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<p />
<p>In May of 2016, graphics specialist NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) began rolling out graphics processors based on its Pascal architecture. The company rolled out an entire stack of gaming desktop-oriented products from top to bottom between May and October, executing extremely well.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Image source: NVIDIA.</p>
<p>The Pascal launch was clearly very successful, and in the quarters after the first Pascal-based products hit the market, NVIDIA started reporting accelerated growth rates in its gaming business.Per a recent investor presentation, NVIDIA says that its revenue from gaming-related products -- primarily gaming-oriented graphics processors -- are up 35% year over year in the company's current fiscal year thus far.</p>
<p>I have seen some speculation about when NVIDIA might roll out gaming products based on its next-generation Volta architecture. Mark Hibben, writing for Seeking Alpha, says that he is "confident that Nvidia will introduce Volta this year, and that it will be based on the TSMC (NYSE: TSM) 10nm process."</p>
<p>I don't share his confidence -- at least if we're talking about graphics processors aimed at gaming. Here's why.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>NVIDIA's current gaming-product stack looks like this (from top to bottom):</p>
<p>The company also offers an ultra-high-end graphics card for prosumers and gamers willing to spend a ton of money called the NVIDIA Titan X. This is based on a chip known as GP102, which has about 50% more graphics resources than the GP104 chip -- though the Titan X doesn't use a fully enabled GP102.</p>
<p>This chip isn't "officially" part of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX lineup, but is, instead, sold under NVIDIA's Titan branding. The chip is also used in NVIDIA's Tesla P40 data-center accelerator (in its full form here).</p>
<p>Current <a href="http://techbuyersguru.com/ces-2017-nvidia-keynote" type="external">rumors suggest Opens a New Window.</a> that NVIDIA will indeed begin selling the GP102 as a proper GeForce GTX gaming card in March of 2017, and that it will be called the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. NVIDIA has traditionally appended the "Ti" suffix to its graphics processors to indicate a higher-end version of the base model, so the 1080 Ti will sit above the 1080 in performance and pricing.</p>
<p>If NVIDIA is going to add the GP102 chip to its GeForce GTX 10-series lineup in March of 2017, it's unlikely that the company will make it obsolete so soon by beginning the rollout of a next-generation graphics architecture in the same year, as this could create some inventory management headaches for NVIDIA's add-in-board partners and their channel partners.</p>
<p>If we look back at NVIDIA's traditional product launch history (Kepler and Maxwell architectures), we can get some hint as to when to expect the company to release Volta.With Maxwell, NVIDIA released the first (high-end gaming) part -- GM204 -- in the fall of 2014, productized as the GeForce GTX 970 and 980. The lower-end GM206, productized as the GeForce GTX 960 and later the GeForce GTX 950, came out in January of 2015.</p>
<p>Image source: NVIDIA.</p>
<p>NVIDIA then released the GM200 chip -- the Maxwell equivalent to today's GP102 chip -- as the GeForce GTX Titan X in March of 2015. (Are you confused by the naming yet?) This was followed by a cut-down, more price friendly GeForce GTX 980 Ti based on the same GM200 chip in June of 2015.</p>
<p>During the Kepler generation, NVIDIA had to make due with the same basic architecture for longer. Kepler, in its GK104 form, hit the market in April of 2012 as the GeForce GTX 680. NVIDIA trickled out the remaining parts based on cut-down GK104 chips, and smaller GK106 and GK107 chips over the course of 2012.</p>
<p>NVIDIA didn't introduce a new architecture in 2013 -- but it needed to put out new products -- so it essentially rebranded (and slightly sped up) the GeForce 600-series Kepler chips, and sold them at lower price points (i.e. the $499 GTX 680 became the $399 GTX 770).It also brought in higher-end Kepler-based chips that were customized for high-performance computing/workstation applications and repurposed those heavy-duty professional chips as premium GeForce GTX 780/780 Ti/Titan/Titan Black gaming/prosumer parts, since they happened also to be better at gaming than the first wave of Kepler chips -- though the chips were saddled with a lot of technology that was useless for gaming.</p>
<p>The original Titan, based on a cut-down variant of a chip known as GK110, launched in February 2013. NVIDIA then cut this chip down further and sold it as the GeForce GTX 780, which launched in May of 2013. NVIDIA then enabled the full chip -- less the bits not useful for gaming -- and sold it as the GeForce GTX 780 Ti in November of 2013.</p>
<p>NVIDIA then enabled the full GK110 chip, including the bits not at all useful for gaming, but very useful for prosumers, and sold that as the Titan Black, which launched in February of 2014.</p>
<p>There's a lot to take in here, but the key takeaways are the following:</p>
<p>If NVIDIA follows historical patterns, if the 1080 Ti comes in March of 2017, then it could be anywhere from 10 months to 13 months before we see the first gaming-oriented Volta product (GV104). That would put the launch time frame at somewhere between January of 2018 (i.e. CES 2018) and April of 2018.</p>
<p>I don't believe that NVIDIA will use TSMC's 10-nanometer manufacturing technology to build Volta. Ten-nanometer is widely viewed as a "stop gap" manufacturing technology that was put into manufacturing primarily to service high-end mobile system-on-chip vendors that couldn't quite wait for 7-nanometer technology which should be much more robust and capable of serving a wider range of product needs to come online.</p>
<p>My expectation is that the first volley of Volta parts will be manufactured in the same 14/16-nanometer manufacturing technologies used to build today's Pascal parts -- as tech news site Fudzilla <a href="http://www.fudzilla.com/news/graphics/41122-nvidia-volta-is-16nm-finfet" type="external">reported Opens a New Window.</a> a while back -- with variants of Volta manufactured in TSMC's 7-nanometer technology coming some time in the 2019 time frame.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Nvidia When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=2ce8f3e8-4015-461c-be9a-fae9683086b2&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Nvidia wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=2ce8f3e8-4015-461c-be9a-fae9683086b2&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of January 4, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/aeassa/info.aspx" type="external">Ashraf Eassa Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Dont Expect NVIDIA Corporation to Launch Volta Architecture Gaming GPUs in 2017 | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/01/10/dont-expect-nvidia-corporation-to-launch-volta-architecture-gaming-gpus-in-2017.html | 2017-01-10 | 0right
| Dont Expect NVIDIA Corporation to Launch Volta Architecture Gaming GPUs in 2017
<p />
<p>In May of 2016, graphics specialist NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) began rolling out graphics processors based on its Pascal architecture. The company rolled out an entire stack of gaming desktop-oriented products from top to bottom between May and October, executing extremely well.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Image source: NVIDIA.</p>
<p>The Pascal launch was clearly very successful, and in the quarters after the first Pascal-based products hit the market, NVIDIA started reporting accelerated growth rates in its gaming business.Per a recent investor presentation, NVIDIA says that its revenue from gaming-related products -- primarily gaming-oriented graphics processors -- are up 35% year over year in the company's current fiscal year thus far.</p>
<p>I have seen some speculation about when NVIDIA might roll out gaming products based on its next-generation Volta architecture. Mark Hibben, writing for Seeking Alpha, says that he is "confident that Nvidia will introduce Volta this year, and that it will be based on the TSMC (NYSE: TSM) 10nm process."</p>
<p>I don't share his confidence -- at least if we're talking about graphics processors aimed at gaming. Here's why.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>NVIDIA's current gaming-product stack looks like this (from top to bottom):</p>
<p>The company also offers an ultra-high-end graphics card for prosumers and gamers willing to spend a ton of money called the NVIDIA Titan X. This is based on a chip known as GP102, which has about 50% more graphics resources than the GP104 chip -- though the Titan X doesn't use a fully enabled GP102.</p>
<p>This chip isn't "officially" part of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX lineup, but is, instead, sold under NVIDIA's Titan branding. The chip is also used in NVIDIA's Tesla P40 data-center accelerator (in its full form here).</p>
<p>Current <a href="http://techbuyersguru.com/ces-2017-nvidia-keynote" type="external">rumors suggest Opens a New Window.</a> that NVIDIA will indeed begin selling the GP102 as a proper GeForce GTX gaming card in March of 2017, and that it will be called the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. NVIDIA has traditionally appended the "Ti" suffix to its graphics processors to indicate a higher-end version of the base model, so the 1080 Ti will sit above the 1080 in performance and pricing.</p>
<p>If NVIDIA is going to add the GP102 chip to its GeForce GTX 10-series lineup in March of 2017, it's unlikely that the company will make it obsolete so soon by beginning the rollout of a next-generation graphics architecture in the same year, as this could create some inventory management headaches for NVIDIA's add-in-board partners and their channel partners.</p>
<p>If we look back at NVIDIA's traditional product launch history (Kepler and Maxwell architectures), we can get some hint as to when to expect the company to release Volta.With Maxwell, NVIDIA released the first (high-end gaming) part -- GM204 -- in the fall of 2014, productized as the GeForce GTX 970 and 980. The lower-end GM206, productized as the GeForce GTX 960 and later the GeForce GTX 950, came out in January of 2015.</p>
<p>Image source: NVIDIA.</p>
<p>NVIDIA then released the GM200 chip -- the Maxwell equivalent to today's GP102 chip -- as the GeForce GTX Titan X in March of 2015. (Are you confused by the naming yet?) This was followed by a cut-down, more price friendly GeForce GTX 980 Ti based on the same GM200 chip in June of 2015.</p>
<p>During the Kepler generation, NVIDIA had to make due with the same basic architecture for longer. Kepler, in its GK104 form, hit the market in April of 2012 as the GeForce GTX 680. NVIDIA trickled out the remaining parts based on cut-down GK104 chips, and smaller GK106 and GK107 chips over the course of 2012.</p>
<p>NVIDIA didn't introduce a new architecture in 2013 -- but it needed to put out new products -- so it essentially rebranded (and slightly sped up) the GeForce 600-series Kepler chips, and sold them at lower price points (i.e. the $499 GTX 680 became the $399 GTX 770).It also brought in higher-end Kepler-based chips that were customized for high-performance computing/workstation applications and repurposed those heavy-duty professional chips as premium GeForce GTX 780/780 Ti/Titan/Titan Black gaming/prosumer parts, since they happened also to be better at gaming than the first wave of Kepler chips -- though the chips were saddled with a lot of technology that was useless for gaming.</p>
<p>The original Titan, based on a cut-down variant of a chip known as GK110, launched in February 2013. NVIDIA then cut this chip down further and sold it as the GeForce GTX 780, which launched in May of 2013. NVIDIA then enabled the full chip -- less the bits not useful for gaming -- and sold it as the GeForce GTX 780 Ti in November of 2013.</p>
<p>NVIDIA then enabled the full GK110 chip, including the bits not at all useful for gaming, but very useful for prosumers, and sold that as the Titan Black, which launched in February of 2014.</p>
<p>There's a lot to take in here, but the key takeaways are the following:</p>
<p>If NVIDIA follows historical patterns, if the 1080 Ti comes in March of 2017, then it could be anywhere from 10 months to 13 months before we see the first gaming-oriented Volta product (GV104). That would put the launch time frame at somewhere between January of 2018 (i.e. CES 2018) and April of 2018.</p>
<p>I don't believe that NVIDIA will use TSMC's 10-nanometer manufacturing technology to build Volta. Ten-nanometer is widely viewed as a "stop gap" manufacturing technology that was put into manufacturing primarily to service high-end mobile system-on-chip vendors that couldn't quite wait for 7-nanometer technology which should be much more robust and capable of serving a wider range of product needs to come online.</p>
<p>My expectation is that the first volley of Volta parts will be manufactured in the same 14/16-nanometer manufacturing technologies used to build today's Pascal parts -- as tech news site Fudzilla <a href="http://www.fudzilla.com/news/graphics/41122-nvidia-volta-is-16nm-finfet" type="external">reported Opens a New Window.</a> a while back -- with variants of Volta manufactured in TSMC's 7-nanometer technology coming some time in the 2019 time frame.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Nvidia When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=2ce8f3e8-4015-461c-be9a-fae9683086b2&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Nvidia wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=2ce8f3e8-4015-461c-be9a-fae9683086b2&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of January 4, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/aeassa/info.aspx" type="external">Ashraf Eassa Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 1,500 |
<p>The editors of the American Bar Association Journal have named former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as this year’s winner of the Lawyer of the Year award — and, perhaps even more curiously, they already have picked Gonzales’ replacement, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, as the winner for 2008.</p>
<p>AP via Yahoo News:</p>
<p>The monthly magazine gave the awards to lawyers who made the most news, said editor and publisher Edward A. Adams.</p>
<p>“Think about Time magazine’s Person of the Year,” Adams said in an interview. “In years past they’ve named people like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin. So we’re not suggesting by these awards that these are the best lawyers in any sense of the word. We are saying they are the most newsworthy — and perhaps also the best.”</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071212/ap_on_go_ot/gonzales_lawyer_of_the_year" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Law Journal Names Gonzales 'Lawyer of the Year' | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/law-journal-names-gonzales-lawyer-of-the-year/ | 2007-12-13 | 4left
| Law Journal Names Gonzales 'Lawyer of the Year'
<p>The editors of the American Bar Association Journal have named former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as this year’s winner of the Lawyer of the Year award — and, perhaps even more curiously, they already have picked Gonzales’ replacement, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, as the winner for 2008.</p>
<p>AP via Yahoo News:</p>
<p>The monthly magazine gave the awards to lawyers who made the most news, said editor and publisher Edward A. Adams.</p>
<p>“Think about Time magazine’s Person of the Year,” Adams said in an interview. “In years past they’ve named people like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin. So we’re not suggesting by these awards that these are the best lawyers in any sense of the word. We are saying they are the most newsworthy — and perhaps also the best.”</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071212/ap_on_go_ot/gonzales_lawyer_of_the_year" type="external">Read more</a></p> | 1,501 |
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<p />
<p>by Scott Sandlin / Journal staff writer</p>
<p>Tracy Province&#160;testified Monday in the capital murder trial of John McCluskey&#160;that he and fellow inmates at the Arizona prison near Kingman, Ariz., used the dog program to make their escape.</p>
<p>The program was run through a local animal rescue group to tame otherwise unadoptable dogs in the area. The program gave the prisoners access to the outside of the prison so the dogs could run and be bathed.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>——————</p>
<p>6:20 a.m.</p>
<p>by Susan Montoya Bryan / Associated Press</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The capital murder trial of an Arizona fugitive accused of killing an Oklahoma couple while on the run will resume Monday with prosecutors calling a fellow inmate to the witness stand.</p>
<p>The prosecution’s case against John McCluskey hinges partly on the testimony of inmate Tracy Province. The two, along with an accomplice, sparked a nationwide manhunt when they escaped from a medium-security prison near Kingman, Ariz., in 2010.</p>
<p>Prosecutors say the trio targeted Gary and Linda Haas of Tecumseh, Okla., at a rest stop near the Texas-New Mexico state line. Tired of driving more than 1,000 miles in their cramped get-away car, they wanted the couple’s pickup truck and trailer.</p>
<p>The Haases were carjacked at gunpoint and forced to drive to a desolate spot along Interstate 40 in eastern New Mexico. They were shot. Their bodies were burned along with their trailer and their truck was stolen.</p>
<p>Province is expected to detail what happened that summer day on the plains of eastern New Mexico. He could be on the stand for as many as three days.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>McCluskey’s defense attorneys indicated in a recent motion they intend to challenge Province’s credibility.</p>
<p>The defense also suggested in opening statements that years of drug use had clouded Province’s memory and that he had incentive to testify for the prosecution to avoid the death penalty.</p>
<p>Province and the accomplice, Casslyn Welch, pleaded guilty last year to numerous charges stemming from the Haases deaths. Both face life sentences.</p>
<p>Welch, who is also McCluskey’s cousin, is expected to testify in the coming weeks.</p>
<p>According to court documents, Province separated from McCluskey and Welch and was arrested in northwestern Wyoming about a week after the Haases were killed. Authorities said he was found with the Haases’ backpack, a Bible, a gun, a knife and other supplies.</p>
<p>He told authorities his plan was to overdose on heroin at Yellowstone National Park, but he decided to try to hitchhike to Indiana instead.</p>
<p>Province was already was serving life in prison for murder and robbery when the prison break happened.</p> | Ariz. inmate testifies in NM capital murder case | false | https://abqjournal.com/253497/ariz-inmate-to-testify-in-nm-capital-murder-case.html | 2013-08-26 | 2least
| Ariz. inmate testifies in NM capital murder case
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>by Scott Sandlin / Journal staff writer</p>
<p>Tracy Province&#160;testified Monday in the capital murder trial of John McCluskey&#160;that he and fellow inmates at the Arizona prison near Kingman, Ariz., used the dog program to make their escape.</p>
<p>The program was run through a local animal rescue group to tame otherwise unadoptable dogs in the area. The program gave the prisoners access to the outside of the prison so the dogs could run and be bathed.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>——————</p>
<p>6:20 a.m.</p>
<p>by Susan Montoya Bryan / Associated Press</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The capital murder trial of an Arizona fugitive accused of killing an Oklahoma couple while on the run will resume Monday with prosecutors calling a fellow inmate to the witness stand.</p>
<p>The prosecution’s case against John McCluskey hinges partly on the testimony of inmate Tracy Province. The two, along with an accomplice, sparked a nationwide manhunt when they escaped from a medium-security prison near Kingman, Ariz., in 2010.</p>
<p>Prosecutors say the trio targeted Gary and Linda Haas of Tecumseh, Okla., at a rest stop near the Texas-New Mexico state line. Tired of driving more than 1,000 miles in their cramped get-away car, they wanted the couple’s pickup truck and trailer.</p>
<p>The Haases were carjacked at gunpoint and forced to drive to a desolate spot along Interstate 40 in eastern New Mexico. They were shot. Their bodies were burned along with their trailer and their truck was stolen.</p>
<p>Province is expected to detail what happened that summer day on the plains of eastern New Mexico. He could be on the stand for as many as three days.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>McCluskey’s defense attorneys indicated in a recent motion they intend to challenge Province’s credibility.</p>
<p>The defense also suggested in opening statements that years of drug use had clouded Province’s memory and that he had incentive to testify for the prosecution to avoid the death penalty.</p>
<p>Province and the accomplice, Casslyn Welch, pleaded guilty last year to numerous charges stemming from the Haases deaths. Both face life sentences.</p>
<p>Welch, who is also McCluskey’s cousin, is expected to testify in the coming weeks.</p>
<p>According to court documents, Province separated from McCluskey and Welch and was arrested in northwestern Wyoming about a week after the Haases were killed. Authorities said he was found with the Haases’ backpack, a Bible, a gun, a knife and other supplies.</p>
<p>He told authorities his plan was to overdose on heroin at Yellowstone National Park, but he decided to try to hitchhike to Indiana instead.</p>
<p>Province was already was serving life in prison for murder and robbery when the prison break happened.</p> | 1,502 |
<p>The Raiderettes perform in a December game against the Buffalo Bills.Daniel Gluskoter/Cal Sports Media/ZUMAPress</p>
<p />
<p>While football fans are getting ready for the Super Bowl this weekend, California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) has turned her attention to the women on the sidelines. Gonzalez, a former cheerleader and labor leader, introduced a bill today that would require California’s professional sports teams to classify cheerleaders as employees, thus forcing teams to provide minimum wage, paid overtime, and workers compensation.</p>
<p>The bill was inspired by a <a href="" type="internal">spate of lawsuits</a> last year in which NFL cheerleaders sued their teams for workplace violations. The first lawsuit, Lacy T. et al vs. The Oakland Raiders, exposed a “stunning system of abuses against cheerleaders,” says Gonzalez, including sub-minimum wage pay, unpaid practices and appearances, and fines for things like <a href="" type="internal">bringing the wrong pom-poms</a> to practice. According to an <a href="http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/10702976/just-cheer-baby-lacy-t-sues-oakland-raiders" type="external">ESPN the Magazine article</a>, a Raiderettes handbook simply says that it’s possible to “find yourself with no salary at all at the end of the season.” (Read more of our coverage of the indignities of NFL cheerleaders <a href="" type="internal">here</a>, and of NHL’s ice girls <a href="" type="internal">here</a>).</p>
<p>“NFL teams and their billionaire owners have used professional cheerleaders as part of the game day experience for decades.&#160; They have capitalized on their talents without providing even the most basic workplace protections like a minimum wage,” Gonzalez said in a statement. Reached by phone, she added, “Nobody would never, ever question that the guy who brings you beer is going to get minimum wage, but we’re not gonna pay the woman on the field who’s entertaining you?” Asked whether she was concerned about pushback from NFL teams, she replied, “I don’t think it’s a good PR move for the NFL to be opposing minimum wage for women’s workers. Let’s be honest.”</p>
<p /> | Lawmaker: Cheerleaders Should Get Paid a Real Wage | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/california-cheerleaders-employees-lorena-gonzalez/ | 2015-01-29 | 4left
| Lawmaker: Cheerleaders Should Get Paid a Real Wage
<p>The Raiderettes perform in a December game against the Buffalo Bills.Daniel Gluskoter/Cal Sports Media/ZUMAPress</p>
<p />
<p>While football fans are getting ready for the Super Bowl this weekend, California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) has turned her attention to the women on the sidelines. Gonzalez, a former cheerleader and labor leader, introduced a bill today that would require California’s professional sports teams to classify cheerleaders as employees, thus forcing teams to provide minimum wage, paid overtime, and workers compensation.</p>
<p>The bill was inspired by a <a href="" type="internal">spate of lawsuits</a> last year in which NFL cheerleaders sued their teams for workplace violations. The first lawsuit, Lacy T. et al vs. The Oakland Raiders, exposed a “stunning system of abuses against cheerleaders,” says Gonzalez, including sub-minimum wage pay, unpaid practices and appearances, and fines for things like <a href="" type="internal">bringing the wrong pom-poms</a> to practice. According to an <a href="http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/10702976/just-cheer-baby-lacy-t-sues-oakland-raiders" type="external">ESPN the Magazine article</a>, a Raiderettes handbook simply says that it’s possible to “find yourself with no salary at all at the end of the season.” (Read more of our coverage of the indignities of NFL cheerleaders <a href="" type="internal">here</a>, and of NHL’s ice girls <a href="" type="internal">here</a>).</p>
<p>“NFL teams and their billionaire owners have used professional cheerleaders as part of the game day experience for decades.&#160; They have capitalized on their talents without providing even the most basic workplace protections like a minimum wage,” Gonzalez said in a statement. Reached by phone, she added, “Nobody would never, ever question that the guy who brings you beer is going to get minimum wage, but we’re not gonna pay the woman on the field who’s entertaining you?” Asked whether she was concerned about pushback from NFL teams, she replied, “I don’t think it’s a good PR move for the NFL to be opposing minimum wage for women’s workers. Let’s be honest.”</p>
<p /> | 1,503 |
<p>Shares of some top credit card companies are up at 10 a.m.:</p>
<p>American Express Co. rose $.71 or .7 percent, to $95.58.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Capital One Financial Corp. rose $.42 or .5 percent, to $83.02.</p>
<p>Discover Financial Services rose $.58 or .9 percent, to $62.56.</p>
<p>Mastercard rose $1.34 or 1.8 percent, to $74.81.</p>
<p>Visa Inc. rose $3.34 or 1.6 percent, to $214.05.</p> | Credit Card companies shares up at 10 a.m. | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/08/25/credit-card-companies-shares-up-at-10-am.html | 2016-03-05 | 0right
| Credit Card companies shares up at 10 a.m.
<p>Shares of some top credit card companies are up at 10 a.m.:</p>
<p>American Express Co. rose $.71 or .7 percent, to $95.58.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Capital One Financial Corp. rose $.42 or .5 percent, to $83.02.</p>
<p>Discover Financial Services rose $.58 or .9 percent, to $62.56.</p>
<p>Mastercard rose $1.34 or 1.8 percent, to $74.81.</p>
<p>Visa Inc. rose $3.34 or 1.6 percent, to $214.05.</p> | 1,504 |
<p>TradeKing All-Star Blogger Mark Wolfinger explains different option strategies with a client on the Trader Network!Posted by</p>
<p><a href="http://community.tradeking.com/members/james-mack/trades" type="external">James MacK Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Mark’s Response</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tradeking.com/ODD" type="external">Click here to review the Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options brochure Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://community.tradeking.com/members/tk-all-star/blogs" type="external">http://community.tradeking.com/members/tk-all-star/blogs Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://community.tradeking.com/members/tk-all-star/details" type="external">http://community.tradeking.com/members/tk-all-star/details Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://finra.org/" type="external">FINRA Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p><a href="http://sipc.org/" type="external">SIPC Opens a New Window.</a></p> | Different Option Strategies Explained | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2012/02/23/different-option-strategies-explained.html | 2016-03-03 | 0right
| Different Option Strategies Explained
<p>TradeKing All-Star Blogger Mark Wolfinger explains different option strategies with a client on the Trader Network!Posted by</p>
<p><a href="http://community.tradeking.com/members/james-mack/trades" type="external">James MacK Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Mark’s Response</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tradeking.com/ODD" type="external">Click here to review the Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options brochure Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://community.tradeking.com/members/tk-all-star/blogs" type="external">http://community.tradeking.com/members/tk-all-star/blogs Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://community.tradeking.com/members/tk-all-star/details" type="external">http://community.tradeking.com/members/tk-all-star/details Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://finra.org/" type="external">FINRA Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p><a href="http://sipc.org/" type="external">SIPC Opens a New Window.</a></p> | 1,505 |
<p>Mergers and acquisitions have been one of the key drivers behind the healthcare sector's leadership during the current bull market. That catalyst has been dealt a blow at the hands of the U.S. government's efforts to crack down on inversion deals, but that does not mean healthcare M&amp;A activity is dead.</p>
<p>Far from it, and some of the sector's exchange-traded funds are uniquely positioned to benefit from ongoing healthcare consolidation. The VANECK VECTORS ETF TRUST GENERIC DRUGS ETF (NASDAQ:GNRX) is one such ETF.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>GNRX, which debuted in January, tracks the Indxx Global Generics &amp; New Pharma Index. That benchmark is intended to track the overall performance of companies that derive a significant proportion of their revenues or that have the potential to derive a significant proportion of their revenues from the generic drug industry, or that have a primary business focus on the generic drug industry, according to <a href="http://www.vaneck.com/vaneck-vectors/equity-etfs/gnrx/snapshot/" type="external">VanEck Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Related Link: <a href="http://www.benzinga.com/general/biotech/16/04/7876269/healthcare-etfs-face-election-year-blues" type="external">Healthcare ETFs Face Election Year Blues Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>GNRX is the only ETF dedicated to generic pharmaceuticals makers. The weighted average market value of GNRX's 79 holdings is $13.9 billion, meaning the ETF is full of potential buyers and sellers assuming more industry consolidation comes to pass.</p>
<p>It likely will, particularly in the biologics and biosimilars space, an area that GNRX offers unique exposure to.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>As pipelines improve, big pharma is seeking out individual therapeutics and smaller biotech companies to bolster drug portfolios. While patent expiries are not terribly onerous near term by historical standards, strengthening innovative drug portfolios is seemingly a preferable strategy as bigger M&amp;A deals struggle to close, said <a href="https://www.fitchratings.com/site/pressrelease?id=1004636" type="external">Fitch Ratings Opens a New Window.</a> in a recent note.</p>
<p>Significant growth is expected for biologics and a looming patent cliff could launch a new wave of revenue growth for GNRX constituents as biosimilars come to market.</p>
<p>The biologics patent cliff over the next decade could add to a new group of affordable generics or so-called biosimilars. Biologics are drugs derived from animal or other biological sources to treat diseases, as opposed to chemically based pharmaceuticals, according to <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/2016/04/new-wave-of-biosimilar-drugs-may-boost-generics-etf/" type="external">ETF Trends Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Potential buyers in GNRX's lineup include Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd (ADR) (NYSE:TEVA) and Mylan NV (NASDAQ:MYL), companies that among other GNRX holdings, have previously displayed acquisitive ways.</p>
<p>Biologics accounted for 12 of the 2015 approvals versus 10 during 2014. Of the approvals, more than half were drugs to treat cancer (33 percent), cardiovascular disease (17 percent) and infections (8 percent). We expect approvals to remain relatively strong in the intermediate term, despite lagging during the first four months of 2016. Eight NMEs have already been approved through April this year, according to Fitch.</p>
<p>2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.</p> | M&A Potential With This Healthcare ETF | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/05/19/ma-potential-with-this-healthcare-etf.html | 2016-05-19 | 0right
| M&A Potential With This Healthcare ETF
<p>Mergers and acquisitions have been one of the key drivers behind the healthcare sector's leadership during the current bull market. That catalyst has been dealt a blow at the hands of the U.S. government's efforts to crack down on inversion deals, but that does not mean healthcare M&amp;A activity is dead.</p>
<p>Far from it, and some of the sector's exchange-traded funds are uniquely positioned to benefit from ongoing healthcare consolidation. The VANECK VECTORS ETF TRUST GENERIC DRUGS ETF (NASDAQ:GNRX) is one such ETF.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>GNRX, which debuted in January, tracks the Indxx Global Generics &amp; New Pharma Index. That benchmark is intended to track the overall performance of companies that derive a significant proportion of their revenues or that have the potential to derive a significant proportion of their revenues from the generic drug industry, or that have a primary business focus on the generic drug industry, according to <a href="http://www.vaneck.com/vaneck-vectors/equity-etfs/gnrx/snapshot/" type="external">VanEck Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Related Link: <a href="http://www.benzinga.com/general/biotech/16/04/7876269/healthcare-etfs-face-election-year-blues" type="external">Healthcare ETFs Face Election Year Blues Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>GNRX is the only ETF dedicated to generic pharmaceuticals makers. The weighted average market value of GNRX's 79 holdings is $13.9 billion, meaning the ETF is full of potential buyers and sellers assuming more industry consolidation comes to pass.</p>
<p>It likely will, particularly in the biologics and biosimilars space, an area that GNRX offers unique exposure to.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>As pipelines improve, big pharma is seeking out individual therapeutics and smaller biotech companies to bolster drug portfolios. While patent expiries are not terribly onerous near term by historical standards, strengthening innovative drug portfolios is seemingly a preferable strategy as bigger M&amp;A deals struggle to close, said <a href="https://www.fitchratings.com/site/pressrelease?id=1004636" type="external">Fitch Ratings Opens a New Window.</a> in a recent note.</p>
<p>Significant growth is expected for biologics and a looming patent cliff could launch a new wave of revenue growth for GNRX constituents as biosimilars come to market.</p>
<p>The biologics patent cliff over the next decade could add to a new group of affordable generics or so-called biosimilars. Biologics are drugs derived from animal or other biological sources to treat diseases, as opposed to chemically based pharmaceuticals, according to <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/2016/04/new-wave-of-biosimilar-drugs-may-boost-generics-etf/" type="external">ETF Trends Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Potential buyers in GNRX's lineup include Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd (ADR) (NYSE:TEVA) and Mylan NV (NASDAQ:MYL), companies that among other GNRX holdings, have previously displayed acquisitive ways.</p>
<p>Biologics accounted for 12 of the 2015 approvals versus 10 during 2014. Of the approvals, more than half were drugs to treat cancer (33 percent), cardiovascular disease (17 percent) and infections (8 percent). We expect approvals to remain relatively strong in the intermediate term, despite lagging during the first four months of 2016. Eight NMEs have already been approved through April this year, according to Fitch.</p>
<p>2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.</p> | 1,506 |
<p>Last October, I wrote the piece “‘ <a href="http://husseini.posthaven.com/democracy-now-gets-nuclear-ban-vote-totally-wrong" type="external">Democracy Now’ Gets Nuclear Ban Vote Totally Wrong</a>“.</p>
<p>Yesterday&#160;morning, again, “Democracy Now” got crucial information about the treaty wrong. The&#160; <a href="" type="internal">lead headline</a>&#160;on the morning’s show was:</p>
<p>At the United Nations headquarters in New York, 122 countries have approved a global treaty to ban the use of nuclear weapons, despite the United States leading the opposition to the treaty.</p>
<p>Actually,&#160; <a href="https://husseini.posthaven.com/broadcasting-unaccountability" type="external">unacknowledged</a>&#160;in the transcript (and spliced on the current&#160; <a href="" type="internal">online version</a>) is that during broadcast, Amy Goodman initially read the headline as “despite the United Nations leading the opposition to the treaty” — and then corrected it at the end of headlines, which is somewhat darkly amusing.</p>
<p>But the core statement is not true. The treaty doesn’t “ban the use of nuclear weapons” — it bans&#160;possession. The name of the agreement is “ <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=57139#.WWP8RX7ystM" type="external">Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons</a>“.</p>
<p>The&#160; <a href="" type="internal">treaty states</a>:</p>
<p>Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to: (a) Develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;…</p>
<p>“Democracy Now” should correct this and be be far more serious about reporting on the role of the U.S. government in forcing the continued possession and threatening use of nuclear weapons.</p> | “Democracy Now” Again Misreports Nuclear Ban Treaty | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/07/12/democracy-now-again-misreports-nuclear-ban-treaty/ | 2017-07-12 | 4left
| “Democracy Now” Again Misreports Nuclear Ban Treaty
<p>Last October, I wrote the piece “‘ <a href="http://husseini.posthaven.com/democracy-now-gets-nuclear-ban-vote-totally-wrong" type="external">Democracy Now’ Gets Nuclear Ban Vote Totally Wrong</a>“.</p>
<p>Yesterday&#160;morning, again, “Democracy Now” got crucial information about the treaty wrong. The&#160; <a href="" type="internal">lead headline</a>&#160;on the morning’s show was:</p>
<p>At the United Nations headquarters in New York, 122 countries have approved a global treaty to ban the use of nuclear weapons, despite the United States leading the opposition to the treaty.</p>
<p>Actually,&#160; <a href="https://husseini.posthaven.com/broadcasting-unaccountability" type="external">unacknowledged</a>&#160;in the transcript (and spliced on the current&#160; <a href="" type="internal">online version</a>) is that during broadcast, Amy Goodman initially read the headline as “despite the United Nations leading the opposition to the treaty” — and then corrected it at the end of headlines, which is somewhat darkly amusing.</p>
<p>But the core statement is not true. The treaty doesn’t “ban the use of nuclear weapons” — it bans&#160;possession. The name of the agreement is “ <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=57139#.WWP8RX7ystM" type="external">Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons</a>“.</p>
<p>The&#160; <a href="" type="internal">treaty states</a>:</p>
<p>Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to: (a) Develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;…</p>
<p>“Democracy Now” should correct this and be be far more serious about reporting on the role of the U.S. government in forcing the continued possession and threatening use of nuclear weapons.</p> | 1,507 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>An Albuquerque woman who pleaded guilty to 16 felony counts that included tax fraud has been sentenced to spend four years in prison, according to a news release from the state Taxation and Revenue Department.</p>
<p>Gayle McIntyre, 55, appeared before state District Judge Michael Vigil of Santa Fe for sentencing on Friday. The judge sentenced her to 30 years incarceration with all but four years suspended, the news release said.</p>
<p>McIntyre, under the judge’s sentence, also will be placed on probation for five years after she’s released from prison, the news release said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>McIntyre was on probation for tax fraud in a 2005 case when she was indicted in January by a grand jury in Santa Fe on 23 counts of tax fraud, computer access with intent to defraud or embezzle, identity theft and forgery, the news release said.</p>
<p>McIntyre, in April, pleaded guilty to seven counts of tax fraud, seven counts of computer access with intent to defraud or embezzle, one count of forgery and one count of attempted felony fraud.</p>
<p>In 2005, McIntyre pleaded guilty to 36 counts of tax fraud for filing false income tax returns and was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay nearly $127,000 in restitution to the state, according to the news release.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Monday, 26 April 2010 17:56</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>An Albuquerque woman who’s currently on probation for tax fraud has pleaded guilty to new criminal charges of filing false state income tax returns.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Authorities said 54-year-old Gayle McIntyre pleaded guilty Monday in state District Court in Santa Fe to seven counts of tax fraud, seven counts of computer access with intent to defraud or embezzle, one count of forgery and one count of attempted felony fraud.</p>
<p>First Judicial District Court Judge Michael Vigil ordered McIntrye to undergo a 60-day evaluation period prior to her sentencing. She could receive between two and eight years in prison and be ordered to pay restitution to the state.</p>
<p>In 2005, McIntyre pleaded guilty to 36 counts of tax fraud for filing false income tax returns and was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay nearly $127,000 in restitution.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Wednesday, 20 January 2010 14:21</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>An Albuquerque woman who is on probation for tax fraud is now facing new charges of tax fraud, embezzlement, forgery and identity theft for allegedly filing false income tax returns, state Taxation and Revenue Secretary Rick Homans announced Wednesday.</p>
<p>Homans said in a news release that Gayle McIntyre, 54, was indicted by a grand jury last week in Santa Fe.</p>
<p>According to the news release, McIntyre was indicted on 23 counts of tax fraud, computer access with intent to defraud or embezzle, identity theft and forgery.</p>
<p>The indictment accuses McIntyre of filing seven false income tax returns totaling $7,393 between June and August of 2009, and depositing in her account one refund check in the amount of $1,765, the news release said.</p>
<p>In 2005, according to the news release, McIntyre pleaded guilty to 36 counts of tax fraud for filing false income tax returns and was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay nearly $127,000 in restitution to the state.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | UPDATED: ABQ Woman Gets 4 Years in Prison in Tax Fraud Case | false | https://abqjournal.com/9401/updated-abq-woman-gets-4-years-in-prison-in-tax-fraud-case.html | 2least
| UPDATED: ABQ Woman Gets 4 Years in Prison in Tax Fraud Case
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>An Albuquerque woman who pleaded guilty to 16 felony counts that included tax fraud has been sentenced to spend four years in prison, according to a news release from the state Taxation and Revenue Department.</p>
<p>Gayle McIntyre, 55, appeared before state District Judge Michael Vigil of Santa Fe for sentencing on Friday. The judge sentenced her to 30 years incarceration with all but four years suspended, the news release said.</p>
<p>McIntyre, under the judge’s sentence, also will be placed on probation for five years after she’s released from prison, the news release said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>McIntyre was on probation for tax fraud in a 2005 case when she was indicted in January by a grand jury in Santa Fe on 23 counts of tax fraud, computer access with intent to defraud or embezzle, identity theft and forgery, the news release said.</p>
<p>McIntyre, in April, pleaded guilty to seven counts of tax fraud, seven counts of computer access with intent to defraud or embezzle, one count of forgery and one count of attempted felony fraud.</p>
<p>In 2005, McIntyre pleaded guilty to 36 counts of tax fraud for filing false income tax returns and was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay nearly $127,000 in restitution to the state, according to the news release.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Monday, 26 April 2010 17:56</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>An Albuquerque woman who’s currently on probation for tax fraud has pleaded guilty to new criminal charges of filing false state income tax returns.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Authorities said 54-year-old Gayle McIntyre pleaded guilty Monday in state District Court in Santa Fe to seven counts of tax fraud, seven counts of computer access with intent to defraud or embezzle, one count of forgery and one count of attempted felony fraud.</p>
<p>First Judicial District Court Judge Michael Vigil ordered McIntrye to undergo a 60-day evaluation period prior to her sentencing. She could receive between two and eight years in prison and be ordered to pay restitution to the state.</p>
<p>In 2005, McIntyre pleaded guilty to 36 counts of tax fraud for filing false income tax returns and was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay nearly $127,000 in restitution.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Wednesday, 20 January 2010 14:21</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>An Albuquerque woman who is on probation for tax fraud is now facing new charges of tax fraud, embezzlement, forgery and identity theft for allegedly filing false income tax returns, state Taxation and Revenue Secretary Rick Homans announced Wednesday.</p>
<p>Homans said in a news release that Gayle McIntyre, 54, was indicted by a grand jury last week in Santa Fe.</p>
<p>According to the news release, McIntyre was indicted on 23 counts of tax fraud, computer access with intent to defraud or embezzle, identity theft and forgery.</p>
<p>The indictment accuses McIntyre of filing seven false income tax returns totaling $7,393 between June and August of 2009, and depositing in her account one refund check in the amount of $1,765, the news release said.</p>
<p>In 2005, according to the news release, McIntyre pleaded guilty to 36 counts of tax fraud for filing false income tax returns and was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay nearly $127,000 in restitution to the state.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 1,508 |
|
<p>On May 15, the anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, its Arab citizens observed a day of mourning for the victims of the Naqba (“catastrophe”) – the mass exodus of half the Palestinian people from the territory which became Israel.</p>
<p>Like every year, this aroused much fury. Tel Aviv University allowed Arab students to hold a meeting, which was attacked by ultra-right Jewish students. Haifa University forbade the meeting altogether. Some years ago the Knesset debated a “Naqba Law” that would have sent commemorators to prison for three years. This was later moderated to the withdrawal of government funds from institutions that mention the Naqba.</p>
<p>The Only Democracy in the Middle East may well be the only democracy in the world that forbids its citizens to remember a historical event. Forgetting is a national duty.</p>
<p>Trouble is, it’s hard to forget the history of the “Palestinian issue”, because it dominates our life. 65 years after the foundation of Israel, half the news in our media concern this one issue, directly or indirectly.</p>
<p>Just now, the South African government has decreed that all products of the West Bank settlements sold there must be clearly marked. This measure, already in force in Europe, was roundly condemned by our Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, as “racist” (looks who’s talking!).&#160; However, it joins a boycott initiated 15 years ago by my Israeli friends and me.</p>
<p>The new government coalition has declared that it will renew negotiations with the Palestinians (everybody knows that this is a hollow promise). A wave of murders and rapes is being attributed to Arabs (and African asylum seekers). All presidential candidates in Egypt promise to take up the fight for the Palestinians. Senior Israeli army officers have disclosed that 3500 Syrian and Iranian missiles, as well as tens of thousands in Hizbollah’s South Lebanon, are ready to be launched against us because of Palestine. And so on, a daily list.</p>
<p>115 years after the foundation of the Zionist movement, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominates our news.</p>
<p>THE FOUNDING FATHERS of Zionism adopted the slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land” (coined much earlier by a British Christian Zionist). They believed the Promised Land to be empty. They knew, of course, that there were some people in the country, but the Zionists were Europeans, and for Europeans at the end of the 19th century, the heyday of imperialism and colonialism, colored people – brown, black, yellow, red or whatever – did not count as people.</p>
<p>When Theodor Herzl put forward the idea of a Jewish State, he was not thinking about Palestine but about an area in Argentina. He intended to empty this area of all its native population – but only after they had killed all the snakes and dangerous beasts.</p>
<p>In his book “Der Judenstaat” there is no mention of Arabs – and not by accident.&#160; When Herzl wrote it, he was not yet thinking about this country. The country appears in the book only in a tiny chapter added at the last moment, titled “Palestine or Argentina?”</p>
<p>Therefore Herzl did not speak about evicting the Palestinian population. This would have been impossible anyway, since Herzl was asking the Ottoman sultan for a charter for Palestine. The Sultan was a Caliph, the spiritual head of all the world’s Muslims. Herzl was too cautious to bring this subject up.</p>
<p>This explains the otherwise curious fact: the Zionist movement has never given a clear answer to its most basic question: how to create a Jewish state in a country inhabited by another people. This question has remained unresolved to this very day.</p>
<p>But only seemingly. Hidden somewhere underneath it all, on the fringes of the collective consciousness, Zionism always had an answer. It is so self-evident, that there was no need to think about it. Only few had the courage to express it openly. It is imprinted on the “genetic code” of the Zionist movement, so to speak, and its daughter, the State of Israel.</p>
<p>This code says: a Jewish State in all the Land of Israel. And therefore: total opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state – at any time, anywhere in the country, at all costs.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>WHEN A strategist plans a war, he first of all defines its aim. That is the Main Effort. Every other effort must be considered accordingly. If it supports the main effort, it is acceptable. If it hurts the main effort, it must be rejected.</p>
<p>The Main Effort of the Zionist/Israeli movement is to achieve a Jewish State in all of Eretz Israel – the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. In other words: the prevention of an Arab Palestinian state.</p>
<p>When one grasps this, all the events of the last 115 years make sense. All the twists and turns, all the seeming contradictions and deviations, all the curious-looking decisions make perfect sense.</p>
<p>In a bird’s eye view, the Zionist-Israeli policy looks like a river striving towards the sea. When it meets an obstacle, it goes around it. The path deviates to the right and to the left, sometimes even going backwards. But it perseveres with a wondrous determination towards its goal.</p>
<p>The guiding principle was to accept every compromise that gives us what we can get at any stage, but never let the final aim out of our sight.</p>
<p>This policy allows us to compromise about everything, except one: an Arab Palestinian state that would confirm the existence of an Arab Palestinian people.</p>
<p>All Israeli governments have fought this idea with all available means. In this respect there was no difference between David Ben-Gurion, who had a secret agreement with King Abdullah of Jordan to obstruct the setting up of the Palestinian state decreed by the UN General Assembly’s 1947 resolution, and Menachem Begin, who made a separate peace with Anwar Sadat in order to get Egypt out of the Israeli-Palestinian war. Not to mention Golda Meir’s famous dictum: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people”. Thousands of other decisions by successive Israeli governments have followed the same logic.</p>
<p>The only exception may be the Oslo agreement – which also did not mention a Palestinian state. After signing it, Yitzhak Rabin did not rush forwards to create such a state. Instead, he stopped in his tracks as if stunned by his own audacity. He hesitated, dithered, until the inevitable Zionist counter-attack gathered momentum and put an end to his effort – and his life.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>THE PRESENT struggle over the settlements is an integral part of this process. The main aim of the settlers is to make a Palestinian state impossible. All Israeli governments have supported them, openly or covertly. They are, of course, illegal under international law, but many of them are also illegal under Israeli law. These are variously called “illegal”, “unlawful”, “unpermitted” and so forth. Israel’s august Supreme Court has ordered the removal of several of them and seen its rulings ignored by the government.</p>
<p>The settlers assert that not a single settlement has been set up without secret government consent. And indeed, all the “unlawful” settlements have been connected at once to the water and electricity grids, special new roads have been built for them and the army has rushed to defend them – indeed the Israel Defense Forces have long ago become the Settlements Defense Forces. Lawyers and shysters galore have been employed to expropriate huge tracts of Palestinian land. One famous woman lawyer discovered a forgotten Ottoman law which says that if you shout from the edge of a village, all the land where the shout cannot be heard belongs to the Sultan. Since the Israeli government is the heir of the Jordanian government, which was the heir of the Sultan, this land belongs to the Israeli government, which turns it over to the settlers. (This is not a joke!)</p>
<p>While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems in abeyance and “nothing happens”, it is really going on with full force in the only battlefield that matters: the settlement enterprise. Everything else is marginal, like the awesome prospect of an Israeli attack on Iran. As I have been saying all along: that will never happen. It is a part of the effort to divert attention from the Two-State Solution, the only peaceful solution there is.</p>
<p>WHERE IS the negation of the Palestinian state leading to?</p>
<p>Logically, it can only lead to an apartheid state in the entire country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. In the long run, that would be untenable, leading to an Arab-majority “bi-national” state, which would be totally unacceptable to almost all Israeli Jews. So what is left?</p>
<p>The only conceivable solution would be transfer of all the Arabs to the other side of the Jordan. In some ultra-right circles, this is openly talked about. The Jordanian monarch is deadly afraid of it.</p>
<p>Population transfer already happened in 1948. It is still a point of debate whether this was done deliberately. In the first part of the war, it was clearly a military necessity (and practiced by both sides). Later on, it became more deliberate. But the main point is that the refugees were not allowed back when the hostilities were over. On the contrary, some villages were emptied and destroyed even later. Everybody acted under the invisible directive of the Main Effort, a direction so deeply ingrained in the collective consciousness, that it did not need any specific order.</p>
<p>But 1948 is long gone. The world has changed. What was tolerated from post-Holocaust brave little Israel would not be tolerated tomorrow from mighty, arrogant Israel. Today It is a pipe-dream – like similar dreams on the other side that Israel would somehow disappear from the map.</p>
<p>This means that ethnic cleansing, the only alternative to the Two-State solution, is impossible. The Main Effort has run into a dead end. IT HAS often been said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a clash between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. This will dominate our lives and the lives of generations to come.</p>
<p>Unless we do something that looks almost impossible: to change the Main Effort, the historic direction of our state. Substitute for it a new national aim: peace and coexistence, reconciliation between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine.</p>
<p>URI AVNERY&#160;is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book&#160; <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">The Politics of Anti-Semitism</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | The Negation of the Palestinian State | true | https://counterpunch.org/2012/05/25/the-negation-of-the-palestinian-state/ | 2012-05-25 | 4left
| The Negation of the Palestinian State
<p>On May 15, the anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, its Arab citizens observed a day of mourning for the victims of the Naqba (“catastrophe”) – the mass exodus of half the Palestinian people from the territory which became Israel.</p>
<p>Like every year, this aroused much fury. Tel Aviv University allowed Arab students to hold a meeting, which was attacked by ultra-right Jewish students. Haifa University forbade the meeting altogether. Some years ago the Knesset debated a “Naqba Law” that would have sent commemorators to prison for three years. This was later moderated to the withdrawal of government funds from institutions that mention the Naqba.</p>
<p>The Only Democracy in the Middle East may well be the only democracy in the world that forbids its citizens to remember a historical event. Forgetting is a national duty.</p>
<p>Trouble is, it’s hard to forget the history of the “Palestinian issue”, because it dominates our life. 65 years after the foundation of Israel, half the news in our media concern this one issue, directly or indirectly.</p>
<p>Just now, the South African government has decreed that all products of the West Bank settlements sold there must be clearly marked. This measure, already in force in Europe, was roundly condemned by our Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, as “racist” (looks who’s talking!).&#160; However, it joins a boycott initiated 15 years ago by my Israeli friends and me.</p>
<p>The new government coalition has declared that it will renew negotiations with the Palestinians (everybody knows that this is a hollow promise). A wave of murders and rapes is being attributed to Arabs (and African asylum seekers). All presidential candidates in Egypt promise to take up the fight for the Palestinians. Senior Israeli army officers have disclosed that 3500 Syrian and Iranian missiles, as well as tens of thousands in Hizbollah’s South Lebanon, are ready to be launched against us because of Palestine. And so on, a daily list.</p>
<p>115 years after the foundation of the Zionist movement, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominates our news.</p>
<p>THE FOUNDING FATHERS of Zionism adopted the slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land” (coined much earlier by a British Christian Zionist). They believed the Promised Land to be empty. They knew, of course, that there were some people in the country, but the Zionists were Europeans, and for Europeans at the end of the 19th century, the heyday of imperialism and colonialism, colored people – brown, black, yellow, red or whatever – did not count as people.</p>
<p>When Theodor Herzl put forward the idea of a Jewish State, he was not thinking about Palestine but about an area in Argentina. He intended to empty this area of all its native population – but only after they had killed all the snakes and dangerous beasts.</p>
<p>In his book “Der Judenstaat” there is no mention of Arabs – and not by accident.&#160; When Herzl wrote it, he was not yet thinking about this country. The country appears in the book only in a tiny chapter added at the last moment, titled “Palestine or Argentina?”</p>
<p>Therefore Herzl did not speak about evicting the Palestinian population. This would have been impossible anyway, since Herzl was asking the Ottoman sultan for a charter for Palestine. The Sultan was a Caliph, the spiritual head of all the world’s Muslims. Herzl was too cautious to bring this subject up.</p>
<p>This explains the otherwise curious fact: the Zionist movement has never given a clear answer to its most basic question: how to create a Jewish state in a country inhabited by another people. This question has remained unresolved to this very day.</p>
<p>But only seemingly. Hidden somewhere underneath it all, on the fringes of the collective consciousness, Zionism always had an answer. It is so self-evident, that there was no need to think about it. Only few had the courage to express it openly. It is imprinted on the “genetic code” of the Zionist movement, so to speak, and its daughter, the State of Israel.</p>
<p>This code says: a Jewish State in all the Land of Israel. And therefore: total opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state – at any time, anywhere in the country, at all costs.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>WHEN A strategist plans a war, he first of all defines its aim. That is the Main Effort. Every other effort must be considered accordingly. If it supports the main effort, it is acceptable. If it hurts the main effort, it must be rejected.</p>
<p>The Main Effort of the Zionist/Israeli movement is to achieve a Jewish State in all of Eretz Israel – the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. In other words: the prevention of an Arab Palestinian state.</p>
<p>When one grasps this, all the events of the last 115 years make sense. All the twists and turns, all the seeming contradictions and deviations, all the curious-looking decisions make perfect sense.</p>
<p>In a bird’s eye view, the Zionist-Israeli policy looks like a river striving towards the sea. When it meets an obstacle, it goes around it. The path deviates to the right and to the left, sometimes even going backwards. But it perseveres with a wondrous determination towards its goal.</p>
<p>The guiding principle was to accept every compromise that gives us what we can get at any stage, but never let the final aim out of our sight.</p>
<p>This policy allows us to compromise about everything, except one: an Arab Palestinian state that would confirm the existence of an Arab Palestinian people.</p>
<p>All Israeli governments have fought this idea with all available means. In this respect there was no difference between David Ben-Gurion, who had a secret agreement with King Abdullah of Jordan to obstruct the setting up of the Palestinian state decreed by the UN General Assembly’s 1947 resolution, and Menachem Begin, who made a separate peace with Anwar Sadat in order to get Egypt out of the Israeli-Palestinian war. Not to mention Golda Meir’s famous dictum: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people”. Thousands of other decisions by successive Israeli governments have followed the same logic.</p>
<p>The only exception may be the Oslo agreement – which also did not mention a Palestinian state. After signing it, Yitzhak Rabin did not rush forwards to create such a state. Instead, he stopped in his tracks as if stunned by his own audacity. He hesitated, dithered, until the inevitable Zionist counter-attack gathered momentum and put an end to his effort – and his life.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>THE PRESENT struggle over the settlements is an integral part of this process. The main aim of the settlers is to make a Palestinian state impossible. All Israeli governments have supported them, openly or covertly. They are, of course, illegal under international law, but many of them are also illegal under Israeli law. These are variously called “illegal”, “unlawful”, “unpermitted” and so forth. Israel’s august Supreme Court has ordered the removal of several of them and seen its rulings ignored by the government.</p>
<p>The settlers assert that not a single settlement has been set up without secret government consent. And indeed, all the “unlawful” settlements have been connected at once to the water and electricity grids, special new roads have been built for them and the army has rushed to defend them – indeed the Israel Defense Forces have long ago become the Settlements Defense Forces. Lawyers and shysters galore have been employed to expropriate huge tracts of Palestinian land. One famous woman lawyer discovered a forgotten Ottoman law which says that if you shout from the edge of a village, all the land where the shout cannot be heard belongs to the Sultan. Since the Israeli government is the heir of the Jordanian government, which was the heir of the Sultan, this land belongs to the Israeli government, which turns it over to the settlers. (This is not a joke!)</p>
<p>While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems in abeyance and “nothing happens”, it is really going on with full force in the only battlefield that matters: the settlement enterprise. Everything else is marginal, like the awesome prospect of an Israeli attack on Iran. As I have been saying all along: that will never happen. It is a part of the effort to divert attention from the Two-State Solution, the only peaceful solution there is.</p>
<p>WHERE IS the negation of the Palestinian state leading to?</p>
<p>Logically, it can only lead to an apartheid state in the entire country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. In the long run, that would be untenable, leading to an Arab-majority “bi-national” state, which would be totally unacceptable to almost all Israeli Jews. So what is left?</p>
<p>The only conceivable solution would be transfer of all the Arabs to the other side of the Jordan. In some ultra-right circles, this is openly talked about. The Jordanian monarch is deadly afraid of it.</p>
<p>Population transfer already happened in 1948. It is still a point of debate whether this was done deliberately. In the first part of the war, it was clearly a military necessity (and practiced by both sides). Later on, it became more deliberate. But the main point is that the refugees were not allowed back when the hostilities were over. On the contrary, some villages were emptied and destroyed even later. Everybody acted under the invisible directive of the Main Effort, a direction so deeply ingrained in the collective consciousness, that it did not need any specific order.</p>
<p>But 1948 is long gone. The world has changed. What was tolerated from post-Holocaust brave little Israel would not be tolerated tomorrow from mighty, arrogant Israel. Today It is a pipe-dream – like similar dreams on the other side that Israel would somehow disappear from the map.</p>
<p>This means that ethnic cleansing, the only alternative to the Two-State solution, is impossible. The Main Effort has run into a dead end. IT HAS often been said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a clash between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. This will dominate our lives and the lives of generations to come.</p>
<p>Unless we do something that looks almost impossible: to change the Main Effort, the historic direction of our state. Substitute for it a new national aim: peace and coexistence, reconciliation between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine.</p>
<p>URI AVNERY&#160;is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book&#160; <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">The Politics of Anti-Semitism</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 1,509 |
<p />
<p>Image source: AMC Theaters.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Winter movie season is just beginning, and AMC Entertainment (NYSE: AMC) has solidified itself thisyearas an international leader in the movie theater industry. But even long lines for all the year's holiday blockbusters may not justify a purchase of AMC's stock. Here is what investors should consider right now.</p>
<p>AMC Entertainment bought out small theater operator Starplex during the summer of 2015 to increase its footprint in non-urban markets. The company more than outdid itself in 2016, moving to purchase two other companies: small-town theater chain Carmike Cinemas and Europe-based Odeon &amp; UCI. Carmike shareholders are set to vote on the deal on Nov. 15. AMC expects the Odeon &amp; UCI deal to close by year's end.</p>
<p>The deals will cost AMC about $1.2 billion each. That $2.4 billion will buy AMC the claim to being not only America's largest theater chain but also the largest in the world. AMC owned or operated 386 theaters with 5,244 screens as of the end of June. At the time the deals were announced, Carmike had 276 theaters with 2,954 screens and Odeon &amp; UCI had 242 theaters and 2,236 screens.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The big-spending company has also been in a race with other U.S.-based chains to rekindle interest in going to the movies. Ticket sales have been in decline since the early 2000s, but AMC has been able to drive revenue higher by increasing ticket prices.</p>
<p>To justify the hikes, AMC has been investing in premium screen and audio experiences with things like 3D movies and IMAX high-definition screens. Also in the works have been efforts to install recliner seating and roll out premium food and drink menus. As a result, the company has been able to set best-ever revenue figures, in spite of falling ticket sales.</p>
<p>Hollywood hopes to do its part as well. Box office revenue set new records in 2015 on the back of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Jurassic World. While 2016 is not expected to match last year's success, a new Marvel Comics movie, Doctor Strange; a Harry Potter sequel; and another Star Wars film are expected to draw big crowds as the year comes to a close.</p>
<p>It may be tempting to buy AMC on excitement over the company's moves, as well as two back-to-back years of strong box office sales. With rising revenue and profits in addition to the two buyout announcements, AMC stock has been having a great 2016.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/AMC" type="external">AMC</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>However, much of the excitement is already priced in at current valuations. The trailing-12-month price-to-earnings ratio is over 29, and the one-year-forward picture based on projections only improves the figure to a 23 time P/E.</p>
<p>Investors have high hopes: AMC reported 13% higher revenue and 158% higher earnings per share in the third quarter. Through the first nine months of 2016, revenue was 5% higher and earnings per share 33% higher than last year. Despite the knockout success the company has had so far, shares initially fell on the news as investors and analysts were looking for even higher revenue figures.</p>
<p>AMC is flying high, but so are expectations. Even with the company growing the top and bottom lines through enhancing the moviegoing experience and presenting a strong lineup of movie releases, this year's big run-up in share prices makes for an expensive purchase. And with higher-than-anticipated expenses expected to start rolling in during the fourth quarter as the company completes the Carmike and Odeon purchases, I think the stock has some room to go on sale before my interest is piqued.</p>
<p>Forget the 2016 Election: 10 stocks we like better than AMC Entertainment Holdings Donald Trump was just elected president, and volatility is up. But here's why you should ignore the election:</p>
<p>Investing geniuses Tom and David Gardner have spent a long time beating the market no matter who's in the White House. In fact, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fecap-foolcom-bbn-election%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0000468%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6454%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=81227542-2824-4414-9899-5e0f1c51a1df&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">ten best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now and AMC Entertainment Holdings wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fecap-foolcom-bbn-election%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0000468%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6454%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=81227542-2824-4414-9899-5e0f1c51a1df&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of November 7, 2016</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/nrossolillo/info.aspx" type="external">Nicholas Rossolillo Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | With Winter Movie Releases Looming, Is AMC Stock a Buy? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/15/with-winter-movie-releases-looming-is-amc-stock-buy.html | 2016-11-15 | 0right
| With Winter Movie Releases Looming, Is AMC Stock a Buy?
<p />
<p>Image source: AMC Theaters.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Winter movie season is just beginning, and AMC Entertainment (NYSE: AMC) has solidified itself thisyearas an international leader in the movie theater industry. But even long lines for all the year's holiday blockbusters may not justify a purchase of AMC's stock. Here is what investors should consider right now.</p>
<p>AMC Entertainment bought out small theater operator Starplex during the summer of 2015 to increase its footprint in non-urban markets. The company more than outdid itself in 2016, moving to purchase two other companies: small-town theater chain Carmike Cinemas and Europe-based Odeon &amp; UCI. Carmike shareholders are set to vote on the deal on Nov. 15. AMC expects the Odeon &amp; UCI deal to close by year's end.</p>
<p>The deals will cost AMC about $1.2 billion each. That $2.4 billion will buy AMC the claim to being not only America's largest theater chain but also the largest in the world. AMC owned or operated 386 theaters with 5,244 screens as of the end of June. At the time the deals were announced, Carmike had 276 theaters with 2,954 screens and Odeon &amp; UCI had 242 theaters and 2,236 screens.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The big-spending company has also been in a race with other U.S.-based chains to rekindle interest in going to the movies. Ticket sales have been in decline since the early 2000s, but AMC has been able to drive revenue higher by increasing ticket prices.</p>
<p>To justify the hikes, AMC has been investing in premium screen and audio experiences with things like 3D movies and IMAX high-definition screens. Also in the works have been efforts to install recliner seating and roll out premium food and drink menus. As a result, the company has been able to set best-ever revenue figures, in spite of falling ticket sales.</p>
<p>Hollywood hopes to do its part as well. Box office revenue set new records in 2015 on the back of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Jurassic World. While 2016 is not expected to match last year's success, a new Marvel Comics movie, Doctor Strange; a Harry Potter sequel; and another Star Wars film are expected to draw big crowds as the year comes to a close.</p>
<p>It may be tempting to buy AMC on excitement over the company's moves, as well as two back-to-back years of strong box office sales. With rising revenue and profits in addition to the two buyout announcements, AMC stock has been having a great 2016.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/AMC" type="external">AMC</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>However, much of the excitement is already priced in at current valuations. The trailing-12-month price-to-earnings ratio is over 29, and the one-year-forward picture based on projections only improves the figure to a 23 time P/E.</p>
<p>Investors have high hopes: AMC reported 13% higher revenue and 158% higher earnings per share in the third quarter. Through the first nine months of 2016, revenue was 5% higher and earnings per share 33% higher than last year. Despite the knockout success the company has had so far, shares initially fell on the news as investors and analysts were looking for even higher revenue figures.</p>
<p>AMC is flying high, but so are expectations. Even with the company growing the top and bottom lines through enhancing the moviegoing experience and presenting a strong lineup of movie releases, this year's big run-up in share prices makes for an expensive purchase. And with higher-than-anticipated expenses expected to start rolling in during the fourth quarter as the company completes the Carmike and Odeon purchases, I think the stock has some room to go on sale before my interest is piqued.</p>
<p>Forget the 2016 Election: 10 stocks we like better than AMC Entertainment Holdings Donald Trump was just elected president, and volatility is up. But here's why you should ignore the election:</p>
<p>Investing geniuses Tom and David Gardner have spent a long time beating the market no matter who's in the White House. In fact, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fecap-foolcom-bbn-election%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0000468%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6454%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=81227542-2824-4414-9899-5e0f1c51a1df&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">ten best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now and AMC Entertainment Holdings wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fecap-foolcom-bbn-election%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0000468%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6454%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=81227542-2824-4414-9899-5e0f1c51a1df&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of November 7, 2016</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/nrossolillo/info.aspx" type="external">Nicholas Rossolillo Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 1,510 |
<p>Julian Assange hopes a photo of the 33-year-old Swedish woman who accused him of rape will in fact help clear his name.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, has what has been alleged against the WikiLeaks founder in Sweden&#160;would not be regarded as criminal offense in most other countries.</p>
<p>Having had sex without a condom with a woman who was sleeping was "not a crime in Latin America," Correa said, <a href="http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/" type="external">according to the Sunday Times</a>.</p>
<p>"The crimes that Assange is accused of, they would not be crimes in 90 to 95 percent of the planet," Correa told the Sunday Times, <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ijamm3OkfZMmH_tG9m72-o6NOPow?docId=CNG.325f4e7e4cb0dd270d9d7d9a7589632e.491" type="external">according to Agence France-Presse</a> (Sunday Times articles are protected by a pay wall).</p>
<p>Asked how allegedly using force to begin intercourse could not be a crime, he reportedly answered:</p>
<p>"A woman he was staying with? Sleeping together in the same bed? Let's pass this on to the Swedish justice system. But, for example, not to use a condom in an act between a couple, this is not a crime in Latin America."&#160;</p>
<p>Assange's alleged victim had reportedly earlier participated in consensual sex.</p>
<p>Correa added that the issue of what constituted rape had been "irrelevant to the decision taken by Ecuador" to grant Assange, 41, asylum.</p>
<p>The photograph, meantime, published by <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2193641/Julian-Assange-rape-claim-Is-photo-clear-him.html" type="external">Britain's Mail on Sunday</a>, shows the Swedish woman smiling for the camera and standing with Assange and three other people.</p>
<p>The woman later told police that 48 hours before the picture was taken, Assange sexually assaulted her.</p>
<p>Attorneys for Assange, who has since June 19 avoided extradition to Sweden to face sex assault charges by residing at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, would likely use the photo to undermine the woman's case should it reach court.</p>
<p>The photograph was taken on August 15, 2010, at the Glenfiddich restaurant in Stockholm at a dinner hosted by Rickard Falkvinge, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, which campaigns for greater government transparency.</p>
<p>Falkvinge reportedly said the purpose of the three-hour dinner was to sign a deal for WikiLeaks to use the party's computer servers.</p>
<p>Assange's lawyers also claim that two days after the alleged assault in Sweden, Assange and Woman A, as the 33-year-old is known, attended a conference and two dinner parties where the pair were practically inseparable.</p>
<p>During one party, Woman A tweeted that she was "with the world's coolest, smartest people!"</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/the-grid/anonymous-wikileaks-stratfor-fbi-hacker-cyber-attacks" type="external">Anonymous, joining Wikileaks, hacks into the big time</a> &#160;</p> | Julian Assange hopes photograph of alleged victim smiling will undermine rape claims | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-08-27/julian-assange-hopes-photograph-alleged-victim-smiling-will-undermine-rape-claims | 2012-08-27 | 3left-center
| Julian Assange hopes photograph of alleged victim smiling will undermine rape claims
<p>Julian Assange hopes a photo of the 33-year-old Swedish woman who accused him of rape will in fact help clear his name.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, has what has been alleged against the WikiLeaks founder in Sweden&#160;would not be regarded as criminal offense in most other countries.</p>
<p>Having had sex without a condom with a woman who was sleeping was "not a crime in Latin America," Correa said, <a href="http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/" type="external">according to the Sunday Times</a>.</p>
<p>"The crimes that Assange is accused of, they would not be crimes in 90 to 95 percent of the planet," Correa told the Sunday Times, <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ijamm3OkfZMmH_tG9m72-o6NOPow?docId=CNG.325f4e7e4cb0dd270d9d7d9a7589632e.491" type="external">according to Agence France-Presse</a> (Sunday Times articles are protected by a pay wall).</p>
<p>Asked how allegedly using force to begin intercourse could not be a crime, he reportedly answered:</p>
<p>"A woman he was staying with? Sleeping together in the same bed? Let's pass this on to the Swedish justice system. But, for example, not to use a condom in an act between a couple, this is not a crime in Latin America."&#160;</p>
<p>Assange's alleged victim had reportedly earlier participated in consensual sex.</p>
<p>Correa added that the issue of what constituted rape had been "irrelevant to the decision taken by Ecuador" to grant Assange, 41, asylum.</p>
<p>The photograph, meantime, published by <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2193641/Julian-Assange-rape-claim-Is-photo-clear-him.html" type="external">Britain's Mail on Sunday</a>, shows the Swedish woman smiling for the camera and standing with Assange and three other people.</p>
<p>The woman later told police that 48 hours before the picture was taken, Assange sexually assaulted her.</p>
<p>Attorneys for Assange, who has since June 19 avoided extradition to Sweden to face sex assault charges by residing at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, would likely use the photo to undermine the woman's case should it reach court.</p>
<p>The photograph was taken on August 15, 2010, at the Glenfiddich restaurant in Stockholm at a dinner hosted by Rickard Falkvinge, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, which campaigns for greater government transparency.</p>
<p>Falkvinge reportedly said the purpose of the three-hour dinner was to sign a deal for WikiLeaks to use the party's computer servers.</p>
<p>Assange's lawyers also claim that two days after the alleged assault in Sweden, Assange and Woman A, as the 33-year-old is known, attended a conference and two dinner parties where the pair were practically inseparable.</p>
<p>During one party, Woman A tweeted that she was "with the world's coolest, smartest people!"</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/the-grid/anonymous-wikileaks-stratfor-fbi-hacker-cyber-attacks" type="external">Anonymous, joining Wikileaks, hacks into the big time</a> &#160;</p> | 1,511 |
<p>Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.</p>
<p>The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.</p>
<p>Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as “the most blatant form of voter intimidation” that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.</p>
<p />
<p>The lawyers also had ascertained that one of the three men had gained access to the polling place by securing a credential as a Democratic poll watcher, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Times.</p>
<p>The career Justice lawyers were on the verge of securing sanctions against the men earlier this month when their superiors ordered them to reverse course, according to interviews and documents. The court had already entered a default judgment against the men on April 20.</p>
<p>RELATED STORIES: • <a href="" type="internal">Panetta tries to remedy language lag in CIA</a> • <a href="" type="internal">Pro-Life Catholic leader roots for Sotomayor</a> • <a href="" type="internal">Obama calling for better digital security</a></p>
<p>A Justice Department spokesman on Thursday confirmed that the agency had dropped the case, dismissing two of the men from the lawsuit with no penalty and winning an order against the third man that simply prohibits him from bringing a weapon to a polling place in future elections.</p>
<p>The department was “successful in obtaining an injunction that prohibits the defendant who brandished a weapon outside a Philadelphia polling place from doing so again,” spokesman Alejandro Miyar said. “Claims were dismissed against the other defendants based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law.”</p>
<p>Mr. Miyar declined to elaborate about any internal dispute between career and political officials, saying only that the department is “committed to the vigorous prosecution of those who intimidate, threaten or coerce anyone exercising his or her sacred right to vote.”</p>
<p>Court records reviewed by The Times show that career Justice lawyers were seeking a default judgment and penalties against the three men as recently as May 5, before abruptly ending their pursuit 10 days later.</p>
<p>People directly familiar with the case, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution, said career lawyers in two separate Justice offices had recommended proceeding to default judgment before political superiors overruled them.</p>
<p>Tensions between career lawyers and political appointees inside the Justice Department have been a sensitive matter since allegations surfaced during the Bush administration that higher-ups had ignored or reversed staff lawyers and that some U.S. attorneys had been removed or selected for political reasons.</p>
<p>During his January confirmation hearings, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that during his lengthy Justice Department tenure, the career lawyers were “my teachers, my colleagues and my friends” and described them as the “backbone” of the department.</p>
<p>“If I am confirmed as attorney general, I will listen to them, respect them and make them proud of the vital goals we will pursue together,” he said.</p>
<p>Justice officials declined to say whether Mr. Holder or other senior Justice officials became involved in the case, saying they don’t discuss internal deliberations.</p>
<p>The civil suit filed Jan. 7 identified the three men as members of the Panthers and said they wore military-style uniforms, black berets, combat boots, battle-dress pants, black jackets with military-style insignias and were armed with “a dangerous weapon”and used racial slurs and insults to scare would-be voters and those there to assist them at the Philadelphia polling location on Nov. 4.</p>
<p>The complaint said the three men engaged in “coercion, threats and intimidation, … racial threats and insults, … menacing and intimidating gestures, … and movements directed at individuals who were present to vote.” It said that unless prohibited by court sanctions, they would “continued to violate … the Voting Rights Act by continuing to direct intimidation, threats and coercion at voters and potential voters, by again deploying uniformed and armed members at the entrance to polling locations in future elections, both in Philadelphia and throughout the country.”</p>
<p>To support its evidence, the government had secured an affidavit from Bartle Bull, a longtime civil rights activist and former aide to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign. Mr. Bull said in a sworn statement dated April 7 that he was serving in November as a credentialed poll watcher in Philadelphia when he saw the three uniformed Panthers confront and intimidate voters with a nightstick.</p>
<p>Inexplicably, the government did not enter the affidavit in the court case, according to the files.</p>
<p>“In my opinion, the men created an intimidating presence at the entrance to a poll,” he declared. “In all my experience in politics, in civil rights litigation and in my efforts in the 1960s to secure the right to vote in Mississippi … I have never encountered or heard of another instance in the United States where armed and uniformed men blocked the entrance to a polling location.”</p>
<p>Mr. Bull said the “clear purpose” of what the Panthers were doing was to “intimidate voters with whom they did not agree.” He also said he overheard one of the men tell a white poll watcher: “You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.”</p>
<p>He called their conduct an “outrageous affront to American democracy and the rights of voters to participate in an election without fear.” He said it was a “racially motivated effort to limit both poll watchers aiding voters, as well as voters with whom the men did not agree.”</p>
<p>The three men named in the complaint - New Black Panther Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz, Minister King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson - refused to appear in court to answer the accusations over a near-five month period, court records said.</p>
<p>Justice Department Voting Rights Section Attorney J. Christian Adams complained in one court filing about the defendants’ failure to appear or to file any pleadings in the case, arguing that Mr. Jackson was “not an infant, nor is he an incompetent person as he appears capable of managing his own affairs, nor is he in the military service of the United States.”</p>
<p>Court records show that as late as May 5, the Justice Department was still considering an order by U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell in Philadelphia to seek judgments, or sanctions, against the three Panthers because of their failure to appear.</p>
<p>But 10 days later, the department reversed itself and filed a notice of voluntary dismissal from the complaint for Malik Zulu Shabazz and Mr. Jackson.</p>
<p>That same day, the department asked for the default judgment against King Samir Shabazz, but limited the penalty to an order that he not display a “weapon within 100 feet of any open polling location on any election day in the city of Philadelphia” until Nov. 15, 2012.</p>
<p>Malik Zulu Shabazz is a Washington, D.C., resident.</p>
<p>Mr. Jackson was an elected member of Philadelphia’s 14th Ward Democratic Committee, and was credentialed to be at the polling place last Nov. 4 as an official Democratic Party polling observer, according to the Philadelphia City Commissioner’s Office.</p>
<p>Efforts to reach the Panthers were unsuccessful. A telephone number listed on the New Black Panthers Web site had been disconnected.</p>
<p>The complaint said that the three men were deployed at the entrance to a Philadelphia polling location wearing the uniform of the New Black Panther Party and that King Samir Shabazz repeatedly brandished a police-style nightstick with a contoured grip and wrist lanyard.</p>
<p>According to the complaint, Malik Zulu Shabazz, a Howard University Law School graduate, said the placement of King Samir Shabazz and Mr. Jackson in Philadelphia was part of a nationwide effort to deploy New Black Panther Party members at polling locations on Election Day.</p>
<p>The New Black Panther Party reportedly has 27 chapters operating across the United States, Britain, the Caribbean and Africa. Its Web page said it has become “a great witness to the validity of the works of the original Black Panther Party,” which was founded in 1966 in Oakland, Calif.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. <a href="http://license.icopyright.net/3.7280?icx_id=/news/2009/may/29/career-lawyers-overruled-on-voting-case/" type="external">Click here for reprint permission</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | EXCLUSIVE: Career lawyers overruled on voting case | true | http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/29/career-lawyers-overruled-on-voting-case/ | 2009-05-29 | 0right
| EXCLUSIVE: Career lawyers overruled on voting case
<p>Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.</p>
<p>The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.</p>
<p>Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as “the most blatant form of voter intimidation” that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.</p>
<p />
<p>The lawyers also had ascertained that one of the three men had gained access to the polling place by securing a credential as a Democratic poll watcher, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Times.</p>
<p>The career Justice lawyers were on the verge of securing sanctions against the men earlier this month when their superiors ordered them to reverse course, according to interviews and documents. The court had already entered a default judgment against the men on April 20.</p>
<p>RELATED STORIES: • <a href="" type="internal">Panetta tries to remedy language lag in CIA</a> • <a href="" type="internal">Pro-Life Catholic leader roots for Sotomayor</a> • <a href="" type="internal">Obama calling for better digital security</a></p>
<p>A Justice Department spokesman on Thursday confirmed that the agency had dropped the case, dismissing two of the men from the lawsuit with no penalty and winning an order against the third man that simply prohibits him from bringing a weapon to a polling place in future elections.</p>
<p>The department was “successful in obtaining an injunction that prohibits the defendant who brandished a weapon outside a Philadelphia polling place from doing so again,” spokesman Alejandro Miyar said. “Claims were dismissed against the other defendants based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law.”</p>
<p>Mr. Miyar declined to elaborate about any internal dispute between career and political officials, saying only that the department is “committed to the vigorous prosecution of those who intimidate, threaten or coerce anyone exercising his or her sacred right to vote.”</p>
<p>Court records reviewed by The Times show that career Justice lawyers were seeking a default judgment and penalties against the three men as recently as May 5, before abruptly ending their pursuit 10 days later.</p>
<p>People directly familiar with the case, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution, said career lawyers in two separate Justice offices had recommended proceeding to default judgment before political superiors overruled them.</p>
<p>Tensions between career lawyers and political appointees inside the Justice Department have been a sensitive matter since allegations surfaced during the Bush administration that higher-ups had ignored or reversed staff lawyers and that some U.S. attorneys had been removed or selected for political reasons.</p>
<p>During his January confirmation hearings, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that during his lengthy Justice Department tenure, the career lawyers were “my teachers, my colleagues and my friends” and described them as the “backbone” of the department.</p>
<p>“If I am confirmed as attorney general, I will listen to them, respect them and make them proud of the vital goals we will pursue together,” he said.</p>
<p>Justice officials declined to say whether Mr. Holder or other senior Justice officials became involved in the case, saying they don’t discuss internal deliberations.</p>
<p>The civil suit filed Jan. 7 identified the three men as members of the Panthers and said they wore military-style uniforms, black berets, combat boots, battle-dress pants, black jackets with military-style insignias and were armed with “a dangerous weapon”and used racial slurs and insults to scare would-be voters and those there to assist them at the Philadelphia polling location on Nov. 4.</p>
<p>The complaint said the three men engaged in “coercion, threats and intimidation, … racial threats and insults, … menacing and intimidating gestures, … and movements directed at individuals who were present to vote.” It said that unless prohibited by court sanctions, they would “continued to violate … the Voting Rights Act by continuing to direct intimidation, threats and coercion at voters and potential voters, by again deploying uniformed and armed members at the entrance to polling locations in future elections, both in Philadelphia and throughout the country.”</p>
<p>To support its evidence, the government had secured an affidavit from Bartle Bull, a longtime civil rights activist and former aide to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign. Mr. Bull said in a sworn statement dated April 7 that he was serving in November as a credentialed poll watcher in Philadelphia when he saw the three uniformed Panthers confront and intimidate voters with a nightstick.</p>
<p>Inexplicably, the government did not enter the affidavit in the court case, according to the files.</p>
<p>“In my opinion, the men created an intimidating presence at the entrance to a poll,” he declared. “In all my experience in politics, in civil rights litigation and in my efforts in the 1960s to secure the right to vote in Mississippi … I have never encountered or heard of another instance in the United States where armed and uniformed men blocked the entrance to a polling location.”</p>
<p>Mr. Bull said the “clear purpose” of what the Panthers were doing was to “intimidate voters with whom they did not agree.” He also said he overheard one of the men tell a white poll watcher: “You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.”</p>
<p>He called their conduct an “outrageous affront to American democracy and the rights of voters to participate in an election without fear.” He said it was a “racially motivated effort to limit both poll watchers aiding voters, as well as voters with whom the men did not agree.”</p>
<p>The three men named in the complaint - New Black Panther Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz, Minister King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson - refused to appear in court to answer the accusations over a near-five month period, court records said.</p>
<p>Justice Department Voting Rights Section Attorney J. Christian Adams complained in one court filing about the defendants’ failure to appear or to file any pleadings in the case, arguing that Mr. Jackson was “not an infant, nor is he an incompetent person as he appears capable of managing his own affairs, nor is he in the military service of the United States.”</p>
<p>Court records show that as late as May 5, the Justice Department was still considering an order by U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell in Philadelphia to seek judgments, or sanctions, against the three Panthers because of their failure to appear.</p>
<p>But 10 days later, the department reversed itself and filed a notice of voluntary dismissal from the complaint for Malik Zulu Shabazz and Mr. Jackson.</p>
<p>That same day, the department asked for the default judgment against King Samir Shabazz, but limited the penalty to an order that he not display a “weapon within 100 feet of any open polling location on any election day in the city of Philadelphia” until Nov. 15, 2012.</p>
<p>Malik Zulu Shabazz is a Washington, D.C., resident.</p>
<p>Mr. Jackson was an elected member of Philadelphia’s 14th Ward Democratic Committee, and was credentialed to be at the polling place last Nov. 4 as an official Democratic Party polling observer, according to the Philadelphia City Commissioner’s Office.</p>
<p>Efforts to reach the Panthers were unsuccessful. A telephone number listed on the New Black Panthers Web site had been disconnected.</p>
<p>The complaint said that the three men were deployed at the entrance to a Philadelphia polling location wearing the uniform of the New Black Panther Party and that King Samir Shabazz repeatedly brandished a police-style nightstick with a contoured grip and wrist lanyard.</p>
<p>According to the complaint, Malik Zulu Shabazz, a Howard University Law School graduate, said the placement of King Samir Shabazz and Mr. Jackson in Philadelphia was part of a nationwide effort to deploy New Black Panther Party members at polling locations on Election Day.</p>
<p>The New Black Panther Party reportedly has 27 chapters operating across the United States, Britain, the Caribbean and Africa. Its Web page said it has become “a great witness to the validity of the works of the original Black Panther Party,” which was founded in 1966 in Oakland, Calif.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. <a href="http://license.icopyright.net/3.7280?icx_id=/news/2009/may/29/career-lawyers-overruled-on-voting-case/" type="external">Click here for reprint permission</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 1,512 |
<p />
<p>Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) reported first-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates on the top and bottom lines, but that only tells part of the story. A deeper look at the bank's latest earnings report shows that the bank continues to improve in terms of efficiency and profitability, so here are seven key items that are important for investors to know.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>First, the headline numbers. The bank's revenue of $22.2 billion handily beat estimates of $21.6 billion, and was up 7% from a year ago. Plus, the bank earned $0.41 per share, beating estimates by $0.06. This is certainly good news, as Bank of America's business continues to improve at a faster-than-expected pace. However, the headline numbers only tell a small part of the story, so let's take a closer look.</p>
<p>Bank of America's stock has performed well over the past year -- will it continue? Image source: Getty Images (Note: This is not a chart of BofA's performance.)</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Bank of America's stock has traded for one of the lowest price-to-book multiples in the banking sector for several years. One major reason for this is the bank's lack of profitability -- specifically, the failure to meet the industry benchmarks of a 10% return on equity and a 1% return on assets. And while the bank isn't quite there yet, it's getting much closer.</p>
<p>Data source: Bank of America earnings report.</p>
<p>I mentioned earlier that Bank of America earned $0.41 per share for the first quarter. This was a 40% profit improvement over the first quarter of last year, much more of a jump than the bank's 7% revenue growth.</p>
<p>The main reason for this is that while the bank's revenue grew, its expenses did not. Overall, Bank of America's expenses were completely flat year over year. Particularly impressive was the consumer banking unit, which managed to reduce expenses by 3%, despite a 5% growth in revenue. In a nutshell, increased revenue without higher expenses translates to strong profit growth.</p>
<p>I've <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/05/bank-of-america-has-bought-back-160-million-shares.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">written before Opens a New Window.</a> about how Bank of America's capital priority over the past few years has been buying back its own shares, as opposed to aggressively increasing its dividend. And despite the much higher share price, that is still the case, as the bank returned $3.1 billion to shareholders during the quarter, and $2.3 billion of this was in the form of buybacks.</p>
<p>Bank of America shares have risen considerably in price over the past year or so, and now trade for just under their book value, and therefore are not as compelling of a bargain as they used to be. Buybacks may be the priority for the time being, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the emphasis shift slightly, in favor of a higher dividend, once the bank submits its capital plan to the Federal Reserve.</p>
<p>One factor that has kept Bank of America's profitability low over the past few years, as well as the rest of the banking industry, has been record low interest spreads. Banks earn a profit from borrowing money at a low rate, and lending it to customers at a higher rate -- known as the "spread," or the net interest yield.</p>
<p>During the first quarter, Bank of America's net interest yield finally started to improve after three straight quarters stuck at the lows. In the earnings report, Bank of America says it expects this to increase further in the second quarter, even without any additional interest rate hikes. Furthermore, the bank says that a 100 basis point (1%) improvement in the yield curve would translate to an additional $3.3 billion in net interest income over the next 12 months.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>A bank's efficiency ratio is a measurement of how much the bank spends to generate its earnings, so lower is better. Bank of America's efficiency ratio has improved by 450 basis points over the past year, but 67% is still on the high end.</p>
<p>However, Bank of America pointed out in its earnings presentation that this looks artificially high due to seasonality. Specifically, if certain expenses, such as seasonally elevated payroll tax costs, had been spread evenly throughout the year, the efficiency ratio would have been a much more attractive 62%.</p>
<p>Part of the reason for Bank of America's increasing efficiency is its strong growth in mobile and online banking. The more people who use these platforms, the greater the cost savings. For example, it costs the bank far less to process a paper check that's deposited than it costs to process a mobile check deposit.</p>
<p>During the first quarter, Bank of America reported 22.2 million active mobile banking users, a 13% year-over-year improvement. One-fifth of all deposit transactions are now completed through its mobile platform. Bank of America has received top rankings in mobile and online banking functionality, and also has improved its digital sales capability in recent quarters.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Bank of AmericaWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=0f08a555-b7af-4e1c-9f14-334781e30c0d&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Bank of America wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=0f08a555-b7af-4e1c-9f14-334781e30c0d&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of April 3, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/KWMatt82/info.aspx" type="external">Matthew Frankel Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Bank of America. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 7 Key Takeaways From Bank of America's Earnings Report | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/04/18/7-key-takeaways-from-bank-america-earnings-report.html | 2017-04-18 | 0right
| 7 Key Takeaways From Bank of America's Earnings Report
<p />
<p>Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) reported first-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates on the top and bottom lines, but that only tells part of the story. A deeper look at the bank's latest earnings report shows that the bank continues to improve in terms of efficiency and profitability, so here are seven key items that are important for investors to know.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>First, the headline numbers. The bank's revenue of $22.2 billion handily beat estimates of $21.6 billion, and was up 7% from a year ago. Plus, the bank earned $0.41 per share, beating estimates by $0.06. This is certainly good news, as Bank of America's business continues to improve at a faster-than-expected pace. However, the headline numbers only tell a small part of the story, so let's take a closer look.</p>
<p>Bank of America's stock has performed well over the past year -- will it continue? Image source: Getty Images (Note: This is not a chart of BofA's performance.)</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Bank of America's stock has traded for one of the lowest price-to-book multiples in the banking sector for several years. One major reason for this is the bank's lack of profitability -- specifically, the failure to meet the industry benchmarks of a 10% return on equity and a 1% return on assets. And while the bank isn't quite there yet, it's getting much closer.</p>
<p>Data source: Bank of America earnings report.</p>
<p>I mentioned earlier that Bank of America earned $0.41 per share for the first quarter. This was a 40% profit improvement over the first quarter of last year, much more of a jump than the bank's 7% revenue growth.</p>
<p>The main reason for this is that while the bank's revenue grew, its expenses did not. Overall, Bank of America's expenses were completely flat year over year. Particularly impressive was the consumer banking unit, which managed to reduce expenses by 3%, despite a 5% growth in revenue. In a nutshell, increased revenue without higher expenses translates to strong profit growth.</p>
<p>I've <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/05/bank-of-america-has-bought-back-160-million-shares.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">written before Opens a New Window.</a> about how Bank of America's capital priority over the past few years has been buying back its own shares, as opposed to aggressively increasing its dividend. And despite the much higher share price, that is still the case, as the bank returned $3.1 billion to shareholders during the quarter, and $2.3 billion of this was in the form of buybacks.</p>
<p>Bank of America shares have risen considerably in price over the past year or so, and now trade for just under their book value, and therefore are not as compelling of a bargain as they used to be. Buybacks may be the priority for the time being, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the emphasis shift slightly, in favor of a higher dividend, once the bank submits its capital plan to the Federal Reserve.</p>
<p>One factor that has kept Bank of America's profitability low over the past few years, as well as the rest of the banking industry, has been record low interest spreads. Banks earn a profit from borrowing money at a low rate, and lending it to customers at a higher rate -- known as the "spread," or the net interest yield.</p>
<p>During the first quarter, Bank of America's net interest yield finally started to improve after three straight quarters stuck at the lows. In the earnings report, Bank of America says it expects this to increase further in the second quarter, even without any additional interest rate hikes. Furthermore, the bank says that a 100 basis point (1%) improvement in the yield curve would translate to an additional $3.3 billion in net interest income over the next 12 months.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>A bank's efficiency ratio is a measurement of how much the bank spends to generate its earnings, so lower is better. Bank of America's efficiency ratio has improved by 450 basis points over the past year, but 67% is still on the high end.</p>
<p>However, Bank of America pointed out in its earnings presentation that this looks artificially high due to seasonality. Specifically, if certain expenses, such as seasonally elevated payroll tax costs, had been spread evenly throughout the year, the efficiency ratio would have been a much more attractive 62%.</p>
<p>Part of the reason for Bank of America's increasing efficiency is its strong growth in mobile and online banking. The more people who use these platforms, the greater the cost savings. For example, it costs the bank far less to process a paper check that's deposited than it costs to process a mobile check deposit.</p>
<p>During the first quarter, Bank of America reported 22.2 million active mobile banking users, a 13% year-over-year improvement. One-fifth of all deposit transactions are now completed through its mobile platform. Bank of America has received top rankings in mobile and online banking functionality, and also has improved its digital sales capability in recent quarters.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Bank of AmericaWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=0f08a555-b7af-4e1c-9f14-334781e30c0d&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Bank of America wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=0f08a555-b7af-4e1c-9f14-334781e30c0d&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of April 3, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/KWMatt82/info.aspx" type="external">Matthew Frankel Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Bank of America. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 1,513 |
<p>You may not realize it yet, but the bioeconomy is at a historic crossroads. The world's largest agricultural companies are on the cusp of developing genetically engineered crops capable of producing novel ingredients for animal feeds, which are currently sourced from supply-constrained production systems.</p>
<p>We have 10,000 years of experience growing crops, supply chains are firmly in place, and there are multiple market needs. There's a $22 billion-per-year bounty up for grabs -- and it figures to be a layup for the industry.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>That's what looking backward at the technology landscape would predict, anyway, but new technologies may keep GMO crops from running away with the multibillion-dollar market opportunity. What happens in the next few years may force investors to readjust their long-term outlook for grain logistics experts such as Archer Daniels Midland (NYSE: ADM) and crop technology specialists such as Monsanto (NYSE: MON).</p>
<p>The first test for the industry is the relatively small $2.4 billion market for high-margin omega-3 fatty acid ingredients, also known as fish oils. But make no mistake: They could be the gateway ingredients for the much larger $22 billion opportunity.</p>
<p>Fish oils have two primary applications: fish-feed nutrients for aquaculture, and human nutritional supplements. The latter has received the lion's share of the attention in recent years, but the former comprises 75% of the fish-oil market. That's a problem. Why? As the name implies, fish oils come from fish, usually of the wild-caught variety. And aquaculture, which now accounts for more than half of the world's seafood production, continues to grow at a furious pace.</p>
<p>Our fish-eat-fish world is unsustainable both economically and environmentally. Fish-oil prices hit record highs last year -- near $3,000 per metric ton -- as supply struggled to keep pace with demand. Meanwhile, <a href="https://herox.com/F3" type="external">experts think there may be a link</a> between "record numbers of starving sea lions and the nesting failure of brown pelicans" and "collapsing Pacific sardine fisheries from California to Peru." Aquaculture production growth will and should continue, which means alternatives must be found. Enter biotech.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Biotech is poised to step up and meet the omega-3 market challenge, but there are two competing production routes. Agricultural biotech companies are racing to develop GMO oilseed crops such as canola, soybean, and camelina that will produce some combination of the three most important omega-3 ingredients -- DHA, EPA, and ARA -- that farmed fish need.</p>
<p>Cargill and BASF have partnered to engineer canola crops with genes from marine microbes that can make them a new source of land-based "fish" oils. The pair have set a deadline of 2020 and have ambitious plans to quickly commercialize the technology. In fact, Cargill wants to pay farmers in Montana to plant up to 500,000 acres of the canola variety once it's available. That could yield 159,000 metric tons of fish oils per year -- about 20% of global demand, and eight times more canola than currently grown in the state. Dow Chemical, now part of DowDuPont, has a similar plan for farmers in Canada.</p>
<p>Not to be outdone, Monsanto is developing GMO soybeans that will result in vegetable oils containing omega-3s for human nutrition applications. However, given that soybeans are a top protein source for both aquaculture and animal feeds, additional applications don't require much imagination.</p>
<p>Yet, while agricultural biotech represents the "keep it simple, stupid" approach to production, it's not the only biotech production route available. And if we decide agricultural land is more valuable growing food for humans, not animals, then we'll need more efficient and higher-yield nonagricultural production routes. That's why a growing list of companies has <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/11/10-low-key-companies-that-are-changing-aquaculture.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=993735bc-9d57-11e7-bc08-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">invested in industrial biotech platforms</a> capable of producing omega-3 ingredients, proteins, and other potential animal-feed additives via large-scale fermentation.</p>
<p>For instance, Archer Daniels Midland and Synthetic Genomics use non-GMO algae to grow DHA Natur, a fish-feed ingredient that provides both protein and DHA. It's one of the grain trader's highest-growth products and is produced in a facility that could churn out up 20,000 metric tons per year. That level of production -- small by industry benchmarks -- would require 63,000 acres of Cargill's GMO canola.</p>
<p>Cargill is certainly aware of the power of industrial biotech: It operates the largest fermentation tanks in the world (producing the food ingredient lactic acid). It also seems to be at least partially hedging its bets. The grain trader has partnered with start-up Calysta to build a 200,000-metric-ton per year facility that will feed methane from natural gas to algae, then harvest the resulting biomass for fish-meal protein. The facility is expected to begin initial operations in 2019.</p>
<p>There are more than 10 companies taking aim at the opportunity in fish meal and omega-3s -- all of which could beat competing GMO-crop products to the market.</p>
<p>In other words, by 2020 investors will have a pretty good idea about which biotechnology will win the battle for alternative sources of omega-3 ingredients. While industrial biotechnology faces unique economic and scaling hurdles, it may eventually become the dominant and preferred production route. Why?</p>
<p>There are many ingredients included in the animal-feed additive category. Therefore, at least initially, GMO crops and industrial biotech will likely win markets on a case-by-case basis. But over time our understanding of biology will improve and costs will come down, likely making industrial biotech the hands-down winner. Eventually. That said, omega-3 fatty acids should be in the win column for industrial biotech by the beginning of the next decade.</p>
<p>That will have major implications for all companies involved. Direct investments aside, grain traders such as Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland are far enough downstream to benefit from the opportunity no matter which production route wins.</p>
<p>Those investing in GMO-crop R&amp;D that targets novel ingredients may soon discover that those hundreds of millions of dollars are better spent elsewhere, such as biopesticide and agricultural-nutrient technologies. That could affect their valuations in the next few years, at the same time as Wall Street expects megamergers to live up to their promises, especially if large R&amp;D programs and potential product portfolios are written off. It could get messy.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, industrial biotech companies could finally find solid footing with this class of high-margin ingredients, although the investing opportunities remain few and far between. It's best to wait on these technology leaders, even if they're on the cusp of bringing an end to the fish-eat-fish world as we know it.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Archer Daniels MidlandWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=5213c1a2-e100-47dc-99c8-4152af336b1b&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=993735bc-9d57-11e7-bc08-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks</a> for investors to buy right now... and Archer Daniels Midland wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=5213c1a2-e100-47dc-99c8-4152af336b1b&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=993735bc-9d57-11e7-bc08-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of September 5, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBlacknGold/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=993735bc-9d57-11e7-bc08-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Maxx Chatsko</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Darling Ingredients. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=993735bc-9d57-11e7-bc08-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy</a>.</p> | Why GMO Crops (Probably) Can't Compete for This $22 Billion Ingredient Opportunity | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/09/23/why-gmo-crops-probably-cant-compete-for-this-22-billion-ingredient-opportunity.html | 2017-09-23 | 0right
| Why GMO Crops (Probably) Can't Compete for This $22 Billion Ingredient Opportunity
<p>You may not realize it yet, but the bioeconomy is at a historic crossroads. The world's largest agricultural companies are on the cusp of developing genetically engineered crops capable of producing novel ingredients for animal feeds, which are currently sourced from supply-constrained production systems.</p>
<p>We have 10,000 years of experience growing crops, supply chains are firmly in place, and there are multiple market needs. There's a $22 billion-per-year bounty up for grabs -- and it figures to be a layup for the industry.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>That's what looking backward at the technology landscape would predict, anyway, but new technologies may keep GMO crops from running away with the multibillion-dollar market opportunity. What happens in the next few years may force investors to readjust their long-term outlook for grain logistics experts such as Archer Daniels Midland (NYSE: ADM) and crop technology specialists such as Monsanto (NYSE: MON).</p>
<p>The first test for the industry is the relatively small $2.4 billion market for high-margin omega-3 fatty acid ingredients, also known as fish oils. But make no mistake: They could be the gateway ingredients for the much larger $22 billion opportunity.</p>
<p>Fish oils have two primary applications: fish-feed nutrients for aquaculture, and human nutritional supplements. The latter has received the lion's share of the attention in recent years, but the former comprises 75% of the fish-oil market. That's a problem. Why? As the name implies, fish oils come from fish, usually of the wild-caught variety. And aquaculture, which now accounts for more than half of the world's seafood production, continues to grow at a furious pace.</p>
<p>Our fish-eat-fish world is unsustainable both economically and environmentally. Fish-oil prices hit record highs last year -- near $3,000 per metric ton -- as supply struggled to keep pace with demand. Meanwhile, <a href="https://herox.com/F3" type="external">experts think there may be a link</a> between "record numbers of starving sea lions and the nesting failure of brown pelicans" and "collapsing Pacific sardine fisheries from California to Peru." Aquaculture production growth will and should continue, which means alternatives must be found. Enter biotech.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Biotech is poised to step up and meet the omega-3 market challenge, but there are two competing production routes. Agricultural biotech companies are racing to develop GMO oilseed crops such as canola, soybean, and camelina that will produce some combination of the three most important omega-3 ingredients -- DHA, EPA, and ARA -- that farmed fish need.</p>
<p>Cargill and BASF have partnered to engineer canola crops with genes from marine microbes that can make them a new source of land-based "fish" oils. The pair have set a deadline of 2020 and have ambitious plans to quickly commercialize the technology. In fact, Cargill wants to pay farmers in Montana to plant up to 500,000 acres of the canola variety once it's available. That could yield 159,000 metric tons of fish oils per year -- about 20% of global demand, and eight times more canola than currently grown in the state. Dow Chemical, now part of DowDuPont, has a similar plan for farmers in Canada.</p>
<p>Not to be outdone, Monsanto is developing GMO soybeans that will result in vegetable oils containing omega-3s for human nutrition applications. However, given that soybeans are a top protein source for both aquaculture and animal feeds, additional applications don't require much imagination.</p>
<p>Yet, while agricultural biotech represents the "keep it simple, stupid" approach to production, it's not the only biotech production route available. And if we decide agricultural land is more valuable growing food for humans, not animals, then we'll need more efficient and higher-yield nonagricultural production routes. That's why a growing list of companies has <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/11/10-low-key-companies-that-are-changing-aquaculture.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=993735bc-9d57-11e7-bc08-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">invested in industrial biotech platforms</a> capable of producing omega-3 ingredients, proteins, and other potential animal-feed additives via large-scale fermentation.</p>
<p>For instance, Archer Daniels Midland and Synthetic Genomics use non-GMO algae to grow DHA Natur, a fish-feed ingredient that provides both protein and DHA. It's one of the grain trader's highest-growth products and is produced in a facility that could churn out up 20,000 metric tons per year. That level of production -- small by industry benchmarks -- would require 63,000 acres of Cargill's GMO canola.</p>
<p>Cargill is certainly aware of the power of industrial biotech: It operates the largest fermentation tanks in the world (producing the food ingredient lactic acid). It also seems to be at least partially hedging its bets. The grain trader has partnered with start-up Calysta to build a 200,000-metric-ton per year facility that will feed methane from natural gas to algae, then harvest the resulting biomass for fish-meal protein. The facility is expected to begin initial operations in 2019.</p>
<p>There are more than 10 companies taking aim at the opportunity in fish meal and omega-3s -- all of which could beat competing GMO-crop products to the market.</p>
<p>In other words, by 2020 investors will have a pretty good idea about which biotechnology will win the battle for alternative sources of omega-3 ingredients. While industrial biotechnology faces unique economic and scaling hurdles, it may eventually become the dominant and preferred production route. Why?</p>
<p>There are many ingredients included in the animal-feed additive category. Therefore, at least initially, GMO crops and industrial biotech will likely win markets on a case-by-case basis. But over time our understanding of biology will improve and costs will come down, likely making industrial biotech the hands-down winner. Eventually. That said, omega-3 fatty acids should be in the win column for industrial biotech by the beginning of the next decade.</p>
<p>That will have major implications for all companies involved. Direct investments aside, grain traders such as Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland are far enough downstream to benefit from the opportunity no matter which production route wins.</p>
<p>Those investing in GMO-crop R&amp;D that targets novel ingredients may soon discover that those hundreds of millions of dollars are better spent elsewhere, such as biopesticide and agricultural-nutrient technologies. That could affect their valuations in the next few years, at the same time as Wall Street expects megamergers to live up to their promises, especially if large R&amp;D programs and potential product portfolios are written off. It could get messy.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, industrial biotech companies could finally find solid footing with this class of high-margin ingredients, although the investing opportunities remain few and far between. It's best to wait on these technology leaders, even if they're on the cusp of bringing an end to the fish-eat-fish world as we know it.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Archer Daniels MidlandWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=5213c1a2-e100-47dc-99c8-4152af336b1b&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=993735bc-9d57-11e7-bc08-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks</a> for investors to buy right now... and Archer Daniels Midland wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=5213c1a2-e100-47dc-99c8-4152af336b1b&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=993735bc-9d57-11e7-bc08-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of September 5, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBlacknGold/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=993735bc-9d57-11e7-bc08-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Maxx Chatsko</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Darling Ingredients. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=993735bc-9d57-11e7-bc08-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy</a>.</p> | 1,514 |
<p>One police officer was killed and three wounded in nighttime shootings in two Florida cities where the officers were responding to suspected drug activity and reports of a suicide attempt, police said Saturday.</p>
<p>One officer was killed and another gravely injured late Friday night in Kissimmee in central Florida just south of the theme park hub of Orlando. The other two officers were injured a couple of hours later in Jacksonville, one of them shot in both hands and the other in the stomach. Three of four suspects in the Kissimmee shooting were arrested, and the shooter in Jacksonville was shot and killed when police returned fire.</p>
<p>In Kissimmee, officers Sam Howard and Matthew Baxter were checking suspects in an area of the city for drug activity when they were shot, Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O’Dell said at a news conference. They did not have an opportunity to return fire.</p>
<p>“They were surprised,” O’Dell said. When asked whether they were ambushed, he said, “It’s too early to tell, but it’s leading that way.”</p>
<p>Baxter, a three-year veteran of the department, died later in a hospital and Howard, a 10-year veteran, was in serious condition, O’Dell said. Both had families, he said.</p>
<p>Following the ambush, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to show his support:</p>
<p>“My thoughts and prayers are with the @KissimmeePolice and their loved ones. We are with you!” He tweeted.</p>
<p>The officers were checking three of the suspects when a fourth opened fire. One of the original three suspects fled and was being sought, and the other three were arrested. Broadcaster WFTV showed aerial footage of police cars with lights flashing swarmed a housing complex as the search continued early Saturday morning.</p>
<p>In the northern Florida city of Jacksonville, police responded to reports of an attempted suicide at a home where three other people were thought to be in danger, Sheriff’s Office Director Mike Bruno said.</p>
<p>A team of officers heard gunshots inside and feared “an active shooter situation” so they approached the house, Bruno said. The suspect then came out firing a high-powered rifle. He was shot and killed, and two of the police officers were wounded in the exchange of fire. The three other people in the house were safe, Bruno said.</p>
<p>Florida Gov. Rick Scott sent Tweets about the four officers, saying “we stand with ALL law enforcement in Florida.”</p>
<p>When O’Dell held his brief news conference outside the hospital where the two fallen Kissimmee officers had been taken, reports already had surfaced of two more officers shot in Jacksonville to the north.</p>
<p>“It’s a tough time for law enforcement,” O’Dell said of those reports. “It’s getting tough to do the job.”</p> | 1 Police Officer Killed, 3 Injured in 2 Shootings in Florida | false | https://newsline.com/1-police-officer-killed-3-injured-in-2-shootings-in-florida/ | 2017-08-19 | 1right-center
| 1 Police Officer Killed, 3 Injured in 2 Shootings in Florida
<p>One police officer was killed and three wounded in nighttime shootings in two Florida cities where the officers were responding to suspected drug activity and reports of a suicide attempt, police said Saturday.</p>
<p>One officer was killed and another gravely injured late Friday night in Kissimmee in central Florida just south of the theme park hub of Orlando. The other two officers were injured a couple of hours later in Jacksonville, one of them shot in both hands and the other in the stomach. Three of four suspects in the Kissimmee shooting were arrested, and the shooter in Jacksonville was shot and killed when police returned fire.</p>
<p>In Kissimmee, officers Sam Howard and Matthew Baxter were checking suspects in an area of the city for drug activity when they were shot, Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O’Dell said at a news conference. They did not have an opportunity to return fire.</p>
<p>“They were surprised,” O’Dell said. When asked whether they were ambushed, he said, “It’s too early to tell, but it’s leading that way.”</p>
<p>Baxter, a three-year veteran of the department, died later in a hospital and Howard, a 10-year veteran, was in serious condition, O’Dell said. Both had families, he said.</p>
<p>Following the ambush, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to show his support:</p>
<p>“My thoughts and prayers are with the @KissimmeePolice and their loved ones. We are with you!” He tweeted.</p>
<p>The officers were checking three of the suspects when a fourth opened fire. One of the original three suspects fled and was being sought, and the other three were arrested. Broadcaster WFTV showed aerial footage of police cars with lights flashing swarmed a housing complex as the search continued early Saturday morning.</p>
<p>In the northern Florida city of Jacksonville, police responded to reports of an attempted suicide at a home where three other people were thought to be in danger, Sheriff’s Office Director Mike Bruno said.</p>
<p>A team of officers heard gunshots inside and feared “an active shooter situation” so they approached the house, Bruno said. The suspect then came out firing a high-powered rifle. He was shot and killed, and two of the police officers were wounded in the exchange of fire. The three other people in the house were safe, Bruno said.</p>
<p>Florida Gov. Rick Scott sent Tweets about the four officers, saying “we stand with ALL law enforcement in Florida.”</p>
<p>When O’Dell held his brief news conference outside the hospital where the two fallen Kissimmee officers had been taken, reports already had surfaced of two more officers shot in Jacksonville to the north.</p>
<p>“It’s a tough time for law enforcement,” O’Dell said of those reports. “It’s getting tough to do the job.”</p> | 1,515 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.shutterstock.com"&gt;lineartestpilot &lt;/a&gt;/Shutterstock</p>
<p />
<p>Four years after the financial crisis, and two years after “financial reform,” top bank executives are still allowed to serve on the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks—institutions that are partially responsible for regulating the financial industry. People like&#160;Jamie Dimon, the JP Morgan Chase CEO whose term at the New York Fed just ended, have&#160; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-s-goodman/elizabeth-warren-jamie-dimon_b_1515220.html" type="external">influence</a>&#160;over whether banks get bailed out by taxpayers when they screw up. Dimon was on the New York Fed board during the 2008 financial crisis, and his bank got over&#160; <a href="http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9d4eb763-7e9c-4dce-a0ba-99e50818f5c7" type="external">$390 billion</a>&#160;in low-interest emergency bailout loans from the Fed.</p>
<p>If liberal Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has his way, all that may soon change.</p>
<p>Sanders <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/276305-sanders-seeking-to-ban-wall-street-ceos-from-fed-boards" type="external">announced Wednesday</a> that he will reintroduce legislation to forbid financial industry executives like Dimon from sitting on any of the 12 regional Fed boards of directors.</p>
<p>“The Fed has got to become a more democratic institution that is responsive to the needs of the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs.” Sanders said.</p>
<p>Last May, Dimon’s bank lost nearly <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/jpmorgan-chase-q02-earnings-2012_n_1670629.html" type="external">$6 billion</a> on a bad bet, which <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/dimon-leaves-new-york-fed-board-as-his-term-ends/" type="external">raised questions</a> about how the risky trade could have gone undetected by regulators like the Fed. At the time, Sanders, then-Senate candidate (and now Senator) Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner all called for Dimon to resign from the Fed board.</p>
<p>“Jamie Dimon was the poster child for why we need to end the serious conflicts of interest at the Fed, but he was not alone,” Sanders said. “Two-thirds of the directors at the New York Fed are hand-picked by the same bankers that the Fed is in charge of regulating.”</p>
<p>A 2011 <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/276305-sanders-seeking-to-ban-wall-street-ceos-from-fed-boards" type="external">Government Accountability Office study</a> found that letting members of the banking industry elect and serve on the Federal Reserve’s board of directors creates “an appearance of a conflict of interest.”</p>
<p>It’s “a clear example of the fox guarding the henhouse,” Sanders said.</p>
<p>Or, as Peter Goodman at the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-s-goodman/elizabeth-warren-jamie-dimon_b_1515220.html" type="external">Huffington Post</a> wrote after the Chase trading loss last May: “This is not the fox guarding the hen house; this is the fox guarding the hen house while selling synthetic derivatives whose value increases with every hen he gobbles up, and who burns down the hen house so he can collect on his fire insurance policy, and then gets the government to build him a new hen house at taxpayer expense. And then, after that, he still gets to guard the new hen house.”</p>
<p /> | Proposed Legislation Would Block Bank Execs From Regulating Banks | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/bernie-sanders-federal-reserve-board-jamie-dimon/ | 2013-01-09 | 4left
| Proposed Legislation Would Block Bank Execs From Regulating Banks
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.shutterstock.com"&gt;lineartestpilot &lt;/a&gt;/Shutterstock</p>
<p />
<p>Four years after the financial crisis, and two years after “financial reform,” top bank executives are still allowed to serve on the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks—institutions that are partially responsible for regulating the financial industry. People like&#160;Jamie Dimon, the JP Morgan Chase CEO whose term at the New York Fed just ended, have&#160; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-s-goodman/elizabeth-warren-jamie-dimon_b_1515220.html" type="external">influence</a>&#160;over whether banks get bailed out by taxpayers when they screw up. Dimon was on the New York Fed board during the 2008 financial crisis, and his bank got over&#160; <a href="http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9d4eb763-7e9c-4dce-a0ba-99e50818f5c7" type="external">$390 billion</a>&#160;in low-interest emergency bailout loans from the Fed.</p>
<p>If liberal Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has his way, all that may soon change.</p>
<p>Sanders <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/276305-sanders-seeking-to-ban-wall-street-ceos-from-fed-boards" type="external">announced Wednesday</a> that he will reintroduce legislation to forbid financial industry executives like Dimon from sitting on any of the 12 regional Fed boards of directors.</p>
<p>“The Fed has got to become a more democratic institution that is responsive to the needs of the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs.” Sanders said.</p>
<p>Last May, Dimon’s bank lost nearly <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/jpmorgan-chase-q02-earnings-2012_n_1670629.html" type="external">$6 billion</a> on a bad bet, which <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/dimon-leaves-new-york-fed-board-as-his-term-ends/" type="external">raised questions</a> about how the risky trade could have gone undetected by regulators like the Fed. At the time, Sanders, then-Senate candidate (and now Senator) Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner all called for Dimon to resign from the Fed board.</p>
<p>“Jamie Dimon was the poster child for why we need to end the serious conflicts of interest at the Fed, but he was not alone,” Sanders said. “Two-thirds of the directors at the New York Fed are hand-picked by the same bankers that the Fed is in charge of regulating.”</p>
<p>A 2011 <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/276305-sanders-seeking-to-ban-wall-street-ceos-from-fed-boards" type="external">Government Accountability Office study</a> found that letting members of the banking industry elect and serve on the Federal Reserve’s board of directors creates “an appearance of a conflict of interest.”</p>
<p>It’s “a clear example of the fox guarding the henhouse,” Sanders said.</p>
<p>Or, as Peter Goodman at the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-s-goodman/elizabeth-warren-jamie-dimon_b_1515220.html" type="external">Huffington Post</a> wrote after the Chase trading loss last May: “This is not the fox guarding the hen house; this is the fox guarding the hen house while selling synthetic derivatives whose value increases with every hen he gobbles up, and who burns down the hen house so he can collect on his fire insurance policy, and then gets the government to build him a new hen house at taxpayer expense. And then, after that, he still gets to guard the new hen house.”</p>
<p /> | 1,516 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" />There are so many times where I’m watching Fox News where I have to remind myself that I’m watching a supposedly legitimate cable news channel. I’ve often joked that Saturday Night Live could create some of their political skits by <a href="" type="internal">simply quoting many of the hosts on Fox News verbatim</a>.</p>
<p>Take for instance when several of the hosts on the Fox News program&#160;Outnumbered sounded&#160;off against public education and Advanced Placement U.S. History while discussing the recent push in Oklahoma to eliminate the course from the state’s public schools.</p>
<p>“There really shouldn’t be public schools,” co-host Kennedy Montgomery said. “I mean, we should really go to a system where parents of every stripe have a choice, have a say in the kind of education their kids get. Because when we have centralized bureaucratic education doctrines and dogmas like this, that’s exactly what happens.”</p>
<p>Wow.</p>
<p>Here’s a rule to live by: If anyone is discussing&#160;anything&#160;and they use the words “doctrine” or “dogma” to try to fear-monger about that particular issue, ignore them, because they’re idiots.</p>
<p>She’s essentially saying that public education is nothing more than indoctrination. Well, I guess she’s right. Public education does seek to indoctrinate our nation’s children – with an education.</p>
<p>Fellow co-host Andrea Tantaros added to that by specifically attacking AP History, calling it nothing but “meaningless liberal crap.”</p>
<p>So, teaching <a href="" type="internal">about factual events in our nation’s history</a> is “meaningless liberal crap”? Well, I guess she’s right as well. Facts and reality do often seem to have a liberal bias.</p>
<p>I really never thought I would see the day where we would have commentators on a major cable “news” station openly attacking education and calling for the abolishment of our public school system. Then again, this&#160;is&#160;Fox News that we’re talking about.</p>
<p>Though there was at least some sanity from&#160;Outnumbered&#160;guest&#160;Judge Alex Ferrer.&#160;</p>
<p>“I think we have to teach our students about the good, the bad and the ugly,” Ferrer said. “We don’t need to sugarcoat everything and tell them America was always wonderful. And we don’t need to make it look like Americans should be apologizing for every bad thing they’ve ever done. I think children should be raised knowing that their forefathers made mistakes too.”</p>
<p>“And we learn, and we hopefully advance and do better,” he continued.</p>
<p>This prompted Tantaros to go off on a ridiculous nationalistic rant where she stated that she wants to see the Department of Education abolished and believes that our history classes should mainly focus on historical events that promote the United States – mostly ignoring the bad stuff.</p>
<p>In other words, she wants the history we teach in our schools to essentially be nothing but <a href="" type="internal">pro-U.S.A. propaganda</a>.</p>
<p>Am I the only one who sees a lot of fascism in all of this “ignore everything that makes our country look bad” nonsense?</p>
<p>It’s like I’ve said before, I’ve really just hit a point where I can’t take these people seriously. I really can’t believe I’ve spent the better part of the last week <a href="" type="internal">reading and writing articles about a state in this country actively trying to abolish an advanced history course</a>&#160;because it’s teaching factual events that happened in our nation’s history.</p>
<p>This is something that’s so ridiculous that I wouldn’t blame anyone who had to double check to make sure this story wasn’t something taken from&#160;The Onion.&#160;</p>
<p>Watch their comments below <a href="http://www.foxnews.com" type="external">via Fox News</a>:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">How Ridiculous is Fox News? Take a Look at This Mind-Boggling List of Absurdity</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Fox News' Andrea Tantaros Pushes Laughable Conspiracy About School Snow Days (Video)</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Fox News' Andrea Tantaros: Healthy Food at School is 'Causing Mental Problems' (Video)</a></p>
<p>0 Facebook comments</p> | Fox News Hosts: We Shouldn’t Have Public Education, It Just Teaches ‘Meaningless Liberal Crap’ (Video) | true | http://forwardprogressives.com/fox-news-hosts-shouldnt-public-education-just-teaching-meaningless-liberal-crap-video/ | 2015-02-20 | 4left
| Fox News Hosts: We Shouldn’t Have Public Education, It Just Teaches ‘Meaningless Liberal Crap’ (Video)
<p><a href="" type="internal" />There are so many times where I’m watching Fox News where I have to remind myself that I’m watching a supposedly legitimate cable news channel. I’ve often joked that Saturday Night Live could create some of their political skits by <a href="" type="internal">simply quoting many of the hosts on Fox News verbatim</a>.</p>
<p>Take for instance when several of the hosts on the Fox News program&#160;Outnumbered sounded&#160;off against public education and Advanced Placement U.S. History while discussing the recent push in Oklahoma to eliminate the course from the state’s public schools.</p>
<p>“There really shouldn’t be public schools,” co-host Kennedy Montgomery said. “I mean, we should really go to a system where parents of every stripe have a choice, have a say in the kind of education their kids get. Because when we have centralized bureaucratic education doctrines and dogmas like this, that’s exactly what happens.”</p>
<p>Wow.</p>
<p>Here’s a rule to live by: If anyone is discussing&#160;anything&#160;and they use the words “doctrine” or “dogma” to try to fear-monger about that particular issue, ignore them, because they’re idiots.</p>
<p>She’s essentially saying that public education is nothing more than indoctrination. Well, I guess she’s right. Public education does seek to indoctrinate our nation’s children – with an education.</p>
<p>Fellow co-host Andrea Tantaros added to that by specifically attacking AP History, calling it nothing but “meaningless liberal crap.”</p>
<p>So, teaching <a href="" type="internal">about factual events in our nation’s history</a> is “meaningless liberal crap”? Well, I guess she’s right as well. Facts and reality do often seem to have a liberal bias.</p>
<p>I really never thought I would see the day where we would have commentators on a major cable “news” station openly attacking education and calling for the abolishment of our public school system. Then again, this&#160;is&#160;Fox News that we’re talking about.</p>
<p>Though there was at least some sanity from&#160;Outnumbered&#160;guest&#160;Judge Alex Ferrer.&#160;</p>
<p>“I think we have to teach our students about the good, the bad and the ugly,” Ferrer said. “We don’t need to sugarcoat everything and tell them America was always wonderful. And we don’t need to make it look like Americans should be apologizing for every bad thing they’ve ever done. I think children should be raised knowing that their forefathers made mistakes too.”</p>
<p>“And we learn, and we hopefully advance and do better,” he continued.</p>
<p>This prompted Tantaros to go off on a ridiculous nationalistic rant where she stated that she wants to see the Department of Education abolished and believes that our history classes should mainly focus on historical events that promote the United States – mostly ignoring the bad stuff.</p>
<p>In other words, she wants the history we teach in our schools to essentially be nothing but <a href="" type="internal">pro-U.S.A. propaganda</a>.</p>
<p>Am I the only one who sees a lot of fascism in all of this “ignore everything that makes our country look bad” nonsense?</p>
<p>It’s like I’ve said before, I’ve really just hit a point where I can’t take these people seriously. I really can’t believe I’ve spent the better part of the last week <a href="" type="internal">reading and writing articles about a state in this country actively trying to abolish an advanced history course</a>&#160;because it’s teaching factual events that happened in our nation’s history.</p>
<p>This is something that’s so ridiculous that I wouldn’t blame anyone who had to double check to make sure this story wasn’t something taken from&#160;The Onion.&#160;</p>
<p>Watch their comments below <a href="http://www.foxnews.com" type="external">via Fox News</a>:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">How Ridiculous is Fox News? Take a Look at This Mind-Boggling List of Absurdity</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Fox News' Andrea Tantaros Pushes Laughable Conspiracy About School Snow Days (Video)</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Fox News' Andrea Tantaros: Healthy Food at School is 'Causing Mental Problems' (Video)</a></p>
<p>0 Facebook comments</p> | 1,517 |
<p />
<p>Benjamin Moore &amp; Co. and three other major paint companies have agreed to settle with the Federal Trade Commission Monday on charges that they deceptively promoted paints that were free of certain chemicals and emissions making them safe for babies and pregnant women when such claims were unfounded.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>ICP Construction Inc., YOLO Colorhouse, LLC, and Imperial Paints, LLC, and Benjamin Moore &amp; Co., Inc. have all agreed to new orders that will bar them from making claims that their products are “emission-free” or “containing zero volatile organic compounds (VOCs).”</p>
<p>During the painting process, some paint chemicals can be harmful to the environment and people, especially to sensitive groups such as babies and those suffering from asthma or allergies. According to the FTC complaint, all four companies made unsubstantiated claims on their paint cans that their products were safe to use around babies, children, pregnant women and those with allergies. However, the FTC found that neither company had any evidence to support those claims.</p>
<p>Additionally, Benjamin Moore and ICP were accused of placing environmental seals that look like it came from third-parties on their products without disclosing that in fact they made the seals themselves.</p>
<p>The FTC ordered each company to immediately correct current advertisements and packaging and contact retailers who are selling their products.</p> | Benjamin Moore, Imperial Paints and others mislead customers, here’s what you need to know | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/07/11/four-major-paint-companies-misled-customers-heres-what-need-to-know.html | 2017-07-11 | 0right
| Benjamin Moore, Imperial Paints and others mislead customers, here’s what you need to know
<p />
<p>Benjamin Moore &amp; Co. and three other major paint companies have agreed to settle with the Federal Trade Commission Monday on charges that they deceptively promoted paints that were free of certain chemicals and emissions making them safe for babies and pregnant women when such claims were unfounded.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>ICP Construction Inc., YOLO Colorhouse, LLC, and Imperial Paints, LLC, and Benjamin Moore &amp; Co., Inc. have all agreed to new orders that will bar them from making claims that their products are “emission-free” or “containing zero volatile organic compounds (VOCs).”</p>
<p>During the painting process, some paint chemicals can be harmful to the environment and people, especially to sensitive groups such as babies and those suffering from asthma or allergies. According to the FTC complaint, all four companies made unsubstantiated claims on their paint cans that their products were safe to use around babies, children, pregnant women and those with allergies. However, the FTC found that neither company had any evidence to support those claims.</p>
<p>Additionally, Benjamin Moore and ICP were accused of placing environmental seals that look like it came from third-parties on their products without disclosing that in fact they made the seals themselves.</p>
<p>The FTC ordered each company to immediately correct current advertisements and packaging and contact retailers who are selling their products.</p> | 1,518 |
<p>“I think almost everyone will grant that if candidates for the United States Senate were required to possess ten million dollars, and for the House one million, the year-in-year-out level of conservatism of those two bodies might be expected to rise sharply. We could still be said to have a freely elected Congress. Anybody with ten million dollars (or one, if he tailored his ambition to fit his means) would be free to try to get himself nominated, and the rest of us would be free to vote for our favourite millionaire or even to abstain from voting.”</p>
<p>A.J. Liebling The Wayward Pressman, 1947</p>
<p>Liebling also warned in the 1960s that the business models of newspapers would one day prove their undoing. A prophecy that rings true today for the giants of that industry in his own country. But the 2009 poll results in the Indian elections&#160; have made Liebling doubly relevant. “Voting for our favourite millionaire”&#160; comes alive with the 15th Lok Sabha House of the People. Its 543 MPs are worth close to Rs. 28 billion The 64 union cabinet members from the Lok Sabha account for Rs. 5 billion. (One US dollar is worth just under 50 rupees. So reckon the Lok Sabha’s total worth is around $2 billion.)&#160; And the links between wealth and winning elections are firmer than ever before.</p>
<p>If you are worth over Rs. 50 million, you are 75 times more likely to win an election to the Lok Sabha than if you are worth under Rs. 1 million. At least, in the case of the 2009 polls. &#160;(Some 23 of 64 Union Cabinet ministers whose asset worth is in the public domain fall into this Rs.50 million-plus category.&#160; Providing it stability of sorts, I guess. In the entire cabinet, only one falls into the less than Rs. 1 million group.)</p>
<p>Another 29 members of the cabinet fall into the Rs. 5 million&#160; to Rs.50 million category.&#160; If you’re in this bracket, your chances of winning&#160; aren’t as great as the 50 million plus, or Platinum Tier, elite. However, you are still 43 times more likely to win than those with less than Rs. 1 million in assets (i.e. almost the whole of India’s population). &#160;The remaining ministers, in case you were losing sleep over their condition, fall into the&#160; Rs. 1 million to Rs. 5 million club, the cabinet equivalent of BPL (Below Poverty Line). However, there are five years in which to remedy this situation and alleviate the misery of this group.</p>
<p>These are just a few of the insights brought to us by an interim report of National Election Watch on the 2009 polls. NEW is a coalition of over 1200 civil society groups working across the country. Their “Analysis of&#160; MPs of the 15th Lok Sabha (2009)” makes great reading and is the product of fine research and much hard work.</p>
<p>There were&#160; 3,437 candidates in the polls with assets of&#160; less than Rs. 1 million, says the report. Of these, just 15 (0.44 per cent) made it past the post. But your chances soar with your assets. Of 1,785 candidates in the Rs. 1 million to Rs. 5 million group, 116&#160; (6 per cent) won. This win-ratio goes up to 19 per cent of candidates for the Rs.5 million to Rs.50 million segment. And of 322 candidates in the Rs.50 million plus or platinum tier, 106 (33&#160; per cent) romped home.</p>
<p>The higher you climb the ladder of lucre, the better your chances. That’s obvious. But what’s striking is how bleak things are for non-millionaires. Even a modest improvement in your wealth helps. Say, you move from the below Rs. 1 million group to the Rs. 1-5 million group &#160;— &#160;your chances immediately improve at a higher rate than your wealth. (Of course that works only if you are already close to the Rs. 1 million mark.) &#160;So it’s not just that wealth has some impact on election outcomes&#160; —&#160; it influences them heavily and disproportionately as you go up the scale.</p>
<p>All of a piece with a society that only last year had 53 dollar billionaires (pre-meltdown), one that still has 836 million human beings who “get by” on less than Rs. 20 a day and which ranks 66th amongst 88 nations on the Global Hunger Index (just one notch above Zimbabwe). &#160;India has plummeted to rank 132 in the United Nations Human Development Index (one slot below Bhutan) as our billionaire count has risen. That wallows below Bolivia, Botswana, the Republic of the Congo and the Occupied Territories of Palestine in the HDI rankings. And never mind being worth billions&#160; –&#160; 60 per cent of adult rural Indians simply do not have bank accounts.</p>
<p>There’s little question that big bucks help in our polls. The number of ‘crorepatis’ (multimillionaires) in the present Lok Sabha is up 98 per cent as compared to 2004. Then there were 154, now there are 306&#160; –&#160; almost double. A healthy growth rate. And there are grounds for optimism that the BPL group in the cabinet can uplift itself speedily. That’s happened to both MPs and candidates in some of the most troubled parts of the country.&#160; The net worth of candidates in Vidarbha rose by over 160 per cent between 2004 and 2009. In Wardha district of that region alone, the net worth of candidates rose by 1157 per cent between 2004 and 2009. The Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput region in the state of Orissa, seen by many as the most deprived zone of the nation, had seven&#160; multimillionaire candidates.</p>
<p>But back to the NEW report. Of the 306 crorepatis in the new Lok Sabha, 141, almost half, belong to the party of the aam aadmi (common man), the Congress. The BJP Lotus is a withering second, with 58 &#160;It still means, though, that the two major parties account for two-thirds of multimillionaires in parliament. The SP, BSP and DMK follow with 14, 13 and 12 respectively. The Shiv Sena doesn’t do too badly with 9 and the NCP with seven. In the case of these two parties, it means that almost 80 per cent of their elected MPs are ‘crorepatis.’ The Left bloc fares poorly, scoring just one from amongst their 24 MPs.</p>
<p>The one-in-three success rate of the Rs. 50 million-plus candidates doesn’t tell the whole story, though. Often, they’ve defeated others of their own league who might well have fared better against candidates of lower asset castes.</p>
<p>We are also faithful to our role model: the United States, where Liebling’s prophecy has worked with a vengeance for decades. One pre-meltdown piece in www.opensecrets.org&#160;&#160;&#160; put it neatly last year. “As Americans worry about their own finances, their elected representatives in Washington&#160; —&#160; with a collective net worth of $3.6 billion&#160; (roughly Rs. 172 billion: PS)&#160; —&#160; are mostly in good shape to withstand a recession.” Before the meltdown rained on their parade, it says, members of Congress, “saw their net worths soar 84 percent from 2004 to 2006, on average.” It points out that while US Senators had&#160; “a median net worth of approximately $1.7 million in 2006” only about&#160; “1 per cent of all American adults had a net worth greater than $1 million around the same time.”</p>
<p>So the collective net worth of&#160; elected representatives in Washington is Rs.172 billion and that of our own Rs. 28 billion. Okay, we’re outclassed. But not to feel too bad about it. For one thing, the US figure appears to include both Senate and House of Representatives. Ours covers only the Lok Sabha (House of the People). What’s more, our team seems to clock a better rate of growth. And the gap is narrowing. The good rate of growth for second or third term MPs also holds another lesson. Not only is it easier to get elected if you have money, it is easier to make money if you get elected</p>
<p>In both countries, money from big corporations clinches poll victories. &#160;Corporate lobbies like Big Oil have long owned&#160; Senators and Congressmen. In India this trend has grown even in terms of individual corporate chiefs. &#160;In the US, corporate power has been on shameless display during the financial bailouts. The AIGs, The Goldman Sachs et al unsheathed their massive clout to grab public money. In India, that power was visible to the naked eye in the run up to last year’s trust vote in parliament. One party even dumped a sworn political stand of eight decades under that influence.</p>
<p>In the NEW report, the wealthiest group of those elected falls into the Rs. 50 million plus category. The ranking within this is intriguing. The average worth of a Lok Sabha MP is Rs. 51 million. But there are&#160; 74 MPs with serious criminal charges against them whose wealth averages Rs. 60 million. That is, they’re well entrenched in Parliament’s Platinum tier. And the average wealth of a cabinet minister is around Rs. 75 million. Ah well, it’s a hard climb to the top.</p>
<p>P. SAINATH is the rural affairs editor of The Hindu, where this piece appears, and is the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p> | The Age of the Everyday Billionaire | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/06/24/the-age-of-the-everyday-billionaire/ | 2009-06-24 | 4left
| The Age of the Everyday Billionaire
<p>“I think almost everyone will grant that if candidates for the United States Senate were required to possess ten million dollars, and for the House one million, the year-in-year-out level of conservatism of those two bodies might be expected to rise sharply. We could still be said to have a freely elected Congress. Anybody with ten million dollars (or one, if he tailored his ambition to fit his means) would be free to try to get himself nominated, and the rest of us would be free to vote for our favourite millionaire or even to abstain from voting.”</p>
<p>A.J. Liebling The Wayward Pressman, 1947</p>
<p>Liebling also warned in the 1960s that the business models of newspapers would one day prove their undoing. A prophecy that rings true today for the giants of that industry in his own country. But the 2009 poll results in the Indian elections&#160; have made Liebling doubly relevant. “Voting for our favourite millionaire”&#160; comes alive with the 15th Lok Sabha House of the People. Its 543 MPs are worth close to Rs. 28 billion The 64 union cabinet members from the Lok Sabha account for Rs. 5 billion. (One US dollar is worth just under 50 rupees. So reckon the Lok Sabha’s total worth is around $2 billion.)&#160; And the links between wealth and winning elections are firmer than ever before.</p>
<p>If you are worth over Rs. 50 million, you are 75 times more likely to win an election to the Lok Sabha than if you are worth under Rs. 1 million. At least, in the case of the 2009 polls. &#160;(Some 23 of 64 Union Cabinet ministers whose asset worth is in the public domain fall into this Rs.50 million-plus category.&#160; Providing it stability of sorts, I guess. In the entire cabinet, only one falls into the less than Rs. 1 million group.)</p>
<p>Another 29 members of the cabinet fall into the Rs. 5 million&#160; to Rs.50 million category.&#160; If you’re in this bracket, your chances of winning&#160; aren’t as great as the 50 million plus, or Platinum Tier, elite. However, you are still 43 times more likely to win than those with less than Rs. 1 million in assets (i.e. almost the whole of India’s population). &#160;The remaining ministers, in case you were losing sleep over their condition, fall into the&#160; Rs. 1 million to Rs. 5 million club, the cabinet equivalent of BPL (Below Poverty Line). However, there are five years in which to remedy this situation and alleviate the misery of this group.</p>
<p>These are just a few of the insights brought to us by an interim report of National Election Watch on the 2009 polls. NEW is a coalition of over 1200 civil society groups working across the country. Their “Analysis of&#160; MPs of the 15th Lok Sabha (2009)” makes great reading and is the product of fine research and much hard work.</p>
<p>There were&#160; 3,437 candidates in the polls with assets of&#160; less than Rs. 1 million, says the report. Of these, just 15 (0.44 per cent) made it past the post. But your chances soar with your assets. Of 1,785 candidates in the Rs. 1 million to Rs. 5 million group, 116&#160; (6 per cent) won. This win-ratio goes up to 19 per cent of candidates for the Rs.5 million to Rs.50 million segment. And of 322 candidates in the Rs.50 million plus or platinum tier, 106 (33&#160; per cent) romped home.</p>
<p>The higher you climb the ladder of lucre, the better your chances. That’s obvious. But what’s striking is how bleak things are for non-millionaires. Even a modest improvement in your wealth helps. Say, you move from the below Rs. 1 million group to the Rs. 1-5 million group &#160;— &#160;your chances immediately improve at a higher rate than your wealth. (Of course that works only if you are already close to the Rs. 1 million mark.) &#160;So it’s not just that wealth has some impact on election outcomes&#160; —&#160; it influences them heavily and disproportionately as you go up the scale.</p>
<p>All of a piece with a society that only last year had 53 dollar billionaires (pre-meltdown), one that still has 836 million human beings who “get by” on less than Rs. 20 a day and which ranks 66th amongst 88 nations on the Global Hunger Index (just one notch above Zimbabwe). &#160;India has plummeted to rank 132 in the United Nations Human Development Index (one slot below Bhutan) as our billionaire count has risen. That wallows below Bolivia, Botswana, the Republic of the Congo and the Occupied Territories of Palestine in the HDI rankings. And never mind being worth billions&#160; –&#160; 60 per cent of adult rural Indians simply do not have bank accounts.</p>
<p>There’s little question that big bucks help in our polls. The number of ‘crorepatis’ (multimillionaires) in the present Lok Sabha is up 98 per cent as compared to 2004. Then there were 154, now there are 306&#160; –&#160; almost double. A healthy growth rate. And there are grounds for optimism that the BPL group in the cabinet can uplift itself speedily. That’s happened to both MPs and candidates in some of the most troubled parts of the country.&#160; The net worth of candidates in Vidarbha rose by over 160 per cent between 2004 and 2009. In Wardha district of that region alone, the net worth of candidates rose by 1157 per cent between 2004 and 2009. The Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput region in the state of Orissa, seen by many as the most deprived zone of the nation, had seven&#160; multimillionaire candidates.</p>
<p>But back to the NEW report. Of the 306 crorepatis in the new Lok Sabha, 141, almost half, belong to the party of the aam aadmi (common man), the Congress. The BJP Lotus is a withering second, with 58 &#160;It still means, though, that the two major parties account for two-thirds of multimillionaires in parliament. The SP, BSP and DMK follow with 14, 13 and 12 respectively. The Shiv Sena doesn’t do too badly with 9 and the NCP with seven. In the case of these two parties, it means that almost 80 per cent of their elected MPs are ‘crorepatis.’ The Left bloc fares poorly, scoring just one from amongst their 24 MPs.</p>
<p>The one-in-three success rate of the Rs. 50 million-plus candidates doesn’t tell the whole story, though. Often, they’ve defeated others of their own league who might well have fared better against candidates of lower asset castes.</p>
<p>We are also faithful to our role model: the United States, where Liebling’s prophecy has worked with a vengeance for decades. One pre-meltdown piece in www.opensecrets.org&#160;&#160;&#160; put it neatly last year. “As Americans worry about their own finances, their elected representatives in Washington&#160; —&#160; with a collective net worth of $3.6 billion&#160; (roughly Rs. 172 billion: PS)&#160; —&#160; are mostly in good shape to withstand a recession.” Before the meltdown rained on their parade, it says, members of Congress, “saw their net worths soar 84 percent from 2004 to 2006, on average.” It points out that while US Senators had&#160; “a median net worth of approximately $1.7 million in 2006” only about&#160; “1 per cent of all American adults had a net worth greater than $1 million around the same time.”</p>
<p>So the collective net worth of&#160; elected representatives in Washington is Rs.172 billion and that of our own Rs. 28 billion. Okay, we’re outclassed. But not to feel too bad about it. For one thing, the US figure appears to include both Senate and House of Representatives. Ours covers only the Lok Sabha (House of the People). What’s more, our team seems to clock a better rate of growth. And the gap is narrowing. The good rate of growth for second or third term MPs also holds another lesson. Not only is it easier to get elected if you have money, it is easier to make money if you get elected</p>
<p>In both countries, money from big corporations clinches poll victories. &#160;Corporate lobbies like Big Oil have long owned&#160; Senators and Congressmen. In India this trend has grown even in terms of individual corporate chiefs. &#160;In the US, corporate power has been on shameless display during the financial bailouts. The AIGs, The Goldman Sachs et al unsheathed their massive clout to grab public money. In India, that power was visible to the naked eye in the run up to last year’s trust vote in parliament. One party even dumped a sworn political stand of eight decades under that influence.</p>
<p>In the NEW report, the wealthiest group of those elected falls into the Rs. 50 million plus category. The ranking within this is intriguing. The average worth of a Lok Sabha MP is Rs. 51 million. But there are&#160; 74 MPs with serious criminal charges against them whose wealth averages Rs. 60 million. That is, they’re well entrenched in Parliament’s Platinum tier. And the average wealth of a cabinet minister is around Rs. 75 million. Ah well, it’s a hard climb to the top.</p>
<p>P. SAINATH is the rural affairs editor of The Hindu, where this piece appears, and is the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p> | 1,519 |
<p>Some producers of sportswear, nuts and other Vietnamese exports to the U.S. appear to rely on forced labor in drug rehab camps, according to Human Rights Watch.</p>
<p>The watchdog group's latest report, available <a href="http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/Vietnam_0911_brochure_LOWRES.pdf" type="external">here</a>, alleges that Vietnam's 130,000-plus drug addicts are often thrown into rehab camps doubling as factories.</p>
<p>Shelling cashews, according to the report, is the most common task imposed on addicts. Vietnam is the largest supplier of cashews to the U.S.</p>
<p>"First there were blood diamonds from the Congo. Then blood rubies from Burma. Could <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2092004,00.html?iid=pf-main-mostpop1" type="external">blood cashews</a> from Vietnam be next?" writes Time Magazine's Andrew Marshall in article on the allegations.</p>
<p>If U.S. prisons compel inmates to churn out license plates and clean highways, what's so bad about forcing drug addicts to shell nuts?</p>
<p>Because the inmates are also sporadically beaten and shocked in a fashion that amounts to torture, says Human Rights Watch.</p>
<p>Vietnam's government, however, <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gzdgUJY7tokcjgR_eC0Fum6CDzFQ?docId=8625aadcd256420aa068bcbcf488c7ae" type="external">insists the report is "groundless,"</a> according to the AP.</p> | Are your cashews shelled by Vietnamese inmates? | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-09-07/are-your-cashews-shelled-vietnamese-inmates | 2011-09-07 | 3left-center
| Are your cashews shelled by Vietnamese inmates?
<p>Some producers of sportswear, nuts and other Vietnamese exports to the U.S. appear to rely on forced labor in drug rehab camps, according to Human Rights Watch.</p>
<p>The watchdog group's latest report, available <a href="http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/Vietnam_0911_brochure_LOWRES.pdf" type="external">here</a>, alleges that Vietnam's 130,000-plus drug addicts are often thrown into rehab camps doubling as factories.</p>
<p>Shelling cashews, according to the report, is the most common task imposed on addicts. Vietnam is the largest supplier of cashews to the U.S.</p>
<p>"First there were blood diamonds from the Congo. Then blood rubies from Burma. Could <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2092004,00.html?iid=pf-main-mostpop1" type="external">blood cashews</a> from Vietnam be next?" writes Time Magazine's Andrew Marshall in article on the allegations.</p>
<p>If U.S. prisons compel inmates to churn out license plates and clean highways, what's so bad about forcing drug addicts to shell nuts?</p>
<p>Because the inmates are also sporadically beaten and shocked in a fashion that amounts to torture, says Human Rights Watch.</p>
<p>Vietnam's government, however, <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gzdgUJY7tokcjgR_eC0Fum6CDzFQ?docId=8625aadcd256420aa068bcbcf488c7ae" type="external">insists the report is "groundless,"</a> according to the AP.</p> | 1,520 |
<p>Arcadia-Loup City 76, Burwell 58</p>
<p>Axtell 70, Eustis-Farnam 24</p>
<p>Bayard 64, South Platte 23</p>
<p>Bellevue West 74, Omaha Burke 52</p>
<p>Blue Hill 54, Shelton 48</p>
<p>Centennial 64, Thayer Central 21</p>
<p>Centura 62, Ravenna 53</p>
<p>Columbus 53, Hastings 47</p>
<p>Edgemont, S.D. 56, Hay Springs 47</p>
<p>Elkhorn Mount Michael 67, South Sioux City 35</p>
<p>Fillmore Central 59, Gibbon 50</p>
<p>Fullerton 71, Spalding Academy 44</p>
<p>Garden County 51, Creek Valley 30</p>
<p>Gordon/Rushville 63, Mitchell 49</p>
<p>Hartington Cedar Catholic 84, Wagner, S.D. 37</p>
<p>Heartland Lutheran 44, Red Cloud 20</p>
<p>Johnson-Brock 64, Pawnee City 40</p>
<p>Lewiston 44, Sterling 42</p>
<p>Lincoln East 64, Papillion-LaVista 49</p>
<p>Millard North 72, Bellevue East 69</p>
<p>Millard South 58, Lincoln North Star 45</p>
<p>Norfolk 75, Fremont 49</p>
<p>Omaha Bryan 55, Lincoln Southwest 50</p>
<p>Omaha Central 86, Omaha Benson 67</p>
<p>Omaha Creighton Prep 90, Omaha Northwest 42</p>
<p>Omaha Roncalli 60, Omaha Gross Catholic 49</p>
<p>Omaha Skutt Catholic 67, Glenwood, Iowa 58</p>
<p>Ord 58, Wood River 45</p>
<p>Overton 38, Elm Creek 37</p>
<p>Sidney 50, Chadron 43</p>
<p>Sutherland 50, Kimball 42</p>
<p>Wilcox-Hildreth 57, Franklin 20</p>
<p>Arcadia-Loup City 76, Burwell 58</p>
<p>Axtell 70, Eustis-Farnam 24</p>
<p>Bayard 64, South Platte 23</p>
<p>Bellevue West 74, Omaha Burke 52</p>
<p>Blue Hill 54, Shelton 48</p>
<p>Centennial 64, Thayer Central 21</p>
<p>Centura 62, Ravenna 53</p>
<p>Columbus 53, Hastings 47</p>
<p>Edgemont, S.D. 56, Hay Springs 47</p>
<p>Elkhorn Mount Michael 67, South Sioux City 35</p>
<p>Fillmore Central 59, Gibbon 50</p>
<p>Fullerton 71, Spalding Academy 44</p>
<p>Garden County 51, Creek Valley 30</p>
<p>Gordon/Rushville 63, Mitchell 49</p>
<p>Hartington Cedar Catholic 84, Wagner, S.D. 37</p>
<p>Heartland Lutheran 44, Red Cloud 20</p>
<p>Johnson-Brock 64, Pawnee City 40</p>
<p>Lewiston 44, Sterling 42</p>
<p>Lincoln East 64, Papillion-LaVista 49</p>
<p>Millard North 72, Bellevue East 69</p>
<p>Millard South 58, Lincoln North Star 45</p>
<p>Norfolk 75, Fremont 49</p>
<p>Omaha Bryan 55, Lincoln Southwest 50</p>
<p>Omaha Central 86, Omaha Benson 67</p>
<p>Omaha Creighton Prep 90, Omaha Northwest 42</p>
<p>Omaha Roncalli 60, Omaha Gross Catholic 49</p>
<p>Omaha Skutt Catholic 67, Glenwood, Iowa 58</p>
<p>Ord 58, Wood River 45</p>
<p>Overton 38, Elm Creek 37</p>
<p>Sidney 50, Chadron 43</p>
<p>Sutherland 50, Kimball 42</p>
<p>Wilcox-Hildreth 57, Franklin 20</p> | Friday's Scores | false | https://apnews.com/amp/998fa26084064ff58c9d38efe5b3d4e8 | 2018-01-27 | 2least
| Friday's Scores
<p>Arcadia-Loup City 76, Burwell 58</p>
<p>Axtell 70, Eustis-Farnam 24</p>
<p>Bayard 64, South Platte 23</p>
<p>Bellevue West 74, Omaha Burke 52</p>
<p>Blue Hill 54, Shelton 48</p>
<p>Centennial 64, Thayer Central 21</p>
<p>Centura 62, Ravenna 53</p>
<p>Columbus 53, Hastings 47</p>
<p>Edgemont, S.D. 56, Hay Springs 47</p>
<p>Elkhorn Mount Michael 67, South Sioux City 35</p>
<p>Fillmore Central 59, Gibbon 50</p>
<p>Fullerton 71, Spalding Academy 44</p>
<p>Garden County 51, Creek Valley 30</p>
<p>Gordon/Rushville 63, Mitchell 49</p>
<p>Hartington Cedar Catholic 84, Wagner, S.D. 37</p>
<p>Heartland Lutheran 44, Red Cloud 20</p>
<p>Johnson-Brock 64, Pawnee City 40</p>
<p>Lewiston 44, Sterling 42</p>
<p>Lincoln East 64, Papillion-LaVista 49</p>
<p>Millard North 72, Bellevue East 69</p>
<p>Millard South 58, Lincoln North Star 45</p>
<p>Norfolk 75, Fremont 49</p>
<p>Omaha Bryan 55, Lincoln Southwest 50</p>
<p>Omaha Central 86, Omaha Benson 67</p>
<p>Omaha Creighton Prep 90, Omaha Northwest 42</p>
<p>Omaha Roncalli 60, Omaha Gross Catholic 49</p>
<p>Omaha Skutt Catholic 67, Glenwood, Iowa 58</p>
<p>Ord 58, Wood River 45</p>
<p>Overton 38, Elm Creek 37</p>
<p>Sidney 50, Chadron 43</p>
<p>Sutherland 50, Kimball 42</p>
<p>Wilcox-Hildreth 57, Franklin 20</p>
<p>Arcadia-Loup City 76, Burwell 58</p>
<p>Axtell 70, Eustis-Farnam 24</p>
<p>Bayard 64, South Platte 23</p>
<p>Bellevue West 74, Omaha Burke 52</p>
<p>Blue Hill 54, Shelton 48</p>
<p>Centennial 64, Thayer Central 21</p>
<p>Centura 62, Ravenna 53</p>
<p>Columbus 53, Hastings 47</p>
<p>Edgemont, S.D. 56, Hay Springs 47</p>
<p>Elkhorn Mount Michael 67, South Sioux City 35</p>
<p>Fillmore Central 59, Gibbon 50</p>
<p>Fullerton 71, Spalding Academy 44</p>
<p>Garden County 51, Creek Valley 30</p>
<p>Gordon/Rushville 63, Mitchell 49</p>
<p>Hartington Cedar Catholic 84, Wagner, S.D. 37</p>
<p>Heartland Lutheran 44, Red Cloud 20</p>
<p>Johnson-Brock 64, Pawnee City 40</p>
<p>Lewiston 44, Sterling 42</p>
<p>Lincoln East 64, Papillion-LaVista 49</p>
<p>Millard North 72, Bellevue East 69</p>
<p>Millard South 58, Lincoln North Star 45</p>
<p>Norfolk 75, Fremont 49</p>
<p>Omaha Bryan 55, Lincoln Southwest 50</p>
<p>Omaha Central 86, Omaha Benson 67</p>
<p>Omaha Creighton Prep 90, Omaha Northwest 42</p>
<p>Omaha Roncalli 60, Omaha Gross Catholic 49</p>
<p>Omaha Skutt Catholic 67, Glenwood, Iowa 58</p>
<p>Ord 58, Wood River 45</p>
<p>Overton 38, Elm Creek 37</p>
<p>Sidney 50, Chadron 43</p>
<p>Sutherland 50, Kimball 42</p>
<p>Wilcox-Hildreth 57, Franklin 20</p> | 1,521 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The tension – shown in high relief during the messy final days of the congressional session – is in some ways a mirror image of the stresses within the Republican Party, which has been divided between its tea party and establishment factions in recent years.</p>
<p>In the case of both parties, the argument pits the more populist, purist elements of the base against the more pragmatic center.</p>
<p>For Democrats, “it is a conflict that was looking for an occasion,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who was a policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton. “The election provided the occasion.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Having lost big in November, two wings within the party have been trading recriminations over which was more to blame while jostling for position to be the face of the Democrats going into 2016.</p>
<p>They are personified by former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, the presumptive presidential front-runner by virtue of her stature and fame, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the anti-Wall Street clarion favored by many on the left to challenge Clinton for the Democratic nomination.</p>
<p>If the loss of the Senate intensified strains within the party, the $1.1 trillion spending bill that passed Saturday night raised two issues that acted as matches to gasoline. One was a provision rolling back portions of the 2010 financial regulatory law known as the Dodd-Frank Act. The other loosened campaign donation limits, allowing the wealthy to give three times the current maximum to the national political parties. That means even more clout for rich donors and the interests they represent.</p>
<p>In both instances, the question was not whether Democrats supported the individual provisions – they generally do not. It was whether individual members considered them so egregious as to merit blowing up a wide-ranging deal to which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada had been a party and for which President Barack Obama was personally lobbying.</p>
<p>“What we saw over the last couple of days is an example of a debate that is probably going to go on for a while in the party,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Reid.</p>
<p>Proponents of the legislation argued that they had succeeded in preventing even more provisions weakening Dodd-Frank from being inserted in the bill. And at any rate, they said, the legislation was far better than anything Democrats could expect should they allow the debate to continue into next year, when Republicans will be in control of the House and Senate.</p>
<p>But Warren urged her colleagues to hold the line, particularly against the banks whose political influence she accused her own party of abetting.</p>
<p>“Enough is enough with Wall Street insiders getting key position after key position and the kind of cronyism we have seen in the executive branch,” she said in a fiery speech on the Senate floor. “Enough is enough with Citigroup passing eleventh-hour deregulatory provisions that nobody takes ownership over but that everybody comes to regret. Enough is enough.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>So strident was her opposition that it drew comparison with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who had led the charge against the bill from the right based on opposition to Obama’s immigration policies. Democratic leaders denied any symmetry.</p>
<p>“Elizabeth Warren, even if people don’t agree with her, she’s constructive. She’s not like Ted Cruz,” Sen. Charles Schumer of New York said Sunday on CNN. “She’s working hard to move things in her direction. And that’s a good thing.”</p>
<p>On the House side, there also was a Democratic schism. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California marshaled opposition to the spending bill, while her second-in-command, Democratic whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, voted for it.</p>
<p>As the drama was playing out on Capitol Hill on Friday, more than 300 former Obama campaign staff members released a letter calling on Warren to run, saying, “we want someone who will stand up for working families and take on the Wall Street banks and special interests that took down our economy.” Last week, the liberal group <a href="http://Moveon.org" type="external">Moveon.org</a> also announced that it would put at least $1 million into an effort to draft Warren, who has repeatedly said she does not intend to run for president and who was recently named to a spot in the Senate Democratic leadership.</p>
<p>Neither statement mentioned Clinton, who many on the left think is too sympathetic to Wall Street and corporate interests. She has yet to make clear what her main rationale for running would be if she decides to seek the presidency.</p>
<p>“I don’t think anyone is dying to have a primary so much as we are to have the right issues debated in this presidential election and beyond,” said Steve Hildebrand, who was Obama’s 2008 deputy campaign manager. Hildebrand said he has not committed to any candidate.</p>
<p>Democrats who opposed the spending bill claimed a moral victory, with Pelosi writing in a letter to her rank-and-file members that their resistance had “strengthened our position.”</p>
<p>Some said it also framed the terms of political engagement going forward.</p>
<p>“I think the overarching narrative that is most powerful right now is that everyday citizens are being left out – almost locked out – of their own democracy, when you look at Washington, when you look at the influence that special interests have,” said Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md. “Democrats want to find a way to give people their voice back.”</p>
<p>It may be that the current struggle will nudge the party further to the left and help it coalesce around a message. Or the episode may have underscored the dysfunction of an era of intense polarization, where meeting in the middle has become all but impossible – even within a single political party.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Democrats appear to be divided on their ideological identity | false | https://abqjournal.com/512612/democrats-appear-to-be-divided-on-their-ideological-identity.html | 2least
| Democrats appear to be divided on their ideological identity
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The tension – shown in high relief during the messy final days of the congressional session – is in some ways a mirror image of the stresses within the Republican Party, which has been divided between its tea party and establishment factions in recent years.</p>
<p>In the case of both parties, the argument pits the more populist, purist elements of the base against the more pragmatic center.</p>
<p>For Democrats, “it is a conflict that was looking for an occasion,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who was a policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton. “The election provided the occasion.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Having lost big in November, two wings within the party have been trading recriminations over which was more to blame while jostling for position to be the face of the Democrats going into 2016.</p>
<p>They are personified by former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, the presumptive presidential front-runner by virtue of her stature and fame, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the anti-Wall Street clarion favored by many on the left to challenge Clinton for the Democratic nomination.</p>
<p>If the loss of the Senate intensified strains within the party, the $1.1 trillion spending bill that passed Saturday night raised two issues that acted as matches to gasoline. One was a provision rolling back portions of the 2010 financial regulatory law known as the Dodd-Frank Act. The other loosened campaign donation limits, allowing the wealthy to give three times the current maximum to the national political parties. That means even more clout for rich donors and the interests they represent.</p>
<p>In both instances, the question was not whether Democrats supported the individual provisions – they generally do not. It was whether individual members considered them so egregious as to merit blowing up a wide-ranging deal to which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada had been a party and for which President Barack Obama was personally lobbying.</p>
<p>“What we saw over the last couple of days is an example of a debate that is probably going to go on for a while in the party,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Reid.</p>
<p>Proponents of the legislation argued that they had succeeded in preventing even more provisions weakening Dodd-Frank from being inserted in the bill. And at any rate, they said, the legislation was far better than anything Democrats could expect should they allow the debate to continue into next year, when Republicans will be in control of the House and Senate.</p>
<p>But Warren urged her colleagues to hold the line, particularly against the banks whose political influence she accused her own party of abetting.</p>
<p>“Enough is enough with Wall Street insiders getting key position after key position and the kind of cronyism we have seen in the executive branch,” she said in a fiery speech on the Senate floor. “Enough is enough with Citigroup passing eleventh-hour deregulatory provisions that nobody takes ownership over but that everybody comes to regret. Enough is enough.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>So strident was her opposition that it drew comparison with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who had led the charge against the bill from the right based on opposition to Obama’s immigration policies. Democratic leaders denied any symmetry.</p>
<p>“Elizabeth Warren, even if people don’t agree with her, she’s constructive. She’s not like Ted Cruz,” Sen. Charles Schumer of New York said Sunday on CNN. “She’s working hard to move things in her direction. And that’s a good thing.”</p>
<p>On the House side, there also was a Democratic schism. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California marshaled opposition to the spending bill, while her second-in-command, Democratic whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, voted for it.</p>
<p>As the drama was playing out on Capitol Hill on Friday, more than 300 former Obama campaign staff members released a letter calling on Warren to run, saying, “we want someone who will stand up for working families and take on the Wall Street banks and special interests that took down our economy.” Last week, the liberal group <a href="http://Moveon.org" type="external">Moveon.org</a> also announced that it would put at least $1 million into an effort to draft Warren, who has repeatedly said she does not intend to run for president and who was recently named to a spot in the Senate Democratic leadership.</p>
<p>Neither statement mentioned Clinton, who many on the left think is too sympathetic to Wall Street and corporate interests. She has yet to make clear what her main rationale for running would be if she decides to seek the presidency.</p>
<p>“I don’t think anyone is dying to have a primary so much as we are to have the right issues debated in this presidential election and beyond,” said Steve Hildebrand, who was Obama’s 2008 deputy campaign manager. Hildebrand said he has not committed to any candidate.</p>
<p>Democrats who opposed the spending bill claimed a moral victory, with Pelosi writing in a letter to her rank-and-file members that their resistance had “strengthened our position.”</p>
<p>Some said it also framed the terms of political engagement going forward.</p>
<p>“I think the overarching narrative that is most powerful right now is that everyday citizens are being left out – almost locked out – of their own democracy, when you look at Washington, when you look at the influence that special interests have,” said Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md. “Democrats want to find a way to give people their voice back.”</p>
<p>It may be that the current struggle will nudge the party further to the left and help it coalesce around a message. Or the episode may have underscored the dysfunction of an era of intense polarization, where meeting in the middle has become all but impossible – even within a single political party.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 1,522 |
|
<p>By Alastair Sharp</p>
<p>TORONTO (Reuters) - Research In Motion's PlayBook, the long-awaited response to Apple's <a href="" type="internal">iPad</a>, goes on sale in the United States and Canada on Tuesday in a launch RIM desperately hopes will win the hearts and minds of consumers.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The stakes could not be higher for the Canadian company, whose <a href="" type="internal">BlackBerry</a> smartphone once reigned supreme but has struggled to compete since Apple's <a href="" type="internal">iPhone</a> and a slew of devices running Google's Android entered the fray.</p>
<p>The launch has not been helped by reviews, which have panned the WiFi-only tablet computer for lacking RIM's trademark email and organizer applications. However, retailers including <a href="" type="internal">Staples</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Best Buy</a> say solid pre-orders for this week's launch suggest pent-up demand for a capable alternative to the iPad.</p>
<p>Some 20,000 stores across the United States and Canada will stock the PlayBook at launch, and it will also be sold directly to enterprises.</p>
<p>Some say it is unfair to even stack the contenders up against the iPad, which single-handedly made the tablet market a reality last April. Apple sold almost 15 million iPads in 2010; RIM is expected to move 3 million PlayBooks in a similar window in 2011, according to 18 analysts polled by Reuters.</p>
<p>"It's not going to be in the same league as the iPad," said Al Hilwa, a Seattle-based analyst at IDC. "The question is will it sell more than the Xoom but less than the Galaxy," for example, he said, referring to Android-based tablets from <a href="" type="internal">Motorola</a> Mobility and <a href="" type="internal">Samsung</a>.</p>
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<p>Underscoring the challenges in whipping up the type of buzz typical of an Apple launch, Staples Canada ditched plans to open its doors at midnight for a more sensible 7 a.m. opening.</p>
<p>But analysts say RIM's Playbook should stay in the hunt, even if it gets off to a slow start as it overhauls its creaky platform with the QNX operating system it acquired last year.</p>
<p>Gartner, a research outfit focused on technology, estimates one in 10 touchscreen devices sold in 2015, or some 30 million, will be powered by QNX, which will likely also find its way onto its smartphones in the next 12 months.</p>
<p>That would place it third behind Apple at almost half the market and Android at just under 40 percent, leaving little room for Hewlett-Packard's soon-to-launch WebOS tablet and completely ignoring a possible Windows tablet platform.</p>
<p>CARRIER EXCITEMENT LIMITED</p>
<p>RIM made its name among a white-collar crowd when mobile email was a novelty and has been slow to broaden its appeal.</p>
<p>And in its current setup, the PlayBook's prime audiences are the 60 million-odd active BlackBerry users worldwide and corporate IT managers who appreciate the reliance on a BlackBerry for access to corporate data. RIM expects large businesses to buy shipments in "the tens of thousands."</p>
<p>Without a cellular connection, carriers such as <a href="" type="internal">Verizon</a> are unlikely to get too excited as they stand to gain little from selling a tablet without a data plan, although the cost savings may attract consumers.</p>
<p>In Canada, carrier Telus aims to set itself apart by offering PlayBook buyers 45-minute sessions with specially-trained staff to explain the device. But Telus' attention is also split; Motorola's Xoom launches there the same day.</p>
<p>Cellular-connected PlayBooks are due out mid-year.</p>
<p>For the boy in every businessman, RIM has stolen a sheet out of the iPad's playbook, teaming up with <a href="" type="internal">Electronic Arts</a> to ship its tablet with the car-racing game 'Need For Speed: Undercover'.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Alastair Sharp, editing by Bernard Orr)</p> | RIM's PlayBook hits shelves | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/04/19/rims-playbook-hits-shelves.html | 2016-03-04 | 0right
| RIM's PlayBook hits shelves
<p>By Alastair Sharp</p>
<p>TORONTO (Reuters) - Research In Motion's PlayBook, the long-awaited response to Apple's <a href="" type="internal">iPad</a>, goes on sale in the United States and Canada on Tuesday in a launch RIM desperately hopes will win the hearts and minds of consumers.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The stakes could not be higher for the Canadian company, whose <a href="" type="internal">BlackBerry</a> smartphone once reigned supreme but has struggled to compete since Apple's <a href="" type="internal">iPhone</a> and a slew of devices running Google's Android entered the fray.</p>
<p>The launch has not been helped by reviews, which have panned the WiFi-only tablet computer for lacking RIM's trademark email and organizer applications. However, retailers including <a href="" type="internal">Staples</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Best Buy</a> say solid pre-orders for this week's launch suggest pent-up demand for a capable alternative to the iPad.</p>
<p>Some 20,000 stores across the United States and Canada will stock the PlayBook at launch, and it will also be sold directly to enterprises.</p>
<p>Some say it is unfair to even stack the contenders up against the iPad, which single-handedly made the tablet market a reality last April. Apple sold almost 15 million iPads in 2010; RIM is expected to move 3 million PlayBooks in a similar window in 2011, according to 18 analysts polled by Reuters.</p>
<p>"It's not going to be in the same league as the iPad," said Al Hilwa, a Seattle-based analyst at IDC. "The question is will it sell more than the Xoom but less than the Galaxy," for example, he said, referring to Android-based tablets from <a href="" type="internal">Motorola</a> Mobility and <a href="" type="internal">Samsung</a>.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Underscoring the challenges in whipping up the type of buzz typical of an Apple launch, Staples Canada ditched plans to open its doors at midnight for a more sensible 7 a.m. opening.</p>
<p>But analysts say RIM's Playbook should stay in the hunt, even if it gets off to a slow start as it overhauls its creaky platform with the QNX operating system it acquired last year.</p>
<p>Gartner, a research outfit focused on technology, estimates one in 10 touchscreen devices sold in 2015, or some 30 million, will be powered by QNX, which will likely also find its way onto its smartphones in the next 12 months.</p>
<p>That would place it third behind Apple at almost half the market and Android at just under 40 percent, leaving little room for Hewlett-Packard's soon-to-launch WebOS tablet and completely ignoring a possible Windows tablet platform.</p>
<p>CARRIER EXCITEMENT LIMITED</p>
<p>RIM made its name among a white-collar crowd when mobile email was a novelty and has been slow to broaden its appeal.</p>
<p>And in its current setup, the PlayBook's prime audiences are the 60 million-odd active BlackBerry users worldwide and corporate IT managers who appreciate the reliance on a BlackBerry for access to corporate data. RIM expects large businesses to buy shipments in "the tens of thousands."</p>
<p>Without a cellular connection, carriers such as <a href="" type="internal">Verizon</a> are unlikely to get too excited as they stand to gain little from selling a tablet without a data plan, although the cost savings may attract consumers.</p>
<p>In Canada, carrier Telus aims to set itself apart by offering PlayBook buyers 45-minute sessions with specially-trained staff to explain the device. But Telus' attention is also split; Motorola's Xoom launches there the same day.</p>
<p>Cellular-connected PlayBooks are due out mid-year.</p>
<p>For the boy in every businessman, RIM has stolen a sheet out of the iPad's playbook, teaming up with <a href="" type="internal">Electronic Arts</a> to ship its tablet with the car-racing game 'Need For Speed: Undercover'.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Alastair Sharp, editing by Bernard Orr)</p> | 1,523 |
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<p>Andre Bertoncin, 15, suffered massive external and internal injuries after falling more than 20 feet from a chairlift at Taos Ski Valley Resort around noon on Monday, the Taos News reported on its Web site.</p>
<p>Bertoncin, a freshman at Taos High School, suffered a ruptured spleen, a lacerated liver, six broken ribs with some bleeding in the chest, a small lung puncture, contusions to the heart and kidney, fractured lower back, a broken pelvis and split tailbone, his stepfather, Dr. Timothy Quigley Peterson, told the Taos News.</p>
<p>Peterson, as it happens, was on call at the Mogul Medical Urgent Care Clinic at Taos Ski Valley when his stepson was brought in following the accident, according to the paper.</p>
<p>Bertoncin was taken to Holy Cross Hospital in Taos, then airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital Level 1 Trauma Center in Albuquerque. He is expected to remain at UNM Hospital for about six weeks, the Taos News reported.</p>
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<p>"He is over the critical phase," Bertoncin’s stepfather told the paper. "Still, as a parent and a physician, this is everyone’s worst nightmare."</p>
<p>No explanation was given for how Bertoncin fell from the chairlift.</p>
<p>A spokesman for Taos Ski Valley told the paper he couldn’t recall the last time such an unusual accident happened.</p>
<p>"Fortunately, this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often," Chris Stagg, the ski valley’s vice president of marketing, told the paper.</p> | 8:35am — Teen Survives Fall | false | https://abqjournal.com/22089/835am-teen-survives-fall.html | 2least
| 8:35am — Teen Survives Fall
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<p />
<p>Andre Bertoncin, 15, suffered massive external and internal injuries after falling more than 20 feet from a chairlift at Taos Ski Valley Resort around noon on Monday, the Taos News reported on its Web site.</p>
<p>Bertoncin, a freshman at Taos High School, suffered a ruptured spleen, a lacerated liver, six broken ribs with some bleeding in the chest, a small lung puncture, contusions to the heart and kidney, fractured lower back, a broken pelvis and split tailbone, his stepfather, Dr. Timothy Quigley Peterson, told the Taos News.</p>
<p>Peterson, as it happens, was on call at the Mogul Medical Urgent Care Clinic at Taos Ski Valley when his stepson was brought in following the accident, according to the paper.</p>
<p>Bertoncin was taken to Holy Cross Hospital in Taos, then airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital Level 1 Trauma Center in Albuquerque. He is expected to remain at UNM Hospital for about six weeks, the Taos News reported.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"He is over the critical phase," Bertoncin’s stepfather told the paper. "Still, as a parent and a physician, this is everyone’s worst nightmare."</p>
<p>No explanation was given for how Bertoncin fell from the chairlift.</p>
<p>A spokesman for Taos Ski Valley told the paper he couldn’t recall the last time such an unusual accident happened.</p>
<p>"Fortunately, this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often," Chris Stagg, the ski valley’s vice president of marketing, told the paper.</p> | 1,524 |
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<p />
<p>The company said the plumes, seen from downtown Denver, were “visible emissions” from the refinery in Commerce City which spokeswoman Nicole Fisher described as being from an uncombusted hydrocarbon. However, the Denver Fire Capt. Greg Pixley said Suncor notified authorities that it was releasing sulfur dioxide, a gas created by the burning of sulfur.</p>
<p>The executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Dr. Larry Wolk, said officials don’t know enough yet about what was in the smoke to determine if it was hazardous. However, he said authorities are reassured that the release was brief and doesn’t appear to pose any immediate threat to people nearby.</p>
<p>Suncor will submit a report to the department about the cause of the malfunction and the emissions, he said.</p>
<p>The Environmental Protection Agency says short-term exposure to sulfur dioxide can harm the human respiratory system and make breathing difficult, especially the young, the elderly and those with asthma.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Fisher said Suncor is monitoring the air around the 98,000-barrel-a-day refinery, which produces gasoline, diesel fuel and asphalt.</p>
<p>Nearby Interstate 270 was temporarily shut down as firefighters responded to the refinery.</p>
<p>The power outage occurred around noon and the smoke dissipated by mid-afternoon.</p> | Fire dept. says sulfur dioxide emitted from Colorado plant | false | https://abqjournal.com/867677/fire-dept-says-sulfur-dioxide-emitted-from-colorado-plant.html | 2016-10-14 | 2least
| Fire dept. says sulfur dioxide emitted from Colorado plant
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<p />
<p>The company said the plumes, seen from downtown Denver, were “visible emissions” from the refinery in Commerce City which spokeswoman Nicole Fisher described as being from an uncombusted hydrocarbon. However, the Denver Fire Capt. Greg Pixley said Suncor notified authorities that it was releasing sulfur dioxide, a gas created by the burning of sulfur.</p>
<p>The executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Dr. Larry Wolk, said officials don’t know enough yet about what was in the smoke to determine if it was hazardous. However, he said authorities are reassured that the release was brief and doesn’t appear to pose any immediate threat to people nearby.</p>
<p>Suncor will submit a report to the department about the cause of the malfunction and the emissions, he said.</p>
<p>The Environmental Protection Agency says short-term exposure to sulfur dioxide can harm the human respiratory system and make breathing difficult, especially the young, the elderly and those with asthma.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Fisher said Suncor is monitoring the air around the 98,000-barrel-a-day refinery, which produces gasoline, diesel fuel and asphalt.</p>
<p>Nearby Interstate 270 was temporarily shut down as firefighters responded to the refinery.</p>
<p>The power outage occurred around noon and the smoke dissipated by mid-afternoon.</p> | 1,525 |
<p>Private investor and Patriotic Millionaires member Eric Schoenberg discusses the GOP tax reform plan and argues why the wealthy should continue to pay more in taxes.</p>
<p>While President Donald Trump and the Republican Party aim to produce a tax plan that favors the middle class, some have concerns the rich will benefit more from the proposed legislation.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>New Jersey millionaire and private investor Eric Schoenberg—part of a nonpartisan group called Patriotic Millionaires, a group which, among other objectives, favor said &#160;tax reform, particularly one that would not benefit the rich.</p>
<p>“The rich should not be paying one penny less—we need that revenue,” he told FOX Business’ Stuart Varney on “Varney &amp; Co.” “And the wealthy already pay much less in taxes.”</p>
<p>Schoenberg, who said he has an income of “over $1 million a year,” explained that he pays fewer taxes than much of the middle class because of certain benefits. He added that the government needs look into the way capital and investment income are taxed.</p>
<p>“That is the primary benefit that goes to the wealthy in this country. That is the reason why people like Warren Buffett pay less in taxes than working-class people,” Schoenberg said.</p>
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<p>The private investor said while the Republicans has been in control of the tax reform agenda, they have not talked about controlling spending and that “all they’re talking about is cutting taxes, primarily on the wealthy.”</p>
<p>Schoenberg said the discussions about what leads to economic growth are complicated, but doesn’t believe there is clear evidence “in favor of any of them.”</p>
<p>“The one thing we have very clear evidence about is the consequence over the last 30 years, every time Congress has gone to mess with the tax system, I have come out ahead,” he said.</p> | Patriotic millionaire says he's only benefited every time Congress changes the tax code | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/10/23/patriotic-millionaire-says-hes-only-benefited-every-time-congress-changes-tax-code.html | 2017-10-23 | 0right
| Patriotic millionaire says he's only benefited every time Congress changes the tax code
<p>Private investor and Patriotic Millionaires member Eric Schoenberg discusses the GOP tax reform plan and argues why the wealthy should continue to pay more in taxes.</p>
<p>While President Donald Trump and the Republican Party aim to produce a tax plan that favors the middle class, some have concerns the rich will benefit more from the proposed legislation.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>New Jersey millionaire and private investor Eric Schoenberg—part of a nonpartisan group called Patriotic Millionaires, a group which, among other objectives, favor said &#160;tax reform, particularly one that would not benefit the rich.</p>
<p>“The rich should not be paying one penny less—we need that revenue,” he told FOX Business’ Stuart Varney on “Varney &amp; Co.” “And the wealthy already pay much less in taxes.”</p>
<p>Schoenberg, who said he has an income of “over $1 million a year,” explained that he pays fewer taxes than much of the middle class because of certain benefits. He added that the government needs look into the way capital and investment income are taxed.</p>
<p>“That is the primary benefit that goes to the wealthy in this country. That is the reason why people like Warren Buffett pay less in taxes than working-class people,” Schoenberg said.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The private investor said while the Republicans has been in control of the tax reform agenda, they have not talked about controlling spending and that “all they’re talking about is cutting taxes, primarily on the wealthy.”</p>
<p>Schoenberg said the discussions about what leads to economic growth are complicated, but doesn’t believe there is clear evidence “in favor of any of them.”</p>
<p>“The one thing we have very clear evidence about is the consequence over the last 30 years, every time Congress has gone to mess with the tax system, I have come out ahead,” he said.</p> | 1,526 |
<p>This week, readers sent us letters congratulating us on our Webby wins for best politics website.</p>
<p>In the FactCheck Mailbag, we feature some of the e-mail we receive. Readers can send comments to <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>. Letters may be edited for length.</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Congrats!</p>
<p>Well, you MUST know that you are the only people who were even remotely concerned about “us people” understanding what is going on!!!!&#160; That, in itself, is the first miracle. And you have all worked so exceedingly hard to keep the truth in the forefront without beating your own drum. So, WE hadda do it fer ya!!!! We all, whoever we are, can never thank you enough for seeing clearly and being able to translate that to we, the people, who need the truth so desperately!!!</p>
<p>Beverly Smith Cottonwood, Ariz.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>So great that you won, as you all so deserve it!!! Keep up the good and unbiased work — especially this year with the upcoming elections. Congratulations to all there.</p>
<p>Theresa Joniec Horsham, Pa.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>You should be proud. They only let me vote for you ONCE. I think the reason you won was because of the great service you are providing. You should send FactCheck to every newspaper, radio station and television station in the country. We need the truth told during this campaign.</p>
<p>Don Hoagland St. Louis, Mo.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>I don’t Tweet, and I don’t Facebook, so, I was unable to vote. But you always have been my favorite political website, and the hands-down authority for all things political. Congrats!</p>
<p>Linda Coleman Rockville, Md.</p> | FactCheck Mailbag, Week of May 1-7 | false | https://factcheck.org/2012/05/factcheck-mailbag-week-of-may-1-7/ | 2012-05-09 | 2least
| FactCheck Mailbag, Week of May 1-7
<p>This week, readers sent us letters congratulating us on our Webby wins for best politics website.</p>
<p>In the FactCheck Mailbag, we feature some of the e-mail we receive. Readers can send comments to <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>. Letters may be edited for length.</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Congrats!</p>
<p>Well, you MUST know that you are the only people who were even remotely concerned about “us people” understanding what is going on!!!!&#160; That, in itself, is the first miracle. And you have all worked so exceedingly hard to keep the truth in the forefront without beating your own drum. So, WE hadda do it fer ya!!!! We all, whoever we are, can never thank you enough for seeing clearly and being able to translate that to we, the people, who need the truth so desperately!!!</p>
<p>Beverly Smith Cottonwood, Ariz.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>So great that you won, as you all so deserve it!!! Keep up the good and unbiased work — especially this year with the upcoming elections. Congratulations to all there.</p>
<p>Theresa Joniec Horsham, Pa.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>You should be proud. They only let me vote for you ONCE. I think the reason you won was because of the great service you are providing. You should send FactCheck to every newspaper, radio station and television station in the country. We need the truth told during this campaign.</p>
<p>Don Hoagland St. Louis, Mo.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>I don’t Tweet, and I don’t Facebook, so, I was unable to vote. But you always have been my favorite political website, and the hands-down authority for all things political. Congrats!</p>
<p>Linda Coleman Rockville, Md.</p> | 1,527 |
<p>WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) — Purdue’s Isaac Haas stood his ground Thursday night.</p>
<p>If he saw one defender in the post, the 7-foot-2 center went straight to the rim. If he was double-teamed, he let teammates make the plays. The strategy worked perfectly, again.</p>
<p>Vincent Edwards scored a career-high 30 points, Haas added 24 and No. 3 Purdue used one late charge to finally get past No. 25 Michigan 92-88 for a school-record tying 16th consecutive win.</p>
<p>“I knew going into the game that Michigan wasn’t going to try to double that much because we have too many good shooters and I figured they’d take their chances going one-on-one in the paint,” Haas said after celebrating the milestone with Edwards near midcourt. “I capitalized on it a lot today.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Purdue (20-2, 9-0 Big Ten) just keeps stacking its resume.</p>
<p>For the first time in 30 years and the fourth time overall, the Boilermakers have won 16 in a row.</p>
<p>The defending Big Ten champs extended their home-court winning streak to 20 and their winning streak over conference foes to 11. They are 9-0 in league play for the first time in the NCAA Tournament era and completed their first regular-season sweep of the Wolverines (17-6, 6-4) in 10 years.</p>
<p>And now they have a win in one of this season’s most entertaining games — courtesy of a 9-0 run midway through the second half.</p>
<p>“Who has five guys who can shoot on the run? And you ask about trying to guard Haas, well you guys go try and guard him,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “He’s a difficult matchup for us.”</p>
<p>For anyone, really. Haas also had six rebounds, three assists and three blocks.</p>
<p>Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman had career-high 26 points, and Zavier Simpson added 16 to lead Michigan.</p>
<p>But after a 20-minute slugfest, the final 20 turned into a shootout.</p>
<p>By the time the third media timeout came, with 7:45 to go, both teams were still shooting over 75 percent from the field and at least 75 percent on 3-pointers in the half. Only seven of 32 shots were missed and at one point, the lead changed on 13 consecutive baskets.</p>
<p>When the streak finally ended, Edwards and Haas took charge.</p>
<p>Edwards made a 3 to tie it at 68, then broke the tie with two free throws before scoring on a putback. Haas’ layup with 7:23 to go made it 74-68.</p>
<p>Duncan Robinson’s layup on the ensuing possession finally ended Michigan’s scoring drought, but Haas answered with a three-point and Carsen Edwards sank two free throws to make it 79-70 with 5:38 left.</p>
<p>Michigan played catch-up the rest of the game but never get closer than three.</p>
<p>“Isaac’s been great,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “The last couple games he hasn’t always had the same amount of opportunities because teams loaded up on him, and that opened up the 3 for us. So I understand what (Michigan) was doing.”</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Michigan: The Wolverines can play with the best in the Big Ten. They upset No. 4 Michigan State on the road two weeks ago and now have gone toe-to-toe twice with the Boilermakers. But with four conference losses already, they’ll need some major help to contend for a conference crown.</p>
<p>Purdue: Right now, the Boilers look unbeatable. They’ve been knocking down 3s at an incredible rate and playing terrific defense. They are so versatile and experienced nothing seems to faze them, even when things don’t go according to script as was the case Thursday.</p>
<p>KEY STATS</p>
<p>Michigan: Adbur-Rahkman also had six 3s. ... Moritz Wagner had 15 points and Charles Matthews added 10.... The Wolverines shot 66.7 percent in the second half and 60.3 percent for the game. ... They were 13 of 23 on 3s.</p>
<p>Purdue: Vincent Edwards also had five rebounds and five assists while Carsen Edwards had 13 points. ... The Boilermakers shot 62.0 percent in the game and were 11 of 20 on 3s. ... It’s the first time Purdue gave up more than 70 points to an opponent since Dec. 1.</p>
<p>ROUGH AND TUMBLE</p>
<p>Purdue center Matt Haarms made an unscheduled wardrobe change at halftime after his No. 32 jersey got ripped. The 7-foot-3 redshirt freshman finished the game wearing No. 34.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Michigan: Will try to rebound from its second straight road loss when it hosts Northwestern on Monday.</p>
<p>Purdue: Can set a school record for longest winning streak with a win at rival Indiana on Sunday.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college basketball: <a href="https://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="https://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">https://collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external" /> <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p>
<p>WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) — Purdue’s Isaac Haas stood his ground Thursday night.</p>
<p>If he saw one defender in the post, the 7-foot-2 center went straight to the rim. If he was double-teamed, he let teammates make the plays. The strategy worked perfectly, again.</p>
<p>Vincent Edwards scored a career-high 30 points, Haas added 24 and No. 3 Purdue used one late charge to finally get past No. 25 Michigan 92-88 for a school-record tying 16th consecutive win.</p>
<p>“I knew going into the game that Michigan wasn’t going to try to double that much because we have too many good shooters and I figured they’d take their chances going one-on-one in the paint,” Haas said after celebrating the milestone with Edwards near midcourt. “I capitalized on it a lot today.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Purdue (20-2, 9-0 Big Ten) just keeps stacking its resume.</p>
<p>For the first time in 30 years and the fourth time overall, the Boilermakers have won 16 in a row.</p>
<p>The defending Big Ten champs extended their home-court winning streak to 20 and their winning streak over conference foes to 11. They are 9-0 in league play for the first time in the NCAA Tournament era and completed their first regular-season sweep of the Wolverines (17-6, 6-4) in 10 years.</p>
<p>And now they have a win in one of this season’s most entertaining games — courtesy of a 9-0 run midway through the second half.</p>
<p>“Who has five guys who can shoot on the run? And you ask about trying to guard Haas, well you guys go try and guard him,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “He’s a difficult matchup for us.”</p>
<p>For anyone, really. Haas also had six rebounds, three assists and three blocks.</p>
<p>Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman had career-high 26 points, and Zavier Simpson added 16 to lead Michigan.</p>
<p>But after a 20-minute slugfest, the final 20 turned into a shootout.</p>
<p>By the time the third media timeout came, with 7:45 to go, both teams were still shooting over 75 percent from the field and at least 75 percent on 3-pointers in the half. Only seven of 32 shots were missed and at one point, the lead changed on 13 consecutive baskets.</p>
<p>When the streak finally ended, Edwards and Haas took charge.</p>
<p>Edwards made a 3 to tie it at 68, then broke the tie with two free throws before scoring on a putback. Haas’ layup with 7:23 to go made it 74-68.</p>
<p>Duncan Robinson’s layup on the ensuing possession finally ended Michigan’s scoring drought, but Haas answered with a three-point and Carsen Edwards sank two free throws to make it 79-70 with 5:38 left.</p>
<p>Michigan played catch-up the rest of the game but never get closer than three.</p>
<p>“Isaac’s been great,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “The last couple games he hasn’t always had the same amount of opportunities because teams loaded up on him, and that opened up the 3 for us. So I understand what (Michigan) was doing.”</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Michigan: The Wolverines can play with the best in the Big Ten. They upset No. 4 Michigan State on the road two weeks ago and now have gone toe-to-toe twice with the Boilermakers. But with four conference losses already, they’ll need some major help to contend for a conference crown.</p>
<p>Purdue: Right now, the Boilers look unbeatable. They’ve been knocking down 3s at an incredible rate and playing terrific defense. They are so versatile and experienced nothing seems to faze them, even when things don’t go according to script as was the case Thursday.</p>
<p>KEY STATS</p>
<p>Michigan: Adbur-Rahkman also had six 3s. ... Moritz Wagner had 15 points and Charles Matthews added 10.... The Wolverines shot 66.7 percent in the second half and 60.3 percent for the game. ... They were 13 of 23 on 3s.</p>
<p>Purdue: Vincent Edwards also had five rebounds and five assists while Carsen Edwards had 13 points. ... The Boilermakers shot 62.0 percent in the game and were 11 of 20 on 3s. ... It’s the first time Purdue gave up more than 70 points to an opponent since Dec. 1.</p>
<p>ROUGH AND TUMBLE</p>
<p>Purdue center Matt Haarms made an unscheduled wardrobe change at halftime after his No. 32 jersey got ripped. The 7-foot-3 redshirt freshman finished the game wearing No. 34.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Michigan: Will try to rebound from its second straight road loss when it hosts Northwestern on Monday.</p>
<p>Purdue: Can set a school record for longest winning streak with a win at rival Indiana on Sunday.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college basketball: <a href="https://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="https://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">https://collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external" /> <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p> | No. 3 Purdue holds off Michigan 92-88 for 16th straight win | false | https://apnews.com/d0b070157c6b4e92b0fb31db84137a07 | 2018-01-26 | 2least
| No. 3 Purdue holds off Michigan 92-88 for 16th straight win
<p>WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) — Purdue’s Isaac Haas stood his ground Thursday night.</p>
<p>If he saw one defender in the post, the 7-foot-2 center went straight to the rim. If he was double-teamed, he let teammates make the plays. The strategy worked perfectly, again.</p>
<p>Vincent Edwards scored a career-high 30 points, Haas added 24 and No. 3 Purdue used one late charge to finally get past No. 25 Michigan 92-88 for a school-record tying 16th consecutive win.</p>
<p>“I knew going into the game that Michigan wasn’t going to try to double that much because we have too many good shooters and I figured they’d take their chances going one-on-one in the paint,” Haas said after celebrating the milestone with Edwards near midcourt. “I capitalized on it a lot today.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Purdue (20-2, 9-0 Big Ten) just keeps stacking its resume.</p>
<p>For the first time in 30 years and the fourth time overall, the Boilermakers have won 16 in a row.</p>
<p>The defending Big Ten champs extended their home-court winning streak to 20 and their winning streak over conference foes to 11. They are 9-0 in league play for the first time in the NCAA Tournament era and completed their first regular-season sweep of the Wolverines (17-6, 6-4) in 10 years.</p>
<p>And now they have a win in one of this season’s most entertaining games — courtesy of a 9-0 run midway through the second half.</p>
<p>“Who has five guys who can shoot on the run? And you ask about trying to guard Haas, well you guys go try and guard him,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “He’s a difficult matchup for us.”</p>
<p>For anyone, really. Haas also had six rebounds, three assists and three blocks.</p>
<p>Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman had career-high 26 points, and Zavier Simpson added 16 to lead Michigan.</p>
<p>But after a 20-minute slugfest, the final 20 turned into a shootout.</p>
<p>By the time the third media timeout came, with 7:45 to go, both teams were still shooting over 75 percent from the field and at least 75 percent on 3-pointers in the half. Only seven of 32 shots were missed and at one point, the lead changed on 13 consecutive baskets.</p>
<p>When the streak finally ended, Edwards and Haas took charge.</p>
<p>Edwards made a 3 to tie it at 68, then broke the tie with two free throws before scoring on a putback. Haas’ layup with 7:23 to go made it 74-68.</p>
<p>Duncan Robinson’s layup on the ensuing possession finally ended Michigan’s scoring drought, but Haas answered with a three-point and Carsen Edwards sank two free throws to make it 79-70 with 5:38 left.</p>
<p>Michigan played catch-up the rest of the game but never get closer than three.</p>
<p>“Isaac’s been great,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “The last couple games he hasn’t always had the same amount of opportunities because teams loaded up on him, and that opened up the 3 for us. So I understand what (Michigan) was doing.”</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Michigan: The Wolverines can play with the best in the Big Ten. They upset No. 4 Michigan State on the road two weeks ago and now have gone toe-to-toe twice with the Boilermakers. But with four conference losses already, they’ll need some major help to contend for a conference crown.</p>
<p>Purdue: Right now, the Boilers look unbeatable. They’ve been knocking down 3s at an incredible rate and playing terrific defense. They are so versatile and experienced nothing seems to faze them, even when things don’t go according to script as was the case Thursday.</p>
<p>KEY STATS</p>
<p>Michigan: Adbur-Rahkman also had six 3s. ... Moritz Wagner had 15 points and Charles Matthews added 10.... The Wolverines shot 66.7 percent in the second half and 60.3 percent for the game. ... They were 13 of 23 on 3s.</p>
<p>Purdue: Vincent Edwards also had five rebounds and five assists while Carsen Edwards had 13 points. ... The Boilermakers shot 62.0 percent in the game and were 11 of 20 on 3s. ... It’s the first time Purdue gave up more than 70 points to an opponent since Dec. 1.</p>
<p>ROUGH AND TUMBLE</p>
<p>Purdue center Matt Haarms made an unscheduled wardrobe change at halftime after his No. 32 jersey got ripped. The 7-foot-3 redshirt freshman finished the game wearing No. 34.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Michigan: Will try to rebound from its second straight road loss when it hosts Northwestern on Monday.</p>
<p>Purdue: Can set a school record for longest winning streak with a win at rival Indiana on Sunday.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college basketball: <a href="https://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="https://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">https://collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external" /> <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p>
<p>WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) — Purdue’s Isaac Haas stood his ground Thursday night.</p>
<p>If he saw one defender in the post, the 7-foot-2 center went straight to the rim. If he was double-teamed, he let teammates make the plays. The strategy worked perfectly, again.</p>
<p>Vincent Edwards scored a career-high 30 points, Haas added 24 and No. 3 Purdue used one late charge to finally get past No. 25 Michigan 92-88 for a school-record tying 16th consecutive win.</p>
<p>“I knew going into the game that Michigan wasn’t going to try to double that much because we have too many good shooters and I figured they’d take their chances going one-on-one in the paint,” Haas said after celebrating the milestone with Edwards near midcourt. “I capitalized on it a lot today.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Purdue (20-2, 9-0 Big Ten) just keeps stacking its resume.</p>
<p>For the first time in 30 years and the fourth time overall, the Boilermakers have won 16 in a row.</p>
<p>The defending Big Ten champs extended their home-court winning streak to 20 and their winning streak over conference foes to 11. They are 9-0 in league play for the first time in the NCAA Tournament era and completed their first regular-season sweep of the Wolverines (17-6, 6-4) in 10 years.</p>
<p>And now they have a win in one of this season’s most entertaining games — courtesy of a 9-0 run midway through the second half.</p>
<p>“Who has five guys who can shoot on the run? And you ask about trying to guard Haas, well you guys go try and guard him,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “He’s a difficult matchup for us.”</p>
<p>For anyone, really. Haas also had six rebounds, three assists and three blocks.</p>
<p>Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman had career-high 26 points, and Zavier Simpson added 16 to lead Michigan.</p>
<p>But after a 20-minute slugfest, the final 20 turned into a shootout.</p>
<p>By the time the third media timeout came, with 7:45 to go, both teams were still shooting over 75 percent from the field and at least 75 percent on 3-pointers in the half. Only seven of 32 shots were missed and at one point, the lead changed on 13 consecutive baskets.</p>
<p>When the streak finally ended, Edwards and Haas took charge.</p>
<p>Edwards made a 3 to tie it at 68, then broke the tie with two free throws before scoring on a putback. Haas’ layup with 7:23 to go made it 74-68.</p>
<p>Duncan Robinson’s layup on the ensuing possession finally ended Michigan’s scoring drought, but Haas answered with a three-point and Carsen Edwards sank two free throws to make it 79-70 with 5:38 left.</p>
<p>Michigan played catch-up the rest of the game but never get closer than three.</p>
<p>“Isaac’s been great,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “The last couple games he hasn’t always had the same amount of opportunities because teams loaded up on him, and that opened up the 3 for us. So I understand what (Michigan) was doing.”</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Michigan: The Wolverines can play with the best in the Big Ten. They upset No. 4 Michigan State on the road two weeks ago and now have gone toe-to-toe twice with the Boilermakers. But with four conference losses already, they’ll need some major help to contend for a conference crown.</p>
<p>Purdue: Right now, the Boilers look unbeatable. They’ve been knocking down 3s at an incredible rate and playing terrific defense. They are so versatile and experienced nothing seems to faze them, even when things don’t go according to script as was the case Thursday.</p>
<p>KEY STATS</p>
<p>Michigan: Adbur-Rahkman also had six 3s. ... Moritz Wagner had 15 points and Charles Matthews added 10.... The Wolverines shot 66.7 percent in the second half and 60.3 percent for the game. ... They were 13 of 23 on 3s.</p>
<p>Purdue: Vincent Edwards also had five rebounds and five assists while Carsen Edwards had 13 points. ... The Boilermakers shot 62.0 percent in the game and were 11 of 20 on 3s. ... It’s the first time Purdue gave up more than 70 points to an opponent since Dec. 1.</p>
<p>ROUGH AND TUMBLE</p>
<p>Purdue center Matt Haarms made an unscheduled wardrobe change at halftime after his No. 32 jersey got ripped. The 7-foot-3 redshirt freshman finished the game wearing No. 34.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Michigan: Will try to rebound from its second straight road loss when it hosts Northwestern on Monday.</p>
<p>Purdue: Can set a school record for longest winning streak with a win at rival Indiana on Sunday.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college basketball: <a href="https://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="https://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">https://collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external" /> <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p> | 1,528 |
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<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Border Patrol agents rescued three illegal immigrants from the American Canal in two days this week, federal officials told the <a href="http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_15617530" type="external">El Paso Times</a>.</p>
<p>Agents rescued the first two around 2 p.m. Monday after they tried to illegally enter the United States along with several others and jumped into the canal trying to elude the agents, the Times said.</p>
<p>One of the two, a woman, was unable to climb out of the canal and was yelling for help and traveled about a half mile down the canal before agents rescued her, officials told the Times.</p>
<p>A third person was pulled from the canal around 2 a.m. Tuesday when three people tried to enter the United States illegally near the same location, the paper reported.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>A man appeared to be struggling with a strong current, but tried to thwart rescue attempts until agents called the Fire Department, who rescued the man about a mile and a half downstream, the Times said.</p>
<p>Agents offered to take the man to the hospital for treatment, but he declined, according to the paper.</p>
<p>When the man was taken to a Border Patrol station, a background check revealed the man to be Juan Chavez-Alvarez, 46, a Mexican citizen and convicted felon in California, the Times said.</p>
<p>He is being held by the Border Patrol pending further prosecution.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 8:45am — Three Illegal Immigrants Rescued from El Paso Canal | false | https://abqjournal.com/8620/845am-three-illegal-immigrants-rescued-from-el-paso-canal.html | 2least
| 8:45am — Three Illegal Immigrants Rescued from El Paso Canal
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Border Patrol agents rescued three illegal immigrants from the American Canal in two days this week, federal officials told the <a href="http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_15617530" type="external">El Paso Times</a>.</p>
<p>Agents rescued the first two around 2 p.m. Monday after they tried to illegally enter the United States along with several others and jumped into the canal trying to elude the agents, the Times said.</p>
<p>One of the two, a woman, was unable to climb out of the canal and was yelling for help and traveled about a half mile down the canal before agents rescued her, officials told the Times.</p>
<p>A third person was pulled from the canal around 2 a.m. Tuesday when three people tried to enter the United States illegally near the same location, the paper reported.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>A man appeared to be struggling with a strong current, but tried to thwart rescue attempts until agents called the Fire Department, who rescued the man about a mile and a half downstream, the Times said.</p>
<p>Agents offered to take the man to the hospital for treatment, but he declined, according to the paper.</p>
<p>When the man was taken to a Border Patrol station, a background check revealed the man to be Juan Chavez-Alvarez, 46, a Mexican citizen and convicted felon in California, the Times said.</p>
<p>He is being held by the Border Patrol pending further prosecution.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 1,529 |
|
<p>Pope Francis spoke at the White House on Sept. 23. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)</p>
<p>Pope Francis got the reception in America usually reserved for rock stars. He speaks with charm and oozes love. He talks of inclusion. But we must remember that no matter how much love and charm he exudes, he is still opposed to gay marriage, believing marriage is between one man and one woman; he’s against abortion at any time; and he leads an institution that believes women are not equal to men and that has a major problem with pedophilia among its leadership.</p>
<p>On his flight back to Rome he responded to a question about whether government officials should be allowed to object to certain duties — such as certifying same-sex marriages. He responded, “I can’t have in mind all the cases that can exist about conscientious objection … but yes, I can say that conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right. It is a right. And if a person does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right.” What he wasn’t asked is whether the conscientious objector should be willing to accept the consequences, be it jail or loss of their job.</p>
<p>Yet we shouldn’t totally disregard the love and charm. The pope demonstrates that you can disagree but not stop talking or respecting each other. You get the impression from some of the things the pope said that he actually understands the separation of church and state in the United States.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pope-francis-gay-marriage-and-families_5607eb53e4b0dd850307ed5a" type="external">Jaweed Kaleem</a> wrote, “Pope Francis … made his most concrete reference to gay marriages that are now legal on American soil when he spoke Sunday morning to bishops gathered at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. He spoke of the ‘unprecedented changes’ having ‘social, cultural and, unfortunately, now juridical effects on family bonds.’ While not actually using the word gay, which he has used before he ‘told bishops the solution to responding to a society that no longer agrees with church doctrine is not to rehash the church’s views, but instead reach out to spread their faith through friendship. Gratitude and appreciation should prevail over concerns and complaints.’ … The pope encouraged bishops to not give up on young people who often don’t hold the same values as the church on family and marriage.”</p>
<p>In addition to talking about gay marriage, the Pope met with victims of sexual abuse and <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/09/27/pope-francis-laments-same-sex-marriage-but-also-warns-bishops/" type="external">agreed</a> to create a new Vatican tribunal to prosecute bishops who failed to protect their flock by covering up for pedophile priests.</p>
<p>In his speech to Congress he highlighted the work of Dorothy Day, a radical socialist who was a suffragette and who founded the Catholic Worker’s Party. Day also had an abortion. He also spoke for immigrants and said, “Let us treat others with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be treated. Let us seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves.”</p>
<p>I am a reform Jew and the God I believe in is inclusive and welcomes all people. It appears Pope Francis wants the Catholic Church to be more welcoming to all people as well, even the ones who don’t agree with its teachings. He spoke out on making annulments of marriages easier, and allowing women who have had abortions to receive communion. I don’t know if that is satisfying to Catholics if divorce and abortion are still considered sins in the eyes of his God. No major institution is easy to change. No religion fully agrees with the principle “live and let live.” Orthodox Jews in my religion are as intolerant as anyone of those who don’t share their beliefs.</p>
<p>But I respect the efforts of Pope Francis, who is at least trying to sound more inclusive. We can only hope Francis will live long enough to have his views trickle down to local parishes and appoint enough new Cardinals so that the next pope won’t be inclined to move the church backwards. It’s a little like hoping none of the current Republicans running for president is the person to succeed Barack Obama.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBT rights and Democratic Party activist. He is a regular contributor to the Blade.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Catholic Church</a> <a href="" type="internal">Dorothy Day</a> <a href="" type="internal">Jaweed Kaleem</a> <a href="" type="internal">Pope Francis</a> <a href="" type="internal">Vatican</a></p> | Lifting the covers on Francis-mania | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2015/10/01/lifting-the-covers-on-francis-mania/ | 3left-center
| Lifting the covers on Francis-mania
<p>Pope Francis spoke at the White House on Sept. 23. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)</p>
<p>Pope Francis got the reception in America usually reserved for rock stars. He speaks with charm and oozes love. He talks of inclusion. But we must remember that no matter how much love and charm he exudes, he is still opposed to gay marriage, believing marriage is between one man and one woman; he’s against abortion at any time; and he leads an institution that believes women are not equal to men and that has a major problem with pedophilia among its leadership.</p>
<p>On his flight back to Rome he responded to a question about whether government officials should be allowed to object to certain duties — such as certifying same-sex marriages. He responded, “I can’t have in mind all the cases that can exist about conscientious objection … but yes, I can say that conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right. It is a right. And if a person does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right.” What he wasn’t asked is whether the conscientious objector should be willing to accept the consequences, be it jail or loss of their job.</p>
<p>Yet we shouldn’t totally disregard the love and charm. The pope demonstrates that you can disagree but not stop talking or respecting each other. You get the impression from some of the things the pope said that he actually understands the separation of church and state in the United States.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pope-francis-gay-marriage-and-families_5607eb53e4b0dd850307ed5a" type="external">Jaweed Kaleem</a> wrote, “Pope Francis … made his most concrete reference to gay marriages that are now legal on American soil when he spoke Sunday morning to bishops gathered at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. He spoke of the ‘unprecedented changes’ having ‘social, cultural and, unfortunately, now juridical effects on family bonds.’ While not actually using the word gay, which he has used before he ‘told bishops the solution to responding to a society that no longer agrees with church doctrine is not to rehash the church’s views, but instead reach out to spread their faith through friendship. Gratitude and appreciation should prevail over concerns and complaints.’ … The pope encouraged bishops to not give up on young people who often don’t hold the same values as the church on family and marriage.”</p>
<p>In addition to talking about gay marriage, the Pope met with victims of sexual abuse and <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/09/27/pope-francis-laments-same-sex-marriage-but-also-warns-bishops/" type="external">agreed</a> to create a new Vatican tribunal to prosecute bishops who failed to protect their flock by covering up for pedophile priests.</p>
<p>In his speech to Congress he highlighted the work of Dorothy Day, a radical socialist who was a suffragette and who founded the Catholic Worker’s Party. Day also had an abortion. He also spoke for immigrants and said, “Let us treat others with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be treated. Let us seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves.”</p>
<p>I am a reform Jew and the God I believe in is inclusive and welcomes all people. It appears Pope Francis wants the Catholic Church to be more welcoming to all people as well, even the ones who don’t agree with its teachings. He spoke out on making annulments of marriages easier, and allowing women who have had abortions to receive communion. I don’t know if that is satisfying to Catholics if divorce and abortion are still considered sins in the eyes of his God. No major institution is easy to change. No religion fully agrees with the principle “live and let live.” Orthodox Jews in my religion are as intolerant as anyone of those who don’t share their beliefs.</p>
<p>But I respect the efforts of Pope Francis, who is at least trying to sound more inclusive. We can only hope Francis will live long enough to have his views trickle down to local parishes and appoint enough new Cardinals so that the next pope won’t be inclined to move the church backwards. It’s a little like hoping none of the current Republicans running for president is the person to succeed Barack Obama.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBT rights and Democratic Party activist. He is a regular contributor to the Blade.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Catholic Church</a> <a href="" type="internal">Dorothy Day</a> <a href="" type="internal">Jaweed Kaleem</a> <a href="" type="internal">Pope Francis</a> <a href="" type="internal">Vatican</a></p> | 1,530 |
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<p>When I looked out into the sanctuary this past Sunday morning, someone was missing. Gilles Bikindou was not sitting in his pew. When he’s there, he is hard to miss, with his little white hat and glasses on. He is also hard to miss because he’s always sitting on the edge of his pew, with a serious look on his face, contemplating every word of my sermon. I fear Gilles will never sit there again.</p>
<p>I’ve never felt so helpless as a pastor as I did on Tuesday, Jan. 9, the day Gilles was unexpectedly detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. As I received the frantic phone call from my associate pastor, Wes, I couldn’t do anything to reverse this horrible course of action. I couldn’t do anything to help a shocked and distraught Wes get back from Charlotte carrying only Gilles’ bag with him. I couldn’t do anything to stop the horrifying set of events that was about to happen that was going to change Gilles’ life.</p>
<p>The first phone call from Gilles was from the York County Detention Center in South Carolina. “Pastor, pastor, I can’t believe they did this to me! That man showed me another side of him, a face I hadn’t seen before.” The ICE officer handling his case had promised that Gilles wouldn’t be detained without warning as long as he continued to cooperate with the legal process. That apparently was not true.</p>
<p>Gilles came to the United States in 2004 from the Republic of Congo on an educational visa. Gilles had witnessed violence and murder in his home country and refused to lie about what he had seen. Because he refused to lie, his country would not pay for his education, so Gilles sought political asylum in 2007. He was denied political asylum, and after reviewing his case with an immigration lawyer in Raleigh, we don’t believe Gilles had adequate representation. Nevertheless, Gilles was living and working in the U.S. legally under an order of supervision that had been renewed every year, until late 2017, for reasons still unknown. But we have suspicions, of course.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/01/16/too-old-for-daca-a-michigan-father-is-deported-after-three-decades-in-the-u-s/?utm_term=.94e80f1ce55e" type="external">Like so many people in our country</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/nyregion/immigration-activist-deportation.html" type="external">living under</a>&#160; <a href="http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/new-york-immigrant-activists-ragbir-montrevil-held-in-miamis-krome-processing-center-face-deportation-9996632" type="external">temporary protected statuses</a>, Gilles was abruptly denied something he had held for so long. What makes Gilles’ story so devastating is that he has a life-threatening illness that requires him to be treated by medicine that’s only available in the U.S. and Canada. He had delivered a stay of removal application to the Charlotte ICE office the day he was detained. The application had a note from his doctor about why he needed to stay here to survive. Sean Gallagher, the field office director at ICE in Atlanta, denied his stay of removal within a few hours of it being received. I feel sure Gallagher never read the application.</p>
<p>The next phone call from Gilles was the most harrowing. I had to tell him myself that the stay of removal had already been denied. He screamed in anger and fear: “Do they want me to die?” The anger I had been feeling finally gave way to sadness as I burst into tears with Gilles on the phone. I told Gilles that we would do everything that we could to fight for him. We continue to fight, to pray, to cry out to God, and to beg our government officials to change their minds. We are telling Gilles’ story, trying to make a way where there seems to be no way, trying to do the work of God’s justice in a world bent toward injustice and apathy.</p>
<p>While trying to find the right words for this Sunday’s sermon, I received another phone call from Gilles who had been transferred to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga. He said, “Pastor, pastor, I know you are busy preparing for tomorrow, but I want to make sure that when you go to church in the morning, you tell everyone how grateful I am. I know you all are doing everything that you can to help me, and I know that God will not leave me.” Gilles reminded me to take hope, that God will not leave any of us, that God would sustain us as we try to find justice for Gilles. Gilles inspires me to keep on trying to make the kingdom of God a reality in our broken world.</p>
<p>The last word from Gilles was that he still hadn’t received his medicine. The days continue to go by. His car still sits empty in our church parking lot. His macroeconomics text book can be seen sitting in the back seat, a reminder of the dream he was working toward that may never be fulfilled, the dream of being a coder, of living a better life, of being able to better take care of himself. His car sits there as a reminder that our beloved Gilles — church member, faithful Sunday school participant, friend who prayed and cared for so many in our community — may never come home. His car sits there as a reminder of all the immigrants who’ve come to our country in search of a better life, who’ve been recently detained and deported, whose temporary statuses are being revoked without mercy, who may never come home.</p>
<p>His car sits there and challenges us to work to see that all of God’s children are treated as beloved, to work to see that God’s justice rolls down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.</p>
<p>If you’d like more information about Gilles’ case and how you can help, please visit <a href="https://www.facebook.com/greenwoodforestcary/" type="external">Greenwood Forest’s</a>Facebook Page.</p>
<p>Related content:</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Baptist church fighting deportation of member with dire health concerns</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Immigrant advocates unhappy with White House decision to end temporary residency for Salvadorans</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Yes, your ancestors probably did come here legally — because ‘illegal’ immigration is less than a century old</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">82 rabbis, activists arrested On Capitol Hill over DACA protest</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Salvadorans at risk of losing immigration status find support in churches</a></p> | The day life changed for a legal immigrant — and his church | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/day-life-changed-legal-immigrant-church/ | 3left-center
| The day life changed for a legal immigrant — and his church
<p>When I looked out into the sanctuary this past Sunday morning, someone was missing. Gilles Bikindou was not sitting in his pew. When he’s there, he is hard to miss, with his little white hat and glasses on. He is also hard to miss because he’s always sitting on the edge of his pew, with a serious look on his face, contemplating every word of my sermon. I fear Gilles will never sit there again.</p>
<p>I’ve never felt so helpless as a pastor as I did on Tuesday, Jan. 9, the day Gilles was unexpectedly detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. As I received the frantic phone call from my associate pastor, Wes, I couldn’t do anything to reverse this horrible course of action. I couldn’t do anything to help a shocked and distraught Wes get back from Charlotte carrying only Gilles’ bag with him. I couldn’t do anything to stop the horrifying set of events that was about to happen that was going to change Gilles’ life.</p>
<p>The first phone call from Gilles was from the York County Detention Center in South Carolina. “Pastor, pastor, I can’t believe they did this to me! That man showed me another side of him, a face I hadn’t seen before.” The ICE officer handling his case had promised that Gilles wouldn’t be detained without warning as long as he continued to cooperate with the legal process. That apparently was not true.</p>
<p>Gilles came to the United States in 2004 from the Republic of Congo on an educational visa. Gilles had witnessed violence and murder in his home country and refused to lie about what he had seen. Because he refused to lie, his country would not pay for his education, so Gilles sought political asylum in 2007. He was denied political asylum, and after reviewing his case with an immigration lawyer in Raleigh, we don’t believe Gilles had adequate representation. Nevertheless, Gilles was living and working in the U.S. legally under an order of supervision that had been renewed every year, until late 2017, for reasons still unknown. But we have suspicions, of course.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/01/16/too-old-for-daca-a-michigan-father-is-deported-after-three-decades-in-the-u-s/?utm_term=.94e80f1ce55e" type="external">Like so many people in our country</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/nyregion/immigration-activist-deportation.html" type="external">living under</a>&#160; <a href="http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/new-york-immigrant-activists-ragbir-montrevil-held-in-miamis-krome-processing-center-face-deportation-9996632" type="external">temporary protected statuses</a>, Gilles was abruptly denied something he had held for so long. What makes Gilles’ story so devastating is that he has a life-threatening illness that requires him to be treated by medicine that’s only available in the U.S. and Canada. He had delivered a stay of removal application to the Charlotte ICE office the day he was detained. The application had a note from his doctor about why he needed to stay here to survive. Sean Gallagher, the field office director at ICE in Atlanta, denied his stay of removal within a few hours of it being received. I feel sure Gallagher never read the application.</p>
<p>The next phone call from Gilles was the most harrowing. I had to tell him myself that the stay of removal had already been denied. He screamed in anger and fear: “Do they want me to die?” The anger I had been feeling finally gave way to sadness as I burst into tears with Gilles on the phone. I told Gilles that we would do everything that we could to fight for him. We continue to fight, to pray, to cry out to God, and to beg our government officials to change their minds. We are telling Gilles’ story, trying to make a way where there seems to be no way, trying to do the work of God’s justice in a world bent toward injustice and apathy.</p>
<p>While trying to find the right words for this Sunday’s sermon, I received another phone call from Gilles who had been transferred to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga. He said, “Pastor, pastor, I know you are busy preparing for tomorrow, but I want to make sure that when you go to church in the morning, you tell everyone how grateful I am. I know you all are doing everything that you can to help me, and I know that God will not leave me.” Gilles reminded me to take hope, that God will not leave any of us, that God would sustain us as we try to find justice for Gilles. Gilles inspires me to keep on trying to make the kingdom of God a reality in our broken world.</p>
<p>The last word from Gilles was that he still hadn’t received his medicine. The days continue to go by. His car still sits empty in our church parking lot. His macroeconomics text book can be seen sitting in the back seat, a reminder of the dream he was working toward that may never be fulfilled, the dream of being a coder, of living a better life, of being able to better take care of himself. His car sits there as a reminder that our beloved Gilles — church member, faithful Sunday school participant, friend who prayed and cared for so many in our community — may never come home. His car sits there as a reminder of all the immigrants who’ve come to our country in search of a better life, who’ve been recently detained and deported, whose temporary statuses are being revoked without mercy, who may never come home.</p>
<p>His car sits there and challenges us to work to see that all of God’s children are treated as beloved, to work to see that God’s justice rolls down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.</p>
<p>If you’d like more information about Gilles’ case and how you can help, please visit <a href="https://www.facebook.com/greenwoodforestcary/" type="external">Greenwood Forest’s</a>Facebook Page.</p>
<p>Related content:</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Baptist church fighting deportation of member with dire health concerns</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Immigrant advocates unhappy with White House decision to end temporary residency for Salvadorans</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Yes, your ancestors probably did come here legally — because ‘illegal’ immigration is less than a century old</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">82 rabbis, activists arrested On Capitol Hill over DACA protest</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Salvadorans at risk of losing immigration status find support in churches</a></p> | 1,531 |
|
<p />
<p>Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose more than expected in September, another sign of the underlying momentum in the housing market.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday its pending home sales index, based on contracts signed last month, increased 1.5 percent to 110.0 following a drop in August.</p>
<p>The index was 2.4 percent higher than in September 2015, the NAR said.</p>
<p>Economists polled by Reuters had forecast pending home sales would rise 1.2 percent last month. The pending home sales index for August was revised slightly lower to 108.4.</p>
<p>Across the nation's four regions, contracts jumped 4.7 percent in the West and also rose in the South. They fell 1.6 percent in the Northeast and edged down in the Midwest.</p>
<p>Separate data last week showed that U.S. home resales surged in September after two straight months of declines as first-time buyers stepped into the market.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>(Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Andrea Ricci)</p> | Pending Home Sales Rebound in September | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/10/27/pending-home-sales-rebound-in-september.html | 2016-10-27 | 0right
| Pending Home Sales Rebound in September
<p />
<p>Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose more than expected in September, another sign of the underlying momentum in the housing market.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday its pending home sales index, based on contracts signed last month, increased 1.5 percent to 110.0 following a drop in August.</p>
<p>The index was 2.4 percent higher than in September 2015, the NAR said.</p>
<p>Economists polled by Reuters had forecast pending home sales would rise 1.2 percent last month. The pending home sales index for August was revised slightly lower to 108.4.</p>
<p>Across the nation's four regions, contracts jumped 4.7 percent in the West and also rose in the South. They fell 1.6 percent in the Northeast and edged down in the Midwest.</p>
<p>Separate data last week showed that U.S. home resales surged in September after two straight months of declines as first-time buyers stepped into the market.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>(Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Andrea Ricci)</p> | 1,532 |
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<p />
<p>SB 96 would exempt military retirement pay from state income tax; SB 258/HB 180 would fast-track professional licensing applications of qualified and pre-licensed veterans and their spouses.</p>
<p>SB 96 would indeed grow our state’s economy. Every year, service members from New Mexico’s four military installations — Kirtland, Cannon and Holloman Air Force Bases, along with White Sands Missile Range — face a dilemma when they retire: Stay and settle in New Mexico, where they’ve developed a wealth of 21st century technological training, or take these skills to the 23 states in the country which offer some form of pension exemption.</p>
<p>All too often — despite having family entrenched in our communities — the choice is reluctantly made to leave the Land of Enchantment for these 23 Lands of Military Retirement Pay Exemptions. Recent military retirees from across the country continue to send comments to my office expressing a great desire to live in beautiful New Mexico. But like our home-grown retirees, they far too often reluctantly settle in states offering military pension exemptions. According to the latest census data, New Mexico had a net gain of four military retirees last year. Our neighboring states numbered in the hundreds.</p>
<p>Many of these new retirees utilize their technical and management skills to start second careers — many in aerospace, aviation or other high-tech industries. Their businesses in turn create jobs. These are the types of businesses which could bolster New Mexico’s growing aerospace and aviation industry — including the Spaceport in southern New Mexico — at a time when the industry worldwide is poised for extensive growth, particularly in Asia and South America.</p>
<p>Veteran and retiree-owned businesses are a big deal here in New Mexico. According to the latest U.S. Census Survey on Small Businesses, there are about 26,500 veteran or military retiree-owned businesses in the state. These businesses generated $9.7 billion in sales revenue, while employing more than 77,000 New Mexicans. One can only imagine how much more these figures could increase with the signing into state law of SB 96.</p>
<p>Similarly, retirees, their spouses and spouses of active-duty personnel transferred to New Mexico have expressed frustration with what the editorial correctly labeled as our state’s antiquated Professional Licensure procedure.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>A recent U.S. Department of Defense report shows nearly 35 percent of military spouses who are in the labor force work in occupations that commonly require an occupational license. These include spouses who work as teachers, child care workers, registered nurses, accountants and auditors and dental assistants. The report indicates more than 100,000 military spouses nationwide were negatively burdened by these licensure restrictions.</p>
<p>These licenses are generally state-specific, so when military spouses move to New Mexico, they must re-qualify to work in their profession — a process that can not only be time-consuming, but costly as well.</p>
<p>Additionally, these frequent relocations provide other setbacks to military spouses in the form of job tenure and advancement opportunities. Employed military spouses who are forced to relocate and find a new job often are forced to forego position tenure and the associated stability, promotions and financial benefits this can offer in many careers.</p>
<p>There are 23 states that have passed favorable policies for qualified and currently-licensed military spouses, including every single state bordering New Mexico. These states do not require these spouses to “start at Square One” to resume their careers. As with the issue of pension exemptions, many military retirees reluctantly choose to settle elsewhere because of the licensure burdens placed on already-licensed spouses.</p>
<p>I can argue that the passage of SB 96, and SB 258/HB 180 would be the honorable, patriotic thing to do. I can argue that it’s the least we can do for the men and women who have sacrificed to protect and serve our country. These two points alone are reason enough to warrant passage and signing into state law, which Gov. Martinez says she would quickly do. But equally important, these bills make strong economic sense. They will put people to work — many of whom are already here. To label the bills, then, as a disservice to the rest of New Mexico is in no way indicative of the strong military heritage of this great state, and I believe is a misrepresentation of the feelings of the majority of New Mexicans who understand the value of our military, veterans, and military families. They are “value-added” to all aspects of our society — not the least of which is a solid economic boost! Let’s give them good reasons to make a solid economic choice to stay here.</p> | Let’s make N.M. more enticing | false | https://abqjournal.com/169660/lets-make-nm-more-enticing.html | 2013-02-17 | 2least
| Let’s make N.M. more enticing
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<p />
<p>SB 96 would exempt military retirement pay from state income tax; SB 258/HB 180 would fast-track professional licensing applications of qualified and pre-licensed veterans and their spouses.</p>
<p>SB 96 would indeed grow our state’s economy. Every year, service members from New Mexico’s four military installations — Kirtland, Cannon and Holloman Air Force Bases, along with White Sands Missile Range — face a dilemma when they retire: Stay and settle in New Mexico, where they’ve developed a wealth of 21st century technological training, or take these skills to the 23 states in the country which offer some form of pension exemption.</p>
<p>All too often — despite having family entrenched in our communities — the choice is reluctantly made to leave the Land of Enchantment for these 23 Lands of Military Retirement Pay Exemptions. Recent military retirees from across the country continue to send comments to my office expressing a great desire to live in beautiful New Mexico. But like our home-grown retirees, they far too often reluctantly settle in states offering military pension exemptions. According to the latest census data, New Mexico had a net gain of four military retirees last year. Our neighboring states numbered in the hundreds.</p>
<p>Many of these new retirees utilize their technical and management skills to start second careers — many in aerospace, aviation or other high-tech industries. Their businesses in turn create jobs. These are the types of businesses which could bolster New Mexico’s growing aerospace and aviation industry — including the Spaceport in southern New Mexico — at a time when the industry worldwide is poised for extensive growth, particularly in Asia and South America.</p>
<p>Veteran and retiree-owned businesses are a big deal here in New Mexico. According to the latest U.S. Census Survey on Small Businesses, there are about 26,500 veteran or military retiree-owned businesses in the state. These businesses generated $9.7 billion in sales revenue, while employing more than 77,000 New Mexicans. One can only imagine how much more these figures could increase with the signing into state law of SB 96.</p>
<p>Similarly, retirees, their spouses and spouses of active-duty personnel transferred to New Mexico have expressed frustration with what the editorial correctly labeled as our state’s antiquated Professional Licensure procedure.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>A recent U.S. Department of Defense report shows nearly 35 percent of military spouses who are in the labor force work in occupations that commonly require an occupational license. These include spouses who work as teachers, child care workers, registered nurses, accountants and auditors and dental assistants. The report indicates more than 100,000 military spouses nationwide were negatively burdened by these licensure restrictions.</p>
<p>These licenses are generally state-specific, so when military spouses move to New Mexico, they must re-qualify to work in their profession — a process that can not only be time-consuming, but costly as well.</p>
<p>Additionally, these frequent relocations provide other setbacks to military spouses in the form of job tenure and advancement opportunities. Employed military spouses who are forced to relocate and find a new job often are forced to forego position tenure and the associated stability, promotions and financial benefits this can offer in many careers.</p>
<p>There are 23 states that have passed favorable policies for qualified and currently-licensed military spouses, including every single state bordering New Mexico. These states do not require these spouses to “start at Square One” to resume their careers. As with the issue of pension exemptions, many military retirees reluctantly choose to settle elsewhere because of the licensure burdens placed on already-licensed spouses.</p>
<p>I can argue that the passage of SB 96, and SB 258/HB 180 would be the honorable, patriotic thing to do. I can argue that it’s the least we can do for the men and women who have sacrificed to protect and serve our country. These two points alone are reason enough to warrant passage and signing into state law, which Gov. Martinez says she would quickly do. But equally important, these bills make strong economic sense. They will put people to work — many of whom are already here. To label the bills, then, as a disservice to the rest of New Mexico is in no way indicative of the strong military heritage of this great state, and I believe is a misrepresentation of the feelings of the majority of New Mexicans who understand the value of our military, veterans, and military families. They are “value-added” to all aspects of our society — not the least of which is a solid economic boost! Let’s give them good reasons to make a solid economic choice to stay here.</p> | 1,533 |
<p>Are you sick of me talking about how <a href="" type="internal">I’m back on the market</a> yet? Good. OK, for those of you who didn’t get the memo, I am attempting to start dating again after a long sabbatical. My thing is — and I know this is not the case for everyone — I hate online dating. It’s not my scene. I have lots of friends who kick ass at it and I know that there are great people online, I just tend to do better in person. I have a pact with myself that if all my IRL options dry up, I will happily resort to online dating. Luckily, I have a good track record of meeting dudes in person. Since I’m over the bar thing and friend set-ups come and go, I’ve had to get a little more creative. After the jump, here’s where I find the majority of my offline dates. Feel free to add your secret IRL dude snagging tips in the comments and I will feel free to try them.</p> | 8 Ways To Meet Guys Offline | true | http://thefrisky.com/post/246-8-ways-to-meet-guys-offline/ | 2018-10-02 | 4left
| 8 Ways To Meet Guys Offline
<p>Are you sick of me talking about how <a href="" type="internal">I’m back on the market</a> yet? Good. OK, for those of you who didn’t get the memo, I am attempting to start dating again after a long sabbatical. My thing is — and I know this is not the case for everyone — I hate online dating. It’s not my scene. I have lots of friends who kick ass at it and I know that there are great people online, I just tend to do better in person. I have a pact with myself that if all my IRL options dry up, I will happily resort to online dating. Luckily, I have a good track record of meeting dudes in person. Since I’m over the bar thing and friend set-ups come and go, I’ve had to get a little more creative. After the jump, here’s where I find the majority of my offline dates. Feel free to add your secret IRL dude snagging tips in the comments and I will feel free to try them.</p> | 1,534 |
<p>A rural school district in Pennsylvania is arming teachers and students with buckets of rocks as a last resort should an armed intruder burst in, the superintendent said Friday.</p>
<p>Every classroom in the district about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia has a 5-gallon bucket of river stones, said Blue Mountain School District Superintendent David Helsel.</p>
<p>“We always strive to find new ways to keep our students safe,” Helsel told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, adding that the rocks are one small part of the district’s overall security plan.</p>
<p>Throwing rocks is more effective than just crawling under desks and waiting, and it gives students and teachers a chance to defend themselves, he said. The district has about 2,700 students at three elementary schools, a middle school and a high school.</p>
<p />
<p>Staff and students in the Blue Mountain district have been trained in a program called “ALICE” which stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate. Helsel said the rocks are part of the “counter” portion of training, fighting back if the intruder makes his way into the classroom.</p>
<p>The buckets are kept in classroom closets.</p>
<p>Kenneth Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, a K-12 security consulting firm, calls the idea illogical and irrational and said it could possibly cost lives.</p>
<p>He said the efforts fill an emotional security need, but don’t actually enhance security.</p>
<p>One high school senior said he supports the plan, adding that throwing rocks is better than throwing books or pencils.</p>
<p>Parents also have been supportive of the measure, which was implemented in the fall.</p>
<p>“At this point, we have to get creative, we have to protect our kids first and foremost,” parent Dori Bornstein told WNEP-TV. “Throwing rocks, it’s an option.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>De Groot reported from Philadelphia.</p> | School District Arms Teachers and Students With Rocks | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/school-district-arms-teachers-and-students-with-rocks/ | 2018-03-23 | 4left
| School District Arms Teachers and Students With Rocks
<p>A rural school district in Pennsylvania is arming teachers and students with buckets of rocks as a last resort should an armed intruder burst in, the superintendent said Friday.</p>
<p>Every classroom in the district about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia has a 5-gallon bucket of river stones, said Blue Mountain School District Superintendent David Helsel.</p>
<p>“We always strive to find new ways to keep our students safe,” Helsel told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, adding that the rocks are one small part of the district’s overall security plan.</p>
<p>Throwing rocks is more effective than just crawling under desks and waiting, and it gives students and teachers a chance to defend themselves, he said. The district has about 2,700 students at three elementary schools, a middle school and a high school.</p>
<p />
<p>Staff and students in the Blue Mountain district have been trained in a program called “ALICE” which stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate. Helsel said the rocks are part of the “counter” portion of training, fighting back if the intruder makes his way into the classroom.</p>
<p>The buckets are kept in classroom closets.</p>
<p>Kenneth Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, a K-12 security consulting firm, calls the idea illogical and irrational and said it could possibly cost lives.</p>
<p>He said the efforts fill an emotional security need, but don’t actually enhance security.</p>
<p>One high school senior said he supports the plan, adding that throwing rocks is better than throwing books or pencils.</p>
<p>Parents also have been supportive of the measure, which was implemented in the fall.</p>
<p>“At this point, we have to get creative, we have to protect our kids first and foremost,” parent Dori Bornstein told WNEP-TV. “Throwing rocks, it’s an option.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>De Groot reported from Philadelphia.</p> | 1,535 |
<p>Nov. 9 (UPI) — A couple of Idaho “nerds” who needed a larger coop for their growing flock of chickens built an elaborate structure in the shape of a flying saucer.</p>
<p>The Boise couple said they recently expanded their small flock of chickens and knew they needed a larger coop than the one they had, so they decided to design something special.</p>
<p>“When we expanded our flock this Summer. We knew a larger coop would be necessary. As an artistic couple, I knew it couldn’t be just any coop. As UFO nerds, we had the perfect plan!” the couple wrote.</p>
<p>A video recorded by the residents shows the chickens lining up in single-file to board their starship, which features tiny windows and blinking lights.</p> | Idaho couple build UFO-style coop for chicken flock | false | https://newsline.com/idaho-couple-build-ufo-style-coop-for-chicken-flock/ | 2017-11-09 | 1right-center
| Idaho couple build UFO-style coop for chicken flock
<p>Nov. 9 (UPI) — A couple of Idaho “nerds” who needed a larger coop for their growing flock of chickens built an elaborate structure in the shape of a flying saucer.</p>
<p>The Boise couple said they recently expanded their small flock of chickens and knew they needed a larger coop than the one they had, so they decided to design something special.</p>
<p>“When we expanded our flock this Summer. We knew a larger coop would be necessary. As an artistic couple, I knew it couldn’t be just any coop. As UFO nerds, we had the perfect plan!” the couple wrote.</p>
<p>A video recorded by the residents shows the chickens lining up in single-file to board their starship, which features tiny windows and blinking lights.</p> | 1,536 |
<p>Retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson announced he is running for president late Sunday night.</p>
<p>He said:</p>
<p>I’m willing to be part of the equation and therefore, I’m announcing my candidacy for President of the United States of America.</p>
<p>Carson is expected to formally announce in Detroit on Monday.</p>
<p>Even though Ben Carson is not a household name, a draft-Ben Carson movement has already raised over $13 million for his campaign.</p>
<p>Carson has a simple answer for why he should run. He said:</p>
<p>I began to ask myself why are people clamoring for me to do this? I represented a lot of the same thoughts that they have. I’m not 100% sure ‘politics as usual’ is going to save us. I think we are in a severe problem . . . a problematic situation.</p>
<p>Dr. Carson is 63 and the former head of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins Children’s Center. His political rise to fame came in 2013 with a single speech at the National Prayer Breakfast where he challenged Obama on taxes, health care, spending and the country’s direction. During his speech the president and first lady were only sitting a few feet away.</p>
<p>He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush and he holds more than 60 honorary doctorate degrees, has served on corporate boards including Kellogg Co and Costco Wholesale Group. He also founded the Carson Scholars Fund which is operating in all 50 states and has awarded nearly $6 million in scholarships to students for academic and humanitarian achievement.</p>
<p>Born poor in Detroit during every speech he has credited his mother for where he is today. Unfortunately Dr. Carson found out Sunday night during rehearsals for his formal announcement his mothers health conditions had become dire as she battles Alzheimer’s. After his formal announcement in Detroit he is going to travel to Dallas to be by her side instead of going to Iowa as previously planned.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Dr. Ben Carson Enters 2016 Presidential Race | true | http://shark-tank.com/2015/05/04/dr-ben-carson-enters-2016-presidential-race/ | 0right
| Dr. Ben Carson Enters 2016 Presidential Race
<p>Retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson announced he is running for president late Sunday night.</p>
<p>He said:</p>
<p>I’m willing to be part of the equation and therefore, I’m announcing my candidacy for President of the United States of America.</p>
<p>Carson is expected to formally announce in Detroit on Monday.</p>
<p>Even though Ben Carson is not a household name, a draft-Ben Carson movement has already raised over $13 million for his campaign.</p>
<p>Carson has a simple answer for why he should run. He said:</p>
<p>I began to ask myself why are people clamoring for me to do this? I represented a lot of the same thoughts that they have. I’m not 100% sure ‘politics as usual’ is going to save us. I think we are in a severe problem . . . a problematic situation.</p>
<p>Dr. Carson is 63 and the former head of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins Children’s Center. His political rise to fame came in 2013 with a single speech at the National Prayer Breakfast where he challenged Obama on taxes, health care, spending and the country’s direction. During his speech the president and first lady were only sitting a few feet away.</p>
<p>He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush and he holds more than 60 honorary doctorate degrees, has served on corporate boards including Kellogg Co and Costco Wholesale Group. He also founded the Carson Scholars Fund which is operating in all 50 states and has awarded nearly $6 million in scholarships to students for academic and humanitarian achievement.</p>
<p>Born poor in Detroit during every speech he has credited his mother for where he is today. Unfortunately Dr. Carson found out Sunday night during rehearsals for his formal announcement his mothers health conditions had become dire as she battles Alzheimer’s. After his formal announcement in Detroit he is going to travel to Dallas to be by her side instead of going to Iowa as previously planned.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 1,537 |
|
<p>On the stock-market channel Friday afternoon, just before commercial time, comes news that the Senate of the USA has declared Inglés the “national language” of state. Then comes the commercial, cutting to a Chinese couple standing in a busy airport, somewhat startled by a youngish white man who rushes up to them and says “welcome to America” in Chinese. “I practiced all morning,” says the gleamy-eyed realtor. “I hope you understand. Welcome to America!” The Century 21 realty company calls this new series of ads, “Agents of Change.” But if it’s true that the bi-lingual aspirations of the eager realtor qualify him as a change agent, where does that leave the Senate?</p>
<p>When the term “national language” was inserted into immigration legislation this week, it both revealed and escalated power attached to English proficiency. On the one hand, the language of the so-called compromise immigration bill already would require English proficiency as a condition of citizenship. Or as one Senator put it: “If you fail to pass the English proficiency exam, you will be deported.”</p>
<p>To this clear and distinct requirement was added another warning: “Unless otherwise offered or provided by law, no person has a right, entitlement, or claim to have the Government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform or provide services, or provide materials in any language other than English” (SAMDT4073). The timing and placement of that language says watch out, when it comes to communicating in languages other than English, the USA is fed up trying.</p>
<p>And so another pander-to-fascists week came to an end in Washington, with little remembrance of the fact that the Senate had declared 2005 “The Year of Foreign Language Study” (SR28); or that legislation is pending “to construct a language arts facility at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, New Mexico” (S2274); or that the 911 Commission said, even according to compromise co-author Sen. Kennedy, “we ought to give emphasis to other languages and that that was in our national security interest.”</p>
<p>The pander-to-fascist context seemed to relieve many observers from worrying overmuch that anything serious or long lasting will come from the President’s call to send National Guard troops to the Mexican border. As in: “isn’t he just pandering to fascists? Isn’t that what this troop thing is really about?” And then moving on to the next issue, as if it matters not at all that based on this week’s fascist pandering soon enough the troops will actually start moving into place.</p>
<p>When the President announced plans for troop deployment, his so-called target audience was only half satisfied. A “Minuteman” spokesman called it a “stop-gap” measure, which again seemed to help observers take comfort that the President was being only a little fascist. More progressive voices picked up the “stop-gap” language and therefore contributed to the impression that the President was being mostly insufficient, stupid, or crazy; when in fact sending thousands of troops to the Mexican border follows the same logic of radical excess that has motivated pre-emptive war, global strike, and torture camps. If this logic has to stop sometime, why not now? In solidarity with a rising immigrant rights movement, the Quakers seemed to get it. So did the ANSWER coalition. This time, these likely suspects are joined by enough insiders that maybe we can quietly snuff this troop deployment before it starts.</p>
<p>Refuting the charge that the troop deployment was merely a pandering insufficiency was none other than the Vice President himself, who came out of his bunker long enough to record an interview on a right-wing radio show that was promptly published at the White House web site. In the interview, the number two leader of the free world explained that good troops can make good fences, and of course good fences are what good neighbors are made of.</p>
<p>Most stunning was the sudden relevance of the New York press, headlining in a timely manner the crucial context to keep in mind: that this is the month when billion dollar bids will be submitted for a megamammoth border contract called SBInet (the Secure Border Initiative Network). Bidders will include such military-industrial behemoths as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. Most interesting is the last-minute entry of the European-based Ericsson company, because they provide surveillance along the Russia-Finland border, matching up nicely with the ideological model of the USA-Mexico border pushed by the fascist crowd’s cold-war compulsions.</p>
<p>On the question of ideological models, it would be prudent to consider that the Vice President’s description of the next Mexican border sounded a lot like the Israeli border with Palestine. In this context, the Bush-Cheney troop deployment will provide free of charge to the winning bidder of border security services a cadre of perma-temp employees who are already trained, dressed for photo-ops, and security-cleared (in case you missed the simultaneous news this week that the agency in charge of security clearances was shutting down because of poor budgeting).</p>
<p>Sad to say during election year in the USA, it still helps to be a little fascist. Everyone seems to comprende.</p>
<p>GREG MOSES is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of <a href="" type="internal">Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence</a>. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and Bush appears in <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html" type="external">Dime’s Worth of Difference</a>, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Inglés Declared National Language | true | https://counterpunch.org/2006/05/20/ingl-eacute-s-declared-national-language/ | 2006-05-20 | 4left
| Inglés Declared National Language
<p>On the stock-market channel Friday afternoon, just before commercial time, comes news that the Senate of the USA has declared Inglés the “national language” of state. Then comes the commercial, cutting to a Chinese couple standing in a busy airport, somewhat startled by a youngish white man who rushes up to them and says “welcome to America” in Chinese. “I practiced all morning,” says the gleamy-eyed realtor. “I hope you understand. Welcome to America!” The Century 21 realty company calls this new series of ads, “Agents of Change.” But if it’s true that the bi-lingual aspirations of the eager realtor qualify him as a change agent, where does that leave the Senate?</p>
<p>When the term “national language” was inserted into immigration legislation this week, it both revealed and escalated power attached to English proficiency. On the one hand, the language of the so-called compromise immigration bill already would require English proficiency as a condition of citizenship. Or as one Senator put it: “If you fail to pass the English proficiency exam, you will be deported.”</p>
<p>To this clear and distinct requirement was added another warning: “Unless otherwise offered or provided by law, no person has a right, entitlement, or claim to have the Government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform or provide services, or provide materials in any language other than English” (SAMDT4073). The timing and placement of that language says watch out, when it comes to communicating in languages other than English, the USA is fed up trying.</p>
<p>And so another pander-to-fascists week came to an end in Washington, with little remembrance of the fact that the Senate had declared 2005 “The Year of Foreign Language Study” (SR28); or that legislation is pending “to construct a language arts facility at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, New Mexico” (S2274); or that the 911 Commission said, even according to compromise co-author Sen. Kennedy, “we ought to give emphasis to other languages and that that was in our national security interest.”</p>
<p>The pander-to-fascist context seemed to relieve many observers from worrying overmuch that anything serious or long lasting will come from the President’s call to send National Guard troops to the Mexican border. As in: “isn’t he just pandering to fascists? Isn’t that what this troop thing is really about?” And then moving on to the next issue, as if it matters not at all that based on this week’s fascist pandering soon enough the troops will actually start moving into place.</p>
<p>When the President announced plans for troop deployment, his so-called target audience was only half satisfied. A “Minuteman” spokesman called it a “stop-gap” measure, which again seemed to help observers take comfort that the President was being only a little fascist. More progressive voices picked up the “stop-gap” language and therefore contributed to the impression that the President was being mostly insufficient, stupid, or crazy; when in fact sending thousands of troops to the Mexican border follows the same logic of radical excess that has motivated pre-emptive war, global strike, and torture camps. If this logic has to stop sometime, why not now? In solidarity with a rising immigrant rights movement, the Quakers seemed to get it. So did the ANSWER coalition. This time, these likely suspects are joined by enough insiders that maybe we can quietly snuff this troop deployment before it starts.</p>
<p>Refuting the charge that the troop deployment was merely a pandering insufficiency was none other than the Vice President himself, who came out of his bunker long enough to record an interview on a right-wing radio show that was promptly published at the White House web site. In the interview, the number two leader of the free world explained that good troops can make good fences, and of course good fences are what good neighbors are made of.</p>
<p>Most stunning was the sudden relevance of the New York press, headlining in a timely manner the crucial context to keep in mind: that this is the month when billion dollar bids will be submitted for a megamammoth border contract called SBInet (the Secure Border Initiative Network). Bidders will include such military-industrial behemoths as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. Most interesting is the last-minute entry of the European-based Ericsson company, because they provide surveillance along the Russia-Finland border, matching up nicely with the ideological model of the USA-Mexico border pushed by the fascist crowd’s cold-war compulsions.</p>
<p>On the question of ideological models, it would be prudent to consider that the Vice President’s description of the next Mexican border sounded a lot like the Israeli border with Palestine. In this context, the Bush-Cheney troop deployment will provide free of charge to the winning bidder of border security services a cadre of perma-temp employees who are already trained, dressed for photo-ops, and security-cleared (in case you missed the simultaneous news this week that the agency in charge of security clearances was shutting down because of poor budgeting).</p>
<p>Sad to say during election year in the USA, it still helps to be a little fascist. Everyone seems to comprende.</p>
<p>GREG MOSES is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of <a href="" type="internal">Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence</a>. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and Bush appears in <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html" type="external">Dime’s Worth of Difference</a>, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 1,538 |
<p><a href="" type="internal">WellPoint</a> (NYSE:WLP) reaffirmed its fiscal 2011 earnings guidance in the range of $7.18 to $7.28 a share on Tuesday, sending its shares higher as investors cheered the optimistic forecast.</p>
<p>Analysts on average are expecting the nation's largest health benefits company by membership to earn just $7.09 a share, according to a Thomson Reuters poll.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>WellPoint’s view includes net investment gains of 28 cents a share during the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>The Indianapolis-based company, which operates the Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, will discuss this view with securities analysts and investors on Tuesday. It will reveal 2012 guidance during its fourth-quarter earnings call on Jan. 25.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | WellPoint Reaffirms Fiscal View, Shares Higher | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/01/10/wellpoint-reaffirms-fiscal-view-shares-higher.html | 2016-01-26 | 0right
| WellPoint Reaffirms Fiscal View, Shares Higher
<p><a href="" type="internal">WellPoint</a> (NYSE:WLP) reaffirmed its fiscal 2011 earnings guidance in the range of $7.18 to $7.28 a share on Tuesday, sending its shares higher as investors cheered the optimistic forecast.</p>
<p>Analysts on average are expecting the nation's largest health benefits company by membership to earn just $7.09 a share, according to a Thomson Reuters poll.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>WellPoint’s view includes net investment gains of 28 cents a share during the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>The Indianapolis-based company, which operates the Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, will discuss this view with securities analysts and investors on Tuesday. It will reveal 2012 guidance during its fourth-quarter earnings call on Jan. 25.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | 1,539 |
<p>New York Times By ALESSANDRA STANLEY</p>
<p />
<p>"Shock and awe" should be the code name for the Pentagon's media strategy. The first full day of television coverage of the invasion of Iraq revealed not the fog of war but a firestorm of amazing combat images.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>From Navy fighter jets roaring off the deck of the carrier Constellation to grainy, green night-scope glimpses of American tanks moving across the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, television showed more live military action in one day than in the entire 1991 war</p> | Networks Make the Most of Their Frontline Access | false | https://poynter.org/news/networks-make-most-their-frontline-access | 2003-03-21 | 2least
| Networks Make the Most of Their Frontline Access
<p>New York Times By ALESSANDRA STANLEY</p>
<p />
<p>"Shock and awe" should be the code name for the Pentagon's media strategy. The first full day of television coverage of the invasion of Iraq revealed not the fog of war but a firestorm of amazing combat images.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>From Navy fighter jets roaring off the deck of the carrier Constellation to grainy, green night-scope glimpses of American tanks moving across the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, television showed more live military action in one day than in the entire 1991 war</p> | 1,540 |
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<p>SYDNEY — Australia’s Transport Minister Darren Chester said on Wednesday that experts will continue analyzing data and scrutinizing debris washing ashore from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in a bid to narrow down where it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. But Chester declined to specify what kind of breakthrough would convince officials to resume the search for the missing airliner that was suspended this week after almost three years.</p>
<p>“When we get some information or data or a breakthrough that leads us to a specific location, the experts will know it when they see it,” he told reporters in the southern city of Melbourne.</p>
<p>The sonar seabed search ended on Tuesday, possibly forever — not because investigators have run out of leads, but because the countries involved in the expensive and vast deep-sea hunt have shown no appetite for opening another big phase.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Late last year, as ships with high-tech search equipment covered the last strips of the 120,000-square kilometer (46,000-square mile) search zone west of Australia, experts concluded they had been looking in the wrong place and should have been searching a smaller area immediately to the north. But by then, $160 million had already been spent by Malaysia, Australia and China, who had previously agreed not to search elsewhere without pinpoint evidence of the plane’s location. More than half of those aboard the plane were Chinese.</p>
<p>Since no technology currently exists that can tell investigators exactly where the plane is, that means the most expensive, complex search in aviation history is over, barring a change of heart from the three countries.</p>
<p>Chester defended the decision to call off the hunt without checking the new area to the north, saying, “No one is coming to me as minister and saying, ‘We know where MH370 is.'” And he insisted the enormous cost had nothing to do with pulling the plug.</p>
<p>“It is a costly exercise, but it hasn’t been the factor which led to the decision to suspend the search,” Chester said. “We don’t want to provide false hope to the families and friends. We need to have credible new evidence leading to a specific location before we would be reasonably considering future search efforts.”</p>
<p>The new 25,000-square kilometer (9,700-square mile) area to the north was determined with the help of drift modeling by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, which attempted to calculate where debris that has washed ashore on coastlines in the western Indian Ocean originated. Chester said that drift modeling would continue, and experts will scrutinize any further debris that washes up. Investigators will also continue to refine the satellite data that led them to conclude the plane went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean.</p>
<p>Many relatives of those lost on the plane, which vanished on March 8, 2014, during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, responded to the announcement that the search was over with outrage. A support group, Voice 370, issued a statement saying that extending the search is “an inescapable duty owed to the flying public.”</p>
<p>Without understanding what happened to the plane, there’s a “good chance that this could happen in the future,” said K.S. Narendran, a member of the group.</p>
<p>Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he empathized with the families, but said search officials had done the best they could under extraordinary circumstances.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We share their deep disappointment that the plane has not been found,” Turnbull told reporters. “It is an unprecedented search. It’s been conducted with the best advice over the areas that were identified as the most likely to find the location of the airplane. It is a shocking tragedy and we grieve and we deeply regret the loss and we deeply regret that the plane has not been found.”</p>
<p>Tony Abbott, who was Australia’s prime minister when the Boeing 777 disappeared, suggested the search should continue. Abbott pledged on the first anniversary of the tragedy: “It can’t go on forever, but as long as there are reasonable leads, the search will go on.” On Tuesday, he tweeted: “Disappointed that the search for MH370 has been called off. Especially if some experts think there are better places to look.”</p>
<p>Chester said he understood Abbott’s feelings, given his involvement in the early phases of the hunt.</p>
<p>“The experts who have been working on this project, this has consumed their life for the best part of three years. This is a disappointing and frustrating day for them as well,” Chester said. “I understand that former Prime Minister Abbott has some concerns as well. He is entitled to express those opinions but it is not a decision that was reached lightly by the three governments in July last year and we remain open to further analysis of whatever data becomes available into the future.”</p>
<p>There is the possibility that a private donor could offer to bankroll a new search. But no one has stepped up yet, raising the bleak possibility that the world’s greatest aviation mystery may never be solved.</p>
<p>Investigators have been stymied again and again in their efforts to find the aircraft. Hopes were repeatedly raised and smashed by false leads: Underwater signals wrongly thought to be emanating from the plane’s black boxes. Possible debris fields that turned out to be sea trash. Oil slicks that contained no jet fuel. A large object detected on the seafloor that was just an old shipwreck.</p>
<p>In the absence of solid leads, investigators relied largely on an analysis of transmissions between the plane and a satellite to narrow down where in the world the jet ended up — a technique never previously used to find an aircraft.</p>
<p>Based on the transmissions, they narrowed down the possible crash zone to a vast arc of ocean slicing across the Southern Hemisphere. Even then, the search zone was enormous and located in one of the most remote patches of water on Earth — 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) off Australia’s west coast. Much of the seabed had never even been mapped.</p>
<p>For years, crews on several ships used sonar equipment to painstakingly comb the search area. The search zone shifted multiple times as investigators refined their analysis, all to no avail. Some began to question whether the plane had gone down in the Southern Hemisphere at all.</p>
<p>Then, in July 2015, came the first proof that the plane was indeed in the Indian Ocean: A wing flap from the aircraft was found on Reunion Island, east of Madagascar. More than 20 pieces of debris confirmed or believed likely to have come from the aircraft have since washed ashore. But while the debris proved the plane went down in the Indian Ocean, the location of the main underwater wreckage — and its crucial black box data recorders — remains stubbornly elusive.</p>
<p>If the plane is never found, the reasons for its disappearance and crash will probably never be known, though Malaysia has said the plane’s erratic movements after takeoff were consistent with deliberate actions.</p>
<p>The sister of the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, slammed authorities for ending the search without settling the mystery, saying her brother will never be absolved of suspicions he deliberately crashed the plane.</p>
<p>“How can they end the search like that? There will be finger-pointing again,” Sakinab Shah said.</p>
<p>Chester said he had not given up hope that the plane may one day be found.</p>
<p>“It’s an extraordinary aviation mystery as it stands today,” he said. “I’m hopeful that we have a breakthrough in the future. We need to prepare ourselves for the sad and tragic reality that in this foreseeable future, we may not find MH370.”</p> | Australia defends end of MH370 hunt; investigation continues | false | https://abqjournal.com/929102/forever-a-mystery-mh370-search-ends-after-nearly-3-years.html | 2017-01-17 | 2least
| Australia defends end of MH370 hunt; investigation continues
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>SYDNEY — Australia’s Transport Minister Darren Chester said on Wednesday that experts will continue analyzing data and scrutinizing debris washing ashore from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in a bid to narrow down where it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. But Chester declined to specify what kind of breakthrough would convince officials to resume the search for the missing airliner that was suspended this week after almost three years.</p>
<p>“When we get some information or data or a breakthrough that leads us to a specific location, the experts will know it when they see it,” he told reporters in the southern city of Melbourne.</p>
<p>The sonar seabed search ended on Tuesday, possibly forever — not because investigators have run out of leads, but because the countries involved in the expensive and vast deep-sea hunt have shown no appetite for opening another big phase.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Late last year, as ships with high-tech search equipment covered the last strips of the 120,000-square kilometer (46,000-square mile) search zone west of Australia, experts concluded they had been looking in the wrong place and should have been searching a smaller area immediately to the north. But by then, $160 million had already been spent by Malaysia, Australia and China, who had previously agreed not to search elsewhere without pinpoint evidence of the plane’s location. More than half of those aboard the plane were Chinese.</p>
<p>Since no technology currently exists that can tell investigators exactly where the plane is, that means the most expensive, complex search in aviation history is over, barring a change of heart from the three countries.</p>
<p>Chester defended the decision to call off the hunt without checking the new area to the north, saying, “No one is coming to me as minister and saying, ‘We know where MH370 is.'” And he insisted the enormous cost had nothing to do with pulling the plug.</p>
<p>“It is a costly exercise, but it hasn’t been the factor which led to the decision to suspend the search,” Chester said. “We don’t want to provide false hope to the families and friends. We need to have credible new evidence leading to a specific location before we would be reasonably considering future search efforts.”</p>
<p>The new 25,000-square kilometer (9,700-square mile) area to the north was determined with the help of drift modeling by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, which attempted to calculate where debris that has washed ashore on coastlines in the western Indian Ocean originated. Chester said that drift modeling would continue, and experts will scrutinize any further debris that washes up. Investigators will also continue to refine the satellite data that led them to conclude the plane went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean.</p>
<p>Many relatives of those lost on the plane, which vanished on March 8, 2014, during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, responded to the announcement that the search was over with outrage. A support group, Voice 370, issued a statement saying that extending the search is “an inescapable duty owed to the flying public.”</p>
<p>Without understanding what happened to the plane, there’s a “good chance that this could happen in the future,” said K.S. Narendran, a member of the group.</p>
<p>Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he empathized with the families, but said search officials had done the best they could under extraordinary circumstances.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We share their deep disappointment that the plane has not been found,” Turnbull told reporters. “It is an unprecedented search. It’s been conducted with the best advice over the areas that were identified as the most likely to find the location of the airplane. It is a shocking tragedy and we grieve and we deeply regret the loss and we deeply regret that the plane has not been found.”</p>
<p>Tony Abbott, who was Australia’s prime minister when the Boeing 777 disappeared, suggested the search should continue. Abbott pledged on the first anniversary of the tragedy: “It can’t go on forever, but as long as there are reasonable leads, the search will go on.” On Tuesday, he tweeted: “Disappointed that the search for MH370 has been called off. Especially if some experts think there are better places to look.”</p>
<p>Chester said he understood Abbott’s feelings, given his involvement in the early phases of the hunt.</p>
<p>“The experts who have been working on this project, this has consumed their life for the best part of three years. This is a disappointing and frustrating day for them as well,” Chester said. “I understand that former Prime Minister Abbott has some concerns as well. He is entitled to express those opinions but it is not a decision that was reached lightly by the three governments in July last year and we remain open to further analysis of whatever data becomes available into the future.”</p>
<p>There is the possibility that a private donor could offer to bankroll a new search. But no one has stepped up yet, raising the bleak possibility that the world’s greatest aviation mystery may never be solved.</p>
<p>Investigators have been stymied again and again in their efforts to find the aircraft. Hopes were repeatedly raised and smashed by false leads: Underwater signals wrongly thought to be emanating from the plane’s black boxes. Possible debris fields that turned out to be sea trash. Oil slicks that contained no jet fuel. A large object detected on the seafloor that was just an old shipwreck.</p>
<p>In the absence of solid leads, investigators relied largely on an analysis of transmissions between the plane and a satellite to narrow down where in the world the jet ended up — a technique never previously used to find an aircraft.</p>
<p>Based on the transmissions, they narrowed down the possible crash zone to a vast arc of ocean slicing across the Southern Hemisphere. Even then, the search zone was enormous and located in one of the most remote patches of water on Earth — 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) off Australia’s west coast. Much of the seabed had never even been mapped.</p>
<p>For years, crews on several ships used sonar equipment to painstakingly comb the search area. The search zone shifted multiple times as investigators refined their analysis, all to no avail. Some began to question whether the plane had gone down in the Southern Hemisphere at all.</p>
<p>Then, in July 2015, came the first proof that the plane was indeed in the Indian Ocean: A wing flap from the aircraft was found on Reunion Island, east of Madagascar. More than 20 pieces of debris confirmed or believed likely to have come from the aircraft have since washed ashore. But while the debris proved the plane went down in the Indian Ocean, the location of the main underwater wreckage — and its crucial black box data recorders — remains stubbornly elusive.</p>
<p>If the plane is never found, the reasons for its disappearance and crash will probably never be known, though Malaysia has said the plane’s erratic movements after takeoff were consistent with deliberate actions.</p>
<p>The sister of the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, slammed authorities for ending the search without settling the mystery, saying her brother will never be absolved of suspicions he deliberately crashed the plane.</p>
<p>“How can they end the search like that? There will be finger-pointing again,” Sakinab Shah said.</p>
<p>Chester said he had not given up hope that the plane may one day be found.</p>
<p>“It’s an extraordinary aviation mystery as it stands today,” he said. “I’m hopeful that we have a breakthrough in the future. We need to prepare ourselves for the sad and tragic reality that in this foreseeable future, we may not find MH370.”</p> | 1,541 |
<p>* Says Petropavlovsk undervalued</p>
<p>* Wants former CEO to come back to lead project to boost output</p>
<p>LONDON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Kazakh businessman Kenges Rakishev, who owns just over a fifth of Russian miner Petropavlovsk, said the company should sell its 31.1 percent stake in Hong Kong-listed iron ore company IRC to focus exclusively on gold.</p>
<p>Rakishev, who bought a 22 percent stake in Petropavlovsk in December, has said his near-term focus is on bringing back former CEO Pavel Masklovskiy to continue work on a project to boost the company’s output.</p>
<p>After that, he would seek acquisitions, not just in Russia, but in central Asia, and he said shareholder value would be increased if Petropavlovsk sold its stake in IRC, which has a market capitalisation of around $200 million.</p>
<p>“IRC is a very good company, but it’s not adding value for Petropavlovsk shareholders,” he said in an interview in London before a closed-door meeting with other shareholders.</p>
<p>Rakishev said Petropavlovsk is undervalued relative to other Russian gold miners.</p>
<p>Leading Russian producer Polyus, for instance, produces nearly 70 tonnes of gold per year, compared with Petropavlovsk’s roughly 15 tonnes, but the valuation gap is much greater than the difference in output, he said.</p>
<p>Petropavlovsk has a market capitalisation of just over 270 million pounds ($377 million) compared with Polyus’s market capitalisation of 602 billion roubles ($10.65 billion), according to Thomson Reuters data.</p>
<p>Analysts say Polyus is a lower cost producer and a considerable amount of Petropavlovsk’s future production depends on a technical project, the Pressure Oxidation Hub (POX), which is scheduled to begin increasing output late this year.</p>
<p>Rakishev, who has previously invested in Kazakh gold assets, said he is committed to Petropavlovsk for the long term. ($1 = 0.7154 pounds) ($1 = 56.5174 roubles) (Reporting by Barbara Lewis; additional reporting by Poliina Devitt in Moscow; Editing by Adrian Croft)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BAC.N" type="external">BAC.N</a>) will pay a $42 million fine and admitted wrongdoing to settle claims by New York’s attorney general that it fraudulently routed clients’ stock trades to outside firms, including one run by swindler Bernard Madoff.</p> FILE PHOTO: A customer leaves a Bank of America ATM kiosk in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
<p>New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the settlement on Friday, and called the fine the largest collected by the state to resolve an electronic trading probe.</p>
<p>The attorney general said Bank of America Merrill Lynch had undisclosed agreements with several electronic trading firms from March 2008 to May 2013 to handle client trades.</p>
<p>He said the bank told clients it was processing the trades in-house, even going so far as to alter trade confirmations, as part of an effort to make its electronic trading services appear safer and more sophisticated than they were.</p>
<p>Schneiderman said the “masking” scheme affected more than 16 million trade orders and 4 billion shares, benefiting such firms as Madoff Securities, Citadel Securities, D.E. Shaw, Knight Capital and Two Sigma Securities.</p>
<p>The bank also admitted to having told traders in its “dark pool,” a private venue where they expected protection from high-speed traders, that up to 30 percent of orders came from retail traders, when the percentage was closer to 5 percent.</p>
<p>“Bank of America Merrill Lynch went to astonishing lengths to defraud its own institutional clients about who was seeing and filling their orders, who was trading in its dark pool, and the capabilities of its electronic trading services,” Schneiderman said in a statement.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BAC.N" type="external">Bank of America Corp</a> 29.17 BAC.N New York Stock Exchange -1.38 (-4.52%) BAC.N BARC.L CSGN.S DBKGn.DE
<p>Bill Halldin, a bank spokesman, said in an email: “At all times we met our obligation to deliver the best prices to clients. About five years ago, we addressed the issues concerning communicating to clients about where their trades were executed.”</p>
<p>The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank also admitted that its masking activity violated New York’s powerful securities fraud law, the Martin Act.</p>
<p>In 2016, Barclays Plc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BARC.L" type="external">BARC.L</a>), Credit Suisse Group AG ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=CSGN.S" type="external">CSGN.S</a>) and Deutsche Bank AG ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DBKGn.DE" type="external">DBKGn.DE</a>) settled separate electronic and high-speed trading probes by Schneiderman’s office for a respective $35 million, $30 million and $18.5 million. They also reached related settlements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.</p>
<p>Madoff is serving a 150-year prison term for running a huge Ponzi scheme involving his investment advisory business.</p>
<p>Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Phil Berlowitz</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GSK.L" type="external">GSK.L</a>) has quit the race to buy Pfizer’s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=PFE.N" type="external">PFE.N</a>) consumer healthcare business, endangering an auction the U.S. drugmaker hoped would bring in as much as $20 billion.</p>
<p>It was not immediately clear whether there were other offers for the business, which includes Advil painkillers and Centrum vitamins, following this week’s deadline for binding bids.</p>
<p>GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which announced its withdrawal on Friday, was seen as the frontrunner to buy the assets after Reckitt Benckiser ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RB.L" type="external">RB.L</a>) left the race late on Wednesday. Johnson &amp; Johnson ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JNJ.N" type="external">JNJ.N</a>) stepped away from the auction in January.</p>
<p>A source familiar with the matter said GSK declined to make a final bid for the assets in the end.</p>
<p>“While we will continue to review opportunities that may accelerate our strategy, they must meet our criteria for returns and not compromise our priorities for capital allocation,” GSK Chief Executive Emma Walmsley said in a statement.</p>
<p>GSK shares rose nearly 4 percent, as investors’ concerns about a potential dividend cut eased.</p>
<p>Pfizer said on Friday it continued to evaluate potential alternatives for the business, which include a spin-off, sale or other transaction, as well as retaining it.</p>
<p>“We have not yet made a decision, but continue to expect to make one in 2018,” a spokesman said.</p>
<p>Sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday it was possible there were other bids. On Friday, a source said that if not, Pfizer could try to tap private equity funds.</p>
<p>Pfizer is the world’s fifth-largest player in consumer health with 2.5 percent of a market bolstered by aging populations and growing interest in health and wellness.</p>
<p>The business, which also includes Chapstick lip balm and Caltrate supplements, is seen as attractive but has come to market at a bad time. GSK and Reckitt are under shareholder pressure to exercise financial discipline, while other potential suitors, such as Bayer ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BAYGn.DE" type="external">BAYGn.DE</a>) and Sanofi ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SASY.PA" type="external">SASY.PA</a>) are busy with other projects.</p> FILE PHOTO: The Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New York, U.S., April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo
<p>What is more, the global consumer health market has slowed, from 4-6 percent like-for-like sales growth to 0-3 percent growth, Morgan Stanley analysts said in December. Major players in the over-the-counter market have been grappling with pricing pressure stoked by online players such as Amazon ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>) and private label competitors.</p>
<p>Pfizer’s hope of fetching around $20 billion translated to a multiple of about 20 times the unit’s core earnings, according to Bernstein analysts, in line with past deals in the sector during faster growing times.</p>
<p>Differences in price expectations also hobbled German drugmaker Merck KGaA’s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MRCG.DE" type="external">MRCG.DE</a>) attempts to sell its consumer products unit, where a price tag of up to 4 billion euros ($5 billion) deterred initial suitors such as Nestle ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NESN.S" type="external">NESN.S</a>), Perrigo ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=PRGO.N" type="external">PRGO.N</a>) and a private-equity consortium.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GSK.L" type="external">GlaxoSmithKline PLC</a> 1315.6 GSK.L London Stock Exchange +41.80 (+3.28%) GSK.L PFE.N RB.L JNJ.N BAYGn.DE
<p>Reckitt’s early interest in the Merck assets also waned as the Pfizer auction gained momentum.</p> SPLIT OPINION
<p>Buying the Pfizer business would have been the boldest move to date for Walmsley, who took over at GSK last April. But the wisdom of a deal split opinion among investors, with some worried about the risk to the company’s dividend.</p>
<p>Acquiring additional consumer health assets at a reasonable price could have been a fairly safe way to boost earnings, since scale is key in over-the-counter remedies, but it could have distracted from fixing GSK’s core pharma division.</p>
<p>That is a particular headache for Walmsley - a consumer products veteran who worked for 17 years at L’Oreal ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=OREP.PA" type="external">OREP.PA</a>) - since she has her work cut out to persuade the market she is the right person to lead Britain’s top pharmaceuticals company.</p>
<p>Last month, in a bid to reassure investors, she spelt out that her first priority was improving performance in prescription drugs, followed by dividend payments and only after that acquisitions.</p>
<p>The overhaul of the drugs business, which has produced fewer blockbuster medicines than rivals in recent years, is underway in both the commercial and research fields.</p>
<p>GSK runs its consumer healthcare business via a joint venture with Novartis ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NOVN.S" type="external">NOVN.S</a>), which complicates any acquisitions. Novartis has the right to sell down its 36.5 percent stake, valued at around $10 billion, from this month, although it has previously indicated it is in no rush to do so.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Paul Sandle and Ben Hirschler; Editing by David Goodman and Mark Potter</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=QCOM.O" type="external">QCOM.O</a>) re-elected its board of directors on Friday with weak support from shareholders, who grilled the U.S. chipmaker over its strategy following its successful defense against a $117-billion hostile bid from Broadcom Ltd ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AVGO.O" type="external">AVGO.O</a>).</p> FILE PHOTO: A sign on the Qualcomm campus is seen in San Diego, California, U.S. November 6, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
<p>Qualcomm has been under pressure to defend its decision to take Broadcom’s bid to a U.S. national security panel for review. This resulted in U.S. President Donald Trump blocking the deal earlier this month over concerns the acquisition would set the United States back in its race against China to develop 5G wireless technology.</p>
<p>The re-election of Qualcomm’s directors was not in doubt on Friday given that Trump had ordered Broadcom to drop its challenge to Qualcomm’s board and withdraw its nominees. However, the investor support the Qualcomm directors received was lower than in most cases where directors run for election unopposed.</p>
<p>Some of the directors were elected with more than 50 percent of the vote. The rest, including Qualcomm Chief Executive Steve Mollenkopf, received support in the range of 40 percent to 50 percent, according to sources familiar with preliminary results of the shareholder vote.</p>
<p>“Anything below 80 percent to 90 percent of votes cast is kind of questionable, 40 percent is very questionable. (Trump)has created some breathing room for Qualcomm. Hopefully, they will use it wisely and improve both their Board and company,” said Kevin McManus, vice president and director of proxy services for Egan-Jones Proxy Services.</p>
<p>Ahead of Friday’s meeting, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc, a shareholder advisory firm, had urged investors to lodge protest votes for Broadcom’s withdrawn board nominees, even though they would not be counted under the company’s rules.</p>
<p>Mollenkopf told investors following the company’s rejection of Broadcom’s bid that he could achieve earnings per share of $6.75 to $7.50 in fiscal 2019, through a number of measures, including a $1-billion cost reduction program and the resolution of licensing disputes, including with Apple Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAPL.O" type="external">AAPL.O</a>).</p>
<p>One shareholder at the meeting asked whether Qualcomm planned to return some or all of its offshore cash to shareholders “who have seen the shares go up to $80 and now is at $55” but “have been faithful. How about a little of that (cash)?”</p>
<p>Qualcomm CFO George Davis said the company’s offshore cash was already earmarked for use in the company’s $44-billion acquisition of chip maker NXP Semiconductors NV ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NXPI.O" type="external">NXPI.O</a>), which is pending clearance from Chinese regulator MOFCOM.</p>
<p>“That doesn’t sound close to $80,” the shareholder responded. Davis pointed to the company’s earnings goal for its fiscal 2019. “That probably sounds more like $80,” Davis said.</p> SMALLER BOARD
<p>Qualcomm last week said its board would shrink to 10 directors from 11 because former chairman Paul Jacobs, the son of Qualcomm’s co-founder, would not be renominated for the board after disclosing his intention to pursue a long-shot bid to take the company private.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=QCOM.O" type="external">Qualcomm Inc</a> 53.66 QCOM.O Nasdaq -1.92 (-3.45%) QCOM.O AVGO.O AAPL.O NXPI.O
<p>Qualcomm shares closed down 1.9 percent on Friday at $53.66. NXP shares ended down 0.7 percent at $120.19, their lowest level since Qualcomm revised its NXP bid last week, amid investor concerns that China will block the deal.</p>
<p>In response to a shareholder question about MOFCOM’s delay in approving the NXP deal, Don Rosenberg, Qualcomm’s legal chief, said that Qualcomm had been “actively engaged” with Chinese regulators “as recently as this week.”</p>
<p>Mollenkopf said he believed the company would close the NXP deal on schedule and noted he was headed to China for a conference immediately after the shareholder meeting. But in response to separate shareholder question about U.S.-China relations, he said Qualcomm has little visibility into broader trends between the two nations.</p>
<p>“This is a little bit of uncharted territory for all of us,” Mollenkopf said. “We have developed a strong China-friendly, U.S.-friendly business model.”</p>
<p>On Friday, Broadcom said its shareholders had voted to redomicile the company from Singapore to the United States. The company is hoping this will make its future acquisitions exempt from reviews from the U.S. security panel, known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.</p> Related Video
<p>However, Trump’s order prohibiting a Broadcom bid for Qualcomm continues to apply even after the redomiciling to the United States.</p>
<p>Reporting by Stephen Nellis; editing by Bill Rigby and Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Steve Wynn, the former chief executive of Wynn Resorts Ltd, has disposed his entire 11.8 percent stake in the firm for $2.1 billion in a dramatic exit of the casino and hotel enterprise he founded over 16 years ago.</p>
<p>In an unexpected separate move, Macau casino operator Galaxy Entertainment said it has agreed to buy 5.3 million primary shares of Wynn Resorts at $175 per share, giving them around a 5 percent stake in the operator which has resorts in Las Vegas and Macau.</p>
<p>Galaxy is one of six licensed operators in the world’s largest gambling hub of Macau and competes with Wynn along with Sands China, MGM China and Melco Resorts.</p>
<p>The casino mogul’s share sale comes a week after Wynn Resorts said Steve and Elaine Wynn, who has a 9.26 percent stake, had scrapped a shareholder agreement that prevented them from selling their stakes.</p>
<p>Steve Wynn resigned as CEO of the Las Vegas-based company last month, following claims he subjected women who worked for him to unwanted advances. He has denied the accusations.</p>
<p>In a joint statement by Galaxy and Wynn on Wednesday, Galaxy Vice Chairman Francis Lui said it was a unique opportunity to “acquire an investment in a globally recognised entertainment corporation with exceptionally high quality assets and a significant development pipeline.”</p>
<p>A Galaxy spokeswoman could not comment further on whether Galaxy would look to increase its holding in the future.</p>
<p>Wynn Resorts CEO Matt Maddox said Galaxy shared many of the same core “operating philosophies and values.”</p>
<p>The announcement also follows the settlement two weeks ago of long standing litigation between Wynn Resorts and Universal Entertainment Corporation.</p>
<p>Wynn said two long-term institutional investors, currently holding stakes in Wynn Resorts, have agreed to purchase the remaining eight million shares held by Steve Wynn also at $175 a share.</p>
<p>A Thursday filing showed the embattled founder sold 4.1 million shares of Wynn Resorts at $180 per share - effectively exiting his entire 12.1 million shares, or 11.8 percent stake in the firm, for a total of $2.14 billion.</p> Steve Wynn, Chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts, speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake WYNN IMPACT
<p>Wynn, who started in Las Vegas casinos in the 1960s, created some of Las Vegas’ most iconic landmarks – the Mirage, Bellagio and Treasure Island.</p>
<p>He was forced to sell his multi-billion dollar operation Mirage Resorts to tycoon Kirk Kerkorian in a hostile takeover in 2000. Kerkorian then created MGM Mirage and Wynn went on to create Wynn Resorts with his ex-wife in 2002.</p> An exterior view Wynn hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Steve Marcus
<p>The 76 year old businessman, whose signature denotes the company’s logo, had built two lavish resorts in the former Portuguese colony of Macau where only six firms have licenses to operate casinos.</p>
<p>Vitaly Umansky, analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in Hong Kong, said the implications of the Galaxy’s investment goes beyond what looks like a passive move at this stage.</p>
<p>“Wynn and Galaxy may be looking at collaborating on future development opportunities in Asia, with Japan being the critical development initiative.”</p>
<p>Galaxy’s octogenarian founder Lui Che Woo, one of Asia’s wealthiest billionaires, has a net wealth of $22 billion according to Forbes. Lui who started his career in construction has grown his casino company into one of Macau’s biggest operators over the past decade.</p>
<p>“There are other large gaming companies who do not have a presence in Macau, but who desperately want to be in Macau, and we would not be surprised to see them angling for a seat at the acquisition table too,” said Grant Govertsen, analyst at Union Gaming in Macau.</p>
<p>While Galaxy has been primarily focused on Macau with its three casinos, it this week received a license to operate a roughly $500 million resort in Boracay, the Philippines most famous holiday island.</p>
<p>Wynn, which operates a resort on Cotai and Macau’s main peninsula, focuses on premium and VIP customers, while Galaxy targets both the high end segment and the broader mass. Both companies have reported strong earnings growth in the fourth quarter with Galaxy posting a 67 percent surge in 2017 profit.</p>
<p>Shares in Wynn Macau and Galaxy dropped 3.9 percent and 2.9 percent respectively on Friday against the benchmark Hang Seng Index which was down 3.1 percent.</p>
<p>Reporting by Farah Master in Hong Kong and Philip George in Bengaluru; Editing by Shri Navaratnam</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | Kazakh tycoon says Petropavlovsk should sell IRC stake Bank of America pays $42 million fine in New York 'masking' probe GSK pulls out of $20 billion race for Pfizer consumer assets Qualcomm re-elects board of directors with tepid support Steve Wynn sells stake in company he founded, Macau casino Galaxy buys in | false | https://reuters.com/article/petropavlovsk-irc/kazakh-tycoon-says-petropavlovsk-should-sell-irc-stake-idUSL8N1PD6P5 | 2018-01-23 | 2least
| Kazakh tycoon says Petropavlovsk should sell IRC stake Bank of America pays $42 million fine in New York 'masking' probe GSK pulls out of $20 billion race for Pfizer consumer assets Qualcomm re-elects board of directors with tepid support Steve Wynn sells stake in company he founded, Macau casino Galaxy buys in
<p>* Says Petropavlovsk undervalued</p>
<p>* Wants former CEO to come back to lead project to boost output</p>
<p>LONDON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Kazakh businessman Kenges Rakishev, who owns just over a fifth of Russian miner Petropavlovsk, said the company should sell its 31.1 percent stake in Hong Kong-listed iron ore company IRC to focus exclusively on gold.</p>
<p>Rakishev, who bought a 22 percent stake in Petropavlovsk in December, has said his near-term focus is on bringing back former CEO Pavel Masklovskiy to continue work on a project to boost the company’s output.</p>
<p>After that, he would seek acquisitions, not just in Russia, but in central Asia, and he said shareholder value would be increased if Petropavlovsk sold its stake in IRC, which has a market capitalisation of around $200 million.</p>
<p>“IRC is a very good company, but it’s not adding value for Petropavlovsk shareholders,” he said in an interview in London before a closed-door meeting with other shareholders.</p>
<p>Rakishev said Petropavlovsk is undervalued relative to other Russian gold miners.</p>
<p>Leading Russian producer Polyus, for instance, produces nearly 70 tonnes of gold per year, compared with Petropavlovsk’s roughly 15 tonnes, but the valuation gap is much greater than the difference in output, he said.</p>
<p>Petropavlovsk has a market capitalisation of just over 270 million pounds ($377 million) compared with Polyus’s market capitalisation of 602 billion roubles ($10.65 billion), according to Thomson Reuters data.</p>
<p>Analysts say Polyus is a lower cost producer and a considerable amount of Petropavlovsk’s future production depends on a technical project, the Pressure Oxidation Hub (POX), which is scheduled to begin increasing output late this year.</p>
<p>Rakishev, who has previously invested in Kazakh gold assets, said he is committed to Petropavlovsk for the long term. ($1 = 0.7154 pounds) ($1 = 56.5174 roubles) (Reporting by Barbara Lewis; additional reporting by Poliina Devitt in Moscow; Editing by Adrian Croft)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BAC.N" type="external">BAC.N</a>) will pay a $42 million fine and admitted wrongdoing to settle claims by New York’s attorney general that it fraudulently routed clients’ stock trades to outside firms, including one run by swindler Bernard Madoff.</p> FILE PHOTO: A customer leaves a Bank of America ATM kiosk in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
<p>New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the settlement on Friday, and called the fine the largest collected by the state to resolve an electronic trading probe.</p>
<p>The attorney general said Bank of America Merrill Lynch had undisclosed agreements with several electronic trading firms from March 2008 to May 2013 to handle client trades.</p>
<p>He said the bank told clients it was processing the trades in-house, even going so far as to alter trade confirmations, as part of an effort to make its electronic trading services appear safer and more sophisticated than they were.</p>
<p>Schneiderman said the “masking” scheme affected more than 16 million trade orders and 4 billion shares, benefiting such firms as Madoff Securities, Citadel Securities, D.E. Shaw, Knight Capital and Two Sigma Securities.</p>
<p>The bank also admitted to having told traders in its “dark pool,” a private venue where they expected protection from high-speed traders, that up to 30 percent of orders came from retail traders, when the percentage was closer to 5 percent.</p>
<p>“Bank of America Merrill Lynch went to astonishing lengths to defraud its own institutional clients about who was seeing and filling their orders, who was trading in its dark pool, and the capabilities of its electronic trading services,” Schneiderman said in a statement.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BAC.N" type="external">Bank of America Corp</a> 29.17 BAC.N New York Stock Exchange -1.38 (-4.52%) BAC.N BARC.L CSGN.S DBKGn.DE
<p>Bill Halldin, a bank spokesman, said in an email: “At all times we met our obligation to deliver the best prices to clients. About five years ago, we addressed the issues concerning communicating to clients about where their trades were executed.”</p>
<p>The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank also admitted that its masking activity violated New York’s powerful securities fraud law, the Martin Act.</p>
<p>In 2016, Barclays Plc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BARC.L" type="external">BARC.L</a>), Credit Suisse Group AG ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=CSGN.S" type="external">CSGN.S</a>) and Deutsche Bank AG ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DBKGn.DE" type="external">DBKGn.DE</a>) settled separate electronic and high-speed trading probes by Schneiderman’s office for a respective $35 million, $30 million and $18.5 million. They also reached related settlements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.</p>
<p>Madoff is serving a 150-year prison term for running a huge Ponzi scheme involving his investment advisory business.</p>
<p>Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Phil Berlowitz</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GSK.L" type="external">GSK.L</a>) has quit the race to buy Pfizer’s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=PFE.N" type="external">PFE.N</a>) consumer healthcare business, endangering an auction the U.S. drugmaker hoped would bring in as much as $20 billion.</p>
<p>It was not immediately clear whether there were other offers for the business, which includes Advil painkillers and Centrum vitamins, following this week’s deadline for binding bids.</p>
<p>GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which announced its withdrawal on Friday, was seen as the frontrunner to buy the assets after Reckitt Benckiser ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RB.L" type="external">RB.L</a>) left the race late on Wednesday. Johnson &amp; Johnson ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JNJ.N" type="external">JNJ.N</a>) stepped away from the auction in January.</p>
<p>A source familiar with the matter said GSK declined to make a final bid for the assets in the end.</p>
<p>“While we will continue to review opportunities that may accelerate our strategy, they must meet our criteria for returns and not compromise our priorities for capital allocation,” GSK Chief Executive Emma Walmsley said in a statement.</p>
<p>GSK shares rose nearly 4 percent, as investors’ concerns about a potential dividend cut eased.</p>
<p>Pfizer said on Friday it continued to evaluate potential alternatives for the business, which include a spin-off, sale or other transaction, as well as retaining it.</p>
<p>“We have not yet made a decision, but continue to expect to make one in 2018,” a spokesman said.</p>
<p>Sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday it was possible there were other bids. On Friday, a source said that if not, Pfizer could try to tap private equity funds.</p>
<p>Pfizer is the world’s fifth-largest player in consumer health with 2.5 percent of a market bolstered by aging populations and growing interest in health and wellness.</p>
<p>The business, which also includes Chapstick lip balm and Caltrate supplements, is seen as attractive but has come to market at a bad time. GSK and Reckitt are under shareholder pressure to exercise financial discipline, while other potential suitors, such as Bayer ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BAYGn.DE" type="external">BAYGn.DE</a>) and Sanofi ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SASY.PA" type="external">SASY.PA</a>) are busy with other projects.</p> FILE PHOTO: The Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New York, U.S., April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo
<p>What is more, the global consumer health market has slowed, from 4-6 percent like-for-like sales growth to 0-3 percent growth, Morgan Stanley analysts said in December. Major players in the over-the-counter market have been grappling with pricing pressure stoked by online players such as Amazon ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>) and private label competitors.</p>
<p>Pfizer’s hope of fetching around $20 billion translated to a multiple of about 20 times the unit’s core earnings, according to Bernstein analysts, in line with past deals in the sector during faster growing times.</p>
<p>Differences in price expectations also hobbled German drugmaker Merck KGaA’s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MRCG.DE" type="external">MRCG.DE</a>) attempts to sell its consumer products unit, where a price tag of up to 4 billion euros ($5 billion) deterred initial suitors such as Nestle ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NESN.S" type="external">NESN.S</a>), Perrigo ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=PRGO.N" type="external">PRGO.N</a>) and a private-equity consortium.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GSK.L" type="external">GlaxoSmithKline PLC</a> 1315.6 GSK.L London Stock Exchange +41.80 (+3.28%) GSK.L PFE.N RB.L JNJ.N BAYGn.DE
<p>Reckitt’s early interest in the Merck assets also waned as the Pfizer auction gained momentum.</p> SPLIT OPINION
<p>Buying the Pfizer business would have been the boldest move to date for Walmsley, who took over at GSK last April. But the wisdom of a deal split opinion among investors, with some worried about the risk to the company’s dividend.</p>
<p>Acquiring additional consumer health assets at a reasonable price could have been a fairly safe way to boost earnings, since scale is key in over-the-counter remedies, but it could have distracted from fixing GSK’s core pharma division.</p>
<p>That is a particular headache for Walmsley - a consumer products veteran who worked for 17 years at L’Oreal ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=OREP.PA" type="external">OREP.PA</a>) - since she has her work cut out to persuade the market she is the right person to lead Britain’s top pharmaceuticals company.</p>
<p>Last month, in a bid to reassure investors, she spelt out that her first priority was improving performance in prescription drugs, followed by dividend payments and only after that acquisitions.</p>
<p>The overhaul of the drugs business, which has produced fewer blockbuster medicines than rivals in recent years, is underway in both the commercial and research fields.</p>
<p>GSK runs its consumer healthcare business via a joint venture with Novartis ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NOVN.S" type="external">NOVN.S</a>), which complicates any acquisitions. Novartis has the right to sell down its 36.5 percent stake, valued at around $10 billion, from this month, although it has previously indicated it is in no rush to do so.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Paul Sandle and Ben Hirschler; Editing by David Goodman and Mark Potter</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=QCOM.O" type="external">QCOM.O</a>) re-elected its board of directors on Friday with weak support from shareholders, who grilled the U.S. chipmaker over its strategy following its successful defense against a $117-billion hostile bid from Broadcom Ltd ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AVGO.O" type="external">AVGO.O</a>).</p> FILE PHOTO: A sign on the Qualcomm campus is seen in San Diego, California, U.S. November 6, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
<p>Qualcomm has been under pressure to defend its decision to take Broadcom’s bid to a U.S. national security panel for review. This resulted in U.S. President Donald Trump blocking the deal earlier this month over concerns the acquisition would set the United States back in its race against China to develop 5G wireless technology.</p>
<p>The re-election of Qualcomm’s directors was not in doubt on Friday given that Trump had ordered Broadcom to drop its challenge to Qualcomm’s board and withdraw its nominees. However, the investor support the Qualcomm directors received was lower than in most cases where directors run for election unopposed.</p>
<p>Some of the directors were elected with more than 50 percent of the vote. The rest, including Qualcomm Chief Executive Steve Mollenkopf, received support in the range of 40 percent to 50 percent, according to sources familiar with preliminary results of the shareholder vote.</p>
<p>“Anything below 80 percent to 90 percent of votes cast is kind of questionable, 40 percent is very questionable. (Trump)has created some breathing room for Qualcomm. Hopefully, they will use it wisely and improve both their Board and company,” said Kevin McManus, vice president and director of proxy services for Egan-Jones Proxy Services.</p>
<p>Ahead of Friday’s meeting, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc, a shareholder advisory firm, had urged investors to lodge protest votes for Broadcom’s withdrawn board nominees, even though they would not be counted under the company’s rules.</p>
<p>Mollenkopf told investors following the company’s rejection of Broadcom’s bid that he could achieve earnings per share of $6.75 to $7.50 in fiscal 2019, through a number of measures, including a $1-billion cost reduction program and the resolution of licensing disputes, including with Apple Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAPL.O" type="external">AAPL.O</a>).</p>
<p>One shareholder at the meeting asked whether Qualcomm planned to return some or all of its offshore cash to shareholders “who have seen the shares go up to $80 and now is at $55” but “have been faithful. How about a little of that (cash)?”</p>
<p>Qualcomm CFO George Davis said the company’s offshore cash was already earmarked for use in the company’s $44-billion acquisition of chip maker NXP Semiconductors NV ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NXPI.O" type="external">NXPI.O</a>), which is pending clearance from Chinese regulator MOFCOM.</p>
<p>“That doesn’t sound close to $80,” the shareholder responded. Davis pointed to the company’s earnings goal for its fiscal 2019. “That probably sounds more like $80,” Davis said.</p> SMALLER BOARD
<p>Qualcomm last week said its board would shrink to 10 directors from 11 because former chairman Paul Jacobs, the son of Qualcomm’s co-founder, would not be renominated for the board after disclosing his intention to pursue a long-shot bid to take the company private.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=QCOM.O" type="external">Qualcomm Inc</a> 53.66 QCOM.O Nasdaq -1.92 (-3.45%) QCOM.O AVGO.O AAPL.O NXPI.O
<p>Qualcomm shares closed down 1.9 percent on Friday at $53.66. NXP shares ended down 0.7 percent at $120.19, their lowest level since Qualcomm revised its NXP bid last week, amid investor concerns that China will block the deal.</p>
<p>In response to a shareholder question about MOFCOM’s delay in approving the NXP deal, Don Rosenberg, Qualcomm’s legal chief, said that Qualcomm had been “actively engaged” with Chinese regulators “as recently as this week.”</p>
<p>Mollenkopf said he believed the company would close the NXP deal on schedule and noted he was headed to China for a conference immediately after the shareholder meeting. But in response to separate shareholder question about U.S.-China relations, he said Qualcomm has little visibility into broader trends between the two nations.</p>
<p>“This is a little bit of uncharted territory for all of us,” Mollenkopf said. “We have developed a strong China-friendly, U.S.-friendly business model.”</p>
<p>On Friday, Broadcom said its shareholders had voted to redomicile the company from Singapore to the United States. The company is hoping this will make its future acquisitions exempt from reviews from the U.S. security panel, known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.</p> Related Video
<p>However, Trump’s order prohibiting a Broadcom bid for Qualcomm continues to apply even after the redomiciling to the United States.</p>
<p>Reporting by Stephen Nellis; editing by Bill Rigby and Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Steve Wynn, the former chief executive of Wynn Resorts Ltd, has disposed his entire 11.8 percent stake in the firm for $2.1 billion in a dramatic exit of the casino and hotel enterprise he founded over 16 years ago.</p>
<p>In an unexpected separate move, Macau casino operator Galaxy Entertainment said it has agreed to buy 5.3 million primary shares of Wynn Resorts at $175 per share, giving them around a 5 percent stake in the operator which has resorts in Las Vegas and Macau.</p>
<p>Galaxy is one of six licensed operators in the world’s largest gambling hub of Macau and competes with Wynn along with Sands China, MGM China and Melco Resorts.</p>
<p>The casino mogul’s share sale comes a week after Wynn Resorts said Steve and Elaine Wynn, who has a 9.26 percent stake, had scrapped a shareholder agreement that prevented them from selling their stakes.</p>
<p>Steve Wynn resigned as CEO of the Las Vegas-based company last month, following claims he subjected women who worked for him to unwanted advances. He has denied the accusations.</p>
<p>In a joint statement by Galaxy and Wynn on Wednesday, Galaxy Vice Chairman Francis Lui said it was a unique opportunity to “acquire an investment in a globally recognised entertainment corporation with exceptionally high quality assets and a significant development pipeline.”</p>
<p>A Galaxy spokeswoman could not comment further on whether Galaxy would look to increase its holding in the future.</p>
<p>Wynn Resorts CEO Matt Maddox said Galaxy shared many of the same core “operating philosophies and values.”</p>
<p>The announcement also follows the settlement two weeks ago of long standing litigation between Wynn Resorts and Universal Entertainment Corporation.</p>
<p>Wynn said two long-term institutional investors, currently holding stakes in Wynn Resorts, have agreed to purchase the remaining eight million shares held by Steve Wynn also at $175 a share.</p>
<p>A Thursday filing showed the embattled founder sold 4.1 million shares of Wynn Resorts at $180 per share - effectively exiting his entire 12.1 million shares, or 11.8 percent stake in the firm, for a total of $2.14 billion.</p> Steve Wynn, Chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts, speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake WYNN IMPACT
<p>Wynn, who started in Las Vegas casinos in the 1960s, created some of Las Vegas’ most iconic landmarks – the Mirage, Bellagio and Treasure Island.</p>
<p>He was forced to sell his multi-billion dollar operation Mirage Resorts to tycoon Kirk Kerkorian in a hostile takeover in 2000. Kerkorian then created MGM Mirage and Wynn went on to create Wynn Resorts with his ex-wife in 2002.</p> An exterior view Wynn hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Steve Marcus
<p>The 76 year old businessman, whose signature denotes the company’s logo, had built two lavish resorts in the former Portuguese colony of Macau where only six firms have licenses to operate casinos.</p>
<p>Vitaly Umansky, analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in Hong Kong, said the implications of the Galaxy’s investment goes beyond what looks like a passive move at this stage.</p>
<p>“Wynn and Galaxy may be looking at collaborating on future development opportunities in Asia, with Japan being the critical development initiative.”</p>
<p>Galaxy’s octogenarian founder Lui Che Woo, one of Asia’s wealthiest billionaires, has a net wealth of $22 billion according to Forbes. Lui who started his career in construction has grown his casino company into one of Macau’s biggest operators over the past decade.</p>
<p>“There are other large gaming companies who do not have a presence in Macau, but who desperately want to be in Macau, and we would not be surprised to see them angling for a seat at the acquisition table too,” said Grant Govertsen, analyst at Union Gaming in Macau.</p>
<p>While Galaxy has been primarily focused on Macau with its three casinos, it this week received a license to operate a roughly $500 million resort in Boracay, the Philippines most famous holiday island.</p>
<p>Wynn, which operates a resort on Cotai and Macau’s main peninsula, focuses on premium and VIP customers, while Galaxy targets both the high end segment and the broader mass. Both companies have reported strong earnings growth in the fourth quarter with Galaxy posting a 67 percent surge in 2017 profit.</p>
<p>Shares in Wynn Macau and Galaxy dropped 3.9 percent and 2.9 percent respectively on Friday against the benchmark Hang Seng Index which was down 3.1 percent.</p>
<p>Reporting by Farah Master in Hong Kong and Philip George in Bengaluru; Editing by Shri Navaratnam</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | 1,542 |
<p>As everyone knows by now, a Missouri State Fair rodeo clown wore an Obama mask, and the Fair subsequently banned him from ever participating again. <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57598571/obama-rodeo-clown-not-one-of-missouris-finer-moments-w.h-says/" type="external">A White House spokesman tacitly approved of this response</a>, calling the incident “not one of the finer moments” in the state. Furthermore, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/politics/missouri-rodeo-clowns-sensitivity-training-obama-clown" type="external">the fair started requiring “sensitivity training” for rodeo clowns</a>. That’s right, sensitivity. For clowns.</p>
<p>On July 31st, Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry Arnn became a target <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/larry-arnn-dark-ones-hillsdale_n_3691839.html" type="external">after using the term “dark ones” in reference to minority students</a>.</p>
<p>Rather than address the actual context and point Arnn was making, Michigan Department of Education lawmakers attempted to demonize Arnn as racially insensitive. Arnn stated that the Department sent people to the school specifically to note the number of non-white students. They were scanning faces for the “dark ones,” as Arnn said. Despite the validity of Arnn’s comments, he was excoriated for using non-approved language.</p>
<p>These incidents represent a frightening trend in American politics and culture. When making a statement that those in power don’t like, one becomes vulnerable to accusations of insensitivity, racism, or some similar form of bigotry and hatred. The message or intent becomes buried in the outrage.</p>
<p>Language use is now a weapon for progressive leaders who wish to silence their enemies. If these breaches of First Amendment principles weren’t enough, a glaring case of government manipulation of the press came into view recently.</p>
<p>The Washington Post broke an alarming story regarding NSA privacy violations, and the NSA and the White House responded with <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-statements-to-the-post/2013/08/15/f40dd2c4-05d6-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html" type="external">their own comments and an attempt to replace interview answers given by NSA director of compliance John DeLong with a prepared statement</a>. This begs the question: how often does the White House make such requests to change news stories, and how often does the press comply?</p>
<p>While it’s obvious that such control of speech, language, and the press is a useful tool for pushing down political opposition, there are even more drastic consequences. As George Orwell said in his Politics and the English Language, “if thought corrupts language, language corrupts thought.”</p>
<p>Portrayal of certain speech as bigoted is powerful because of the concept that what one thinks affects what one says, but the reverse is true as well.</p>
<p>Controlling what people say is very close to controlling what people think. When government holds power over thought, there is no freedom left. Orwell understood this, as shown through the fictional “Newspeak” in his famous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.</p>
<p>When clowns are going through sensitivity training, it sure seems like we’re very close to turning that dystopian fiction into reality.</p>
<p>————————</p>
<p>Isaac Morrison is a student at Hillsdale College, and previously wrote <a href="http://collegeinsurrection.com/2013/07/hillsdale-student-rinos-and-wackos-the-problem-with-politics/" type="external">RINOs and Wackos – The Problem With Politics</a>&#160;for College Insurrection.</p> | Sensitive Clowns: The Erosion of Free Speech | true | http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/08/sensitive-clowns-the-erosion-of-free-speech/ | 0right
| Sensitive Clowns: The Erosion of Free Speech
<p>As everyone knows by now, a Missouri State Fair rodeo clown wore an Obama mask, and the Fair subsequently banned him from ever participating again. <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57598571/obama-rodeo-clown-not-one-of-missouris-finer-moments-w.h-says/" type="external">A White House spokesman tacitly approved of this response</a>, calling the incident “not one of the finer moments” in the state. Furthermore, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/politics/missouri-rodeo-clowns-sensitivity-training-obama-clown" type="external">the fair started requiring “sensitivity training” for rodeo clowns</a>. That’s right, sensitivity. For clowns.</p>
<p>On July 31st, Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry Arnn became a target <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/larry-arnn-dark-ones-hillsdale_n_3691839.html" type="external">after using the term “dark ones” in reference to minority students</a>.</p>
<p>Rather than address the actual context and point Arnn was making, Michigan Department of Education lawmakers attempted to demonize Arnn as racially insensitive. Arnn stated that the Department sent people to the school specifically to note the number of non-white students. They were scanning faces for the “dark ones,” as Arnn said. Despite the validity of Arnn’s comments, he was excoriated for using non-approved language.</p>
<p>These incidents represent a frightening trend in American politics and culture. When making a statement that those in power don’t like, one becomes vulnerable to accusations of insensitivity, racism, or some similar form of bigotry and hatred. The message or intent becomes buried in the outrage.</p>
<p>Language use is now a weapon for progressive leaders who wish to silence their enemies. If these breaches of First Amendment principles weren’t enough, a glaring case of government manipulation of the press came into view recently.</p>
<p>The Washington Post broke an alarming story regarding NSA privacy violations, and the NSA and the White House responded with <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-statements-to-the-post/2013/08/15/f40dd2c4-05d6-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html" type="external">their own comments and an attempt to replace interview answers given by NSA director of compliance John DeLong with a prepared statement</a>. This begs the question: how often does the White House make such requests to change news stories, and how often does the press comply?</p>
<p>While it’s obvious that such control of speech, language, and the press is a useful tool for pushing down political opposition, there are even more drastic consequences. As George Orwell said in his Politics and the English Language, “if thought corrupts language, language corrupts thought.”</p>
<p>Portrayal of certain speech as bigoted is powerful because of the concept that what one thinks affects what one says, but the reverse is true as well.</p>
<p>Controlling what people say is very close to controlling what people think. When government holds power over thought, there is no freedom left. Orwell understood this, as shown through the fictional “Newspeak” in his famous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.</p>
<p>When clowns are going through sensitivity training, it sure seems like we’re very close to turning that dystopian fiction into reality.</p>
<p>————————</p>
<p>Isaac Morrison is a student at Hillsdale College, and previously wrote <a href="http://collegeinsurrection.com/2013/07/hillsdale-student-rinos-and-wackos-the-problem-with-politics/" type="external">RINOs and Wackos – The Problem With Politics</a>&#160;for College Insurrection.</p> | 1,543 |
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<p>DURANGO, Colo. — Mike Pence is predicting Wednesday’s final presidential debate will revolve around “bigger things” facing the nation, rather than controversies surrounding Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>The Republican vice presidential nominee still used a Wednesday rally in Durango, Colorado, to hammer the Democratic nominee with a litany of familiar Republican attacks.</p>
<p>But Pence told hundreds of Donald Trump supporters that “this election is about a lot bigger things than her small ethics.”</p>
<p>He cited national security, the economy and Supreme Court appointments, and he said he expects those issues “are going to be talked about tonight.</p>
<p>Pence plans to attend the Las Vegas debate.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Trump running mate Mike Pence campaigns in Durango | false | https://abqjournal.com/870754/trump-running-mate-mike-pence-campaigns-in-durango.html | 2least
| Trump running mate Mike Pence campaigns in Durango
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<p>DURANGO, Colo. — Mike Pence is predicting Wednesday’s final presidential debate will revolve around “bigger things” facing the nation, rather than controversies surrounding Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>The Republican vice presidential nominee still used a Wednesday rally in Durango, Colorado, to hammer the Democratic nominee with a litany of familiar Republican attacks.</p>
<p>But Pence told hundreds of Donald Trump supporters that “this election is about a lot bigger things than her small ethics.”</p>
<p>He cited national security, the economy and Supreme Court appointments, and he said he expects those issues “are going to be talked about tonight.</p>
<p>Pence plans to attend the Las Vegas debate.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 1,544 |
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<p>New Mexico tracks are bad bets for the horses that run their hearts — and sometimes their lives — out at the state’s racinos.</p>
<p>A recent New York Times investigation found New Mexico had the nation’s worst safety record in horse racing for 2009-11. The newspaper’s analysis of data shows that of the six tracks in the nation with the worst safety records, five were in New Mexico — and Ruidoso Downs topped the list.</p>
<p>Fact is, horse racing is a questionable economic proposition, at best, and casino gambling has been both savior and its curse.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In 1997, former Gov. Gary Johnson signed legislation allowing slot machines at New Mexico tracks so horse racing wouldn’t die out. Since then, racino slots have raked in about $2.2 billion in winnings. Tracks have to pay the state 26 percent of winnings in gambling taxes and set aside 20 percent more for horse racing purses.</p>
<p>Purse money in New Mexico is among the highest in the nation. From 1999 to 2011 it totaled $447 million. It now runs about $45 million annually, about five times what it was in 1999.</p>
<p>Those lucrative purses give owners and trainers plenty of incentive to race horses that are injured, ill, doped up or too young. And with the money infusion to racing from slot machines, the excuse that we can’t afford better drug testing procedures is ridiculous.</p>
<p>While racino gambling and the money it hauls in has upped the ante, doping on New Mexico tracks predates the racinos.</p>
<p>A Journal investigation in the mid-1980s found that stimulants and other drugs used to “hop” horses were readily available at tracks. While New Mexico has banned Clenbuterol, a steroid-like drug, other drugs allowed on race days to treat pain can mask injuries that can lead to breakdowns.</p>
<p>New Mexico has lousy testing, allows excessive medication amounts of some drugs and does pathetic enforcement for doping violations.</p>
<p>Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is co-sponsoring a bill that would require tracks nationwide that provide “simulcast” or Internet wagering to ban performance-enhancing drugs, test the winning horse plus one additional horse from each race and add penalties for doping violations, including fines and a “three strikes you’re out” rule.</p>
<p>Setting standards is an excellent idea, but enforcement should be left to the states rather than creating another federal bureaucracy to police the industry.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, New Mexico’s Racing Commission should step up and address this long-festering problem. While it says it lacks money to test more horses that race in New Mexico, why is the state paying for drug tests in the first place? That should be a cost of doing business for racinos and horse owners.</p>
<p>With purses averaging $45 million a year, the money is out there.</p>
<p>If only for humane reasons, the horse racing industry should not view the animals that make it money as commodities to be tossed aside.</p>
<p>Quarter horse racing may have arisen out of the Wild West days, but at least the iconic cowboy knew he had to treat his horse well. Otherwise he’d be afoot. Without courageous and spirited horses, New Mexico’s racing industry would be afoot as well.</p>
<p>This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.</p> | Editorial: Raise the Stakes On N.M.’s Racing Industry | false | https://abqjournal.com/97078/raise-the-stakes-on-nms-racing-industry.html | 2012-03-29 | 2least
| Editorial: Raise the Stakes On N.M.’s Racing Industry
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<p />
<p>New Mexico tracks are bad bets for the horses that run their hearts — and sometimes their lives — out at the state’s racinos.</p>
<p>A recent New York Times investigation found New Mexico had the nation’s worst safety record in horse racing for 2009-11. The newspaper’s analysis of data shows that of the six tracks in the nation with the worst safety records, five were in New Mexico — and Ruidoso Downs topped the list.</p>
<p>Fact is, horse racing is a questionable economic proposition, at best, and casino gambling has been both savior and its curse.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In 1997, former Gov. Gary Johnson signed legislation allowing slot machines at New Mexico tracks so horse racing wouldn’t die out. Since then, racino slots have raked in about $2.2 billion in winnings. Tracks have to pay the state 26 percent of winnings in gambling taxes and set aside 20 percent more for horse racing purses.</p>
<p>Purse money in New Mexico is among the highest in the nation. From 1999 to 2011 it totaled $447 million. It now runs about $45 million annually, about five times what it was in 1999.</p>
<p>Those lucrative purses give owners and trainers plenty of incentive to race horses that are injured, ill, doped up or too young. And with the money infusion to racing from slot machines, the excuse that we can’t afford better drug testing procedures is ridiculous.</p>
<p>While racino gambling and the money it hauls in has upped the ante, doping on New Mexico tracks predates the racinos.</p>
<p>A Journal investigation in the mid-1980s found that stimulants and other drugs used to “hop” horses were readily available at tracks. While New Mexico has banned Clenbuterol, a steroid-like drug, other drugs allowed on race days to treat pain can mask injuries that can lead to breakdowns.</p>
<p>New Mexico has lousy testing, allows excessive medication amounts of some drugs and does pathetic enforcement for doping violations.</p>
<p>Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is co-sponsoring a bill that would require tracks nationwide that provide “simulcast” or Internet wagering to ban performance-enhancing drugs, test the winning horse plus one additional horse from each race and add penalties for doping violations, including fines and a “three strikes you’re out” rule.</p>
<p>Setting standards is an excellent idea, but enforcement should be left to the states rather than creating another federal bureaucracy to police the industry.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, New Mexico’s Racing Commission should step up and address this long-festering problem. While it says it lacks money to test more horses that race in New Mexico, why is the state paying for drug tests in the first place? That should be a cost of doing business for racinos and horse owners.</p>
<p>With purses averaging $45 million a year, the money is out there.</p>
<p>If only for humane reasons, the horse racing industry should not view the animals that make it money as commodities to be tossed aside.</p>
<p>Quarter horse racing may have arisen out of the Wild West days, but at least the iconic cowboy knew he had to treat his horse well. Otherwise he’d be afoot. Without courageous and spirited horses, New Mexico’s racing industry would be afoot as well.</p>
<p>This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.</p> | 1,545 |
<p>“The commitment to stay union-free must exist at all levels of management–from the chairperson of the ‘Board’ down to the front-line manager. Therefore, no one in management is immune from carrying his or her ‘own weight’ in the union prevention effort.”</p>
<p>–from “Labor Relations and You at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center #6022”</p>
<p>ONCE UPON a time, GM was the biggest employer in the U.S. In the historic labor battles of the 1930s, GM workers formed the United Auto Workers (UAW). During the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, they won substantial gains in wages and benefits.</p>
<p>Of course, both GM and the UAW are now pale shadows of their former selves. Today the largest employer in the U.S. (and the world) is the anti-union behemoth Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s 1.4 million U.S. “associates” often earn poverty or near poverty wages.</p>
<p>As Nelson Lichtenstein writes in his new book <a href="" type="internal">The Retail Revolution</a>, Wal-Mart got its start in one of the poorest and least-unionized sections of the South nearly five decades ago–in an overwhelmingly white stretch of rural Arkansas that had been mostly untouched by the New Deal and civil rights.</p>
<p>It was during the economic crises of the 1970s and the right-wing “Reagan Revolution” of the 1980s that Wal-Mart first blossomed into a retail giant. As recession and free-market policies rolled back the gains of the New Deal and civil rights era, Wal-Mart thrived. Not only that, it reproduced the conditions of its origin as it spread outward from Arkansas through the South and Midwest.</p>
<p>Wal-Mart drives down retail wages and busts retail unions. But it has also situated itself in a command position within the globalized manufacturing and shipping system. In that position, it uses its leverage to drive down manufacturing wages and compel offshoring.</p>
<p>A “battle royal” is building between the Beast of Bentonville and its workers, Lichtenstein argues–a battle he believes will “shape American life for a generation.”</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>THE GREAT labor upsurge of the 1930s didn’t leave the world of retail work completely untouched. Thousands of retail clerks joined employee organizations and unions. Even where there were no such organizations, widespread unionization eventually put upward pressure on retail workers’ wages.</p>
<p>Some department store mini-chains that catered to lower income workers–particularly in urban areas–were even owned by immigrant families who openly professed support for labor and the New Deal. After the Second World War, department stores that catered neither to the rich or poor but a generation of workers that now had a modicum of disposable income proliferated. Clerks at these chains–like Sears and J.C. Penny–were generally nonunion and made less than manufacturing workers, but were paid enough (and given enough autonomy) to keep unions out without losing employees.</p>
<p>But the economic downturn of the 1970s created conditions that were ripe for the return of low-cost retail outlets. The first chain to benefit from the new climate was Kmart, which had established stores in working-class suburbs throughout the Midwest. Kmart’s customer base included millions of blue -collar union workers.</p>
<p>Wal-Mart, however, came of age far from this milieu. As Lichtenstein writes:</p>
<p>“Wal-Mart began its stupendous growth in a region that was distinctively provincial, even fundamentally at odds with the economic structures and political expectations that had nurtured commerce in the great northern tier of industrial states that stretched from Boston to Chicago and Minneapolis. America’s manufacturing belt was a region of ethnic and racial heterogeneity, home to an increasingly skilled workforce and, after the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society eras, a potent union movement and an extensive welfare state.</p>
<p>“In contrast, the Ozarks of northeast Arkansas and southern Missouri were poor, white and rural. Neither the New Deal nor the civil rights impulse had really come to the region when Sam Walton began to assemble his chain of small-town stores in the 1950s and 1960s.”</p>
<p>Lichtenstein exaggerates the extent of the Northern “welfare state.” Nevertheless, in its formative years, Wal-Mart was able to escape a host of labor regulations and play fast and loose with the minimum wage, price-controls (that had been enacted to put a check on the growth of large chains) and various “Yankee” laws and business practices.</p>
<p>Wal-Mart had the space to design its own deregulated low wage business model–a model that could seize the “opportunity” presented by the end of the post-war economic boom and then the general turn toward neoliberalism, deregulation, union-busting and the free market.</p>
<p>The architect of this empire was Sam Walton.</p>
<p>Walton liked to project a down-home folksy persona–but his roots weren’t exactly the salt of the earth. Sam’s father worked as a debt collector during the Great Depression and took his son with him to meet with farmers defaulting on their mortgages.</p>
<p>Lichtenstein writes, “Tens of thousands of farmers were in default, and it was part of Walton’s job to assess the property, make the threats, and serve the papers that dispossessed a generation of families from their land.”</p>
<p>Sam claimed that his father tried to leave farmers with what little “self-respect” he could–but as Lichtenstein writes, “the dispossession of so many rural folk was still something close to theft, the brutal climax of America’s great enclosure movement, a multi-decade eviction that would prepare the cultural and economic ground on which Sam Walton built his commercial empire.”</p>
<p>Dispossessing farmers paid reasonably well, but Sam Walton needed more start-up capital for his empire than his father’s real-life job as a villain from The Grapes of Wrath had bequeathed him. So Walton did what many other “self-made men” have done; he married into money. Sam’s wife, Helen Robson, was the daughter of a local banker and politician. Most importantly, she had a trust fund that allowed Walton to start buying up department stores.</p>
<p>Before Wal-Mart, retail in rural Arkansas was dominated by small general stores down the dirt and gravel side-roads from small farms. The New Deal paved Arkansas’ roads, and post-war highway construction allowed for larger stores to service larger areas.</p>
<p>The Great Depression–with the help of Sam Walton’s father–had deprived thousands of farmers of their livelihoods, making them desperate for work, and the poverty of the region meant customers were looking for discounts.</p>
<p>In other words, rural Arkansas was ripe for low-wage big box retail.</p>
<p>After several years of managing or franchising other chain stores, Walton struck out on his own and formed Wal-Mart. The 1970s were, as Lichtenstein writes, Walton’s “miracle decade.” Wal-Mart “moved from obscurity and regional curiosity to crack the $1 billion sales mark. Opening as many as 50 new stores each year, Walton saw revenues soar at an annual rate of almost 40 percent.”</p>
<p>Walton opened almost all of his new stores at this time in towns with a population of less than 10,000 people to ensure domination of the local market. Wal-Mart established a near monopoly in town after town. Throughout the 1970s, Wal-Mart “grew between four and five times as rapidly as Penny’s, Kmart and Woolco, the discount version of Woolworth.”</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>LOW WAGES were central to Wal-Mart’s success, but so too was Walton’s obsession with absolute control over inventory and supply and later on, the use of technology. Wal-Mart cut out the retail “middleman” and came to employ the most advanced technology to keep track of its goods. It was Wal-Mart that led the way toward the universal adoption of the bar code and the eradication of the wholesale salesmen and jobbers that had dominated retail.</p>
<p>Before Wal-Mart most retail outlets–especially outside the big urban markets–had to rely on others to do their warehousing. Stores had little control over supply compared to the big brand name manufacturers that supplied them. Walton changed this by creating–from the start–his own in-house supply, trucking and warehouse system. As one executive put it, “the misconception is that we’re in the retail business, we’re in the distribution business.”</p>
<p>Up until 1978, no Wal-Mart stores were ever built more than a day’s drive from corporate headquarters. As Wal-Mart spread outward from its base in Bentonville, it did so in roughly concentric circles, with each new wave of stores preceded by a new distribution center (DC). Today, the company has more than 120 DCs across North America:</p>
<p>“Today a typical DC is gigantic, sprawling over 1.2 million square feet, with roofs that cover the equivalent of 15 or 20 football fields. Two or three hundred trucks arrive each day, either from the company’s suppliers or to pick up a load for the stores. The trucks nestle into one of the hundred or more bays that penetrate each side of the mile-long wall that encloses the distribution center itself. From these semi-trailers, thousands of boxes, each labeled with its own identifying bar code and destination address, are quickly fed along one of the many small conveyors–there are more than 20 miles in all…</p>
<p>“These river-like streams of boxes then converge in four larger tributaries at a “merge center,” from which the torrent of boxes streams into a mechanized sorting area. Three electronic eyes read the labels after which electric arms reach out and guide the boxes, destined for particular Wal-Mart stores, out of the sorting area and into one of the facility’s 100 chutes, which lead onto a waiting truck, all at the rate of 200 cartons per minute, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.”</p>
<p>All this is controlled by computer from Arkansas. When Wal-Mart first began, however, technology had not caught up to Walton’s designs. With the invention of the bar code–the first product to be stamped with a Universal Product Code was a packet of gum in 1974–Walton had found the technological advance he needed.</p>
<p>In 1980, Wal-Mart began to install scanners in its stores. Productivity increased by 50 percent. Within a few years, Wal-Mart made scanners standard in all stores, and managers awarded cashiers with pins for “those who could scan 500 items per hour.”</p>
<p>In the mid-1980s Walton’s empire spread into space: “Wal-Mart took the lead, deploying the world’s largest private, integrated satellite communication network, which beamed data, voice, and video communication to and from corporate headquarters and more than 1,500 stores, all via a single communications satellite in geostationary orbit 23,300 miles above the equator.”</p>
<p>In real time, Wal-Mart executives now know exactly what is being stocked, shipped and sold in every store on the plant. And in real time, Wal-Mart executives can talk live via satellite to their army of underpaid associates.</p>
<p>Wal-Mart changed the balance of power between retailers and manufacturers. Manufacturers who once set prices found they had to bow before Wal-Mart’s constant demand for low wages if they to access this increasingly massive distribution and retail network.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>BENTONVILLE IS just as interested in monitoring its employees as it is in monitoring its products. Because wages and working conditions at Wal-Mart are so poor the company has notable difficulty controlling employees. For example, off-the-clock work is (illegally) expected of employees as a matter of course.</p>
<p>Turnover of shop-floor employees has frequently approached crisis proportions. In 1999, the company had a 70 percent turnover rate and 67 percent of entry-level workers quit within three months. Some of these employees were no doubt convinced to quit after they proved incompatible with Wal-Mart’s culture of hyper-exploitation. Of course, very few former associates ever receive unemployment benefits.</p>
<p>Turnover has declined over the past 10 years (along with the deteriorating economy). Still, it costs the company millions of dollars a year. They’re reportedly researching ways to automate both hiring and firing.</p>
<p>Of course, if you can’t quit and you can’t make ends meet with your paltry Wal-Mart paycheck, you can always steal from work. Employee theft is counted in retail losses along with shoplifting as a part of what is called “shrinkage.” Shrinkage, Lichtenstein writes, amounts to about “$30 billion a year in unexplained inventory losses”–nearly half is a result of employee theft.</p>
<p>Wal-Mart is obsessed with shrinkage. In the 1980s and 1990s, the company developed its own internal police force–called Loss Prevention–to deal with employee theft and to spy on employees. “By 2000, there were more than 550 salaried managers in Loss Prevention, scores of internal auditors, and thousands of in-store hourly employees to keep associates and managers both vigilant and fearful.”</p>
<p>Loss Prevention even went after “loyal” employees who considered themselves steeped in Wal-Mart’s corporate culture, arbitrarily demanding they be fired even when managers’ defended them. Walton’s mini-Gestapo had so much power that even dozens of store managers circulated a letter in protest.</p>
<p>Public Enemy number one in Bentonville, however, was (and is) organized labor.</p>
<p>Sam Walton developed a nearly messianic opposition to unions and he spread that gospel throughout every corner of his growing empire. It was an opposition fueling by the same forces that led Arkansas to become the nation’s first “right-to-work” state.</p>
<p>When Wal-Mart first felt the “union threat” in 1972, Walton turned to John Tate, one of the founding fathers of the modern “union avoidance” industry. Tate had cut his teeth in the post-war battle between union workers and packinghouse bosses in Omaha–a battle the unions won. Tate, however, soldiered on.</p>
<p>As Lichtenstein writes, “Tate traveled in right-wing political circles that linked militant anti-unionism to a libertarian rejection of the welfare state, fair employment legislation, and regulatory oversight by the federal government. This put him in league with the John Birch Society and the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade.”</p>
<p>When Walton “faced union trouble at two stores in central Missouri,” he put in a phone call to Tate for help. Tate’s strategy for dealing with the union threat was twofold: bust the union and at the same time develop a more paternalistic approach to associates. This is the origin of Wal-Mart’s “We Care” program. This included a “profit-sharing” scheme and a way for associates to bypass their supervisors to talk directly with Bentonville.</p>
<p>The profit sharing was set up in such a way that even at its high point fewer than 1 in 50 employees ever saw any money. “The most important impact of the profit-sharing scheme was ideological,” Lichtenstein writes, “linking the employees to the fate of the company, but also justifying the self-exploitation that was integral to Wal-Mart culture.”</p>
<p>Likewise, the direct employee pipeline to corporate executives had less to do with solving problems than finding out about them soon enough to prevent union activity.</p>
<p>In the late 1970s, a group of DC workers and truckers started to organize, and the Teamsters launched union drives in Bentonville and Searcy, Arkansas. An overwhelming majority of the Bentonville DC workers even signed union cards. But after a long anti-union campaign in which Sam Walton threatened to close the warehouse down, the union was busted.</p>
<p>Rather than redoubling their efforts after having come so close, much of organized labor concluded that Wal-Mart was too difficult to organize. Wal-Mart drew the opposite lesson and became even more vigilant in “union avoidance” warning new associates that any flirtation with unionization would result in violence and conflict.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>EVENTUALLY the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) targeted Wal-Mart, or more accurately found their own members in Wal-Mart’s crosshairs. The UFCW represented (and still represents) a significant number of grocery workers. However, Wal-Mart was able to undercut its union (and non-union) supermarket competitors as it expanded into the business. Labor costs represented up to 70 percent of total expenditures among the traditional supermarkets. But Wal-Mart’s labor costs were far lower.</p>
<p>UFCW members were, as Lichtenstein writes, “caught in the squeeze” as their current employers were run out of a market or as they cut their own employees’ wages to “remain competitive.” The UFCW launched a campaign to organize Wal-Mart.</p>
<p>That campaign has been more “defensive” than “offensive.” UFCW has offered support to some of the few dozen groups of workers who have tried (over the years) to organize at different stores, but has often focused on efforts to keep Wal-Mart out of certain markets–for example, the campaign to keep Wal-Mart out of Chicago.</p>
<p>In the organizing drives that have occurred, Wal-Mart has sprung into action to stamp out the union threat. Local managers are told they are on full-time anti-union work and if they hesitate they are immediately fired. “Then comes,” Lichtenstein writes, “a barrage of leaflets, videos, personnel shifts and meetings with individual employees, often climaxed with an on-site visit by top corporate executives. Captive audience assembles become more frequent and more intimidating as the presumptive date of the NLRB election draws near.”</p>
<p>If the union does win, as in the case of two Canadian stores, or among a group of Texas butchers, Wal-Mart simply closes the store–or in the case of the butchers, abolishes the department. Bentonville keeps constant track of the “union threat” through a “Union Probability Index” (UPI), later rechristened “Unaddressed People Issues.” A store with a high index is given special attention by Wal-Mart headquarters, so that the “right people” (i.e., troublemakers) can be transferred, fired, have their hours cut or otherwise be shown the door.</p>
<p>There is of course, much else that can be said about Wal-Mart. For example, Lichtenstein shows how the company cynically used a “Buy American” campaign in the 1980s at the same time as it was setting up its new global (and now largely China-based) supply network. He also explores Wal-Mart’s bizarre paternalistic corporate culture.</p>
<p>All this is important, but what stands out the most about this company is that it thrives when workers (here and abroad) fall behind.</p>
<p>For Wal-Mart, economic hard times mean more customers and more desperate employees. It is no accident that Wal-Mart’s “miracle decade” was the same decade that saw the end of the post-Second World War economic boom. Similarly, deindustrialization at home and hyper-exploitation of workers abroad are simply the natural byproducts of their business-model–byproducts that also have the added bonus of increasing Wal-Mart’s customer base.</p>
<p>Through relentless exploitation and innovation Wal-Mart has become a dominant economic and political force.</p>
<p>Lichtenstein’s book is titled, The Retail Revolution. Wal-Mart “revolutionized” the technical and logistical aspects of retail and supply, but at the same time Wal-Mart represents a sort of counter-revolution against the historic gains of the labor movement.</p>
<p>Still, those who think Wal-Mart is “too powerful” to organize should take stock of Bentonville’s obsession with organized labor. Wal-Mart is afraid of its own employees. It’s afraid of what it has created. It fears at the very core of its being the accumulated grievances of its associates.</p>
<p>It is time for organized labor–and not just the UFCW–to do whatever it takes and allocate whatever resources it takes. That cannot be a merely defensive campaign, but an offensive one–a campaign to help Wal-Mart workers organize and fight for themselves.</p>
<p>ADAM TURL writes for the <a href="http://www.socialistworker.org" type="external">Socialist Worker</a>, where this article originally appeared.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | The Wal-Mart Counter-Revolution | true | https://counterpunch.org/2010/02/19/the-wal-mart-counter-revolution/ | 2010-02-19 | 4left
| The Wal-Mart Counter-Revolution
<p>“The commitment to stay union-free must exist at all levels of management–from the chairperson of the ‘Board’ down to the front-line manager. Therefore, no one in management is immune from carrying his or her ‘own weight’ in the union prevention effort.”</p>
<p>–from “Labor Relations and You at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center #6022”</p>
<p>ONCE UPON a time, GM was the biggest employer in the U.S. In the historic labor battles of the 1930s, GM workers formed the United Auto Workers (UAW). During the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, they won substantial gains in wages and benefits.</p>
<p>Of course, both GM and the UAW are now pale shadows of their former selves. Today the largest employer in the U.S. (and the world) is the anti-union behemoth Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s 1.4 million U.S. “associates” often earn poverty or near poverty wages.</p>
<p>As Nelson Lichtenstein writes in his new book <a href="" type="internal">The Retail Revolution</a>, Wal-Mart got its start in one of the poorest and least-unionized sections of the South nearly five decades ago–in an overwhelmingly white stretch of rural Arkansas that had been mostly untouched by the New Deal and civil rights.</p>
<p>It was during the economic crises of the 1970s and the right-wing “Reagan Revolution” of the 1980s that Wal-Mart first blossomed into a retail giant. As recession and free-market policies rolled back the gains of the New Deal and civil rights era, Wal-Mart thrived. Not only that, it reproduced the conditions of its origin as it spread outward from Arkansas through the South and Midwest.</p>
<p>Wal-Mart drives down retail wages and busts retail unions. But it has also situated itself in a command position within the globalized manufacturing and shipping system. In that position, it uses its leverage to drive down manufacturing wages and compel offshoring.</p>
<p>A “battle royal” is building between the Beast of Bentonville and its workers, Lichtenstein argues–a battle he believes will “shape American life for a generation.”</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>THE GREAT labor upsurge of the 1930s didn’t leave the world of retail work completely untouched. Thousands of retail clerks joined employee organizations and unions. Even where there were no such organizations, widespread unionization eventually put upward pressure on retail workers’ wages.</p>
<p>Some department store mini-chains that catered to lower income workers–particularly in urban areas–were even owned by immigrant families who openly professed support for labor and the New Deal. After the Second World War, department stores that catered neither to the rich or poor but a generation of workers that now had a modicum of disposable income proliferated. Clerks at these chains–like Sears and J.C. Penny–were generally nonunion and made less than manufacturing workers, but were paid enough (and given enough autonomy) to keep unions out without losing employees.</p>
<p>But the economic downturn of the 1970s created conditions that were ripe for the return of low-cost retail outlets. The first chain to benefit from the new climate was Kmart, which had established stores in working-class suburbs throughout the Midwest. Kmart’s customer base included millions of blue -collar union workers.</p>
<p>Wal-Mart, however, came of age far from this milieu. As Lichtenstein writes:</p>
<p>“Wal-Mart began its stupendous growth in a region that was distinctively provincial, even fundamentally at odds with the economic structures and political expectations that had nurtured commerce in the great northern tier of industrial states that stretched from Boston to Chicago and Minneapolis. America’s manufacturing belt was a region of ethnic and racial heterogeneity, home to an increasingly skilled workforce and, after the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society eras, a potent union movement and an extensive welfare state.</p>
<p>“In contrast, the Ozarks of northeast Arkansas and southern Missouri were poor, white and rural. Neither the New Deal nor the civil rights impulse had really come to the region when Sam Walton began to assemble his chain of small-town stores in the 1950s and 1960s.”</p>
<p>Lichtenstein exaggerates the extent of the Northern “welfare state.” Nevertheless, in its formative years, Wal-Mart was able to escape a host of labor regulations and play fast and loose with the minimum wage, price-controls (that had been enacted to put a check on the growth of large chains) and various “Yankee” laws and business practices.</p>
<p>Wal-Mart had the space to design its own deregulated low wage business model–a model that could seize the “opportunity” presented by the end of the post-war economic boom and then the general turn toward neoliberalism, deregulation, union-busting and the free market.</p>
<p>The architect of this empire was Sam Walton.</p>
<p>Walton liked to project a down-home folksy persona–but his roots weren’t exactly the salt of the earth. Sam’s father worked as a debt collector during the Great Depression and took his son with him to meet with farmers defaulting on their mortgages.</p>
<p>Lichtenstein writes, “Tens of thousands of farmers were in default, and it was part of Walton’s job to assess the property, make the threats, and serve the papers that dispossessed a generation of families from their land.”</p>
<p>Sam claimed that his father tried to leave farmers with what little “self-respect” he could–but as Lichtenstein writes, “the dispossession of so many rural folk was still something close to theft, the brutal climax of America’s great enclosure movement, a multi-decade eviction that would prepare the cultural and economic ground on which Sam Walton built his commercial empire.”</p>
<p>Dispossessing farmers paid reasonably well, but Sam Walton needed more start-up capital for his empire than his father’s real-life job as a villain from The Grapes of Wrath had bequeathed him. So Walton did what many other “self-made men” have done; he married into money. Sam’s wife, Helen Robson, was the daughter of a local banker and politician. Most importantly, she had a trust fund that allowed Walton to start buying up department stores.</p>
<p>Before Wal-Mart, retail in rural Arkansas was dominated by small general stores down the dirt and gravel side-roads from small farms. The New Deal paved Arkansas’ roads, and post-war highway construction allowed for larger stores to service larger areas.</p>
<p>The Great Depression–with the help of Sam Walton’s father–had deprived thousands of farmers of their livelihoods, making them desperate for work, and the poverty of the region meant customers were looking for discounts.</p>
<p>In other words, rural Arkansas was ripe for low-wage big box retail.</p>
<p>After several years of managing or franchising other chain stores, Walton struck out on his own and formed Wal-Mart. The 1970s were, as Lichtenstein writes, Walton’s “miracle decade.” Wal-Mart “moved from obscurity and regional curiosity to crack the $1 billion sales mark. Opening as many as 50 new stores each year, Walton saw revenues soar at an annual rate of almost 40 percent.”</p>
<p>Walton opened almost all of his new stores at this time in towns with a population of less than 10,000 people to ensure domination of the local market. Wal-Mart established a near monopoly in town after town. Throughout the 1970s, Wal-Mart “grew between four and five times as rapidly as Penny’s, Kmart and Woolco, the discount version of Woolworth.”</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>LOW WAGES were central to Wal-Mart’s success, but so too was Walton’s obsession with absolute control over inventory and supply and later on, the use of technology. Wal-Mart cut out the retail “middleman” and came to employ the most advanced technology to keep track of its goods. It was Wal-Mart that led the way toward the universal adoption of the bar code and the eradication of the wholesale salesmen and jobbers that had dominated retail.</p>
<p>Before Wal-Mart most retail outlets–especially outside the big urban markets–had to rely on others to do their warehousing. Stores had little control over supply compared to the big brand name manufacturers that supplied them. Walton changed this by creating–from the start–his own in-house supply, trucking and warehouse system. As one executive put it, “the misconception is that we’re in the retail business, we’re in the distribution business.”</p>
<p>Up until 1978, no Wal-Mart stores were ever built more than a day’s drive from corporate headquarters. As Wal-Mart spread outward from its base in Bentonville, it did so in roughly concentric circles, with each new wave of stores preceded by a new distribution center (DC). Today, the company has more than 120 DCs across North America:</p>
<p>“Today a typical DC is gigantic, sprawling over 1.2 million square feet, with roofs that cover the equivalent of 15 or 20 football fields. Two or three hundred trucks arrive each day, either from the company’s suppliers or to pick up a load for the stores. The trucks nestle into one of the hundred or more bays that penetrate each side of the mile-long wall that encloses the distribution center itself. From these semi-trailers, thousands of boxes, each labeled with its own identifying bar code and destination address, are quickly fed along one of the many small conveyors–there are more than 20 miles in all…</p>
<p>“These river-like streams of boxes then converge in four larger tributaries at a “merge center,” from which the torrent of boxes streams into a mechanized sorting area. Three electronic eyes read the labels after which electric arms reach out and guide the boxes, destined for particular Wal-Mart stores, out of the sorting area and into one of the facility’s 100 chutes, which lead onto a waiting truck, all at the rate of 200 cartons per minute, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.”</p>
<p>All this is controlled by computer from Arkansas. When Wal-Mart first began, however, technology had not caught up to Walton’s designs. With the invention of the bar code–the first product to be stamped with a Universal Product Code was a packet of gum in 1974–Walton had found the technological advance he needed.</p>
<p>In 1980, Wal-Mart began to install scanners in its stores. Productivity increased by 50 percent. Within a few years, Wal-Mart made scanners standard in all stores, and managers awarded cashiers with pins for “those who could scan 500 items per hour.”</p>
<p>In the mid-1980s Walton’s empire spread into space: “Wal-Mart took the lead, deploying the world’s largest private, integrated satellite communication network, which beamed data, voice, and video communication to and from corporate headquarters and more than 1,500 stores, all via a single communications satellite in geostationary orbit 23,300 miles above the equator.”</p>
<p>In real time, Wal-Mart executives now know exactly what is being stocked, shipped and sold in every store on the plant. And in real time, Wal-Mart executives can talk live via satellite to their army of underpaid associates.</p>
<p>Wal-Mart changed the balance of power between retailers and manufacturers. Manufacturers who once set prices found they had to bow before Wal-Mart’s constant demand for low wages if they to access this increasingly massive distribution and retail network.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>BENTONVILLE IS just as interested in monitoring its employees as it is in monitoring its products. Because wages and working conditions at Wal-Mart are so poor the company has notable difficulty controlling employees. For example, off-the-clock work is (illegally) expected of employees as a matter of course.</p>
<p>Turnover of shop-floor employees has frequently approached crisis proportions. In 1999, the company had a 70 percent turnover rate and 67 percent of entry-level workers quit within three months. Some of these employees were no doubt convinced to quit after they proved incompatible with Wal-Mart’s culture of hyper-exploitation. Of course, very few former associates ever receive unemployment benefits.</p>
<p>Turnover has declined over the past 10 years (along with the deteriorating economy). Still, it costs the company millions of dollars a year. They’re reportedly researching ways to automate both hiring and firing.</p>
<p>Of course, if you can’t quit and you can’t make ends meet with your paltry Wal-Mart paycheck, you can always steal from work. Employee theft is counted in retail losses along with shoplifting as a part of what is called “shrinkage.” Shrinkage, Lichtenstein writes, amounts to about “$30 billion a year in unexplained inventory losses”–nearly half is a result of employee theft.</p>
<p>Wal-Mart is obsessed with shrinkage. In the 1980s and 1990s, the company developed its own internal police force–called Loss Prevention–to deal with employee theft and to spy on employees. “By 2000, there were more than 550 salaried managers in Loss Prevention, scores of internal auditors, and thousands of in-store hourly employees to keep associates and managers both vigilant and fearful.”</p>
<p>Loss Prevention even went after “loyal” employees who considered themselves steeped in Wal-Mart’s corporate culture, arbitrarily demanding they be fired even when managers’ defended them. Walton’s mini-Gestapo had so much power that even dozens of store managers circulated a letter in protest.</p>
<p>Public Enemy number one in Bentonville, however, was (and is) organized labor.</p>
<p>Sam Walton developed a nearly messianic opposition to unions and he spread that gospel throughout every corner of his growing empire. It was an opposition fueling by the same forces that led Arkansas to become the nation’s first “right-to-work” state.</p>
<p>When Wal-Mart first felt the “union threat” in 1972, Walton turned to John Tate, one of the founding fathers of the modern “union avoidance” industry. Tate had cut his teeth in the post-war battle between union workers and packinghouse bosses in Omaha–a battle the unions won. Tate, however, soldiered on.</p>
<p>As Lichtenstein writes, “Tate traveled in right-wing political circles that linked militant anti-unionism to a libertarian rejection of the welfare state, fair employment legislation, and regulatory oversight by the federal government. This put him in league with the John Birch Society and the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade.”</p>
<p>When Walton “faced union trouble at two stores in central Missouri,” he put in a phone call to Tate for help. Tate’s strategy for dealing with the union threat was twofold: bust the union and at the same time develop a more paternalistic approach to associates. This is the origin of Wal-Mart’s “We Care” program. This included a “profit-sharing” scheme and a way for associates to bypass their supervisors to talk directly with Bentonville.</p>
<p>The profit sharing was set up in such a way that even at its high point fewer than 1 in 50 employees ever saw any money. “The most important impact of the profit-sharing scheme was ideological,” Lichtenstein writes, “linking the employees to the fate of the company, but also justifying the self-exploitation that was integral to Wal-Mart culture.”</p>
<p>Likewise, the direct employee pipeline to corporate executives had less to do with solving problems than finding out about them soon enough to prevent union activity.</p>
<p>In the late 1970s, a group of DC workers and truckers started to organize, and the Teamsters launched union drives in Bentonville and Searcy, Arkansas. An overwhelming majority of the Bentonville DC workers even signed union cards. But after a long anti-union campaign in which Sam Walton threatened to close the warehouse down, the union was busted.</p>
<p>Rather than redoubling their efforts after having come so close, much of organized labor concluded that Wal-Mart was too difficult to organize. Wal-Mart drew the opposite lesson and became even more vigilant in “union avoidance” warning new associates that any flirtation with unionization would result in violence and conflict.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>EVENTUALLY the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) targeted Wal-Mart, or more accurately found their own members in Wal-Mart’s crosshairs. The UFCW represented (and still represents) a significant number of grocery workers. However, Wal-Mart was able to undercut its union (and non-union) supermarket competitors as it expanded into the business. Labor costs represented up to 70 percent of total expenditures among the traditional supermarkets. But Wal-Mart’s labor costs were far lower.</p>
<p>UFCW members were, as Lichtenstein writes, “caught in the squeeze” as their current employers were run out of a market or as they cut their own employees’ wages to “remain competitive.” The UFCW launched a campaign to organize Wal-Mart.</p>
<p>That campaign has been more “defensive” than “offensive.” UFCW has offered support to some of the few dozen groups of workers who have tried (over the years) to organize at different stores, but has often focused on efforts to keep Wal-Mart out of certain markets–for example, the campaign to keep Wal-Mart out of Chicago.</p>
<p>In the organizing drives that have occurred, Wal-Mart has sprung into action to stamp out the union threat. Local managers are told they are on full-time anti-union work and if they hesitate they are immediately fired. “Then comes,” Lichtenstein writes, “a barrage of leaflets, videos, personnel shifts and meetings with individual employees, often climaxed with an on-site visit by top corporate executives. Captive audience assembles become more frequent and more intimidating as the presumptive date of the NLRB election draws near.”</p>
<p>If the union does win, as in the case of two Canadian stores, or among a group of Texas butchers, Wal-Mart simply closes the store–or in the case of the butchers, abolishes the department. Bentonville keeps constant track of the “union threat” through a “Union Probability Index” (UPI), later rechristened “Unaddressed People Issues.” A store with a high index is given special attention by Wal-Mart headquarters, so that the “right people” (i.e., troublemakers) can be transferred, fired, have their hours cut or otherwise be shown the door.</p>
<p>There is of course, much else that can be said about Wal-Mart. For example, Lichtenstein shows how the company cynically used a “Buy American” campaign in the 1980s at the same time as it was setting up its new global (and now largely China-based) supply network. He also explores Wal-Mart’s bizarre paternalistic corporate culture.</p>
<p>All this is important, but what stands out the most about this company is that it thrives when workers (here and abroad) fall behind.</p>
<p>For Wal-Mart, economic hard times mean more customers and more desperate employees. It is no accident that Wal-Mart’s “miracle decade” was the same decade that saw the end of the post-Second World War economic boom. Similarly, deindustrialization at home and hyper-exploitation of workers abroad are simply the natural byproducts of their business-model–byproducts that also have the added bonus of increasing Wal-Mart’s customer base.</p>
<p>Through relentless exploitation and innovation Wal-Mart has become a dominant economic and political force.</p>
<p>Lichtenstein’s book is titled, The Retail Revolution. Wal-Mart “revolutionized” the technical and logistical aspects of retail and supply, but at the same time Wal-Mart represents a sort of counter-revolution against the historic gains of the labor movement.</p>
<p>Still, those who think Wal-Mart is “too powerful” to organize should take stock of Bentonville’s obsession with organized labor. Wal-Mart is afraid of its own employees. It’s afraid of what it has created. It fears at the very core of its being the accumulated grievances of its associates.</p>
<p>It is time for organized labor–and not just the UFCW–to do whatever it takes and allocate whatever resources it takes. That cannot be a merely defensive campaign, but an offensive one–a campaign to help Wal-Mart workers organize and fight for themselves.</p>
<p>ADAM TURL writes for the <a href="http://www.socialistworker.org" type="external">Socialist Worker</a>, where this article originally appeared.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | 1,546 |
<p>BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary's president has announced that parliamentary elections will be held on April 8.</p>
<p>President Janos Ader said Thursday in a statement that the vote will be held on the anniversary of the 1990 elections, the first after the end of communism.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Viktor Orban will be seeking his third consecutive term — and fourth overall. Polls show his Fidesz party holding a huge lead over a fragmented opposition.</p>
<p>Orban has strongly rejected mass migration — especially by Muslims — and has portrayed the elections as a choice between keeping the border fences Hungary built in 2015 to stop migrants or reopening a path for them into Europe.</p>
<p>Voters will elect 199 lawmakers to four-year terms. The official election campaign will start on Feb. 17.</p>
<p>BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary's president has announced that parliamentary elections will be held on April 8.</p>
<p>President Janos Ader said Thursday in a statement that the vote will be held on the anniversary of the 1990 elections, the first after the end of communism.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Viktor Orban will be seeking his third consecutive term — and fourth overall. Polls show his Fidesz party holding a huge lead over a fragmented opposition.</p>
<p>Orban has strongly rejected mass migration — especially by Muslims — and has portrayed the elections as a choice between keeping the border fences Hungary built in 2015 to stop migrants or reopening a path for them into Europe.</p>
<p>Voters will elect 199 lawmakers to four-year terms. The official election campaign will start on Feb. 17.</p> | Hungary's president sets parliamentary elections for April 8 | false | https://apnews.com/amp/bee11ffe89484d0c87a915099946626f | 2018-01-11 | 2least
| Hungary's president sets parliamentary elections for April 8
<p>BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary's president has announced that parliamentary elections will be held on April 8.</p>
<p>President Janos Ader said Thursday in a statement that the vote will be held on the anniversary of the 1990 elections, the first after the end of communism.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Viktor Orban will be seeking his third consecutive term — and fourth overall. Polls show his Fidesz party holding a huge lead over a fragmented opposition.</p>
<p>Orban has strongly rejected mass migration — especially by Muslims — and has portrayed the elections as a choice between keeping the border fences Hungary built in 2015 to stop migrants or reopening a path for them into Europe.</p>
<p>Voters will elect 199 lawmakers to four-year terms. The official election campaign will start on Feb. 17.</p>
<p>BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary's president has announced that parliamentary elections will be held on April 8.</p>
<p>President Janos Ader said Thursday in a statement that the vote will be held on the anniversary of the 1990 elections, the first after the end of communism.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Viktor Orban will be seeking his third consecutive term — and fourth overall. Polls show his Fidesz party holding a huge lead over a fragmented opposition.</p>
<p>Orban has strongly rejected mass migration — especially by Muslims — and has portrayed the elections as a choice between keeping the border fences Hungary built in 2015 to stop migrants or reopening a path for them into Europe.</p>
<p>Voters will elect 199 lawmakers to four-year terms. The official election campaign will start on Feb. 17.</p> | 1,547 |
<p>The captain of the ferry that <a href="" type="internal">sank off South Korea</a> said that he was “deeply ashamed” Thursday as a criminal investigation began into the disaster.</p>
<p>Lee Joon-seok, 69, is being questioned by the coast guard, according to an official quoted by Reuters.</p>
<p>Lee appeared in front of Korean media with his face hidden in a gray hoodie. "I am really sorry and deeply ashamed," he said. "I don't know what to say."</p>
<p>Coast guard spokesman Kim Jae-in declined to speculate on the cause of sinking, but denied earlier reports by Yonhap news agency that the ferry had turned too swiftly. He also declined to say whether the ferry had drifted from its usual route.</p>
<p>Lee was filling in for the regular captain, who was on leave, but had been at sea for 40 years and had traveled on the route before, ferry operator Chonghaejin said.</p>
<p>Chonghaejin issued a brief statement via local media apologizing for the accident but has made no further comment.</p>
<p>Almost <a href="" type="internal">300 passengers remained still missing</a> after the vessel capsized and sank off South Korea on Wednesday.</p> | South Korea Ferry Captain: I Am ‘Deeply Ashamed’ | false | http://nbcnews.com/storyline/south-korea-ferry-disaster/south-korea-ferry-captain-i-am-deeply-ashamed-n82766 | 2014-04-17 | 3left-center
| South Korea Ferry Captain: I Am ‘Deeply Ashamed’
<p>The captain of the ferry that <a href="" type="internal">sank off South Korea</a> said that he was “deeply ashamed” Thursday as a criminal investigation began into the disaster.</p>
<p>Lee Joon-seok, 69, is being questioned by the coast guard, according to an official quoted by Reuters.</p>
<p>Lee appeared in front of Korean media with his face hidden in a gray hoodie. "I am really sorry and deeply ashamed," he said. "I don't know what to say."</p>
<p>Coast guard spokesman Kim Jae-in declined to speculate on the cause of sinking, but denied earlier reports by Yonhap news agency that the ferry had turned too swiftly. He also declined to say whether the ferry had drifted from its usual route.</p>
<p>Lee was filling in for the regular captain, who was on leave, but had been at sea for 40 years and had traveled on the route before, ferry operator Chonghaejin said.</p>
<p>Chonghaejin issued a brief statement via local media apologizing for the accident but has made no further comment.</p>
<p>Almost <a href="" type="internal">300 passengers remained still missing</a> after the vessel capsized and sank off South Korea on Wednesday.</p> | 1,548 |
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<p>Kim Vandevoorde, 40.</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An Albuquerque woman threw a glass bottle at her neighbor’s two-year-old child, cutting him above the eye, while yelling derogatory things about Mexicans Sunday, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.</p>
<p>The two-year-old’s family told police their neighbor — identified as 40-year-old Kim Vandevoorde — had been throwing bottles all night, and the the family had just gone inside and ignored it.</p>
<p>But they called police when she threw one at the 2-year-old, hitting him just above his right eye, the complaint states. The child was checked out on scene by emergency medical technicians.</p>
<p>Vandevoorde told police she accidentally struck the child with her trash can lid when she was throwing away glass. She said the neighbors had been drinking and playing loud music on her property all night.</p>
<p>She told police she hadn’t thrown any glass, but other neighbors said they saw her throwing the glass, and there was broken glass on the sidewalk, the officer noted.</p>
<p>Vandevoorde was charged with child abuse and booked into the county jail on $15,000 bail.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Police: Woman throws glass bottle at 2-year-old | false | https://abqjournal.com/466397/police-woman-throws-glass-bottle-at-2-year-old.html | 2least
| Police: Woman throws glass bottle at 2-year-old
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Kim Vandevoorde, 40.</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An Albuquerque woman threw a glass bottle at her neighbor’s two-year-old child, cutting him above the eye, while yelling derogatory things about Mexicans Sunday, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.</p>
<p>The two-year-old’s family told police their neighbor — identified as 40-year-old Kim Vandevoorde — had been throwing bottles all night, and the the family had just gone inside and ignored it.</p>
<p>But they called police when she threw one at the 2-year-old, hitting him just above his right eye, the complaint states. The child was checked out on scene by emergency medical technicians.</p>
<p>Vandevoorde told police she accidentally struck the child with her trash can lid when she was throwing away glass. She said the neighbors had been drinking and playing loud music on her property all night.</p>
<p>She told police she hadn’t thrown any glass, but other neighbors said they saw her throwing the glass, and there was broken glass on the sidewalk, the officer noted.</p>
<p>Vandevoorde was charged with child abuse and booked into the county jail on $15,000 bail.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 1,549 |
|
<p>As the Roberts hearings vividly demonstrated, and as any confirmation hearing between now and January 2009 will similarly demonstrate, Roe v. Wade did not settle the abortion debate. Neither did Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the 1992 decision affirming Roe‘s “central finding,” in which three Supreme Court justices instructed the American people to stop fretting about&#160;the issue. The American people declining to be so instructed, the debate has not only continued but intensified, even as the federal judiciary’s contortions over Roe have continued to distort our law and warp three-plus decades of American politics.</p>
<p>At his hearings, and irrespective of whether John Roberts was being quizzed on a constitutional “right to privacy,” his views of judicial precedent, or his philosophy of judging, Roe was lurking just beneath the surface. Some senators looked for clues that a Roberts Court would reverse what Justice Byron White (a Kennedy Democrat) called in 1973 an exercise in “raw judicial power.” Others sought assurance that a Roberts Court would do no such thing. But whatever the euphemisms, it was Roe that was on everyone’s mind. Future nominees can expect more of the same.</p>
<p>The arguments and the surrogate-arguments and the pseudo-arguments about Roe have been recycled so many times that it seemed, these past several months, as if there were nothing new to say on the subject (or, in the case of Senator Joe Biden, try to say – in correct English). Shortly after Chief Justice Roberts was confirmed, though, a friend sent me the following from Signposts in a Strange Land, a collection of novelist Walker Percy’s occasional essays – which, if it doesn’t say anything precisely new, does put the old truths in a new light, thanks to Percy’s keen eye and mordant wit:</p>
<p>“There is a wonderful irony here. It is this: the onset of individual life is not a dogma of the Church but a fact of science. How much more convenient if we lived in the thirteenth century, when no one knew anything about microbiology and arguments about the onset of life were legitimate. Compared to a modern textbook of embryology, Thomas Aquinas sounds like an American Civil Liberties Union member. Nowadays it is not some misguided ecclesiastics who are trying to suppress an embarrassing scientific fact. It is the secular juridical-journalistic establishment.</p>
<p>“Please indulge the novelist if he thinks in novelistic terms. Picture the scene. A Galileo trial in reverse. The Supreme Court is cross-examining a high school biology teacher and admonishing him that of course it is only his personal opinion that the fertilized human ovum is an individual human life. He is enjoined not to teach his private beliefs at a public school. Like Galileo, he caves in, submits, but in turning away is heard to murmur, ‘But it’s still alive!’</p>
<p>“To pro-abortionists: according to opinion polls, it looks as if you may get your way. But you’re not going to have it both ways. You are going to be told what you are doing.”</p>
<p>The dance around Roe will continue, because the politics of the moment do not permit an honest confrontation with the facts: the biological facts, the constitutional facts, and the moral facts. Perhaps, when the dance finally ends, Roe’s implausibility as constitutional doctrine will bring it down. Perhaps a Robert Court, affirming the work of state legislatures on partial-birth abortion, clinic regulation, informed consent, and parental notification, will hollow-out the “abortion liberty” to the point where it comes to mean virtually nothing. Perhaps.</p>
<p>Whatever the ultimate judicial outcome, the task of pro-life American citizens will remain the same: to remind our fellow-citizens, our legislators, our governors, our president, and our courts of the facts of the matter. The scientific fact is that a unique human life exists from the moment of conception. The constitutional fact is that Roe was wrongly decided. The moral fact is that the willful taking of an innocent human life is always a grave evil. These are the facts.</p>
<p>Those who deny the facts must be told what they are doing.</p>
<p>George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.</p> | Dancing Around the Issue | false | https://eppc.org/publications/dancing-around-the-issue/ | 1right-center
| Dancing Around the Issue
<p>As the Roberts hearings vividly demonstrated, and as any confirmation hearing between now and January 2009 will similarly demonstrate, Roe v. Wade did not settle the abortion debate. Neither did Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the 1992 decision affirming Roe‘s “central finding,” in which three Supreme Court justices instructed the American people to stop fretting about&#160;the issue. The American people declining to be so instructed, the debate has not only continued but intensified, even as the federal judiciary’s contortions over Roe have continued to distort our law and warp three-plus decades of American politics.</p>
<p>At his hearings, and irrespective of whether John Roberts was being quizzed on a constitutional “right to privacy,” his views of judicial precedent, or his philosophy of judging, Roe was lurking just beneath the surface. Some senators looked for clues that a Roberts Court would reverse what Justice Byron White (a Kennedy Democrat) called in 1973 an exercise in “raw judicial power.” Others sought assurance that a Roberts Court would do no such thing. But whatever the euphemisms, it was Roe that was on everyone’s mind. Future nominees can expect more of the same.</p>
<p>The arguments and the surrogate-arguments and the pseudo-arguments about Roe have been recycled so many times that it seemed, these past several months, as if there were nothing new to say on the subject (or, in the case of Senator Joe Biden, try to say – in correct English). Shortly after Chief Justice Roberts was confirmed, though, a friend sent me the following from Signposts in a Strange Land, a collection of novelist Walker Percy’s occasional essays – which, if it doesn’t say anything precisely new, does put the old truths in a new light, thanks to Percy’s keen eye and mordant wit:</p>
<p>“There is a wonderful irony here. It is this: the onset of individual life is not a dogma of the Church but a fact of science. How much more convenient if we lived in the thirteenth century, when no one knew anything about microbiology and arguments about the onset of life were legitimate. Compared to a modern textbook of embryology, Thomas Aquinas sounds like an American Civil Liberties Union member. Nowadays it is not some misguided ecclesiastics who are trying to suppress an embarrassing scientific fact. It is the secular juridical-journalistic establishment.</p>
<p>“Please indulge the novelist if he thinks in novelistic terms. Picture the scene. A Galileo trial in reverse. The Supreme Court is cross-examining a high school biology teacher and admonishing him that of course it is only his personal opinion that the fertilized human ovum is an individual human life. He is enjoined not to teach his private beliefs at a public school. Like Galileo, he caves in, submits, but in turning away is heard to murmur, ‘But it’s still alive!’</p>
<p>“To pro-abortionists: according to opinion polls, it looks as if you may get your way. But you’re not going to have it both ways. You are going to be told what you are doing.”</p>
<p>The dance around Roe will continue, because the politics of the moment do not permit an honest confrontation with the facts: the biological facts, the constitutional facts, and the moral facts. Perhaps, when the dance finally ends, Roe’s implausibility as constitutional doctrine will bring it down. Perhaps a Robert Court, affirming the work of state legislatures on partial-birth abortion, clinic regulation, informed consent, and parental notification, will hollow-out the “abortion liberty” to the point where it comes to mean virtually nothing. Perhaps.</p>
<p>Whatever the ultimate judicial outcome, the task of pro-life American citizens will remain the same: to remind our fellow-citizens, our legislators, our governors, our president, and our courts of the facts of the matter. The scientific fact is that a unique human life exists from the moment of conception. The constitutional fact is that Roe was wrongly decided. The moral fact is that the willful taking of an innocent human life is always a grave evil. These are the facts.</p>
<p>Those who deny the facts must be told what they are doing.</p>
<p>George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.</p> | 1,550 |
|
<p>SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — A woman who owned a Shreveport tax preparation business has pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns even after her electronic filing number was revoked.</p>
<p>U.S. Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook says 47-year-old Deborah A. Turner, of Shreveport, pleaded guilty Monday before U.S. Magistrate Mark L. Hornsby to one count each of making and subscribing a false tax return and aiding and assisting in making and subscribing a false return.</p>
<p>The plea will become final after it is accepted by U.S. District Judge S. Maurice Hicks Jr.</p>
<p>The IRS revoked Turner's electronic filing number, but she started using her daughter's number to continue filing returns containing false information so her clients could increase the size of their refunds.</p>
<p>Turner faces up to three years in prison for each count. Sentencing is set for April 2.</p>
<p>SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — A woman who owned a Shreveport tax preparation business has pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns even after her electronic filing number was revoked.</p>
<p>U.S. Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook says 47-year-old Deborah A. Turner, of Shreveport, pleaded guilty Monday before U.S. Magistrate Mark L. Hornsby to one count each of making and subscribing a false tax return and aiding and assisting in making and subscribing a false return.</p>
<p>The plea will become final after it is accepted by U.S. District Judge S. Maurice Hicks Jr.</p>
<p>The IRS revoked Turner's electronic filing number, but she started using her daughter's number to continue filing returns containing false information so her clients could increase the size of their refunds.</p>
<p>Turner faces up to three years in prison for each count. Sentencing is set for April 2.</p> | Louisiana tax preparer pleads to filing false returns | false | https://apnews.com/amp/fa178bafa7b84c7480d3506d9f968bc2 | 2018-01-25 | 2least
| Louisiana tax preparer pleads to filing false returns
<p>SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — A woman who owned a Shreveport tax preparation business has pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns even after her electronic filing number was revoked.</p>
<p>U.S. Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook says 47-year-old Deborah A. Turner, of Shreveport, pleaded guilty Monday before U.S. Magistrate Mark L. Hornsby to one count each of making and subscribing a false tax return and aiding and assisting in making and subscribing a false return.</p>
<p>The plea will become final after it is accepted by U.S. District Judge S. Maurice Hicks Jr.</p>
<p>The IRS revoked Turner's electronic filing number, but she started using her daughter's number to continue filing returns containing false information so her clients could increase the size of their refunds.</p>
<p>Turner faces up to three years in prison for each count. Sentencing is set for April 2.</p>
<p>SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — A woman who owned a Shreveport tax preparation business has pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns even after her electronic filing number was revoked.</p>
<p>U.S. Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook says 47-year-old Deborah A. Turner, of Shreveport, pleaded guilty Monday before U.S. Magistrate Mark L. Hornsby to one count each of making and subscribing a false tax return and aiding and assisting in making and subscribing a false return.</p>
<p>The plea will become final after it is accepted by U.S. District Judge S. Maurice Hicks Jr.</p>
<p>The IRS revoked Turner's electronic filing number, but she started using her daughter's number to continue filing returns containing false information so her clients could increase the size of their refunds.</p>
<p>Turner faces up to three years in prison for each count. Sentencing is set for April 2.</p> | 1,551 |
<p>True, the weather hardly ever departs from the ideal range, and the mountain and oceanside vistas (when visible through the smog) can make for picturesque living in Los Angeles … provided you have somewhere to live. For the homeless, as two advocacy agencies have noted, L.A. seems downright mean.</p>
<p>Los Angeles Times:</p>
<p>The survey of 273 cities by the National Law Center on Homelessness &amp; Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless based its rankings on the number of laws targeting the homeless by making it illegal to sleep, eat or sit in public spaces.</p>
<p><a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/07/law-center-slams-la-as-americas-meanest-city-toward-homeless.html" type="external">Read more</a></p>
<p /> | L.A. Tagged as the City Meanest to the Homeless | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/l-a-tagged-as-the-city-meanest-to-the-homeless/ | 2009-07-15 | 4left
| L.A. Tagged as the City Meanest to the Homeless
<p>True, the weather hardly ever departs from the ideal range, and the mountain and oceanside vistas (when visible through the smog) can make for picturesque living in Los Angeles … provided you have somewhere to live. For the homeless, as two advocacy agencies have noted, L.A. seems downright mean.</p>
<p>Los Angeles Times:</p>
<p>The survey of 273 cities by the National Law Center on Homelessness &amp; Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless based its rankings on the number of laws targeting the homeless by making it illegal to sleep, eat or sit in public spaces.</p>
<p><a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/07/law-center-slams-la-as-americas-meanest-city-toward-homeless.html" type="external">Read more</a></p>
<p /> | 1,552 |
<p>In 1995, Japanese scientists began to notice intricate designs in the sand, <a href="http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/15/whats-this-mysterious-circle-on-the-seafloor/" type="external">some up to 7 feet</a> in diameter. Where did these crops circles come from? Aliens? For nearly 20 years, this has been a mystery.</p>
<p>Recently, <a href="http://www.livescience.com/40132-underwater-mystery-circles.html" type="external">the answer was found</a>: Japanese puffer fish. Even more recently this phenomenon was caught on film.</p>
<p>These meticulous bastards will spend hours on end designing intricate structures in the sand. They move up and down in deeply choreographed motions. Back, forth. They carve and carve and carve until they have created a mesmerizing circular structure like a sundial or a medallion out of the curves and ridges in the sand. Each peak of these ridges is a perfectly place sea shell. Upon aerial view, the sculpture is hypnotizing as it is symmetrical.</p>
<p>The most curious aspect of these fish is that it’s not as though they majored in architecture or have a protractor in their pocket—they just do it. Something in their nature calls to them, and that’s why they begin their design. Other puffers come and are infatuated by their sexual counterpart—completely absorbed in their spirit and practice.</p>
<p>If the female approves of the design, they will lay eggs in the center. Males will fertilize these eggs externally. Afterward, the female will disappear and the male will guard the eggs (and their masterpiece) until they hatch.</p>
<p>Click below to watch these lil buggers at work!</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Featured image via <a href="https://pixabay.com/en/narrow-lined-puffer-fish-saltwater-586338/" type="external">Pixabay</a></p> | Japanese Puffer Fish Leave Giant Mysterious Crop Circles (VIDEO) | true | http://offthemainpage.com/2017/05/02/japanese-puffer-fish-leave-giant-mysterious-crop-circles-video/ | 2017-05-02 | 4left
| Japanese Puffer Fish Leave Giant Mysterious Crop Circles (VIDEO)
<p>In 1995, Japanese scientists began to notice intricate designs in the sand, <a href="http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/15/whats-this-mysterious-circle-on-the-seafloor/" type="external">some up to 7 feet</a> in diameter. Where did these crops circles come from? Aliens? For nearly 20 years, this has been a mystery.</p>
<p>Recently, <a href="http://www.livescience.com/40132-underwater-mystery-circles.html" type="external">the answer was found</a>: Japanese puffer fish. Even more recently this phenomenon was caught on film.</p>
<p>These meticulous bastards will spend hours on end designing intricate structures in the sand. They move up and down in deeply choreographed motions. Back, forth. They carve and carve and carve until they have created a mesmerizing circular structure like a sundial or a medallion out of the curves and ridges in the sand. Each peak of these ridges is a perfectly place sea shell. Upon aerial view, the sculpture is hypnotizing as it is symmetrical.</p>
<p>The most curious aspect of these fish is that it’s not as though they majored in architecture or have a protractor in their pocket—they just do it. Something in their nature calls to them, and that’s why they begin their design. Other puffers come and are infatuated by their sexual counterpart—completely absorbed in their spirit and practice.</p>
<p>If the female approves of the design, they will lay eggs in the center. Males will fertilize these eggs externally. Afterward, the female will disappear and the male will guard the eggs (and their masterpiece) until they hatch.</p>
<p>Click below to watch these lil buggers at work!</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Featured image via <a href="https://pixabay.com/en/narrow-lined-puffer-fish-saltwater-586338/" type="external">Pixabay</a></p> | 1,553 |
<p />
<p>Wall Street's major indexes closed slightly higher on Thursday but finished well off session highs as investors were nervous about upcoming talks between China's President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The leaders of the world's two biggest economies are to greet each other at the president's Mar-a-Lago retreat in Palm Beach, Florida, late Thursday afternoon, kicking off a summit that will conclude with a working lunch on Friday.</p>
<p>Investors are anxious for news on China-U.S. trade relations and discussions on reining in North Korea's arms program, according to market participants.</p>
<p>"People are concerned because this could go south in a hurry because the Chinese president is a savvy politician with a lot of experience in these types of things and you have a novice (U.S.) politician on the world stage," said Peter Costa, President, Empire Executions Inc in New York.</p>
<p>"The meeting is going to set the tone for what comes ahead and you don't want the tone to be negative," said Costa.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Stocks pared gains in the late afternoon after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made comments on the meeting.</p>
<p>From Mar-a-Lago, Tillerson said the United States will "pursue economic engagement with China that prioritizes the economic wellbeing of the American people" and would not shy away from frank discussions.</p>
<p>“Tillerson sounded like he was taking a little bit of a hardline stance with China,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief portfolio strategist at Wells Fargo Funds Management in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. “This increases the risks that this could be a bit more confrontational than a friendly get-together between Presidents Trump and Xi.”</p>
<p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average &lt;.DJI&gt; closed up 14.8 points, or 0.07 percent, to close at 20,662.95, the S&amp;P 500 &lt;.SPX&gt; gained 4.54 points, or 0.19 percent, to 2,357.49 after reaching a session high of 2364.16 earlier in the day.</p>
<p>The Nasdaq Composite &lt;.IXIC&gt; added 14.47 points, or 0.25 percent, to 5,878.95.</p>
<p>The stock market had dramatically reversed course to close lower on Wednesday after signals that the Fed would start to trim its $4.5 billion balance sheet this year.</p>
<p>But investors reconsidered their reactions on Thursday, according to Stephen Massocca, Senior Vice President at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco.</p>
<p>"The Fed isn't going to be indiscriminately pulling the prop out from under the market. There will be some sensitivity to what's going on in the economy," said Massocca.</p>
<p>Four of the 11 major S&amp;P sectors ended lower. The energy index &lt;.SPNY&gt; rose 0.8 percent as oil prices rose to near one-month highs. [O/R] Comcast Corp was the S&amp;P's biggest boost with a 2.1 percent gain to $38.13 after it announced a wireless service.</p>
<p>Some investors are cautious ahead of the start of the corporate earnings season next week given the lofty valuations. The S&amp;P 500 index is trading at about 18 times forward earnings estimates, above its long-term average of 15.</p>
<p>Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 3.20-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.18-to-1 ratio favored advancers.</p>
<p>The S&amp;P 500 posted 8 new 52-week highs and four new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 32 new highs and 61 new lows.</p>
<p>About 6.4 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges compared with the 6.8 billion average for the last 20 sessions.</p>
<p>(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos in New York and Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza and James Dalgleish)</p> | Wall Street Posts Slight Gain, Investors Anxious on Trump-Xi Meet | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/04/06/wall-street-bounces-back-from-wednesdays-fed-led-decline.html | 2017-04-06 | 0right
| Wall Street Posts Slight Gain, Investors Anxious on Trump-Xi Meet
<p />
<p>Wall Street's major indexes closed slightly higher on Thursday but finished well off session highs as investors were nervous about upcoming talks between China's President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The leaders of the world's two biggest economies are to greet each other at the president's Mar-a-Lago retreat in Palm Beach, Florida, late Thursday afternoon, kicking off a summit that will conclude with a working lunch on Friday.</p>
<p>Investors are anxious for news on China-U.S. trade relations and discussions on reining in North Korea's arms program, according to market participants.</p>
<p>"People are concerned because this could go south in a hurry because the Chinese president is a savvy politician with a lot of experience in these types of things and you have a novice (U.S.) politician on the world stage," said Peter Costa, President, Empire Executions Inc in New York.</p>
<p>"The meeting is going to set the tone for what comes ahead and you don't want the tone to be negative," said Costa.</p>
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<p>Stocks pared gains in the late afternoon after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made comments on the meeting.</p>
<p>From Mar-a-Lago, Tillerson said the United States will "pursue economic engagement with China that prioritizes the economic wellbeing of the American people" and would not shy away from frank discussions.</p>
<p>“Tillerson sounded like he was taking a little bit of a hardline stance with China,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief portfolio strategist at Wells Fargo Funds Management in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. “This increases the risks that this could be a bit more confrontational than a friendly get-together between Presidents Trump and Xi.”</p>
<p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average &lt;.DJI&gt; closed up 14.8 points, or 0.07 percent, to close at 20,662.95, the S&amp;P 500 &lt;.SPX&gt; gained 4.54 points, or 0.19 percent, to 2,357.49 after reaching a session high of 2364.16 earlier in the day.</p>
<p>The Nasdaq Composite &lt;.IXIC&gt; added 14.47 points, or 0.25 percent, to 5,878.95.</p>
<p>The stock market had dramatically reversed course to close lower on Wednesday after signals that the Fed would start to trim its $4.5 billion balance sheet this year.</p>
<p>But investors reconsidered their reactions on Thursday, according to Stephen Massocca, Senior Vice President at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco.</p>
<p>"The Fed isn't going to be indiscriminately pulling the prop out from under the market. There will be some sensitivity to what's going on in the economy," said Massocca.</p>
<p>Four of the 11 major S&amp;P sectors ended lower. The energy index &lt;.SPNY&gt; rose 0.8 percent as oil prices rose to near one-month highs. [O/R] Comcast Corp was the S&amp;P's biggest boost with a 2.1 percent gain to $38.13 after it announced a wireless service.</p>
<p>Some investors are cautious ahead of the start of the corporate earnings season next week given the lofty valuations. The S&amp;P 500 index is trading at about 18 times forward earnings estimates, above its long-term average of 15.</p>
<p>Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 3.20-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.18-to-1 ratio favored advancers.</p>
<p>The S&amp;P 500 posted 8 new 52-week highs and four new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 32 new highs and 61 new lows.</p>
<p>About 6.4 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges compared with the 6.8 billion average for the last 20 sessions.</p>
<p>(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos in New York and Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza and James Dalgleish)</p> | 1,554 |
<p>It isn’t what the Founders had in mind, but “I dare you to impeach me” is being normalized as both a governing strategy and a political tactic. We stand on the threshold of a new era of post-constitutional governance, not simply because of the sweeping executive order on immigration President Obama announced last night, but because of what Hillary Clinton just said about it. Waving aside the cautious stance she’s adopted since stepping down as Secretary of State, Hillary swiftly <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-gop-abdication-forced-obamas-hand-immigration" type="external">endorsed</a> Obama’s executive action. The contrast with her <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/clinton-now-against-licenses-for-illegal-immigrants/?_r=0" type="external">waffling</a> on the issue of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants in 2008 is striking.</p>
<p>Conservatives have been <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/kim-strassel-the-next-prez-and-the-obama-way-1416528052" type="external">highlighting</a> the prospect that some future Republican president might turn the tables on Democrats and abuse executive discretion for conservative ends. This is partly a way of frightening Democrats into abandoning their dangerous game, and partly an expression of <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/392847/fight-power-grab-charles-c-w-cooke" type="external">horror</a> at the onrushing constitutional crisis. Yet Democrats for the most part have been licking their chops at the prospects of rule by executive diktat. Sad to say, Hillary shares their eagerness.</p>
<p>For a hundred years the progressive left has yearned to dispense with the Constitution’s various safeguards against precipitous, faction-driven change. Victory is in sight. Obama has broken the constitutional taboo and Hillary has embraced his precedent.</p>
<p>Why should Democrats preoccupy themselves with fears of Republican autocracy when they’re inches away from 6 to 10 continuous years of liberation from constitutional restraint? The lure of fundamental transformation outweighs any fear of frustration or reversal under a Republican president. With the GOP House already blocking Obama, and Democratic control over Congress unlikely to be restored at least until after the next census, abuse of executive discretion is the only way out for America’s newly emboldened and ambitious left.</p>
<p>Impeachment as a remedy has largely been taken off the table. This is likely true regardless of the president’s race or gender. Yet with added confidence that Republicans would never have the nerve to cashier the first woman president, “I dare you to impeach me” will be President Hillary’s unspoken watchword, every bit as much as it has been for President Obama.</p>
<p>While Hillary will surely attempt to open some distance between herself and President Obama as she campaigns, her swift embrace of his polarizing order on immigration will make it difficult for her to present herself as anything other than Obama’s third term.</p>
<p>I’ve already <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/388560/why-hillarys-alinsky-letters-matter-stanley-kurtz" type="external">argued</a> that Hillary’s deepest sympathies remain on the left. She spent much of her husband’s presidency arguing behind the scenes for precisely the sort of transformative policies and polarizing political tactics that Obama deploys with abandon today. For both Obama and Hillary, the Alinskyite background is very much alive and well. And everything about the increasingly left-leaning and post-constitutional tendencies of the Democratic Party conspires to push Hillary in the direction of her formative political commitments.</p>
<p>No doubt the next Republican presidential nominee will run against Obama’s executive overreach. Whether a Republican winner would be tempted nonetheless to follow in Obama’s constitutionally questionable footsteps can be debated. Yet Hillary Clinton’s interest in cementing and extending the dangerous precedent set by Obama’s executive overreach is evident. We have stepped into post-constitutional territory and are one election away from losing any prospect of exit.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>— Stanley Kurtz is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center</p> | I Dare You to Impeach Me | false | https://eppc.org/publications/i-dare-you-to-impeach-me-hillary-clinton-obama-immigration/ | 1right-center
| I Dare You to Impeach Me
<p>It isn’t what the Founders had in mind, but “I dare you to impeach me” is being normalized as both a governing strategy and a political tactic. We stand on the threshold of a new era of post-constitutional governance, not simply because of the sweeping executive order on immigration President Obama announced last night, but because of what Hillary Clinton just said about it. Waving aside the cautious stance she’s adopted since stepping down as Secretary of State, Hillary swiftly <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-gop-abdication-forced-obamas-hand-immigration" type="external">endorsed</a> Obama’s executive action. The contrast with her <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/clinton-now-against-licenses-for-illegal-immigrants/?_r=0" type="external">waffling</a> on the issue of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants in 2008 is striking.</p>
<p>Conservatives have been <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/kim-strassel-the-next-prez-and-the-obama-way-1416528052" type="external">highlighting</a> the prospect that some future Republican president might turn the tables on Democrats and abuse executive discretion for conservative ends. This is partly a way of frightening Democrats into abandoning their dangerous game, and partly an expression of <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/392847/fight-power-grab-charles-c-w-cooke" type="external">horror</a> at the onrushing constitutional crisis. Yet Democrats for the most part have been licking their chops at the prospects of rule by executive diktat. Sad to say, Hillary shares their eagerness.</p>
<p>For a hundred years the progressive left has yearned to dispense with the Constitution’s various safeguards against precipitous, faction-driven change. Victory is in sight. Obama has broken the constitutional taboo and Hillary has embraced his precedent.</p>
<p>Why should Democrats preoccupy themselves with fears of Republican autocracy when they’re inches away from 6 to 10 continuous years of liberation from constitutional restraint? The lure of fundamental transformation outweighs any fear of frustration or reversal under a Republican president. With the GOP House already blocking Obama, and Democratic control over Congress unlikely to be restored at least until after the next census, abuse of executive discretion is the only way out for America’s newly emboldened and ambitious left.</p>
<p>Impeachment as a remedy has largely been taken off the table. This is likely true regardless of the president’s race or gender. Yet with added confidence that Republicans would never have the nerve to cashier the first woman president, “I dare you to impeach me” will be President Hillary’s unspoken watchword, every bit as much as it has been for President Obama.</p>
<p>While Hillary will surely attempt to open some distance between herself and President Obama as she campaigns, her swift embrace of his polarizing order on immigration will make it difficult for her to present herself as anything other than Obama’s third term.</p>
<p>I’ve already <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/388560/why-hillarys-alinsky-letters-matter-stanley-kurtz" type="external">argued</a> that Hillary’s deepest sympathies remain on the left. She spent much of her husband’s presidency arguing behind the scenes for precisely the sort of transformative policies and polarizing political tactics that Obama deploys with abandon today. For both Obama and Hillary, the Alinskyite background is very much alive and well. And everything about the increasingly left-leaning and post-constitutional tendencies of the Democratic Party conspires to push Hillary in the direction of her formative political commitments.</p>
<p>No doubt the next Republican presidential nominee will run against Obama’s executive overreach. Whether a Republican winner would be tempted nonetheless to follow in Obama’s constitutionally questionable footsteps can be debated. Yet Hillary Clinton’s interest in cementing and extending the dangerous precedent set by Obama’s executive overreach is evident. We have stepped into post-constitutional territory and are one election away from losing any prospect of exit.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>— Stanley Kurtz is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center</p> | 1,555 |
|
<p>A Senior Software Engineer at Google wrote an internal memo questioning the assumption of discrimination as the explanation for why women are underrepresented in High Tech (which he defined as Software Engineering).</p>
<p>I noted that questioning the religious orthodoxy of diversity was dangerous to his career,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Google Senior Engineer commits diversity heresy:</a></p>
<p />
<p>There is no religious doctrine as unassailable as the claim that differences in achievement in areas where women and/or racial/ethnic minorities are UNDERrepresented is caused by systemic sexism/racism etc.</p>
<p>That religious doctrine, however, never is applied to fields in which women and/or racial/ethnic minorities are OVERrepresented.</p>
<p>The claim that differences in outcome are caused by discrimination drives the “diversity” agenda on campuses and at companies. That one might support diversity as a goal, yet question whether the problem is systemic discrimination and whether MORE discrimination really is the answer, is considered heresy and is punishable by firing, harassment, and on campuses, being shouted down….</p>
<p>While the memo is being regularly described as “anti-diversity,” a plain reading of the document shows that is not accurate. The Senior Engineer does not question diversity as a goal, but does question the explanations given as to why it is not being achieved in High Tech….</p>
<p>… questioning the assumptions underlying diversity initiatives is so dangerous to employment — one stands at risk of being accused of violating company anti-discrimination policies merely by questioning whether there is in fact discrimination. That accusation could be a career ending. Which is why people just shut up.</p>
<p>This memo could be used as a launching point for an open and fact-based discussion of why some group succeed in the Software Engineering field (and some other high tech fields) more than others. If you can’t identify the actual problem, you can’t meaningfully discuss solutions.</p>
<p>I’m guessing that that Google Senior Engineer soon will be a former Google Senior Engineer, will be outed on the internet (he already has been, but I’m not using his name), will be mercilessly harassed and doxxed, and will be driven underground. Because that’s how diversity heretics are treated.</p>
<p>Over the last 24 hours the Senior Engineer was identified on the internet, and there were demands that Google fire him.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="https://www.recode.net/2017/8/7/16110696/firing-google-ceo-employee-penned-controversial-memo-on-women-has-violated-its-code-of-conduct" type="external">Recode</a> reported on a memo from Google CEO that suggested the Senior Engineer has violated Google’s Code of Conduct:</p>
<p>In a memo to employees, CEO Sundar Pichai said the employee who penned a controversial memo that claimed that women had biological issues that prevented them from being as successful as men in tech had violated its Code of Conduct and that the post had crossed “the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”</p>
<p>He added: “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”</p>
<p>Pichai’s wording appears to indicate that the employee is likely be fired, which some inside and outside the company have been calling for. A Google spokesperson said the company would not confirm any firing of an individual employee, but others have been let go for violating its Code of Conduct in the past.</p>
<p>Here is the CEO memo to employees provided in the Recode post. To put it in the lingo of the campus, the Senior Engineer was accused by the CEO of Google of violating other employees safe spaces:</p>
<p>From: Sundar</p>
<p>Subject: Our words matter</p>
<p>This has been a very difficult few days. I wanted to provide an update on the memo that was circulated over this past week.</p>
<p>First, let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it. However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.”</p>
<p>The memo has clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender. Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”</p>
<p>At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo — such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all — are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on those topics — we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions.</p>
<p>The past few days have been very difficult for many at the company, and we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree — while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct. I’d encourage each of you to make an effort over the coming days to reach out to those who might have different perspectives from your own. I will be doing the same.</p>
<p>I have been on work related travel in Africa and Europe the past couple of weeks and had just started my family vacation here this week. I have decided to return tomorrow as clearly there’s a lot more to discuss as a group — including how we create a more inclusive environment for all.</p>
<p>So please join me, along with members of the leadership team at a town hall on Thursday. Check your calendar soon for details.</p>
<p>— Sundar</p>
<p>And sure enough, Google just fired the Senior Engineer.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&amp;utm_content=business&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social" type="external">Bloomberg</a> reports:</p>
<p>Alphabet Inc.’s Google has fired an employee who wrote an internal memo blasting the web company’s diversity policies, creating a firestorm across Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>James Damore, the Google engineer who wrote the note, confirmed his dismissal in an email, saying that he had been fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” A Google representative didn’t immediately return a request for comment.</p>
<p>Google’s Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai sent a note to employees on Monday that said portions of the employee’s memo “violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.” But he didn’t say if the company was taking action against the employee.</p>
<p>In a memo to employees, CEO Sundar Pichai said the employee who penned a controversial memo that claimed that women had biological issues that prevented them from being as successful as men in tech had violated its Code of Conduct and that the post had crossed “the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”</p>
<p>He added: “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”</p>
<p>Pichai’s wording appears to indicate that the employee is likely be fired, which some inside and outside the company have been calling for. A Google spokesperson said the company would not confirm any firing of an individual employee, but others have been let go for violating its Code of Conduct in the past.</p>
<p>This is a pretty chilling development. It completely proves the Senior Engineers point about the shaming and shut-down culture that surrounds discussions of discrimination and diversity.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>[This post was updated multiple times]</p> | Google Senior Engineer FIRED for diversity memo | true | http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/08/google-senior-engineer-fired-for-diversity-memo/ | 2017-08-07 | 0right
| Google Senior Engineer FIRED for diversity memo
<p>A Senior Software Engineer at Google wrote an internal memo questioning the assumption of discrimination as the explanation for why women are underrepresented in High Tech (which he defined as Software Engineering).</p>
<p>I noted that questioning the religious orthodoxy of diversity was dangerous to his career,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Google Senior Engineer commits diversity heresy:</a></p>
<p />
<p>There is no religious doctrine as unassailable as the claim that differences in achievement in areas where women and/or racial/ethnic minorities are UNDERrepresented is caused by systemic sexism/racism etc.</p>
<p>That religious doctrine, however, never is applied to fields in which women and/or racial/ethnic minorities are OVERrepresented.</p>
<p>The claim that differences in outcome are caused by discrimination drives the “diversity” agenda on campuses and at companies. That one might support diversity as a goal, yet question whether the problem is systemic discrimination and whether MORE discrimination really is the answer, is considered heresy and is punishable by firing, harassment, and on campuses, being shouted down….</p>
<p>While the memo is being regularly described as “anti-diversity,” a plain reading of the document shows that is not accurate. The Senior Engineer does not question diversity as a goal, but does question the explanations given as to why it is not being achieved in High Tech….</p>
<p>… questioning the assumptions underlying diversity initiatives is so dangerous to employment — one stands at risk of being accused of violating company anti-discrimination policies merely by questioning whether there is in fact discrimination. That accusation could be a career ending. Which is why people just shut up.</p>
<p>This memo could be used as a launching point for an open and fact-based discussion of why some group succeed in the Software Engineering field (and some other high tech fields) more than others. If you can’t identify the actual problem, you can’t meaningfully discuss solutions.</p>
<p>I’m guessing that that Google Senior Engineer soon will be a former Google Senior Engineer, will be outed on the internet (he already has been, but I’m not using his name), will be mercilessly harassed and doxxed, and will be driven underground. Because that’s how diversity heretics are treated.</p>
<p>Over the last 24 hours the Senior Engineer was identified on the internet, and there were demands that Google fire him.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="https://www.recode.net/2017/8/7/16110696/firing-google-ceo-employee-penned-controversial-memo-on-women-has-violated-its-code-of-conduct" type="external">Recode</a> reported on a memo from Google CEO that suggested the Senior Engineer has violated Google’s Code of Conduct:</p>
<p>In a memo to employees, CEO Sundar Pichai said the employee who penned a controversial memo that claimed that women had biological issues that prevented them from being as successful as men in tech had violated its Code of Conduct and that the post had crossed “the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”</p>
<p>He added: “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”</p>
<p>Pichai’s wording appears to indicate that the employee is likely be fired, which some inside and outside the company have been calling for. A Google spokesperson said the company would not confirm any firing of an individual employee, but others have been let go for violating its Code of Conduct in the past.</p>
<p>Here is the CEO memo to employees provided in the Recode post. To put it in the lingo of the campus, the Senior Engineer was accused by the CEO of Google of violating other employees safe spaces:</p>
<p>From: Sundar</p>
<p>Subject: Our words matter</p>
<p>This has been a very difficult few days. I wanted to provide an update on the memo that was circulated over this past week.</p>
<p>First, let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it. However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.”</p>
<p>The memo has clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender. Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”</p>
<p>At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo — such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all — are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on those topics — we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions.</p>
<p>The past few days have been very difficult for many at the company, and we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree — while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct. I’d encourage each of you to make an effort over the coming days to reach out to those who might have different perspectives from your own. I will be doing the same.</p>
<p>I have been on work related travel in Africa and Europe the past couple of weeks and had just started my family vacation here this week. I have decided to return tomorrow as clearly there’s a lot more to discuss as a group — including how we create a more inclusive environment for all.</p>
<p>So please join me, along with members of the leadership team at a town hall on Thursday. Check your calendar soon for details.</p>
<p>— Sundar</p>
<p>And sure enough, Google just fired the Senior Engineer.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&amp;utm_content=business&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social" type="external">Bloomberg</a> reports:</p>
<p>Alphabet Inc.’s Google has fired an employee who wrote an internal memo blasting the web company’s diversity policies, creating a firestorm across Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>James Damore, the Google engineer who wrote the note, confirmed his dismissal in an email, saying that he had been fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” A Google representative didn’t immediately return a request for comment.</p>
<p>Google’s Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai sent a note to employees on Monday that said portions of the employee’s memo “violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.” But he didn’t say if the company was taking action against the employee.</p>
<p>In a memo to employees, CEO Sundar Pichai said the employee who penned a controversial memo that claimed that women had biological issues that prevented them from being as successful as men in tech had violated its Code of Conduct and that the post had crossed “the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”</p>
<p>He added: “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”</p>
<p>Pichai’s wording appears to indicate that the employee is likely be fired, which some inside and outside the company have been calling for. A Google spokesperson said the company would not confirm any firing of an individual employee, but others have been let go for violating its Code of Conduct in the past.</p>
<p>This is a pretty chilling development. It completely proves the Senior Engineers point about the shaming and shut-down culture that surrounds discussions of discrimination and diversity.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>[This post was updated multiple times]</p> | 1,556 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>SANTA FE – Several school superintendents told a legislative committee Thursday that half of the state’s high school seniors are in a state of limbo due to confusion over state-mandated graduation requirements, and in some cases, parents have advised students to pursue GED certificates instead of diplomas.</p>
<p>The superintendents from around the state addressed the Legislative Education Study Committee in the Roundhouse, saying that memos and rule changes by the Public Education Department have repeatedly caught them off guard. The result is that they don’t always know how best to advise parents or students.</p>
<p>Paul Benoit, superintendent of the Floyd School District and president of the New Mexico School Superintendents Association, said the group took an informal survey recently to which three-quarters of the state’s districts responded. In those districts, 52 percent – more than 4,000 seniors – are not sure whether they will have completed all the requirements and passed all the tests needed to graduate next spring.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Leighann Lenti, the PED’s deputy director for policy and program, said the rule changes came about because of concerns expressed by districts and are meant to provide districts with more flexibility. And she pointed out that the agency spends $27 million annually on remedial courses to help students catch up.</p>
<p>PED chief Hanna Skandera, in a meeting with the Journal editorial board Thursday, said her department had issued only three memos since the summer.</p>
<p>“You can’t speak out of both sides of your mouth,” Skandera said of school district officials. “Either you don’t want any more options because it’s confusing – keep it static – which means we wouldn’t give any more flexibilities, but then you can’t say (to the PED), ‘Hey, you’re not listening.’ ”</p>
<p>The problem is not the PED’s attempts to provide districts with some flexibility over graduation requirements, but the timing of the changes after the school year started, Benoit said.</p>
<p>“We don’t take this lightly,” he said.</p>
<p>TJ Parks, superintendent of the Hobbs School District, brought along a high school senior, Sergio Torres, one of the students who finds himself in a state of graduation limbo. Parks described Torres as a remarkable student who, for more than three years, has done everything required of him, but who so far has been unable to pass all the required exams.</p>
<p>He attributed part of the problem to changes in testing requirements.</p>
<p>“The lack of long-term planning is doing damage to our system,” Parks told the lawmakers. The recent implementation of end-of-course assessments – meant to replace final exams – “is causing high consternation among our staff.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In a rhetorical question to the panel, he asked, “Why don’t we try to figure out what’s wrong with the system, rather than punishing teachers and students?”</p>
<p>Artesia Public Schools Superintendent Crit Caton and Santa Fe Superintendent Joel Boyd also addressed the panel, expressing many of the same concerns. To illustrate his point, Caton circulated a Nov. 4 memorandum from Skandera citing two laws that focus on a requirement that students must pass a physical education class to graduate. In previous years, participation in a school band counted toward the PE requirement.</p>
<p>This year, after school started in August, the band waiver was removed as an alternative to PE, a change no one present could adequately explain. The superintendents said the unexpected change could affect hundreds of seniors statewide.</p>
<p>Several lawmakers said by the time students enter their senior year, they are essentially completing their side of an implied contract with the local school district. Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, said she believes the state could be opening itself up to lawsuits.</p>
<p>“How many other situations are there like this?” asked Rep. Rick Miera, D-Albuquerque, the committee’s vice chair.</p>
<p>Boyd spoke about the importance of local districts retaining some authority to set graduation requirements. He seemed to find bipartisan support among committee members. Sens. William Soules, D-Las Cruces, and Craig Brandt, R-Rio Rancho, both noted the importance of locally elected school board members being accountable to their constituents. They cautioned that the Legislature, in years past, has probably ceded too much of its authority to the PED and now needs to be careful not to continue that practice.</p>
<p>Fairly early in the discussion, Sen. John Sapien, D-Corrales, the committee chair, waxed emotional as he talked about decisions that could easily affect kids’ lives. His eyes welled with tears when he said he had heard that some Bernalillo parents were advising their teens to seek a GED rather than a high school diploma because the requirements are clear and easier to follow.</p>
<p>Boyd, Caton and Parks also said they have heard similar stories in their school districts.</p>
<p>Sapien was not the only one to become emotional.</p>
<p>Later, following Sapien’s comment to PED’s Lenti about her speaking in “soundbites,” she broke down in tears, saying once more that first and foremost on the minds of everyone at the PED are New Mexico’s children.</p>
<p>Journal staff writer Rick Nathanson contributed to this report.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p /> | Rule changes leaving state high school seniors in limbo | false | https://abqjournal.com/301412/graduation-rule-changes-leave-high-school-seniors-in-limbo.html | 2013-11-15 | 2least
| Rule changes leaving state high school seniors in limbo
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>SANTA FE – Several school superintendents told a legislative committee Thursday that half of the state’s high school seniors are in a state of limbo due to confusion over state-mandated graduation requirements, and in some cases, parents have advised students to pursue GED certificates instead of diplomas.</p>
<p>The superintendents from around the state addressed the Legislative Education Study Committee in the Roundhouse, saying that memos and rule changes by the Public Education Department have repeatedly caught them off guard. The result is that they don’t always know how best to advise parents or students.</p>
<p>Paul Benoit, superintendent of the Floyd School District and president of the New Mexico School Superintendents Association, said the group took an informal survey recently to which three-quarters of the state’s districts responded. In those districts, 52 percent – more than 4,000 seniors – are not sure whether they will have completed all the requirements and passed all the tests needed to graduate next spring.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Leighann Lenti, the PED’s deputy director for policy and program, said the rule changes came about because of concerns expressed by districts and are meant to provide districts with more flexibility. And she pointed out that the agency spends $27 million annually on remedial courses to help students catch up.</p>
<p>PED chief Hanna Skandera, in a meeting with the Journal editorial board Thursday, said her department had issued only three memos since the summer.</p>
<p>“You can’t speak out of both sides of your mouth,” Skandera said of school district officials. “Either you don’t want any more options because it’s confusing – keep it static – which means we wouldn’t give any more flexibilities, but then you can’t say (to the PED), ‘Hey, you’re not listening.’ ”</p>
<p>The problem is not the PED’s attempts to provide districts with some flexibility over graduation requirements, but the timing of the changes after the school year started, Benoit said.</p>
<p>“We don’t take this lightly,” he said.</p>
<p>TJ Parks, superintendent of the Hobbs School District, brought along a high school senior, Sergio Torres, one of the students who finds himself in a state of graduation limbo. Parks described Torres as a remarkable student who, for more than three years, has done everything required of him, but who so far has been unable to pass all the required exams.</p>
<p>He attributed part of the problem to changes in testing requirements.</p>
<p>“The lack of long-term planning is doing damage to our system,” Parks told the lawmakers. The recent implementation of end-of-course assessments – meant to replace final exams – “is causing high consternation among our staff.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In a rhetorical question to the panel, he asked, “Why don’t we try to figure out what’s wrong with the system, rather than punishing teachers and students?”</p>
<p>Artesia Public Schools Superintendent Crit Caton and Santa Fe Superintendent Joel Boyd also addressed the panel, expressing many of the same concerns. To illustrate his point, Caton circulated a Nov. 4 memorandum from Skandera citing two laws that focus on a requirement that students must pass a physical education class to graduate. In previous years, participation in a school band counted toward the PE requirement.</p>
<p>This year, after school started in August, the band waiver was removed as an alternative to PE, a change no one present could adequately explain. The superintendents said the unexpected change could affect hundreds of seniors statewide.</p>
<p>Several lawmakers said by the time students enter their senior year, they are essentially completing their side of an implied contract with the local school district. Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, said she believes the state could be opening itself up to lawsuits.</p>
<p>“How many other situations are there like this?” asked Rep. Rick Miera, D-Albuquerque, the committee’s vice chair.</p>
<p>Boyd spoke about the importance of local districts retaining some authority to set graduation requirements. He seemed to find bipartisan support among committee members. Sens. William Soules, D-Las Cruces, and Craig Brandt, R-Rio Rancho, both noted the importance of locally elected school board members being accountable to their constituents. They cautioned that the Legislature, in years past, has probably ceded too much of its authority to the PED and now needs to be careful not to continue that practice.</p>
<p>Fairly early in the discussion, Sen. John Sapien, D-Corrales, the committee chair, waxed emotional as he talked about decisions that could easily affect kids’ lives. His eyes welled with tears when he said he had heard that some Bernalillo parents were advising their teens to seek a GED rather than a high school diploma because the requirements are clear and easier to follow.</p>
<p>Boyd, Caton and Parks also said they have heard similar stories in their school districts.</p>
<p>Sapien was not the only one to become emotional.</p>
<p>Later, following Sapien’s comment to PED’s Lenti about her speaking in “soundbites,” she broke down in tears, saying once more that first and foremost on the minds of everyone at the PED are New Mexico’s children.</p>
<p>Journal staff writer Rick Nathanson contributed to this report.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p /> | 1,557 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/colin_n/3178266540/sizes/l/in/photostream/"&gt;Colin Nederkoorn&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr.</p>
<p />
<p>Today the Senate will consider two bills that would clamp down on the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to enforce the Clean Air Act. This comes on the day after the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted in favor of Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-910" type="external">Energy Tax Prevention Act</a>, or HR 910, which would overturn the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Today, the Senate will vote on two items: an amendment introduced by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that essentially attaches HR 910 as an amendment to an unrelated small business bill, and a bill by Sen. <a href="http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=R000361" type="external">John D. Rockefeller</a> (D-W.Va.), which puts a hold on the EPA’s regulatory powers for two years.</p>
<p>Rockefeller, who racked up $31,200 in campaign contributions <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2010&amp;cid=N00001685&amp;type=I&amp;newmem=N" type="external">from Peabody Energy</a> from 2005 through 2010, claims he’s “not for” a bill “ <a href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dlashof/dangerous_delaying_tactics.html" type="external">which abolishes the EPA</a>” and&#160;“strips them all of funding”—it’s simply that Congress needs an opportunity to enact climate legislation. If last summer’s <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/110737-liberal-activists-say-good-riddance-to-kerry-lieberman-climate-bill" type="external">fizzling of the Kerry-Lieberman</a> climate bill is any sign, the chances of Congress doing so in the foreseeable future <a href="" type="internal">are slim to none</a>. Nevertheless, Rockefeller’s bill won the support of <a href="" type="internal">six other Democratic senators</a>. (MoJo’s <a href="" type="internal">Kate Sheppard</a> has more on this.)</p>
<p>In essence, McConnell and Rockefeller’s motions represent a “sneak-attack” on the EPA, as the Natural Resource Defense Council’s <a href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dlashof/dangerous_delaying_tactics.html" type="external">Dan Lashof puts it</a>. And according to <a href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/paltman/will_the_senate_support_a_snea.html" type="external">NRDC’s Pete Altman</a>, these actions are moving forward despite strong opposition from public interest groups including the American Lung Association, the Consumers Union, and the Small Business Majority.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a <a href="" type="internal">recent poll</a> from NRDC&#160;found that 63 percent of likely voters agreed that Congress should not stop the EPA from updating air quality standards, and 69 percent thought that “EPA scientists, rather than Congress, should set pollution standards.” And in California, where GOP members are now trying to pre-empt a strict carbon-emissions law, voters just swatted down an <a href="" type="internal">oil-industry</a>– <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/opinion/21tue1.html" type="external">funded</a> initiative to suspend that law by a <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-analyses-find-that-california-cap-and-trade-system-will-have-only-minor-economic-impact-poll-finds-increased-voter-support-for-ab-32-and-strong-backing-for-the-proposed-emissions-trading-program-111620494.html" type="external">62 percent to 39 percent margin</a>.</p>
<p /> | Senators’ “Sneak-Attack” on the EPA | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/senators-attack-epa-carbon-climate/ | 2011-03-16 | 4left
| Senators’ “Sneak-Attack” on the EPA
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/colin_n/3178266540/sizes/l/in/photostream/"&gt;Colin Nederkoorn&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr.</p>
<p />
<p>Today the Senate will consider two bills that would clamp down on the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to enforce the Clean Air Act. This comes on the day after the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted in favor of Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-910" type="external">Energy Tax Prevention Act</a>, or HR 910, which would overturn the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Today, the Senate will vote on two items: an amendment introduced by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that essentially attaches HR 910 as an amendment to an unrelated small business bill, and a bill by Sen. <a href="http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=R000361" type="external">John D. Rockefeller</a> (D-W.Va.), which puts a hold on the EPA’s regulatory powers for two years.</p>
<p>Rockefeller, who racked up $31,200 in campaign contributions <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2010&amp;cid=N00001685&amp;type=I&amp;newmem=N" type="external">from Peabody Energy</a> from 2005 through 2010, claims he’s “not for” a bill “ <a href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dlashof/dangerous_delaying_tactics.html" type="external">which abolishes the EPA</a>” and&#160;“strips them all of funding”—it’s simply that Congress needs an opportunity to enact climate legislation. If last summer’s <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/110737-liberal-activists-say-good-riddance-to-kerry-lieberman-climate-bill" type="external">fizzling of the Kerry-Lieberman</a> climate bill is any sign, the chances of Congress doing so in the foreseeable future <a href="" type="internal">are slim to none</a>. Nevertheless, Rockefeller’s bill won the support of <a href="" type="internal">six other Democratic senators</a>. (MoJo’s <a href="" type="internal">Kate Sheppard</a> has more on this.)</p>
<p>In essence, McConnell and Rockefeller’s motions represent a “sneak-attack” on the EPA, as the Natural Resource Defense Council’s <a href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dlashof/dangerous_delaying_tactics.html" type="external">Dan Lashof puts it</a>. And according to <a href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/paltman/will_the_senate_support_a_snea.html" type="external">NRDC’s Pete Altman</a>, these actions are moving forward despite strong opposition from public interest groups including the American Lung Association, the Consumers Union, and the Small Business Majority.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a <a href="" type="internal">recent poll</a> from NRDC&#160;found that 63 percent of likely voters agreed that Congress should not stop the EPA from updating air quality standards, and 69 percent thought that “EPA scientists, rather than Congress, should set pollution standards.” And in California, where GOP members are now trying to pre-empt a strict carbon-emissions law, voters just swatted down an <a href="" type="internal">oil-industry</a>– <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/opinion/21tue1.html" type="external">funded</a> initiative to suspend that law by a <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-analyses-find-that-california-cap-and-trade-system-will-have-only-minor-economic-impact-poll-finds-increased-voter-support-for-ab-32-and-strong-backing-for-the-proposed-emissions-trading-program-111620494.html" type="external">62 percent to 39 percent margin</a>.</p>
<p /> | 1,558 |
<p>( <a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/" type="external">Natural News</a>) Here I was, strolling up to a cancer fundraising event for a relative I hardly knew. I heard the sounds of drunken chatter and eyed the Budweiser banner sponsoring the event. A crowd of faces overflowed out of the banquet hall like fizz bubbling over the brim of a red solo cup. I entered through the doorway, greeted by the smell of chemical perfume and barbeque. A raffle was being held to pay for the medical expenses that had overwhelmed yet another family. With blank stares, people were filling their plates with shredded hog meat, colored red and preserved with carcinogenic sodium nitrite. Kids were clamoring for ice cream and other pieces of refined sugar. Caramel color and corn syrup flowed. I overheard conversations, dominated by the talk of health problems and medical bills. (Related:&#160; <a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/054422_toxic_ingredients_cancer_avoid.html" type="external">Top 10 cancer causing food ingredients to avoid</a>.)</p>
<p>I followed a steady stream of people to the back bar. There he was, in a crowded room, surrounded by slot machines and cold drinks. His doctor said he had six months to live. He had been diagnosed with colon cancer just four years ago. The initial chemotherapy was declared a success, but not for long. As usual, the cancer was back, unresolved, rearing its head again. Now here he was, gambling the night away, hoping and praying for a miracle.</p>
<p>Today, 72 percent of early deaths are from non-communicable chronic diseases that are connected to dietary choices that lead to cardiovascular events, obesity, Type-2 diabetes and cancer. A large ongoing study being conducted by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington is seeking why people around the world are at risk of early death. Life expectancy seems to be increasing, but the way people are living these extra years equates to misery. Are people living longer or suffering and dying longer? What are the factors contributing to this misery?</p>
<p>Five papers have already been published in the&#160;Lancet&#160;medical journal, detailing the specific causes, most of which are related to the decisions people make throughout their lifetime. Tobacco use has always been to blame and it is responsible for roughly 12.5 percent of early deaths. Alcohol and drug use is to blame for six percent, but the most shocking statistic from the study is the effect of a poor diet on life expectancy. The study revealed that a diet consumed with junk food and toxic food ingredients alone&#160; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/14/poor-diet-is-a-factor-in-one-in-five-deaths-global-disease-study-reveals" type="external">cause 20 percent of early deaths worldwide</a>. This did not even factor in metabolic issues such as high body mass index (eight percent), high systolic blood pressure (20 percent), high fasting plasma glucose (10 percent), and high total cholesterol (7.5 percent), all of which can be traced back to poor diet in some way. Another five percent was attributed to low physical activity (two percent) and child and maternal malnutrition (five percent), two issues wildly underestimated.</p>
<p>In the face of challenges unconquered, the drunkenness at the cancer charity event that night&#160;seemed arrogant and undignified. I made a small donation to the family who was struggling with medical bills, but more importantly, I gave them a little bit of information about the causes and how the&#160; <a href="https://www.naturalhealth365.com/chemotherapy-cancer-patients-1796.html" type="external">chemotherapy fails to address the real issues</a>. I hated to see a cancer charity event serve all this toxic junk food to so many people. This habitual eating of junk food was a major cause, right under their noses.</p>
<p>I wondered why cancer charity events like this one didn’t have fresh juice bar instead. I wondered why kids were clamoring for candies and soda instead of reaching for polyphenol-rich green tea.&#160;I wondered why people weren’t celebrating real cellular health by serving organic fruits, vegetables, superfoods, herbs, and berries. I had met doctors who had healed patients with living foods. I had met&#160; <a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/045385_Chris_Wark_beating_cancer_natural_cures.html" type="external">cancer survivors who had turned away from chemotherapy</a>&#160;and chose nutrition and detoxification instead.</p>
<p>We must do more to reject the added sugars, antibiotics, colors, hydrogenated oils, heavy metals&#160;and preservatives that are tainting our blood and poisoning our livers, kidneys and brain. We should fight back against the food companies that inundate our lives with chemicals that weaken our cellular health.&#160; <a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/044443_healing_foods_cancer_immune_support.html" type="external">Plants, herbs, and superfoods&#160;</a>should replace thick saturated animal products that slow down our digestive system and constrict our blood flow. Hormonal, puss-filled dairy products should be replaced with&#160; <a href="https://www.naturalnewsblogs.com/5-super-berries-cause-cancer-cells-self-destruct/" type="external">nuts, seeds, berries</a>&#160;and the very nutritional essences of life. We don’t have to be a statistic. We can live with greater energy and not suffer from the sickness and immune suppression of&#160; <a href="http://ingredients.news/" type="external">toxic junk food</a>.</p>
<p>For more helpful information, visit&#160; <a href="https://thetruthaboutcancer.com/" type="external">The Truth About Cancer</a>.</p>
<p>Sources include:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/14/poor-diet-is-a-factor-in-one-in-five-deaths-global-disease-study-reveals" type="external">The Guardian.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/054422_toxic_ingredients_cancer_avoid.html" type="external">NaturalNews.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/2017-03-16-shocking-data-reveal-bad-diets-are-responsible-for-45-of-heart-diabetes-related-deaths.html" type="external">NaturalNews.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naturalhealth365.com/chemotherapy-cancer-patients-1796.html" type="external">NaturalHealth365.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/045385_Chris_Wark_beating_cancer_natural_cures.html" type="external">NaturalNews.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/044443_healing_foods_cancer_immune_support.html" type="external">NaturalNews.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naturalnewsblogs.com/5-super-berries-cause-cancer-cells-self-destruct/" type="external">NaturalNewsBlogs.com</a></p>
<p>Courtesy of <a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/2017-09-28-groundbreaking-study-reveals-20-of-all-deaths-caused-by-junk-food-and-toxic-food-ingredients.html" type="external">Natural News</a></p>
<p />
<p /> | Groundbreaking study reveals 20% of all deaths now caused by junk food and toxic food ingredients | true | http://dcclothesline.com/2017/10/01/groundbreaking-study-reveals-20-of-all-deaths-now-caused-by-junk-food-and-toxic-food-ingredients/ | 2017-10-01 | 0right
| Groundbreaking study reveals 20% of all deaths now caused by junk food and toxic food ingredients
<p>( <a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/" type="external">Natural News</a>) Here I was, strolling up to a cancer fundraising event for a relative I hardly knew. I heard the sounds of drunken chatter and eyed the Budweiser banner sponsoring the event. A crowd of faces overflowed out of the banquet hall like fizz bubbling over the brim of a red solo cup. I entered through the doorway, greeted by the smell of chemical perfume and barbeque. A raffle was being held to pay for the medical expenses that had overwhelmed yet another family. With blank stares, people were filling their plates with shredded hog meat, colored red and preserved with carcinogenic sodium nitrite. Kids were clamoring for ice cream and other pieces of refined sugar. Caramel color and corn syrup flowed. I overheard conversations, dominated by the talk of health problems and medical bills. (Related:&#160; <a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/054422_toxic_ingredients_cancer_avoid.html" type="external">Top 10 cancer causing food ingredients to avoid</a>.)</p>
<p>I followed a steady stream of people to the back bar. There he was, in a crowded room, surrounded by slot machines and cold drinks. His doctor said he had six months to live. He had been diagnosed with colon cancer just four years ago. The initial chemotherapy was declared a success, but not for long. As usual, the cancer was back, unresolved, rearing its head again. Now here he was, gambling the night away, hoping and praying for a miracle.</p>
<p>Today, 72 percent of early deaths are from non-communicable chronic diseases that are connected to dietary choices that lead to cardiovascular events, obesity, Type-2 diabetes and cancer. A large ongoing study being conducted by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington is seeking why people around the world are at risk of early death. Life expectancy seems to be increasing, but the way people are living these extra years equates to misery. Are people living longer or suffering and dying longer? What are the factors contributing to this misery?</p>
<p>Five papers have already been published in the&#160;Lancet&#160;medical journal, detailing the specific causes, most of which are related to the decisions people make throughout their lifetime. Tobacco use has always been to blame and it is responsible for roughly 12.5 percent of early deaths. Alcohol and drug use is to blame for six percent, but the most shocking statistic from the study is the effect of a poor diet on life expectancy. The study revealed that a diet consumed with junk food and toxic food ingredients alone&#160; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/14/poor-diet-is-a-factor-in-one-in-five-deaths-global-disease-study-reveals" type="external">cause 20 percent of early deaths worldwide</a>. This did not even factor in metabolic issues such as high body mass index (eight percent), high systolic blood pressure (20 percent), high fasting plasma glucose (10 percent), and high total cholesterol (7.5 percent), all of which can be traced back to poor diet in some way. Another five percent was attributed to low physical activity (two percent) and child and maternal malnutrition (five percent), two issues wildly underestimated.</p>
<p>In the face of challenges unconquered, the drunkenness at the cancer charity event that night&#160;seemed arrogant and undignified. I made a small donation to the family who was struggling with medical bills, but more importantly, I gave them a little bit of information about the causes and how the&#160; <a href="https://www.naturalhealth365.com/chemotherapy-cancer-patients-1796.html" type="external">chemotherapy fails to address the real issues</a>. I hated to see a cancer charity event serve all this toxic junk food to so many people. This habitual eating of junk food was a major cause, right under their noses.</p>
<p>I wondered why cancer charity events like this one didn’t have fresh juice bar instead. I wondered why kids were clamoring for candies and soda instead of reaching for polyphenol-rich green tea.&#160;I wondered why people weren’t celebrating real cellular health by serving organic fruits, vegetables, superfoods, herbs, and berries. I had met doctors who had healed patients with living foods. I had met&#160; <a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/045385_Chris_Wark_beating_cancer_natural_cures.html" type="external">cancer survivors who had turned away from chemotherapy</a>&#160;and chose nutrition and detoxification instead.</p>
<p>We must do more to reject the added sugars, antibiotics, colors, hydrogenated oils, heavy metals&#160;and preservatives that are tainting our blood and poisoning our livers, kidneys and brain. We should fight back against the food companies that inundate our lives with chemicals that weaken our cellular health.&#160; <a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/044443_healing_foods_cancer_immune_support.html" type="external">Plants, herbs, and superfoods&#160;</a>should replace thick saturated animal products that slow down our digestive system and constrict our blood flow. Hormonal, puss-filled dairy products should be replaced with&#160; <a href="https://www.naturalnewsblogs.com/5-super-berries-cause-cancer-cells-self-destruct/" type="external">nuts, seeds, berries</a>&#160;and the very nutritional essences of life. We don’t have to be a statistic. We can live with greater energy and not suffer from the sickness and immune suppression of&#160; <a href="http://ingredients.news/" type="external">toxic junk food</a>.</p>
<p>For more helpful information, visit&#160; <a href="https://thetruthaboutcancer.com/" type="external">The Truth About Cancer</a>.</p>
<p>Sources include:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/14/poor-diet-is-a-factor-in-one-in-five-deaths-global-disease-study-reveals" type="external">The Guardian.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/054422_toxic_ingredients_cancer_avoid.html" type="external">NaturalNews.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/2017-03-16-shocking-data-reveal-bad-diets-are-responsible-for-45-of-heart-diabetes-related-deaths.html" type="external">NaturalNews.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naturalhealth365.com/chemotherapy-cancer-patients-1796.html" type="external">NaturalHealth365.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/045385_Chris_Wark_beating_cancer_natural_cures.html" type="external">NaturalNews.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/044443_healing_foods_cancer_immune_support.html" type="external">NaturalNews.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.naturalnewsblogs.com/5-super-berries-cause-cancer-cells-self-destruct/" type="external">NaturalNewsBlogs.com</a></p>
<p>Courtesy of <a href="https://www.naturalnews.com/2017-09-28-groundbreaking-study-reveals-20-of-all-deaths-caused-by-junk-food-and-toxic-food-ingredients.html" type="external">Natural News</a></p>
<p />
<p /> | 1,559 |
<p>CURWOOD: Its Living on Earth. Im Steve Curwood. December in Paris is not quite like April in Paris, but it is expected to become key this year in the global push to fight climate disruption. On March 31, the United States released its pledges to reduce emissions well ahead of the climate summit in the city of light, the most important such session since negotiations unraveled in Copenhagen in 2009. And the United States was among the first nations to reveal its commitments. Here to discuss where we stand is Jennifer Morgan, Director of the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute. Welcome back to Living on Earth, Jennifer.</p>
<p>MORGAN: Thanks, it's great to be here.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: Now, the US finds itself in a different position than in the run-up to the previous major conference there in Copenhagen where in the early days of the Obama administration there wasn't even a task force to figure out what the US position would be. To what extent is the United States, is America, leading this charge now?</p>
<p>MORGAN: The US, I think, is very much leading the charge; they've put forward a serious offer. The President has asked every single secretary to look at what he or she can do to reduce emissions with their executive authority. They've put their offer forward early and transparently. I think it's a big priority for the President's second term, which is great.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: So talk about the US plan. How much of the emissions is the United States committed to reduce?</p>
<p>MORGAN: They've committed to reduce 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. That's about a doubling of what they've done thus far. It includes all greenhouse gas emissions, a hundred percent of them. They have a list of the various standards and laws and rules that they're going to use, that they have authority to use to meet that target making power plants more efficient tackling methane using fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, appliances. It's a pretty robust plan, I think.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: And President Obama doesn't need Congress at all to do this apparently.</p>
<p>MORGAN: He doesn't. What he is doing is using his executive authority which was granted to him by the Supreme Court that found that greenhouse gases are pollutants and therefore the Clean Air Act must regulate those sources and so with this plan can be done without Congress, but clearly it would be better if Congress was engaged in helping out on tackling climate change.</p>
<p>Much of the US energy plan will rely on President Obamas clean power plant rule. (Photo: Bigstockphoto)</p>
<p>CURWOOD: Well, without Congress though the United States isn't able to say that we would simply buy emissions from elsewhere, that is trade emissions that we have to do everything at home. Some would say that maybe puts us in a stronger position.</p>
<p>MORGAN: Well, I think it is very interesting, and it sends a strong signal that the US is decarbonizing its economy domestically, that there will be much less coal used, more renewables used. It's really calling on American ingenuity and innovation to solve the problem and not trying to go and buy offset credits somewhere else.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: So on the Jennifer Morgan World Resources Institute's scale of weak to ambitious, how strong is the United States plan, let's say from one to ten?</p>
<p>MORGAN: I would give it a good seven, seven to eight. I mean, it does set a longer-term goal of getting out to about 80 percent reductions by 2050. There, more is needed. Climate change is happening now and we need to actually shift and have deep decarbonization of our entire economies, so over the longer term, greater ambition is going to be needed.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: Talk to me about some of the other countries here. Who else has put forward an ambitious plan?</p>
<p>MORGAN: Well, I think we've seen serious offers from Switzerland, I think most importantly from European Union. They've said they're going to reduce their emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, so they're really staying the course. Renewables is the only energy source that's going to be growing in Europe in the future, and very importantly, Mexico just tabled its national plan to peak its emissions in 2026, set up a Climate Policy Council with United States, also putting in a set of measures to harmonize standards. So I think the standard you see in the US plan I would expect to be a conversation now with Mexico, and the first developing country to get out there in front of many other developed countries in fact.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: How's the rest of Latin America faring? I understand you were recently in Brazil?</p>
<p>MORGAN: Latin America is a fascinating place. There's so much dynamism there and you see the plans will come in, I think, from Chile, from Peru, from Columbia, where they, from what I understand, see that acting on climate change is much less expensive then dealing with the costs of the impacts of climate change. Brazil is in a unique situation, it's reduced its deforestation omissions quite a lot, but it could start building coal in Brazil instead of sticking with its low carbon energy sources. So there, my hope would be that they'll follow the pathway of China and India and put in place ambitious targets on wind and solar so that they don't make the mistakes of other countries.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: What about China? China is the worlds largest emitter, and they didn't have a plan to hit the March deadline, but as I understand it they will have something by June? How concerning is that delay and how strong do you think their approach will be?</p>
<p>MORGAN: Well, China's big step on the world stage was in the US-China agreement that came out in November of last year where they indicated that they were going to work to peak their emissions by the latest 2030 and aim to do so beforehand. They put out a big commitment on non-fossil energy sources and are really I think getting in more detail of what will go into their plan and that's why they're taking a little bit longer. As long as that comes out in June, July, I'm not worried about it. My understanding is you know they have so much going on also on pilots on emissions trading, on efficiency, they're really trying to make that a robust plan, which is just immensely important. The way that China goes in the future is clearly fundamental for whether we're able to really tackle this problem or not.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: So from your perspective where do we stand now heading into these really important negotiations in Paris come December? In other words, how optimistic are you that the world is going to get something meaningful done?</p>
<p>Jennifer Morgan (Photo: World Resources Institute)</p>
<p>MORGAN: Well, I think where we stand is that you're seeing a level of seriousness by major economies coming forward with their plans, what they are going to do. I think the negotiations will intensify. I'm optimistic that there will be an agreement in Paris. I think, though, it's got to be a really hard number of months to get this done. It will require heads of state engagements so that that agreement can be as robust as possible, that it can send a signal to the world that the future is low carbon and that it's got to happen faster and at greater scale than people had expected beforehand.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: Jennifer Morgan is Director of the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute. Thanks for joining us today.</p>
<p>MORGAN: Thank you.</p> | US Submits Climate Plan as Paris Summit Approaches | false | https://pri.org/stories/2015-04-03/us-submits-climate-plan-paris-summit-approaches | 2015-04-03 | 3left-center
| US Submits Climate Plan as Paris Summit Approaches
<p>CURWOOD: Its Living on Earth. Im Steve Curwood. December in Paris is not quite like April in Paris, but it is expected to become key this year in the global push to fight climate disruption. On March 31, the United States released its pledges to reduce emissions well ahead of the climate summit in the city of light, the most important such session since negotiations unraveled in Copenhagen in 2009. And the United States was among the first nations to reveal its commitments. Here to discuss where we stand is Jennifer Morgan, Director of the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute. Welcome back to Living on Earth, Jennifer.</p>
<p>MORGAN: Thanks, it's great to be here.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: Now, the US finds itself in a different position than in the run-up to the previous major conference there in Copenhagen where in the early days of the Obama administration there wasn't even a task force to figure out what the US position would be. To what extent is the United States, is America, leading this charge now?</p>
<p>MORGAN: The US, I think, is very much leading the charge; they've put forward a serious offer. The President has asked every single secretary to look at what he or she can do to reduce emissions with their executive authority. They've put their offer forward early and transparently. I think it's a big priority for the President's second term, which is great.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: So talk about the US plan. How much of the emissions is the United States committed to reduce?</p>
<p>MORGAN: They've committed to reduce 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. That's about a doubling of what they've done thus far. It includes all greenhouse gas emissions, a hundred percent of them. They have a list of the various standards and laws and rules that they're going to use, that they have authority to use to meet that target making power plants more efficient tackling methane using fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, appliances. It's a pretty robust plan, I think.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: And President Obama doesn't need Congress at all to do this apparently.</p>
<p>MORGAN: He doesn't. What he is doing is using his executive authority which was granted to him by the Supreme Court that found that greenhouse gases are pollutants and therefore the Clean Air Act must regulate those sources and so with this plan can be done without Congress, but clearly it would be better if Congress was engaged in helping out on tackling climate change.</p>
<p>Much of the US energy plan will rely on President Obamas clean power plant rule. (Photo: Bigstockphoto)</p>
<p>CURWOOD: Well, without Congress though the United States isn't able to say that we would simply buy emissions from elsewhere, that is trade emissions that we have to do everything at home. Some would say that maybe puts us in a stronger position.</p>
<p>MORGAN: Well, I think it is very interesting, and it sends a strong signal that the US is decarbonizing its economy domestically, that there will be much less coal used, more renewables used. It's really calling on American ingenuity and innovation to solve the problem and not trying to go and buy offset credits somewhere else.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: So on the Jennifer Morgan World Resources Institute's scale of weak to ambitious, how strong is the United States plan, let's say from one to ten?</p>
<p>MORGAN: I would give it a good seven, seven to eight. I mean, it does set a longer-term goal of getting out to about 80 percent reductions by 2050. There, more is needed. Climate change is happening now and we need to actually shift and have deep decarbonization of our entire economies, so over the longer term, greater ambition is going to be needed.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: Talk to me about some of the other countries here. Who else has put forward an ambitious plan?</p>
<p>MORGAN: Well, I think we've seen serious offers from Switzerland, I think most importantly from European Union. They've said they're going to reduce their emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, so they're really staying the course. Renewables is the only energy source that's going to be growing in Europe in the future, and very importantly, Mexico just tabled its national plan to peak its emissions in 2026, set up a Climate Policy Council with United States, also putting in a set of measures to harmonize standards. So I think the standard you see in the US plan I would expect to be a conversation now with Mexico, and the first developing country to get out there in front of many other developed countries in fact.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: How's the rest of Latin America faring? I understand you were recently in Brazil?</p>
<p>MORGAN: Latin America is a fascinating place. There's so much dynamism there and you see the plans will come in, I think, from Chile, from Peru, from Columbia, where they, from what I understand, see that acting on climate change is much less expensive then dealing with the costs of the impacts of climate change. Brazil is in a unique situation, it's reduced its deforestation omissions quite a lot, but it could start building coal in Brazil instead of sticking with its low carbon energy sources. So there, my hope would be that they'll follow the pathway of China and India and put in place ambitious targets on wind and solar so that they don't make the mistakes of other countries.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: What about China? China is the worlds largest emitter, and they didn't have a plan to hit the March deadline, but as I understand it they will have something by June? How concerning is that delay and how strong do you think their approach will be?</p>
<p>MORGAN: Well, China's big step on the world stage was in the US-China agreement that came out in November of last year where they indicated that they were going to work to peak their emissions by the latest 2030 and aim to do so beforehand. They put out a big commitment on non-fossil energy sources and are really I think getting in more detail of what will go into their plan and that's why they're taking a little bit longer. As long as that comes out in June, July, I'm not worried about it. My understanding is you know they have so much going on also on pilots on emissions trading, on efficiency, they're really trying to make that a robust plan, which is just immensely important. The way that China goes in the future is clearly fundamental for whether we're able to really tackle this problem or not.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: So from your perspective where do we stand now heading into these really important negotiations in Paris come December? In other words, how optimistic are you that the world is going to get something meaningful done?</p>
<p>Jennifer Morgan (Photo: World Resources Institute)</p>
<p>MORGAN: Well, I think where we stand is that you're seeing a level of seriousness by major economies coming forward with their plans, what they are going to do. I think the negotiations will intensify. I'm optimistic that there will be an agreement in Paris. I think, though, it's got to be a really hard number of months to get this done. It will require heads of state engagements so that that agreement can be as robust as possible, that it can send a signal to the world that the future is low carbon and that it's got to happen faster and at greater scale than people had expected beforehand.</p>
<p>CURWOOD: Jennifer Morgan is Director of the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute. Thanks for joining us today.</p>
<p>MORGAN: Thank you.</p> | 1,560 |
<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening's drawing of the Pennsylvania Lottery's "Pick 4 Evening" game were:</p>
<p>1-5-4-9, Wild: 5</p>
<p>(one, five, four, nine; Wild: five)</p>
<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening's drawing of the Pennsylvania Lottery's "Pick 4 Evening" game were:</p>
<p>1-5-4-9, Wild: 5</p>
<p>(one, five, four, nine; Wild: five)</p> | Winning numbers drawn in 'Pick 4 Evening' game | false | https://apnews.com/amp/8a07ddab1b124f6e9a7d2900d611e2b6 | 2018-01-04 | 2least
| Winning numbers drawn in 'Pick 4 Evening' game
<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening's drawing of the Pennsylvania Lottery's "Pick 4 Evening" game were:</p>
<p>1-5-4-9, Wild: 5</p>
<p>(one, five, four, nine; Wild: five)</p>
<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening's drawing of the Pennsylvania Lottery's "Pick 4 Evening" game were:</p>
<p>1-5-4-9, Wild: 5</p>
<p>(one, five, four, nine; Wild: five)</p> | 1,561 |
<p>your email</p>
<p>your name</p>
<p>recipient(s) email (comma separated)</p>
<p />
<p>message</p>
<p>captcha</p>
<p />
<p>(Image: Coalition of Immokalee Workers)</p>
<p>The hot summer has brought in a bumper crop of food activism from coast to coast. For the past few weeks, a group of Florida farm workers has embarked on a marketing coup that challenges the country's food business giants by educating consumers about exploitation in the tomato industry.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://ciw-online.org/index.html" type="external">Coalition of Immokalee Workers</a> (CIW) has made a name for itself by using creative consumer-driven campaigns to promote fairer wages and working conditions for tomato harvesters, a workforce fueled by Latino migrant laborers. Though corporate resistance has been formidable, the group has scored a series of victories over the past few years over the likes of Taco Bell, Burger King and Subway. Partnering with consumer groups and fair-food activists, the CIW's <a href="http://ciw-online.org/101.html#cff" type="external">Campaign for Fair Food</a> seeks to educate people about the brutal labor that goes into each tomato.</p>
<p>Farmworkers' backbreaking toil will be spotlighted on some of the trendiest sidewalks in Manhattan on Friday, with rallies at Trader Joe's stores in the Village and Chelsea. The actions follow a similar campaign on the West Coast in which <a href="http://ciw-online.org/TJs_Tour_Bay_Area.html" type="external">protesters in San Francisco and Berkeley</a> wielded paper-bag picket signs and marched through the Mission District calling on drivers to “Honk for Farm Worker Justice.” The CIW now counts a number of <a href="http://www.gainesville.com/article/20110728/ARTICLES/110729497/1002/news01?Title=Local-religious-leaders-rally-against-Publix-at-City-Hall" type="external">religious leaders</a> and <a href="http://zesterdaily.com/zester-soapbox-articles/944-trader-joes-says-no-to-increase-for-florida-tomato-farmworkers" type="external">gourmet food activist Barry Estabrook</a> among its allies.</p>
<p>The Coalition says its multi-pronged struggle involves “all the elements of our country's food industry,” from the folks hauling baskets all the way up to the florescent-lit supermarket aisle. Most importantly, the organization banks on the political leverage of consumers to push stores and suppliers to abide by ethical standards. With an active membership of several thousand, the workers themselves participate as well through organizing and educating people on “humanizing our farm labor system.”</p>
<p>The workers' key demand, an additional penny per pound of tomatoes picked, seems a tiny cost for consumers and producers to absorb, given the workers' long hours, arduous working conditions and their vulnerability to maltreatment and even slave labor. The pennies do add up for laborers, potentially boosting yearly earnings by several thousand dollars. (Typical wages amount to <a href="http://www.ciw-online.org/Resources/tools/general/10FactsFigures.pdf" type="external">less than $12,000 annually</a>, according to the Coalition, and after years of virtually stagnant wages, “a worker today must pick more than 2.25 tons of tomatoes to earn minimum wage in a typical 10-hour workday.")</p>
<p>CIW's summer <a href="http://www.foodfirst.org/en/Coalition+of+Immokalee+Workers+Trader+Joe%27s+Truth+Tour" type="external">Truth Tour</a> demonstrations, which focus on big-name grocers, have been decried by the right-wing blogosphere as a “Prototypical Example of Alinsky Tactics and Smug Self-Immortalization.” Translation: an effective protest action.</p>
<p>The campaign puts Trader Joe's hip, liberal brand in a bind: the company <a href="http://www.traderjoes.com/pdf/attachments/Note-to-Customers-about-Florida-Tomatoes.pdf" type="external">complained publicly</a> in May that while it was willing to comply with CIW's demands in general, specific provisions of the draft agreement were “overreaching” and “improper.” CIW <a href="http://ciw-online.org/TJs_customers_talk_back.html" type="external">responded with</a> lengthy point-by-point rebuttals and <a href="http://ciw-online.org/say_it_aint_so_Trader_Joes.html" type="external">declared</a>, 'It seems that the longer Trader Joe's resists the Fair Food movement, the more its leadership -- from the CEO to the public relations department -- is determined to tarnish the company's reputation as an ethical, progressive grocer.”</p>
<p>The organizing model evokes interesting historical comparisons with another wave of farm labor activist in the 1960s and 1970s led by <a href="http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&amp;inc=_page.php?menu=research&amp;inc=history/01.html" type="external">United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez</a>, which pioneered union organizing in agriculture. Yet the UFW <a href="" type="internal">has lost political salience over the years</a>, as working conditions have deteriorated.</p>
<p>The younger, nimbler CIW is not a union, but in many ways neither needs nor desires the conventional union structure. The fluid, precarious nature of migrant labor is a barrier to movement building, yet at the same time, the tomato and food industry's severe consolidation across the supply chain provide fertile ground for focused, visible campaigns that mobilize consumers and workers in tandem.</p>
<p>Last fall, Kari Lydersen <a href="" type="internal">reported</a> that faced with pressure from consumers and workers, some of Florida's big growers had finally agreed to the penny-per-pound wage subsidy. Soon after, the Coalition clinched a <a href="http://www.ciw-online.org/FTGE_CIW_joint_release.html" type="external">groundbreaking deal with the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange</a>, which bound major growers to a contract that includes “a strict code of conduct, a cooperative complaint resolution system, a participatory health and safety program, and a worker-to-worker education process.” The agreement, estimated to cover more than 90 percent of Florida's tomato industry, helps close a crucial gap in the chain, since retailers and restaurants agreeing to the penny raise could guarantee that the benefit would trickle down to workers.</p>
<p>The enforcement mechanism within the binding agreement is designed to keep growers and suppliers in check, using an outside nonprofit group to monitor compliance, so that, at least in theory, any grower that violates the code won't be able to sell to retailers also bound to the agreement. <a href="http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/nov/16/historic-deal-made-between-immokalee-workers-flori/" type="external">CIW organizer Lucas Benitez</a> told Naples Daily News that employers have to answer to both their buyers and their workers:</p>
<p>With this agreement, we will be working with growers to identify and eliminate abuses through a cooperative complaint investigation and resolution system, with real consequences for violations, including zero tolerance for forced labor.</p>
<p>In the absence of strong government regulation, the Coalition's strategy aims not just to force employers to obey labor laws but also strive for decent working standards overall, in order to turn Florida's tomato industry from a bastion of poverty into, in Benitez's words, “a model of social accountability for the 21st century.” Whether such industrial change can be wrought by a motley alliance of some of the country's poorest workers, the biggest food brands, and the savviest customers, has yet to be seen. But if a bunch of migrant farm workers can get Manhattan hipsters to think seriously about who picked their salad this summer, they're on the road to victory.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>The description of food industry consolidation was edited for clarity.</p> | Coalition of Immokalee Workers Brings Farmworker Movement to the Streets | true | http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/11804/coailition_of_imokalee_workers_brings_farmworker_justice_to_the_street/ | 2011-08-05 | 4left
| Coalition of Immokalee Workers Brings Farmworker Movement to the Streets
<p>your email</p>
<p>your name</p>
<p>recipient(s) email (comma separated)</p>
<p />
<p>message</p>
<p>captcha</p>
<p />
<p>(Image: Coalition of Immokalee Workers)</p>
<p>The hot summer has brought in a bumper crop of food activism from coast to coast. For the past few weeks, a group of Florida farm workers has embarked on a marketing coup that challenges the country's food business giants by educating consumers about exploitation in the tomato industry.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://ciw-online.org/index.html" type="external">Coalition of Immokalee Workers</a> (CIW) has made a name for itself by using creative consumer-driven campaigns to promote fairer wages and working conditions for tomato harvesters, a workforce fueled by Latino migrant laborers. Though corporate resistance has been formidable, the group has scored a series of victories over the past few years over the likes of Taco Bell, Burger King and Subway. Partnering with consumer groups and fair-food activists, the CIW's <a href="http://ciw-online.org/101.html#cff" type="external">Campaign for Fair Food</a> seeks to educate people about the brutal labor that goes into each tomato.</p>
<p>Farmworkers' backbreaking toil will be spotlighted on some of the trendiest sidewalks in Manhattan on Friday, with rallies at Trader Joe's stores in the Village and Chelsea. The actions follow a similar campaign on the West Coast in which <a href="http://ciw-online.org/TJs_Tour_Bay_Area.html" type="external">protesters in San Francisco and Berkeley</a> wielded paper-bag picket signs and marched through the Mission District calling on drivers to “Honk for Farm Worker Justice.” The CIW now counts a number of <a href="http://www.gainesville.com/article/20110728/ARTICLES/110729497/1002/news01?Title=Local-religious-leaders-rally-against-Publix-at-City-Hall" type="external">religious leaders</a> and <a href="http://zesterdaily.com/zester-soapbox-articles/944-trader-joes-says-no-to-increase-for-florida-tomato-farmworkers" type="external">gourmet food activist Barry Estabrook</a> among its allies.</p>
<p>The Coalition says its multi-pronged struggle involves “all the elements of our country's food industry,” from the folks hauling baskets all the way up to the florescent-lit supermarket aisle. Most importantly, the organization banks on the political leverage of consumers to push stores and suppliers to abide by ethical standards. With an active membership of several thousand, the workers themselves participate as well through organizing and educating people on “humanizing our farm labor system.”</p>
<p>The workers' key demand, an additional penny per pound of tomatoes picked, seems a tiny cost for consumers and producers to absorb, given the workers' long hours, arduous working conditions and their vulnerability to maltreatment and even slave labor. The pennies do add up for laborers, potentially boosting yearly earnings by several thousand dollars. (Typical wages amount to <a href="http://www.ciw-online.org/Resources/tools/general/10FactsFigures.pdf" type="external">less than $12,000 annually</a>, according to the Coalition, and after years of virtually stagnant wages, “a worker today must pick more than 2.25 tons of tomatoes to earn minimum wage in a typical 10-hour workday.")</p>
<p>CIW's summer <a href="http://www.foodfirst.org/en/Coalition+of+Immokalee+Workers+Trader+Joe%27s+Truth+Tour" type="external">Truth Tour</a> demonstrations, which focus on big-name grocers, have been decried by the right-wing blogosphere as a “Prototypical Example of Alinsky Tactics and Smug Self-Immortalization.” Translation: an effective protest action.</p>
<p>The campaign puts Trader Joe's hip, liberal brand in a bind: the company <a href="http://www.traderjoes.com/pdf/attachments/Note-to-Customers-about-Florida-Tomatoes.pdf" type="external">complained publicly</a> in May that while it was willing to comply with CIW's demands in general, specific provisions of the draft agreement were “overreaching” and “improper.” CIW <a href="http://ciw-online.org/TJs_customers_talk_back.html" type="external">responded with</a> lengthy point-by-point rebuttals and <a href="http://ciw-online.org/say_it_aint_so_Trader_Joes.html" type="external">declared</a>, 'It seems that the longer Trader Joe's resists the Fair Food movement, the more its leadership -- from the CEO to the public relations department -- is determined to tarnish the company's reputation as an ethical, progressive grocer.”</p>
<p>The organizing model evokes interesting historical comparisons with another wave of farm labor activist in the 1960s and 1970s led by <a href="http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&amp;inc=_page.php?menu=research&amp;inc=history/01.html" type="external">United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez</a>, which pioneered union organizing in agriculture. Yet the UFW <a href="" type="internal">has lost political salience over the years</a>, as working conditions have deteriorated.</p>
<p>The younger, nimbler CIW is not a union, but in many ways neither needs nor desires the conventional union structure. The fluid, precarious nature of migrant labor is a barrier to movement building, yet at the same time, the tomato and food industry's severe consolidation across the supply chain provide fertile ground for focused, visible campaigns that mobilize consumers and workers in tandem.</p>
<p>Last fall, Kari Lydersen <a href="" type="internal">reported</a> that faced with pressure from consumers and workers, some of Florida's big growers had finally agreed to the penny-per-pound wage subsidy. Soon after, the Coalition clinched a <a href="http://www.ciw-online.org/FTGE_CIW_joint_release.html" type="external">groundbreaking deal with the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange</a>, which bound major growers to a contract that includes “a strict code of conduct, a cooperative complaint resolution system, a participatory health and safety program, and a worker-to-worker education process.” The agreement, estimated to cover more than 90 percent of Florida's tomato industry, helps close a crucial gap in the chain, since retailers and restaurants agreeing to the penny raise could guarantee that the benefit would trickle down to workers.</p>
<p>The enforcement mechanism within the binding agreement is designed to keep growers and suppliers in check, using an outside nonprofit group to monitor compliance, so that, at least in theory, any grower that violates the code won't be able to sell to retailers also bound to the agreement. <a href="http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/nov/16/historic-deal-made-between-immokalee-workers-flori/" type="external">CIW organizer Lucas Benitez</a> told Naples Daily News that employers have to answer to both their buyers and their workers:</p>
<p>With this agreement, we will be working with growers to identify and eliminate abuses through a cooperative complaint investigation and resolution system, with real consequences for violations, including zero tolerance for forced labor.</p>
<p>In the absence of strong government regulation, the Coalition's strategy aims not just to force employers to obey labor laws but also strive for decent working standards overall, in order to turn Florida's tomato industry from a bastion of poverty into, in Benitez's words, “a model of social accountability for the 21st century.” Whether such industrial change can be wrought by a motley alliance of some of the country's poorest workers, the biggest food brands, and the savviest customers, has yet to be seen. But if a bunch of migrant farm workers can get Manhattan hipsters to think seriously about who picked their salad this summer, they're on the road to victory.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>The description of food industry consolidation was edited for clarity.</p> | 1,562 |
<p>Barack Obama has an accountability problem. It’s not simply that during the 2008 campaign he made extravagant promises to heal the planet, slow the rise of the oceans, end political divisions in America, and usher in an era of hope and change. It’s that as a candidate and in the early days of his presidency, Obama and his top aides made a series of very specific promises on a range of issues.</p>
<p>As a candidate, Obama promised to create five million new energy jobs alone, claimed that by the end of his first term his health care plan would “bring down premiums by $2,500 for the typical family,” and guaranteed that his financial rescue plan would help “stop foreclosures.” As president-elect, Obama informed us that he had asked two of his top economic advisers, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, to conduct a “rigorous analysis” of his economic recovery plan. The report that he released predicted unemployment would not rise above 8 percent if the stimulus plan was passed. And in the first year of his presidency, Obama pledged to “cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office,” “lift two million Americans from poverty,” and “jolt our economy back to life.”</p>
<p>The problem for Obama is that his predictions were not only wrong; they were terribly wide of the mark. For example, since the president was sworn in, America has suffered a net decline of roughly half a million jobs. According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average annual premium for family health coverage through an employer reached $15,073 in 2011!!an increase of 9 percent, or $1,303, over the previous year. The 9 percent increase in family premiums between 2010 and 2011 followed an increase of 3 percent between 2009 and 2010. Under Obama, the number of foreclosures was the worst in history. In addition, last year was the worst sales year on record for housing, while home values are nearly 35 percent lower than they were five years ago.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has been above 8percent for 41 consecutive months. The deficit was around $1.3 trillion the day Obama took office in the midst of the financial crisis; according to the Congressional Budget Office, in the current 2012 budget year, the deficit will be around $1.25 trillion. And a record 46 million Americans are now living in poverty.</p>
<p>In addition, during the Obama years we’ve experienced the weakest economic recovery on record. America’s credit rating was downgraded for the first time in our history. The standard of living for Americans fell more steeply than at any time since the government began recording it five decades ago. Income for American families has actually declined more following the economic recession than it did during the official recession itself.</p>
<p>Adding salt to his self-inflicted wounds, Obama, in the heady early days of his presidency, invited accountability. In February 2009, for example, the president told NBC’s Matt Lauer that if he didn’t have the economy fixed in three years, then “there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”</p>
<p>Given that Obama’s key economic promises haven’t been kept, what possible excuse can the president offer? Easy. The president’s explanation goes something like this: By the time he took office, the economic situation was far worse than anyone, including Obama, imagined. The deficit was far larger than anyone predicted. The president therefore can’t be held accountable for his failed promises. He was operating on a false set of assumptions. The crisis was much deeper than he knew when he made those promises. “We didn’t know how bad it was,” is how Obama put it last year.</p>
<p>Here’s the problem: If you go back and examine the record, you’ll find that Obama was fully aware of the depth and severity of the recession. As a candidate, for example, he said we were facing “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” As president-elect, Obama said we faced “a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime.”</p>
<p>Prior to being sworn in, Obama knew!!in fact, he went out of his way to warn us!!that we were shedding more than half a million jobs per month, the worst job loss in over three decades. That in 2008 we had lost more jobs than in any year since the Great Depression. That manufacturing had hit a 28-year low. That the stock market had fallen almost 40 percent in less than a year. That credit markets were nearly frozen. That businesses large and small couldn’t borrow the money they needed to meet payroll and create jobs. That home foreclosures were mounting. That credit card and auto loan delinquencies were rising. That the economy was “in a global crisis.” And that he was inheriting an “enormous budget deficit!!you know, some estimates over a trillion dollars. That’s before we do anything.”</p>
<p>In other words, Barack Obama knew full well how bad things were when he promised he’d cut the deficit in half, when his economic team said that if his stimulus package passed, unemployment would not rise above 8 percent, and much of the rest.</p>
<p>What this means, then, is that Barack Obama’s only excuse for his failures is a myth and a mirage!!a manufactured, after-the-fact effort to escape accountability for his own words, his own commitments, and his own failings.</p>
<p>The “We Couldn’t Possibly Have Known How Bad It Was” narrative is an understandable one for Obama to resort to. But like so much of what the president says these days, it’s simply make-believe. The president has run out of excuses, which explains why for many Americans he’s just about run out of time.</p>
<p>Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | Promises, Promises | false | https://eppc.org/publications/promises-promises/ | 1right-center
| Promises, Promises
<p>Barack Obama has an accountability problem. It’s not simply that during the 2008 campaign he made extravagant promises to heal the planet, slow the rise of the oceans, end political divisions in America, and usher in an era of hope and change. It’s that as a candidate and in the early days of his presidency, Obama and his top aides made a series of very specific promises on a range of issues.</p>
<p>As a candidate, Obama promised to create five million new energy jobs alone, claimed that by the end of his first term his health care plan would “bring down premiums by $2,500 for the typical family,” and guaranteed that his financial rescue plan would help “stop foreclosures.” As president-elect, Obama informed us that he had asked two of his top economic advisers, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, to conduct a “rigorous analysis” of his economic recovery plan. The report that he released predicted unemployment would not rise above 8 percent if the stimulus plan was passed. And in the first year of his presidency, Obama pledged to “cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office,” “lift two million Americans from poverty,” and “jolt our economy back to life.”</p>
<p>The problem for Obama is that his predictions were not only wrong; they were terribly wide of the mark. For example, since the president was sworn in, America has suffered a net decline of roughly half a million jobs. According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average annual premium for family health coverage through an employer reached $15,073 in 2011!!an increase of 9 percent, or $1,303, over the previous year. The 9 percent increase in family premiums between 2010 and 2011 followed an increase of 3 percent between 2009 and 2010. Under Obama, the number of foreclosures was the worst in history. In addition, last year was the worst sales year on record for housing, while home values are nearly 35 percent lower than they were five years ago.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has been above 8percent for 41 consecutive months. The deficit was around $1.3 trillion the day Obama took office in the midst of the financial crisis; according to the Congressional Budget Office, in the current 2012 budget year, the deficit will be around $1.25 trillion. And a record 46 million Americans are now living in poverty.</p>
<p>In addition, during the Obama years we’ve experienced the weakest economic recovery on record. America’s credit rating was downgraded for the first time in our history. The standard of living for Americans fell more steeply than at any time since the government began recording it five decades ago. Income for American families has actually declined more following the economic recession than it did during the official recession itself.</p>
<p>Adding salt to his self-inflicted wounds, Obama, in the heady early days of his presidency, invited accountability. In February 2009, for example, the president told NBC’s Matt Lauer that if he didn’t have the economy fixed in three years, then “there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”</p>
<p>Given that Obama’s key economic promises haven’t been kept, what possible excuse can the president offer? Easy. The president’s explanation goes something like this: By the time he took office, the economic situation was far worse than anyone, including Obama, imagined. The deficit was far larger than anyone predicted. The president therefore can’t be held accountable for his failed promises. He was operating on a false set of assumptions. The crisis was much deeper than he knew when he made those promises. “We didn’t know how bad it was,” is how Obama put it last year.</p>
<p>Here’s the problem: If you go back and examine the record, you’ll find that Obama was fully aware of the depth and severity of the recession. As a candidate, for example, he said we were facing “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” As president-elect, Obama said we faced “a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime.”</p>
<p>Prior to being sworn in, Obama knew!!in fact, he went out of his way to warn us!!that we were shedding more than half a million jobs per month, the worst job loss in over three decades. That in 2008 we had lost more jobs than in any year since the Great Depression. That manufacturing had hit a 28-year low. That the stock market had fallen almost 40 percent in less than a year. That credit markets were nearly frozen. That businesses large and small couldn’t borrow the money they needed to meet payroll and create jobs. That home foreclosures were mounting. That credit card and auto loan delinquencies were rising. That the economy was “in a global crisis.” And that he was inheriting an “enormous budget deficit!!you know, some estimates over a trillion dollars. That’s before we do anything.”</p>
<p>In other words, Barack Obama knew full well how bad things were when he promised he’d cut the deficit in half, when his economic team said that if his stimulus package passed, unemployment would not rise above 8 percent, and much of the rest.</p>
<p>What this means, then, is that Barack Obama’s only excuse for his failures is a myth and a mirage!!a manufactured, after-the-fact effort to escape accountability for his own words, his own commitments, and his own failings.</p>
<p>The “We Couldn’t Possibly Have Known How Bad It Was” narrative is an understandable one for Obama to resort to. But like so much of what the president says these days, it’s simply make-believe. The president has run out of excuses, which explains why for many Americans he’s just about run out of time.</p>
<p>Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | 1,563 |
|
<p>BLUEFIELD — Students eager to combine their passion for Christian service with their academic disciplines found an opportunity on a recent medical mission trip sponsored by Bluefield College.</p>
<p>Five students joined two professors and campus minister David Taylor in performing&#160; daily medical procedures in Roaring Creek, Belize, a village of 2,000 people northeast of the country’s capital, Belmopan.</p>
<p />
<p>The team was guided by Van Clampitt, a doctor and father of one of the students, and nurse Linda Ramella.</p>
<p>“This experience was really good for someone going into the medical profession,” said Alyssa Weddle, a pre-med major who learned to draw blood, listen to hearts and lungs and perform an ultrasound. “Under the direction of Dr.Clampitt, we were able to perform actual medical work. Performing an ultrasound on a pregnant woman was an amazing experience!”</p>
<p>The team was based at the Uriah Compound, a medical facility in Roaring Creek established by Body &amp; Soul Ministries, an American Christian organization. The clinic is stocked with supplies and equipment not available even in the nearby capital.</p>
<p>The ultrasound was performed on the daughter of the team’s interpreter just a day before her baby was born. Later that week, they visited mother and child, getting an opportunity of “seeing the baby on the inside one day” and “holding the baby after it was born a few days later.”</p>
<p>But Jeana Church said excitement was tempered by evidence of a less than adequate health care system in the poor nation.</p>
<p>“Medical supplies were just stored in filing cabinets with labels on the outside of the drawers and dirty gauze was just lying on a chair in the medical ward where we visited,” she said. “It was a bio-hazard.”</p>
<p>When they weren’t working in the clinic, the team visited neighborhoods in the village and distributed rice and beans.</p>
<p>“We went into the really poor parts of the village where there was no running water or electricity," said Greg Kerr, professor of biology. “There were just shacks. It was a striking contrast between beauty and squalor, because the shacks had beautiful wild orchids or birds-of-paradise growing right next to them.”</p>
<p>Weddle smiled when she remembered the children. “So many of them take care of their younger brothers and sisters and one day we saw a group of children playing in the river,” she said. “It was good to see kids being kids, even though they weren’t supposed to be in the river when it was muddy.”</p>
<p />
<p>The village of Roaring Creek is named for nearby waterfalls that flow into the Belize River, and “Belize” itself is roughly translated “muddy river.” That river is the source of some health problems for the population living nearby, said Weddle. She recalled a 14-year-old girl who came to the clinic with stomach problems.</p>
<p>“I asked as many questions as I could think of to figure out what might be wrong with her,” said Weddle. “Then, Dr. Clampitt asked her if she had been drinking water from the river, and she said ‘yes.’ I tried to explain to her if she and her family would just boil the water, they wouldn’t have stomach problems anymore. It was amazing to think that I could help someone with something as simple as instructing them to boil their drinking water. I hope she went back home and taught her family and neighbors to boil their water, too.”</p>
<p>While the team was staying at the Uriah Compound, the well’s water pump malfunctioned, and Kerr led efforts to restore it.</p>
<p>“Several years ago, our well pump went out at home,” he said, “and I remember grumbling because I had to go through the process of learning how to replace the motor on the pump. I was glad that God could use my experience for good, and I will be less likely to grumble about little difficulties in the future.”</p>
<p>The BC team came back thankful for “such an amazing opportunity” to help those less fortunate and to live out their passion for service.</p>
<p>“I’m just a student,” said Weddle, “but I'm so glad I got help.”</p>
<p>Others on the team were Mickey Pellillo, assistant professor of English and director of Bluefield’s Writing Center, and students Ashley Clampitt, Kayla Hayes and Cody Sabol.</p>
<p>The trip was funded in part by a grant from the Appalachian College Association, a consortium of 36 private liberal arts colleges and universities in Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.</p> | Students combine academic studies, Christian service | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/studentscombineacademicstudieschristianservice/ | 3left-center
| Students combine academic studies, Christian service
<p>BLUEFIELD — Students eager to combine their passion for Christian service with their academic disciplines found an opportunity on a recent medical mission trip sponsored by Bluefield College.</p>
<p>Five students joined two professors and campus minister David Taylor in performing&#160; daily medical procedures in Roaring Creek, Belize, a village of 2,000 people northeast of the country’s capital, Belmopan.</p>
<p />
<p>The team was guided by Van Clampitt, a doctor and father of one of the students, and nurse Linda Ramella.</p>
<p>“This experience was really good for someone going into the medical profession,” said Alyssa Weddle, a pre-med major who learned to draw blood, listen to hearts and lungs and perform an ultrasound. “Under the direction of Dr.Clampitt, we were able to perform actual medical work. Performing an ultrasound on a pregnant woman was an amazing experience!”</p>
<p>The team was based at the Uriah Compound, a medical facility in Roaring Creek established by Body &amp; Soul Ministries, an American Christian organization. The clinic is stocked with supplies and equipment not available even in the nearby capital.</p>
<p>The ultrasound was performed on the daughter of the team’s interpreter just a day before her baby was born. Later that week, they visited mother and child, getting an opportunity of “seeing the baby on the inside one day” and “holding the baby after it was born a few days later.”</p>
<p>But Jeana Church said excitement was tempered by evidence of a less than adequate health care system in the poor nation.</p>
<p>“Medical supplies were just stored in filing cabinets with labels on the outside of the drawers and dirty gauze was just lying on a chair in the medical ward where we visited,” she said. “It was a bio-hazard.”</p>
<p>When they weren’t working in the clinic, the team visited neighborhoods in the village and distributed rice and beans.</p>
<p>“We went into the really poor parts of the village where there was no running water or electricity," said Greg Kerr, professor of biology. “There were just shacks. It was a striking contrast between beauty and squalor, because the shacks had beautiful wild orchids or birds-of-paradise growing right next to them.”</p>
<p>Weddle smiled when she remembered the children. “So many of them take care of their younger brothers and sisters and one day we saw a group of children playing in the river,” she said. “It was good to see kids being kids, even though they weren’t supposed to be in the river when it was muddy.”</p>
<p />
<p>The village of Roaring Creek is named for nearby waterfalls that flow into the Belize River, and “Belize” itself is roughly translated “muddy river.” That river is the source of some health problems for the population living nearby, said Weddle. She recalled a 14-year-old girl who came to the clinic with stomach problems.</p>
<p>“I asked as many questions as I could think of to figure out what might be wrong with her,” said Weddle. “Then, Dr. Clampitt asked her if she had been drinking water from the river, and she said ‘yes.’ I tried to explain to her if she and her family would just boil the water, they wouldn’t have stomach problems anymore. It was amazing to think that I could help someone with something as simple as instructing them to boil their drinking water. I hope she went back home and taught her family and neighbors to boil their water, too.”</p>
<p>While the team was staying at the Uriah Compound, the well’s water pump malfunctioned, and Kerr led efforts to restore it.</p>
<p>“Several years ago, our well pump went out at home,” he said, “and I remember grumbling because I had to go through the process of learning how to replace the motor on the pump. I was glad that God could use my experience for good, and I will be less likely to grumble about little difficulties in the future.”</p>
<p>The BC team came back thankful for “such an amazing opportunity” to help those less fortunate and to live out their passion for service.</p>
<p>“I’m just a student,” said Weddle, “but I'm so glad I got help.”</p>
<p>Others on the team were Mickey Pellillo, assistant professor of English and director of Bluefield’s Writing Center, and students Ashley Clampitt, Kayla Hayes and Cody Sabol.</p>
<p>The trip was funded in part by a grant from the Appalachian College Association, a consortium of 36 private liberal arts colleges and universities in Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.</p> | 1,564 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>In this image made from video, injured passengers of Etihad Flight EY474 receive medical treatment at the health facility at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Cengkareng, in the outskirt of Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, May 4, 2016. Dozens of passengers and a crew member aboard the flight were injured Wednesday when their plane ran into sudden turbulence as it prepared to land in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. (AP Photo/APTN)</p>
<p>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Thirty-one passengers and a crew member aboard an Etihad Airways flight were injured Wednesday when their plane ran into sudden turbulence as it prepared to land in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.</p>
<p>The United Arab Emirates' national airline said flight EY474, which departed from its hub in the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi, was hit by "severe and unexpected turbulence" about 45 minutes before landing at Soekarno Hatta International Airport.</p>
<p>The Airbus A330-200 landed safely but nine passengers and a crew member were taken to a local hospital for their injuries, Etihad said. Paramedics treated the other 22 at the airport's clinic for minor injuries and they were released, the airline said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Haerul Anwar, a spokesman for the Jakarta airport, described nine of the injuries as serious. He said officials from the airport and Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee were inspecting the plane.</p>
<p>The airline did not provide details on the severity of the injuries, but said the turbulence was severe enough that it damaged cabin storage bins.</p>
<p>Indonesian Transportation Ministry spokesman Hemi Pamuraharjo said at least eight Indonesian passengers and a foreign flight attendant onboard were hurt, with several suffering broken bones.</p>
<p>Etihad did not immediately answer questions about how many passengers were onboard. It said the airline's planned Jakarta to Abu Dhabi flight on Wednesday on the same plane had been cancelled and the airline was assisting passengers.</p>
<p>Passengers onboard who spoke to Jakarta-based news website Okezone said oxygen masks tumbled out in the turbulence and passengers, including Muslim pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia, were hurt.</p>
<p>"It happened when I was performing pray," passenger Nenden Nurhaini told the website. "The plane suddenly began to shake so fast."</p>
<p>Etihad, like its older Gulf rivals Qatar Airways and Dubai-based Emirates, has grown rapidly in recent years primarily by attracting long-haul transit passengers. Founded in 2003, it has a good safety record and last year carried 17.6 million passengers. It holds stakes in several other airlines, including Air Berlin, Alitalia and Virgin Australia.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Ali Kotarumalos in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.</p> | Severe turbulence injures 32 on Etihad flight to Indonesia | false | https://abqjournal.com/768102/severe-turbulence-injures-32-on-etihad-flight-to-indonesia.html | 2least
| Severe turbulence injures 32 on Etihad flight to Indonesia
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>In this image made from video, injured passengers of Etihad Flight EY474 receive medical treatment at the health facility at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Cengkareng, in the outskirt of Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, May 4, 2016. Dozens of passengers and a crew member aboard the flight were injured Wednesday when their plane ran into sudden turbulence as it prepared to land in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. (AP Photo/APTN)</p>
<p>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Thirty-one passengers and a crew member aboard an Etihad Airways flight were injured Wednesday when their plane ran into sudden turbulence as it prepared to land in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.</p>
<p>The United Arab Emirates' national airline said flight EY474, which departed from its hub in the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi, was hit by "severe and unexpected turbulence" about 45 minutes before landing at Soekarno Hatta International Airport.</p>
<p>The Airbus A330-200 landed safely but nine passengers and a crew member were taken to a local hospital for their injuries, Etihad said. Paramedics treated the other 22 at the airport's clinic for minor injuries and they were released, the airline said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Haerul Anwar, a spokesman for the Jakarta airport, described nine of the injuries as serious. He said officials from the airport and Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee were inspecting the plane.</p>
<p>The airline did not provide details on the severity of the injuries, but said the turbulence was severe enough that it damaged cabin storage bins.</p>
<p>Indonesian Transportation Ministry spokesman Hemi Pamuraharjo said at least eight Indonesian passengers and a foreign flight attendant onboard were hurt, with several suffering broken bones.</p>
<p>Etihad did not immediately answer questions about how many passengers were onboard. It said the airline's planned Jakarta to Abu Dhabi flight on Wednesday on the same plane had been cancelled and the airline was assisting passengers.</p>
<p>Passengers onboard who spoke to Jakarta-based news website Okezone said oxygen masks tumbled out in the turbulence and passengers, including Muslim pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia, were hurt.</p>
<p>"It happened when I was performing pray," passenger Nenden Nurhaini told the website. "The plane suddenly began to shake so fast."</p>
<p>Etihad, like its older Gulf rivals Qatar Airways and Dubai-based Emirates, has grown rapidly in recent years primarily by attracting long-haul transit passengers. Founded in 2003, it has a good safety record and last year carried 17.6 million passengers. It holds stakes in several other airlines, including Air Berlin, Alitalia and Virgin Australia.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Ali Kotarumalos in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.</p> | 1,565 |
|
<p>Photo of Jerry Brown: Wikimedia Commons</p>
<p />
<p>Editors’ Note: This education dispatch is part of a new ongoing series reported from&#160; <a href="http://www.missionhs.org/" type="external">Mission High School</a>, where education writer&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Kristina Rizga</a> is known to students as “Miss K.” <a href="" type="internal">Click here to see all of</a> <a href="" type="internal">Mojo</a> <a href="" type="internal">‘s recent education coverage</a>, or <a href="http://twitter.com/KristinaRizga" type="external">follow</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/KristinaRizga" type="external">The Miss K Files</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/KristinaRizga" type="external">on Twitter</a> or with <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/KristinaRizga" type="external">this RSS&#160;Feed</a>.</p>
<p>After a week of <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/14/local/la-me-brown-education-20101214" type="external">depressing announcements</a> about looming budget woes, the <a href="http://www.cta.org/" type="external">California Teachers Association</a> is celebrating some good news for a change. On Wednesday, The Sacramento Bee <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/04/3297230/brown-budget-will-spare-schools.html" type="external">reported</a> that governor Jerry Brown plans to spare K-12 education and community colleges from another massive round of cuts—if, and this is a big if—California voters can accept higher taxes on their purchases, cars, and income. Brown plans to hold a related special election this spring.</p>
<p>Today, Brown’s office <a href="http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/01/comings-and-goings-on-the-stat.html#ixzz1AHTySLb9What%20is%20the%20total%20yearly%20budget" type="external">released the names</a> of the seven members who’ll sit on California’s State Board of Education, the state body that sets education policies for the state. Gone is a member who supported the “ <a href="" type="internal">parent trigger</a>” law, a controversial education reform that union members staunchly opposed. Anti-charter advocate and education professor <a href="http://www.dianeravitch.com/vita.html" type="external">Diane Ravitch</a> views the new board as a victory, tweeting that control has shifted from big-business/foundations to teachers and teacher unions.</p>
<p>Speaking of charter schools, Brown opened two himself when he was mayor of Oakland and has since <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/14/local/la-me-brown-education-20101214" type="external">signaled</a> to pro-charter advocates, including US&#160;education secretary <a href="" type="internal">Arne Duncan</a>, that he now believes charter schools are driven by faith in overly simplistic solutions with a “pervasive technocratic bias and an uncritical faith in the power [of] social science.”</p>
<p /> | Jerry Brown vs. the Parent Trigger Law? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jerry-brown-and-education-reform/ | 2011-01-06 | 4left
| Jerry Brown vs. the Parent Trigger Law?
<p>Photo of Jerry Brown: Wikimedia Commons</p>
<p />
<p>Editors’ Note: This education dispatch is part of a new ongoing series reported from&#160; <a href="http://www.missionhs.org/" type="external">Mission High School</a>, where education writer&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Kristina Rizga</a> is known to students as “Miss K.” <a href="" type="internal">Click here to see all of</a> <a href="" type="internal">Mojo</a> <a href="" type="internal">‘s recent education coverage</a>, or <a href="http://twitter.com/KristinaRizga" type="external">follow</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/KristinaRizga" type="external">The Miss K Files</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/KristinaRizga" type="external">on Twitter</a> or with <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/KristinaRizga" type="external">this RSS&#160;Feed</a>.</p>
<p>After a week of <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/14/local/la-me-brown-education-20101214" type="external">depressing announcements</a> about looming budget woes, the <a href="http://www.cta.org/" type="external">California Teachers Association</a> is celebrating some good news for a change. On Wednesday, The Sacramento Bee <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/04/3297230/brown-budget-will-spare-schools.html" type="external">reported</a> that governor Jerry Brown plans to spare K-12 education and community colleges from another massive round of cuts—if, and this is a big if—California voters can accept higher taxes on their purchases, cars, and income. Brown plans to hold a related special election this spring.</p>
<p>Today, Brown’s office <a href="http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/01/comings-and-goings-on-the-stat.html#ixzz1AHTySLb9What%20is%20the%20total%20yearly%20budget" type="external">released the names</a> of the seven members who’ll sit on California’s State Board of Education, the state body that sets education policies for the state. Gone is a member who supported the “ <a href="" type="internal">parent trigger</a>” law, a controversial education reform that union members staunchly opposed. Anti-charter advocate and education professor <a href="http://www.dianeravitch.com/vita.html" type="external">Diane Ravitch</a> views the new board as a victory, tweeting that control has shifted from big-business/foundations to teachers and teacher unions.</p>
<p>Speaking of charter schools, Brown opened two himself when he was mayor of Oakland and has since <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/14/local/la-me-brown-education-20101214" type="external">signaled</a> to pro-charter advocates, including US&#160;education secretary <a href="" type="internal">Arne Duncan</a>, that he now believes charter schools are driven by faith in overly simplistic solutions with a “pervasive technocratic bias and an uncritical faith in the power [of] social science.”</p>
<p /> | 1,566 |
<p>Isle Royale in Lake Superior is a national park. Besides its fame as a park, Isle Royale is also famous for its wolf and moose populations. The island provides a unique experimental design of what happens when populations are permitted to grow without restraint.</p>
<p>The story begins with the immigration of moose to the island sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s. &#160;Some speculate that moose swam to the island or crossed on ice in winter. No matter how they got there, they existed on the island for five decades without wolves. By the 1920s the moose population increased to more than 3000 and as a consequence of over browsing, the moose population crashed in the 1930s. The moose population languished for a while, and then began to grow again.</p>
<p>Just after World War II, wolves migrated to the island, most likely over the ice in winter. Wolves preyed on moose, and for a few decades, wolves and moose seems to sustain a relative equilibrium. Then in 1980, the wolf population crashed after the introduction of canine parvovirus.</p>
<p>Released from wolf predation, the moose population soared to new heights inflicting tremendous damage to the island’s plant communities. As before the moose population crashed with 2000 moose starving to death in one four month period! The moose population now remains at around 500 animals, far below their original high numbers due to the damage sustained by the island’s plant community as a consequence of too many moose.</p>
<p>ISLAND EARTH</p>
<p>There are lessons for human population in the Isle Royale example as well as other tales that could be told. Continuous population growth can lead to habitat degradation, great suffering for the dominant animal, and eventually a lowered carrying capacity due to habitat destruction.</p>
<p>Human populations may be like the proverbial moose population. We have been released from predators that might otherwise keep our numbers in check and somewhat sustainable. Mind you I have no wish for a major pandemic, famine, warfare or other factors that once held human numbers in check. But I do think there are plenty of signs, that humans, like the moose of Isle Royale, are degrading the carrying capacity of Planet Earth—which is, after all, the only habitable island we know of in the Universe.</p>
<p>Despite the seriousness of population growth as an agent of planetary damage with serious potential repercussions for human survival, there is a tendency for the majority of people to ignore the issue.</p>
<p>There are many on both the left and right ends of the political spectrum who feel human population growth is not a problem or at the very least a manageable problem. Typically the right opposes any discussion of population reduction because of conservative religious views or a business model that requires endless growth to maintain economic prosperity. The left tends to downplay population based on social justice grounds—that the world’s poor are blamed for population growth, while the world’s richest countries enjoy the benefits of excessive consumption.</p>
<p>Both support their respective positions often by arguing that as a result of technology we will &#160;rise to the occasion and help us get through any shortages we may face be it energy, food, or space. In a sense the worldviews of the left and right are not appreciably different when it comes to techno optimism.</p>
<p>I am inclined to agree that technological advances often change assumptions about limiting factors—what’s available to use and at what cost can change dramatically due to technological innovations. At one time salt was more valuable than gold, but technological innovations has made it so common we can buy it for pennies.&#160; So I am loath to discount how technology can rapidly change predictions and assumptions about the availability of critical resources.</p>
<p>But the problem is that technology does not come free. There’s a huge ecological cost to technological fixes. Even if you could grow sufficient food for 10 billion people, one has to consider what’s driving that food production. The price of food does not reflect the real costs.</p>
<p>It’s the mining that produces the metal to make the plow. It’s the gas drilling that provides the fertilizer. It’s the oil drilling that provides the fuel to power the trucks that moves the food to people. It’s the dams that provide the water storage for irrigation of fields.&#160; And even more so today the computers that calculate the amount of water to spread or the exact percentage of pesticide to apply and so on. Behind that food production is long technology train that is pulling a lot of cars—each taking a bite out of the Earth’s biodiversity, land and water to feed a growing human population.</p>
<p>Of course, I’m generalizing here, and there are many shades of gray and degrees of buy-in to the various perspectives. But there are few on either side of the right or left who agree that human population growth poses a grave danger to the Earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity, much less a threat to humanity as well.</p>
<p>The debate over population has largely focused on whether outright population growth—primarily in the less developed countries is a threat– and/or whether consumption of natural resources by developed countries is really the problem for sustainability. In reality this debate is not helpful since both are problematic. &#160;Both issues need to be addressed.&#160; Depending on how you define sustainability, we are already likely well past any sustainable society.</p>
<p>FINITE EARTH</p>
<p>There are physical limits to the Earth and its life support systems. &#160;And though technology can unleash abundance where previously there was scarcity, ultimately this means there are limits to population growth. There is only so much agricultural land, fish in the sea, fresh water to drink, oil and coal to burn, and so forth. Where and when we reach those limits is a matter of debate, and for many of these resources, limits may be more regional in nature. But what can’t be debated is that all of these are finite.&#160; I don’t doubt that humans are clever and innovative, and some of these resources will be replaced or used far more efficiently in the future.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, &#160;just the physical need for housing, and providing basic needs for an expanding human population will place new demands on Planet Earth whether we impose strict limits or not. What we have in terms of ecological limitations is a planet that is already overtaxed if one uses the appropriate metrics like biodiversity loss.</p>
<p>It would be unfortunate to simply try to determine what number of humans could be supported on Earth if we were to completely exploit any of these resources. &#160;I think it misses an important philosophical question.</p>
<p>In the simplest terms, some define sustainably only in terms of human population. Can the Earth sustain 10 billion or whatever number one chooses to use? I think it probably can.</p>
<p>However that may be the wrong question. &#160;Human sustainability ought to be a question of quality of life. And when that is the objective, we clearly need to reduce our population and consumption. For human impacts on the planet’s natural capital; its forests, its oceans, its ecosystems, as well as air, water, air, and wildlife are already showing severe degradation and/or loss of resources that are critical to human health and happiness. Impoverishment of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity, loss of beauty and exhaustion of critical minerals, and energy supplies all threatens to jeopardize the continued habitation of humans on the planet.</p>
<p>Even if we could succeed in supporting a population of 9 or 10 billion people that doesn’t mean that number is good for the Earth and good for people. Do you really want to live in a mega city with wall-to-wall apartments much like a packing plant at a CAFO factory (Confined Animal Farming Operation)?&#160; Can anyone argue that this provides a quality of life?</p>
<p>If one answers in the negative, and says they would prefer to live in less crowded conditions with abundant clear air, clean water, abundant wildlife, and beautiful surroundings than it really demonstrates that we must do something about population. It is a choice. Inaction is a choice by default.</p>
<p>NATURE SUFFERS</p>
<p>There are other considerations other than merely whether human population can be sustained in some fashion. We have a moral obligation not only to the overall quality of life for humans, but also a responsibility for other life on Earth. As many have pointed out we are on the verge of a massive new extinction. The world is losing species at a rate that is 100 to 1000 times faster than the natural extinction rate. Studies have shown that biologically diverse ecosystems are more productive, so these losses, if nothing else, have the potential of reducing the ability of the Earth to sustain human population.</p>
<p>Habitat loss is the biggest driver of extinction. And much of this habitat loss is a direct consequence of human population growth and the need to support more and more people. For instance, agriculture already claims an astounding 40% of the Earth’s total land area. This figure is not difficult to doubt if you have ever stared out of a plane window while flying over the Great Plains and Midwest. What you see is mile upon mile—for thousands of miles—is croplands that have virtually replaced the native prairie ecosystem.</p>
<p>When you consider there are huge areas of permanent ice like Antarctica as well as the boreal forests that cover much of Siberia and Canada, such numbers are shocking. Agriculture, by its definition, is the production of one or a few species of plant and/or animal at the expense of native species. &#160;And the amount of land devoted to agriculture is expanding as a direct result of human population growth. The existing agricultural land use is a major driver of species extinction and biodiversity loss. Increasing agricultural conversion will likely hasten biodiversity losses.</p>
<p>No one wants to say to anyone that they have to suffer hunger or even starvation. And it seems sensible to suggest that population reduction is really the only way we can guarantee adequate nutrition for people without continuing to drive more and more species over the brink to extinction.</p>
<p>And even when species are not driven to extinction, they may be so reduced that they are functionally extinct. Globally, large predators have been shown to have significant influence upon ecosystem function. Yet large predators are among the most imperiled animals on the Earth. In many parts of the world they are functionally extinct.</p>
<p>ETHICAL CONSIDERATION</p>
<p>Thus far I’ve mostly made the argument for population reduction based on how it might improve things for human society. But humans are not the only species on the Planet.&#160; Ethically we have a moral obligation to share the Planet with other life. I recognize that most people will see human life as most important, and that is completely natural. Yet it’s also an important human trait that we have compassion for other lifeforms. And if one feels that we have a moral obligation to share the Earth with the other millions of species inhabiting the Earth and being an agent of their extinction is morally wrong than we should look again at how population growth is contributing to species extirpation.</p>
<p>THE PROBLEM</p>
<p>Proponents who discount population growth or suggest that the rising tide of humanity is already self- correcting and that globally population growth is tapering off.&#160; Tapering off isn’t good enough. While some countries are experiencing reduced fertility and in some places like northern Europe or Japan, population growth is no longer at replacement, globally human population is still growing at an astounding rate.</p>
<p>Despite these positive shifts in demographics in some countries, we are still adding 80 million people to the Earth every year!&#160; And some suggest that somewhere on the planet we’ll be building the equivalent of a city of a million inhabitants every five days from now until 2050. This multiplier effect due to demographic &#160;inertia will cause significant population expansion for decades to come.</p>
<p>A good example is the country of Ghana. In 2010 there were 20 million people in this impoverished country.&#160; The average number of children born per woman was 4. Even if the fertility level decreased dramatically to replacement rate of 1.1 children per mother 2020, we would see Ghana’s population continue to grow for 40 more years before it would stabilize at 40 million.</p>
<p>There are additional social issues, particularly concerning pregnancy and women’s health. An alarming 1400 Afghanistan women per 100,000 die in childbirth or complications from pregnancy, compared to 5 deaths per 100,000 in countries like Denmark. Of course, that is mostly a factor of poverty and lack of good medical care, but it is also a factor of how many children women in each country typically have. The more children you birth, the higher the chances that one of them will be problematic. Maintaining and providing good medical care while your population is exploding is difficult if not impossible as well.</p>
<p>As many note, education of women can significantly reduce population growth.&#160; But there is a chicken and egg situation here.&#160; One of the main barriers to education is poverty. In poor countries providing even a minimum education for women is made more difficult by the sheer number of children requiring schooling.</p>
<p>Happy pronouncements that we can feed more people through new agricultural techniques and other techno-fixes, ignore the fact that more a billion people already live in extreme poverty. It’s difficult to see how adding 2-3 billion more people can make it any easier to relieve poverty.</p>
<p>There is evidence that overall mortality and absolute poverty are declining, especially for the world’s poorest people. However, with that decline in mortality and economic growth come new demands upon the Earth.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that some parts of the world consume the bulk of natural resources, per capita consumption is increasing even among the poorest people. While this is likely a good thing given the extreme poverty, it does not bode well for the Earth.</p>
<p>In addition, most assertions that we can feed, house, cloth, educate, and employ 9 or 10 billion people requires continuing ever deeper into dependency on high tech solutions and massive inputs of energy. Intensive agriculture using genetically modified crops, an abundance of pesticides, irrigation, and the conversion of more and more the Earth’s surface to growing crops at the expense of native ecosystems.&#160; We are already nearing the limits or perhaps exceeding the limits on what can be captured by nets and trollers from the world’s oceans. Decline in larger fish across the world has serious implications for ocean ecosystems. And most of the world’s grazing lands are suffering from livestock induced degradation, soil erosion, and weed invasion.</p>
<p>And unless one presumes everyone is going to live a bare existence lifestyle, providing even a reasonable amount of light, heat, and power for production and transportation of “things” requires more and more energy production.&#160; Whether this is derived from burning of more fossil fuels or nuclear energy and/or massive wind farms, solar fields, hydroelectric, and other more renewable energy sources, the end result is more and more of the Earth is mined, drilled, and/or converted to energy production.</p>
<p>IS POPULATION DECLINE A PROBLEM?</p>
<p>Part of the hysteria over population voiced by some is that declining population growth will lead to economic stagnation. As <a href="" type="internal">one commentator</a> said recently “ It’s an irony that aging doomsayers like Ehrlich and Holdren may not live long enough to behold &#160;come to fruition in their lifetime, but to achieve the very goals they claim to be aiming toward, there may be only one hope for the human species: Bring on the babies. “</p>
<p>The Population Reference Bureau reported that in 2011 US population grew by just 0.7%. Immigration was down, and more people survived than were born. This is causing some to wring their hands over what is sometimes called the demographic decline. They predict that aging population and lack of births will lead to economic decline and a collapse of society. Just look at the aging population of Japan and its slowing economy we are told, ignoring the fact that Germany and a number of other European countries have low reproduction rates as well as strong economies.</p>
<p>NATURAL REGULATION OR BRAINS?</p>
<p>I’m generally an advocate of natural regulation—or letting nature take its course. But when it comes to human population collapse, I’d rather see alternatives. We are, we are told by those who suffer from too much hubris, (often the same ones saying we don’t have a population problem) that we are clever and intelligent. Well an intelligent person, and even one that might not believe we have a serious population problem, would at least use the precautionary principle which says in the absence of better information you seek the alternative that has the least potential for long term damage.</p>
<p>Certainly advocating population reduction can have few down sides that I am aware of, especially if done with a sense of justice and fairness. Even though I do not want to be viewed as a techno optimist, I have to admit that we have the “technology” in the form of birth control, plus education, and access to medical facilities to limit our population. It seems in light of the on-going biodiversity loss as well as other crisis’s exacerbated by population growth (like global climate change) that we can begin a global effort to bring human population more in line with global carrying capacity. And global carrying capacity in my view means not significantly contributing to accelerated species extinction, excessive pollution, and the rapid consumption&#160; and/or degradation of finite resources.</p>
<p>I’m afraid that if we don’t use our brains, we’ll follow a path much like the Isle Royale moose—a major population crash with a much depressed and infinitely poorer surviving population of humans. But even worse, we may be taking down a lot of the Earth’s heritage of diversity and landscapes in the process.</p>
<p>George Wuerthner&#160;is an ecologist with among others, a degree in wildlife biology, and is a former Montana hunting guide. He has published 35 books.&#160;</p> | The Parable of Isle Royale | true | https://counterpunch.org/2012/06/05/the-parable-of-isle-royale/ | 2012-06-05 | 4left
| The Parable of Isle Royale
<p>Isle Royale in Lake Superior is a national park. Besides its fame as a park, Isle Royale is also famous for its wolf and moose populations. The island provides a unique experimental design of what happens when populations are permitted to grow without restraint.</p>
<p>The story begins with the immigration of moose to the island sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s. &#160;Some speculate that moose swam to the island or crossed on ice in winter. No matter how they got there, they existed on the island for five decades without wolves. By the 1920s the moose population increased to more than 3000 and as a consequence of over browsing, the moose population crashed in the 1930s. The moose population languished for a while, and then began to grow again.</p>
<p>Just after World War II, wolves migrated to the island, most likely over the ice in winter. Wolves preyed on moose, and for a few decades, wolves and moose seems to sustain a relative equilibrium. Then in 1980, the wolf population crashed after the introduction of canine parvovirus.</p>
<p>Released from wolf predation, the moose population soared to new heights inflicting tremendous damage to the island’s plant communities. As before the moose population crashed with 2000 moose starving to death in one four month period! The moose population now remains at around 500 animals, far below their original high numbers due to the damage sustained by the island’s plant community as a consequence of too many moose.</p>
<p>ISLAND EARTH</p>
<p>There are lessons for human population in the Isle Royale example as well as other tales that could be told. Continuous population growth can lead to habitat degradation, great suffering for the dominant animal, and eventually a lowered carrying capacity due to habitat destruction.</p>
<p>Human populations may be like the proverbial moose population. We have been released from predators that might otherwise keep our numbers in check and somewhat sustainable. Mind you I have no wish for a major pandemic, famine, warfare or other factors that once held human numbers in check. But I do think there are plenty of signs, that humans, like the moose of Isle Royale, are degrading the carrying capacity of Planet Earth—which is, after all, the only habitable island we know of in the Universe.</p>
<p>Despite the seriousness of population growth as an agent of planetary damage with serious potential repercussions for human survival, there is a tendency for the majority of people to ignore the issue.</p>
<p>There are many on both the left and right ends of the political spectrum who feel human population growth is not a problem or at the very least a manageable problem. Typically the right opposes any discussion of population reduction because of conservative religious views or a business model that requires endless growth to maintain economic prosperity. The left tends to downplay population based on social justice grounds—that the world’s poor are blamed for population growth, while the world’s richest countries enjoy the benefits of excessive consumption.</p>
<p>Both support their respective positions often by arguing that as a result of technology we will &#160;rise to the occasion and help us get through any shortages we may face be it energy, food, or space. In a sense the worldviews of the left and right are not appreciably different when it comes to techno optimism.</p>
<p>I am inclined to agree that technological advances often change assumptions about limiting factors—what’s available to use and at what cost can change dramatically due to technological innovations. At one time salt was more valuable than gold, but technological innovations has made it so common we can buy it for pennies.&#160; So I am loath to discount how technology can rapidly change predictions and assumptions about the availability of critical resources.</p>
<p>But the problem is that technology does not come free. There’s a huge ecological cost to technological fixes. Even if you could grow sufficient food for 10 billion people, one has to consider what’s driving that food production. The price of food does not reflect the real costs.</p>
<p>It’s the mining that produces the metal to make the plow. It’s the gas drilling that provides the fertilizer. It’s the oil drilling that provides the fuel to power the trucks that moves the food to people. It’s the dams that provide the water storage for irrigation of fields.&#160; And even more so today the computers that calculate the amount of water to spread or the exact percentage of pesticide to apply and so on. Behind that food production is long technology train that is pulling a lot of cars—each taking a bite out of the Earth’s biodiversity, land and water to feed a growing human population.</p>
<p>Of course, I’m generalizing here, and there are many shades of gray and degrees of buy-in to the various perspectives. But there are few on either side of the right or left who agree that human population growth poses a grave danger to the Earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity, much less a threat to humanity as well.</p>
<p>The debate over population has largely focused on whether outright population growth—primarily in the less developed countries is a threat– and/or whether consumption of natural resources by developed countries is really the problem for sustainability. In reality this debate is not helpful since both are problematic. &#160;Both issues need to be addressed.&#160; Depending on how you define sustainability, we are already likely well past any sustainable society.</p>
<p>FINITE EARTH</p>
<p>There are physical limits to the Earth and its life support systems. &#160;And though technology can unleash abundance where previously there was scarcity, ultimately this means there are limits to population growth. There is only so much agricultural land, fish in the sea, fresh water to drink, oil and coal to burn, and so forth. Where and when we reach those limits is a matter of debate, and for many of these resources, limits may be more regional in nature. But what can’t be debated is that all of these are finite.&#160; I don’t doubt that humans are clever and innovative, and some of these resources will be replaced or used far more efficiently in the future.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, &#160;just the physical need for housing, and providing basic needs for an expanding human population will place new demands on Planet Earth whether we impose strict limits or not. What we have in terms of ecological limitations is a planet that is already overtaxed if one uses the appropriate metrics like biodiversity loss.</p>
<p>It would be unfortunate to simply try to determine what number of humans could be supported on Earth if we were to completely exploit any of these resources. &#160;I think it misses an important philosophical question.</p>
<p>In the simplest terms, some define sustainably only in terms of human population. Can the Earth sustain 10 billion or whatever number one chooses to use? I think it probably can.</p>
<p>However that may be the wrong question. &#160;Human sustainability ought to be a question of quality of life. And when that is the objective, we clearly need to reduce our population and consumption. For human impacts on the planet’s natural capital; its forests, its oceans, its ecosystems, as well as air, water, air, and wildlife are already showing severe degradation and/or loss of resources that are critical to human health and happiness. Impoverishment of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity, loss of beauty and exhaustion of critical minerals, and energy supplies all threatens to jeopardize the continued habitation of humans on the planet.</p>
<p>Even if we could succeed in supporting a population of 9 or 10 billion people that doesn’t mean that number is good for the Earth and good for people. Do you really want to live in a mega city with wall-to-wall apartments much like a packing plant at a CAFO factory (Confined Animal Farming Operation)?&#160; Can anyone argue that this provides a quality of life?</p>
<p>If one answers in the negative, and says they would prefer to live in less crowded conditions with abundant clear air, clean water, abundant wildlife, and beautiful surroundings than it really demonstrates that we must do something about population. It is a choice. Inaction is a choice by default.</p>
<p>NATURE SUFFERS</p>
<p>There are other considerations other than merely whether human population can be sustained in some fashion. We have a moral obligation not only to the overall quality of life for humans, but also a responsibility for other life on Earth. As many have pointed out we are on the verge of a massive new extinction. The world is losing species at a rate that is 100 to 1000 times faster than the natural extinction rate. Studies have shown that biologically diverse ecosystems are more productive, so these losses, if nothing else, have the potential of reducing the ability of the Earth to sustain human population.</p>
<p>Habitat loss is the biggest driver of extinction. And much of this habitat loss is a direct consequence of human population growth and the need to support more and more people. For instance, agriculture already claims an astounding 40% of the Earth’s total land area. This figure is not difficult to doubt if you have ever stared out of a plane window while flying over the Great Plains and Midwest. What you see is mile upon mile—for thousands of miles—is croplands that have virtually replaced the native prairie ecosystem.</p>
<p>When you consider there are huge areas of permanent ice like Antarctica as well as the boreal forests that cover much of Siberia and Canada, such numbers are shocking. Agriculture, by its definition, is the production of one or a few species of plant and/or animal at the expense of native species. &#160;And the amount of land devoted to agriculture is expanding as a direct result of human population growth. The existing agricultural land use is a major driver of species extinction and biodiversity loss. Increasing agricultural conversion will likely hasten biodiversity losses.</p>
<p>No one wants to say to anyone that they have to suffer hunger or even starvation. And it seems sensible to suggest that population reduction is really the only way we can guarantee adequate nutrition for people without continuing to drive more and more species over the brink to extinction.</p>
<p>And even when species are not driven to extinction, they may be so reduced that they are functionally extinct. Globally, large predators have been shown to have significant influence upon ecosystem function. Yet large predators are among the most imperiled animals on the Earth. In many parts of the world they are functionally extinct.</p>
<p>ETHICAL CONSIDERATION</p>
<p>Thus far I’ve mostly made the argument for population reduction based on how it might improve things for human society. But humans are not the only species on the Planet.&#160; Ethically we have a moral obligation to share the Planet with other life. I recognize that most people will see human life as most important, and that is completely natural. Yet it’s also an important human trait that we have compassion for other lifeforms. And if one feels that we have a moral obligation to share the Earth with the other millions of species inhabiting the Earth and being an agent of their extinction is morally wrong than we should look again at how population growth is contributing to species extirpation.</p>
<p>THE PROBLEM</p>
<p>Proponents who discount population growth or suggest that the rising tide of humanity is already self- correcting and that globally population growth is tapering off.&#160; Tapering off isn’t good enough. While some countries are experiencing reduced fertility and in some places like northern Europe or Japan, population growth is no longer at replacement, globally human population is still growing at an astounding rate.</p>
<p>Despite these positive shifts in demographics in some countries, we are still adding 80 million people to the Earth every year!&#160; And some suggest that somewhere on the planet we’ll be building the equivalent of a city of a million inhabitants every five days from now until 2050. This multiplier effect due to demographic &#160;inertia will cause significant population expansion for decades to come.</p>
<p>A good example is the country of Ghana. In 2010 there were 20 million people in this impoverished country.&#160; The average number of children born per woman was 4. Even if the fertility level decreased dramatically to replacement rate of 1.1 children per mother 2020, we would see Ghana’s population continue to grow for 40 more years before it would stabilize at 40 million.</p>
<p>There are additional social issues, particularly concerning pregnancy and women’s health. An alarming 1400 Afghanistan women per 100,000 die in childbirth or complications from pregnancy, compared to 5 deaths per 100,000 in countries like Denmark. Of course, that is mostly a factor of poverty and lack of good medical care, but it is also a factor of how many children women in each country typically have. The more children you birth, the higher the chances that one of them will be problematic. Maintaining and providing good medical care while your population is exploding is difficult if not impossible as well.</p>
<p>As many note, education of women can significantly reduce population growth.&#160; But there is a chicken and egg situation here.&#160; One of the main barriers to education is poverty. In poor countries providing even a minimum education for women is made more difficult by the sheer number of children requiring schooling.</p>
<p>Happy pronouncements that we can feed more people through new agricultural techniques and other techno-fixes, ignore the fact that more a billion people already live in extreme poverty. It’s difficult to see how adding 2-3 billion more people can make it any easier to relieve poverty.</p>
<p>There is evidence that overall mortality and absolute poverty are declining, especially for the world’s poorest people. However, with that decline in mortality and economic growth come new demands upon the Earth.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that some parts of the world consume the bulk of natural resources, per capita consumption is increasing even among the poorest people. While this is likely a good thing given the extreme poverty, it does not bode well for the Earth.</p>
<p>In addition, most assertions that we can feed, house, cloth, educate, and employ 9 or 10 billion people requires continuing ever deeper into dependency on high tech solutions and massive inputs of energy. Intensive agriculture using genetically modified crops, an abundance of pesticides, irrigation, and the conversion of more and more the Earth’s surface to growing crops at the expense of native ecosystems.&#160; We are already nearing the limits or perhaps exceeding the limits on what can be captured by nets and trollers from the world’s oceans. Decline in larger fish across the world has serious implications for ocean ecosystems. And most of the world’s grazing lands are suffering from livestock induced degradation, soil erosion, and weed invasion.</p>
<p>And unless one presumes everyone is going to live a bare existence lifestyle, providing even a reasonable amount of light, heat, and power for production and transportation of “things” requires more and more energy production.&#160; Whether this is derived from burning of more fossil fuels or nuclear energy and/or massive wind farms, solar fields, hydroelectric, and other more renewable energy sources, the end result is more and more of the Earth is mined, drilled, and/or converted to energy production.</p>
<p>IS POPULATION DECLINE A PROBLEM?</p>
<p>Part of the hysteria over population voiced by some is that declining population growth will lead to economic stagnation. As <a href="" type="internal">one commentator</a> said recently “ It’s an irony that aging doomsayers like Ehrlich and Holdren may not live long enough to behold &#160;come to fruition in their lifetime, but to achieve the very goals they claim to be aiming toward, there may be only one hope for the human species: Bring on the babies. “</p>
<p>The Population Reference Bureau reported that in 2011 US population grew by just 0.7%. Immigration was down, and more people survived than were born. This is causing some to wring their hands over what is sometimes called the demographic decline. They predict that aging population and lack of births will lead to economic decline and a collapse of society. Just look at the aging population of Japan and its slowing economy we are told, ignoring the fact that Germany and a number of other European countries have low reproduction rates as well as strong economies.</p>
<p>NATURAL REGULATION OR BRAINS?</p>
<p>I’m generally an advocate of natural regulation—or letting nature take its course. But when it comes to human population collapse, I’d rather see alternatives. We are, we are told by those who suffer from too much hubris, (often the same ones saying we don’t have a population problem) that we are clever and intelligent. Well an intelligent person, and even one that might not believe we have a serious population problem, would at least use the precautionary principle which says in the absence of better information you seek the alternative that has the least potential for long term damage.</p>
<p>Certainly advocating population reduction can have few down sides that I am aware of, especially if done with a sense of justice and fairness. Even though I do not want to be viewed as a techno optimist, I have to admit that we have the “technology” in the form of birth control, plus education, and access to medical facilities to limit our population. It seems in light of the on-going biodiversity loss as well as other crisis’s exacerbated by population growth (like global climate change) that we can begin a global effort to bring human population more in line with global carrying capacity. And global carrying capacity in my view means not significantly contributing to accelerated species extinction, excessive pollution, and the rapid consumption&#160; and/or degradation of finite resources.</p>
<p>I’m afraid that if we don’t use our brains, we’ll follow a path much like the Isle Royale moose—a major population crash with a much depressed and infinitely poorer surviving population of humans. But even worse, we may be taking down a lot of the Earth’s heritage of diversity and landscapes in the process.</p>
<p>George Wuerthner&#160;is an ecologist with among others, a degree in wildlife biology, and is a former Montana hunting guide. He has published 35 books.&#160;</p> | 1,567 |
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) _ These Wisconsin lotteries were drawn Friday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>AD-QH-8C-2D-3H</p>
<p>(AD, QH, 8C, 2D, 3H)</p>
<p>SuperCash</p>
<p>05-13-25-26-30-33, Doubler: Y</p>
<p>(five, thirteen, twenty-five, twenty-six, thirty, thirty-three; Doubler: Y)</p>
<p>Badger 5</p>
<p>05-11-14-20-28</p>
<p>(five, eleven, fourteen, twenty, twenty-eight)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $10,000</p>
<p>Daily Pick 3</p>
<p>5-9-4</p>
<p>(five, nine, four)</p>
<p>Daily Pick 4</p>
<p>7-6-5-4</p>
<p>(seven, six, five, four)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>17-18-33-46-60, Mega Ball: 24, Megaplier: 4</p>
<p>(seventeen, eighteen, thirty-three, forty-six, sixty; Mega Ball: twenty-four; Megaplier: four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $45 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) _ These Wisconsin lotteries were drawn Friday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>AD-QH-8C-2D-3H</p>
<p>(AD, QH, 8C, 2D, 3H)</p>
<p>SuperCash</p>
<p>05-13-25-26-30-33, Doubler: Y</p>
<p>(five, thirteen, twenty-five, twenty-six, thirty, thirty-three; Doubler: Y)</p>
<p>Badger 5</p>
<p>05-11-14-20-28</p>
<p>(five, eleven, fourteen, twenty, twenty-eight)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $10,000</p>
<p>Daily Pick 3</p>
<p>5-9-4</p>
<p>(five, nine, four)</p>
<p>Daily Pick 4</p>
<p>7-6-5-4</p>
<p>(seven, six, five, four)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>17-18-33-46-60, Mega Ball: 24, Megaplier: 4</p>
<p>(seventeen, eighteen, thirty-three, forty-six, sixty; Mega Ball: twenty-four; Megaplier: four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $45 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p> | WI Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/c30a13106ea74ea98b129d7a9a9a7f4b | 2018-01-13 | 2least
| WI Lottery
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) _ These Wisconsin lotteries were drawn Friday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>AD-QH-8C-2D-3H</p>
<p>(AD, QH, 8C, 2D, 3H)</p>
<p>SuperCash</p>
<p>05-13-25-26-30-33, Doubler: Y</p>
<p>(five, thirteen, twenty-five, twenty-six, thirty, thirty-three; Doubler: Y)</p>
<p>Badger 5</p>
<p>05-11-14-20-28</p>
<p>(five, eleven, fourteen, twenty, twenty-eight)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $10,000</p>
<p>Daily Pick 3</p>
<p>5-9-4</p>
<p>(five, nine, four)</p>
<p>Daily Pick 4</p>
<p>7-6-5-4</p>
<p>(seven, six, five, four)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>17-18-33-46-60, Mega Ball: 24, Megaplier: 4</p>
<p>(seventeen, eighteen, thirty-three, forty-six, sixty; Mega Ball: twenty-four; Megaplier: four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $45 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) _ These Wisconsin lotteries were drawn Friday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>AD-QH-8C-2D-3H</p>
<p>(AD, QH, 8C, 2D, 3H)</p>
<p>SuperCash</p>
<p>05-13-25-26-30-33, Doubler: Y</p>
<p>(five, thirteen, twenty-five, twenty-six, thirty, thirty-three; Doubler: Y)</p>
<p>Badger 5</p>
<p>05-11-14-20-28</p>
<p>(five, eleven, fourteen, twenty, twenty-eight)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $10,000</p>
<p>Daily Pick 3</p>
<p>5-9-4</p>
<p>(five, nine, four)</p>
<p>Daily Pick 4</p>
<p>7-6-5-4</p>
<p>(seven, six, five, four)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>17-18-33-46-60, Mega Ball: 24, Megaplier: 4</p>
<p>(seventeen, eighteen, thirty-three, forty-six, sixty; Mega Ball: twenty-four; Megaplier: four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $45 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p> | 1,568 |
<p>On the heels of an explosive report alleging that the Hillary Clinton campaign helped pay for that infamous Trump-Russia dossier, known in some circles as the "golden showers dossier," two New York Times reporters have publicly accused Clinton's campaign lawyer, Marc Elias, of lying to them about funding the research.</p>
<p>The report published by the <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-campaign-dnc-funded-firm-behind-trump-dossier-report/article/2638512" type="external">The Washington Post</a> on Tuesday revealed that Elias' law firm hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. The infamous "golden showers" dossier alleged that Trump had personal ties to Russia, had colluded with them to harm Hillary's campaign, and engaged in unsavory sexual practices with Russian hookers when visiting the country. When BuzzFeed published the dossier without confirming the dossier's veracity, the information within was largely regarded by intelligence experts as untrustworthy.</p>
<p>"When I tried to report this story, Clinton campaign lawyer @marceelias pushed back vigorously, saying 'You (or your sources) are wrong,'" NYT reporter Kenneth Vogel tweeted.</p>
<p>Maggie Haberman of the NYT echoed Vogel's assertions. "Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year," she tweeted.</p> | NYT Reporter: Clinton Campaign Lawyer Lied To Me About Dossier Funding | true | https://dailywire.com/news/22723/nyt-reporter-clinton-campaign-lawyer-lied-me-about-paul-bois | 2017-10-25 | 0right
| NYT Reporter: Clinton Campaign Lawyer Lied To Me About Dossier Funding
<p>On the heels of an explosive report alleging that the Hillary Clinton campaign helped pay for that infamous Trump-Russia dossier, known in some circles as the "golden showers dossier," two New York Times reporters have publicly accused Clinton's campaign lawyer, Marc Elias, of lying to them about funding the research.</p>
<p>The report published by the <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-campaign-dnc-funded-firm-behind-trump-dossier-report/article/2638512" type="external">The Washington Post</a> on Tuesday revealed that Elias' law firm hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. The infamous "golden showers" dossier alleged that Trump had personal ties to Russia, had colluded with them to harm Hillary's campaign, and engaged in unsavory sexual practices with Russian hookers when visiting the country. When BuzzFeed published the dossier without confirming the dossier's veracity, the information within was largely regarded by intelligence experts as untrustworthy.</p>
<p>"When I tried to report this story, Clinton campaign lawyer @marceelias pushed back vigorously, saying 'You (or your sources) are wrong,'" NYT reporter Kenneth Vogel tweeted.</p>
<p>Maggie Haberman of the NYT echoed Vogel's assertions. "Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year," she tweeted.</p> | 1,569 |
<p>Investing.com – Peru stocks were higher after the close on Wednesday, as gains in the , and sectors led shares higher.</p>
<p>At the close in Lima, the rose 0.11%.</p>
<p>The best performers of the session on the were Relapasa (LM:), which rose 4.17% or 0.010 points to trade at 0.250 at the close. Meanwhile, Grana Y Monter (LM:) added 2.98% or 0.080 points to end at 2.760 and Corporacion Aceros Arequipa SA (LM:) was up 2.90% or 0.020 points to 0.710 in late trade.</p>
<p>The worst performers of the session were PPX Mining Corp (LM:), which fell 8.45% or 0.01 points to trade at 0.07 at the close. Candente Copper (LM:) declined 6.25% or 0.0050 points to end at 0.0750 and Trevali Mining (LM:) was down 5.00% or 0.060 points to 1.140.</p>
<p>Falling stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the Lima Stock Exchange by 19 to 14 and 9 ended unchanged.</p>
<p>Crude oil for October delivery was up 2.28% or 1.10 to $49.33 a barrel. Elsewhere in commodities trading, Brent oil for delivery in November fell 0.05% or 0.03 to hit $55.09 a barrel, while the December Gold Futures contract fell 0.35% or 4.70 to trade at $1328.00 a troy ounce.</p>
<p>USD/PEN was unchanged 0.00% to 3.2405, while EUR/PEN unchanged 0.00% to 3.8466.</p>
<p>The US Dollar Index Futures was up 0.54% at 92.39.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | Peru stocks higher at close of trade; S&P Lima General up 0.11% | false | https://newsline.com/peru-stocks-higher-at-close-of-trade-sp-lima-general-up-0-11/ | 2017-09-13 | 1right-center
| Peru stocks higher at close of trade; S&P Lima General up 0.11%
<p>Investing.com – Peru stocks were higher after the close on Wednesday, as gains in the , and sectors led shares higher.</p>
<p>At the close in Lima, the rose 0.11%.</p>
<p>The best performers of the session on the were Relapasa (LM:), which rose 4.17% or 0.010 points to trade at 0.250 at the close. Meanwhile, Grana Y Monter (LM:) added 2.98% or 0.080 points to end at 2.760 and Corporacion Aceros Arequipa SA (LM:) was up 2.90% or 0.020 points to 0.710 in late trade.</p>
<p>The worst performers of the session were PPX Mining Corp (LM:), which fell 8.45% or 0.01 points to trade at 0.07 at the close. Candente Copper (LM:) declined 6.25% or 0.0050 points to end at 0.0750 and Trevali Mining (LM:) was down 5.00% or 0.060 points to 1.140.</p>
<p>Falling stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the Lima Stock Exchange by 19 to 14 and 9 ended unchanged.</p>
<p>Crude oil for October delivery was up 2.28% or 1.10 to $49.33 a barrel. Elsewhere in commodities trading, Brent oil for delivery in November fell 0.05% or 0.03 to hit $55.09 a barrel, while the December Gold Futures contract fell 0.35% or 4.70 to trade at $1328.00 a troy ounce.</p>
<p>USD/PEN was unchanged 0.00% to 3.2405, while EUR/PEN unchanged 0.00% to 3.8466.</p>
<p>The US Dollar Index Futures was up 0.54% at 92.39.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | 1,570 |
<p>U.S. troops are wrapping up training for a future 9-month deployment to Egypt for a peacekeeping and riot control mission.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian Morsi regime has a good friend in the United States.</p>
<p>More than 400 American soldiers will soon join a multinational peacekeeping force comprised of military forces from 13 nations, according to <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/21/us-soldiers-set-deploy-egypt-riot-control/" type="external">The Washington Times</a>.</p>
<p>Once there, they will be tasked with manning security checkpoints along the Egyptian-Israeli border. They will report any violations of the peace treaty between the two nations, as well as quell riots and protests.</p>
<p>Their training lasted six months at both Fort Hood, Texas and Fort Irwin, Calif., and included Molotov cocktail attack response. Their specific departure date isn’t yet certain.</p>
<p>Earlier this week, the Obama administration announced that the U.S. will provide arms to Syrian rebel forces as well as send troops along the Syrian-Jordanian border.</p>
<p>The Obama administration has been a good friend to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi regime. The U.S. has provided both financial aid and sophisticated weaponry in the form of F-16 fighter jets and Abrams M1A1 tanks since January.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.kcentv.com" type="external">kcentv.com – KCEN HD – Waco, Temple, and Killeen</a></p> | US troops to be deployed to — Egypt? | true | http://bizpacreview.com/2013/06/21/us-troops-to-be-deployed-to-egypt-78419 | 2013-06-21 | 0right
| US troops to be deployed to — Egypt?
<p>U.S. troops are wrapping up training for a future 9-month deployment to Egypt for a peacekeeping and riot control mission.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian Morsi regime has a good friend in the United States.</p>
<p>More than 400 American soldiers will soon join a multinational peacekeeping force comprised of military forces from 13 nations, according to <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/21/us-soldiers-set-deploy-egypt-riot-control/" type="external">The Washington Times</a>.</p>
<p>Once there, they will be tasked with manning security checkpoints along the Egyptian-Israeli border. They will report any violations of the peace treaty between the two nations, as well as quell riots and protests.</p>
<p>Their training lasted six months at both Fort Hood, Texas and Fort Irwin, Calif., and included Molotov cocktail attack response. Their specific departure date isn’t yet certain.</p>
<p>Earlier this week, the Obama administration announced that the U.S. will provide arms to Syrian rebel forces as well as send troops along the Syrian-Jordanian border.</p>
<p>The Obama administration has been a good friend to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi regime. The U.S. has provided both financial aid and sophisticated weaponry in the form of F-16 fighter jets and Abrams M1A1 tanks since January.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.kcentv.com" type="external">kcentv.com – KCEN HD – Waco, Temple, and Killeen</a></p> | 1,571 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) — Surveillance video shows a naked man driving away from a Florida storage center in a stolen pickup truck loaded with a statue of a large, black and white checkered swan.</p>
<p>Now deputies are looking for the swan that was stolen last weekend. In a Facebook posting Thursday, Polk County Sheriff's officials said they know “it's got to be hard to hide one of these,” adding, “Someone has seen it.”</p>
<p>Investigators say they've found the truck that was reported stolen in a nearby county, but they still don't know why the man was naked as he apparently tried to break into Lakeland Cold Storage.</p>
<p>The video shows the man holding a white bucket in front of his body as he tries to open doors at the storage center in Lakeland, which is between Orlando and Tampa.</p>
<p><a href="#cb6552f5-aed5-436e-982f-171875a28bab" type="external">© 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</a> Learn more about our <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/privacy" type="external">Privacy Policy</a> and <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/terms" type="external">Terms of Use</a>.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Sheriff: It's 'hard to hide' swan statue stolen by naked man | false | https://abqjournal.com/1009263/sheriff-its-hard-to-hide-swan-statue-stolen-by-naked-man-2.html | 2017-05-26 | 2least
| Sheriff: It's 'hard to hide' swan statue stolen by naked man
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) — Surveillance video shows a naked man driving away from a Florida storage center in a stolen pickup truck loaded with a statue of a large, black and white checkered swan.</p>
<p>Now deputies are looking for the swan that was stolen last weekend. In a Facebook posting Thursday, Polk County Sheriff's officials said they know “it's got to be hard to hide one of these,” adding, “Someone has seen it.”</p>
<p>Investigators say they've found the truck that was reported stolen in a nearby county, but they still don't know why the man was naked as he apparently tried to break into Lakeland Cold Storage.</p>
<p>The video shows the man holding a white bucket in front of his body as he tries to open doors at the storage center in Lakeland, which is between Orlando and Tampa.</p>
<p><a href="#cb6552f5-aed5-436e-982f-171875a28bab" type="external">© 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</a> Learn more about our <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/privacy" type="external">Privacy Policy</a> and <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/terms" type="external">Terms of Use</a>.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 1,572 |
<p>Do you hear that? No, it's not a vuvuzela, the plastic trumpet that sounds like a swarm of bees. It's the sound of the ratings going through the roof for the World Cup. Yes, the United States, which is not known as a soccer-friendly country, is apparently hooked on the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The Nielsen Company estimated that Saturday's first-round tie by the U.S. and English teams was seen by an estimated 13 million people, making it the most-watched telecast involving the U.S. men's team since 1994. Score another one for the USA! More at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100613/ap_en_tv/us_wcup_tv_s_buzz</p> | World Cup wins U.S. Fans: 13 Million Viewers | true | https://theroot.com/world-cup-wins-u-s-fans-13-million-viewers-1790879843 | 2010-06-14 | 4left
| World Cup wins U.S. Fans: 13 Million Viewers
<p>Do you hear that? No, it's not a vuvuzela, the plastic trumpet that sounds like a swarm of bees. It's the sound of the ratings going through the roof for the World Cup. Yes, the United States, which is not known as a soccer-friendly country, is apparently hooked on the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The Nielsen Company estimated that Saturday's first-round tie by the U.S. and English teams was seen by an estimated 13 million people, making it the most-watched telecast involving the U.S. men's team since 1994. Score another one for the USA! More at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100613/ap_en_tv/us_wcup_tv_s_buzz</p> | 1,573 |
<p>Simon Pegg started the Mission Impossible films playing a techie sidekick. Now he’s moved into the spotlight, playing one of the lead characters.</p>
<p>The English actor, screenwriter, comedian and social media tyro&#160;has been hard at work promoting yet another Mission Impossible film. This time it’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2381249/" type="external">Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation</a>, which premiered July 31. Pegg has a lot of action and sci-fi under his belt. He’s in the new Star Wars Episode VII, and has played Scotty in several recent Star Trek films, including Star Trek Beyond, which is currently filming. He has also written several screen plays for comedic action films.</p>
<p>Pegg’s roles have begun to change, however. If he started the Mission Impossible films as a techie sidekick with comedic lines, he is now playing one of the lead secret agents, a character named Benji Dunn.</p>
<p>“There’s been a real evolution since I first played this character 10&#160;years ago, and it’s been really fun to kind of track that. Benji is a great way in for the audience. He’s a kind of human being. He’s not a superhero. He’s very much an ordinary person who finds himself in an extraordinary situation,” Pegg said.</p>
<p>Pegg did more than add to his screen time in the new Mission Impossible film. He also did much of his own stunt work in the movie.</p>
<p>“You kinda have to. Otherwise you just get left behind, you know?” Pegg says, adding that he thought the stunt work would give filmgoers a more authentic experience, “I mean, I’m not decrying green screen or CG because they’re incredible tools and they’ve opened up a whole universe of possibilities to us as filmmakers. But when you know something is digitally created, there’s a degree of separation, or a degree of distance you suddenly get.”</p>
<p>Pegg highlighted movie star Tom&#160;Cruise’s stunt work in the film, which included a scene filmed high up on the outside of a tall building.</p>
<p>“On the day it was even more scary because we didn’t know he was going to survive,” Pegg says, “You’re still thinking, ‘Oh my God, he’s on the side of that building.’”</p>
<p>Pegg says much of his cinematic work has benefitted from his good working friendships and relationships with fellow actors, producers&#160;and screenwriters. He has worked on a sitcom, and several films, including Spaced (1999), Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007) with his friends Edgar Wright and Nick Frost. He has also worked extensively with writer, director and producer JJ Abrams.</p>
<p>“I think one of the most significant phone calls I ever got was ‘JJ Abrams is on line one for you, Simon,'"&#160;Pegg says, adding, “He was directing his first feature, which was Mission Impossible III, and [Abrams said], ‘Would you like to come and be in it?’ And I was very excited at the prospect of being asked. Now I would count him among my best friends.”</p>
<p>Pegg remains a science-fiction fan, but he got himself into hot water earlier this year for some comments (that he says were taken out of context) about the way adults now consume movies and shows about superheroes and aliens.</p>
<p>“Adults now consume things that long ago might have been considered childish. You know, like comic books and video games,” Pegg says, adding, “I’m a participant in that. A lot of my interests are things which might have been deemed childish a long time ago.”</p>
<p>Pegg says he likes the fantasy and sci-fi genre, but insists that the best films —&#160;whether they’re fantasy, superhero, or sci-fi —&#160;base their stories on real-world issues and concerns.</p>
<p>“If you’re going to have these amazing kind of spectacle films, it’s great to kind of pin them with some thought. It’s what fantasy and science fiction is about. These things are allegorical. They’ve always been about us, and so they say things about what we’re scared of, what we’re preoccupied with and so for it to just be about, you know, robots fighting, it’s kind of, it’s a bit of a waste in a way,” Pegg says.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.studio360.org/story/simon-pegg-impossible-mission/" type="external">This story</a> first aired as an interview on <a href="http://www.studio360.org/" type="external">PRI's Studio 360</a> with Kurt Andersen.</p> | How Simon Pegg moved from quirky comic actor to action movie star | false | https://pri.org/stories/2015-08-10/how-simon-pegg-moved-quirky-comic-actor-action-movie-star | 2015-08-10 | 3left-center
| How Simon Pegg moved from quirky comic actor to action movie star
<p>Simon Pegg started the Mission Impossible films playing a techie sidekick. Now he’s moved into the spotlight, playing one of the lead characters.</p>
<p>The English actor, screenwriter, comedian and social media tyro&#160;has been hard at work promoting yet another Mission Impossible film. This time it’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2381249/" type="external">Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation</a>, which premiered July 31. Pegg has a lot of action and sci-fi under his belt. He’s in the new Star Wars Episode VII, and has played Scotty in several recent Star Trek films, including Star Trek Beyond, which is currently filming. He has also written several screen plays for comedic action films.</p>
<p>Pegg’s roles have begun to change, however. If he started the Mission Impossible films as a techie sidekick with comedic lines, he is now playing one of the lead secret agents, a character named Benji Dunn.</p>
<p>“There’s been a real evolution since I first played this character 10&#160;years ago, and it’s been really fun to kind of track that. Benji is a great way in for the audience. He’s a kind of human being. He’s not a superhero. He’s very much an ordinary person who finds himself in an extraordinary situation,” Pegg said.</p>
<p>Pegg did more than add to his screen time in the new Mission Impossible film. He also did much of his own stunt work in the movie.</p>
<p>“You kinda have to. Otherwise you just get left behind, you know?” Pegg says, adding that he thought the stunt work would give filmgoers a more authentic experience, “I mean, I’m not decrying green screen or CG because they’re incredible tools and they’ve opened up a whole universe of possibilities to us as filmmakers. But when you know something is digitally created, there’s a degree of separation, or a degree of distance you suddenly get.”</p>
<p>Pegg highlighted movie star Tom&#160;Cruise’s stunt work in the film, which included a scene filmed high up on the outside of a tall building.</p>
<p>“On the day it was even more scary because we didn’t know he was going to survive,” Pegg says, “You’re still thinking, ‘Oh my God, he’s on the side of that building.’”</p>
<p>Pegg says much of his cinematic work has benefitted from his good working friendships and relationships with fellow actors, producers&#160;and screenwriters. He has worked on a sitcom, and several films, including Spaced (1999), Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007) with his friends Edgar Wright and Nick Frost. He has also worked extensively with writer, director and producer JJ Abrams.</p>
<p>“I think one of the most significant phone calls I ever got was ‘JJ Abrams is on line one for you, Simon,'"&#160;Pegg says, adding, “He was directing his first feature, which was Mission Impossible III, and [Abrams said], ‘Would you like to come and be in it?’ And I was very excited at the prospect of being asked. Now I would count him among my best friends.”</p>
<p>Pegg remains a science-fiction fan, but he got himself into hot water earlier this year for some comments (that he says were taken out of context) about the way adults now consume movies and shows about superheroes and aliens.</p>
<p>“Adults now consume things that long ago might have been considered childish. You know, like comic books and video games,” Pegg says, adding, “I’m a participant in that. A lot of my interests are things which might have been deemed childish a long time ago.”</p>
<p>Pegg says he likes the fantasy and sci-fi genre, but insists that the best films —&#160;whether they’re fantasy, superhero, or sci-fi —&#160;base their stories on real-world issues and concerns.</p>
<p>“If you’re going to have these amazing kind of spectacle films, it’s great to kind of pin them with some thought. It’s what fantasy and science fiction is about. These things are allegorical. They’ve always been about us, and so they say things about what we’re scared of, what we’re preoccupied with and so for it to just be about, you know, robots fighting, it’s kind of, it’s a bit of a waste in a way,” Pegg says.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.studio360.org/story/simon-pegg-impossible-mission/" type="external">This story</a> first aired as an interview on <a href="http://www.studio360.org/" type="external">PRI's Studio 360</a> with Kurt Andersen.</p> | 1,574 |
<p>GREENVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Two fraternities at East Carolina University have been closed by their national organizations following investigations into alcohol and hazing infractions.</p>
<p>Local media outlets report school officials announced Monday that Delta Chi National Fraternity will close its local chapter immediately for an indefinite period after an investigation that found actions by members constituted hazing and other violations of the fraternity's policies.</p>
<p>The school also said Tau Kappa Epsilon will close the Lambda Psi Chapter for four years.</p>
<p>The announcement follows the closure of ECU's Sigma Phi Epsilon in May for similar concerns and comes during ongoing scrutiny nationally of the Greek system prompted by hazing deaths and other incidents. Virginia Hardy, ECU vice chancellor for student affairs, said the school supports the decisions by the national organization.</p>
<p>GREENVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Two fraternities at East Carolina University have been closed by their national organizations following investigations into alcohol and hazing infractions.</p>
<p>Local media outlets report school officials announced Monday that Delta Chi National Fraternity will close its local chapter immediately for an indefinite period after an investigation that found actions by members constituted hazing and other violations of the fraternity's policies.</p>
<p>The school also said Tau Kappa Epsilon will close the Lambda Psi Chapter for four years.</p>
<p>The announcement follows the closure of ECU's Sigma Phi Epsilon in May for similar concerns and comes during ongoing scrutiny nationally of the Greek system prompted by hazing deaths and other incidents. Virginia Hardy, ECU vice chancellor for student affairs, said the school supports the decisions by the national organization.</p> | 2 ECU fraternities closed after hazing, alcohol infractions | false | https://apnews.com/amp/01cd483e4fe54ea8b73a407f897e03c8 | 2018-01-08 | 2least
| 2 ECU fraternities closed after hazing, alcohol infractions
<p>GREENVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Two fraternities at East Carolina University have been closed by their national organizations following investigations into alcohol and hazing infractions.</p>
<p>Local media outlets report school officials announced Monday that Delta Chi National Fraternity will close its local chapter immediately for an indefinite period after an investigation that found actions by members constituted hazing and other violations of the fraternity's policies.</p>
<p>The school also said Tau Kappa Epsilon will close the Lambda Psi Chapter for four years.</p>
<p>The announcement follows the closure of ECU's Sigma Phi Epsilon in May for similar concerns and comes during ongoing scrutiny nationally of the Greek system prompted by hazing deaths and other incidents. Virginia Hardy, ECU vice chancellor for student affairs, said the school supports the decisions by the national organization.</p>
<p>GREENVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Two fraternities at East Carolina University have been closed by their national organizations following investigations into alcohol and hazing infractions.</p>
<p>Local media outlets report school officials announced Monday that Delta Chi National Fraternity will close its local chapter immediately for an indefinite period after an investigation that found actions by members constituted hazing and other violations of the fraternity's policies.</p>
<p>The school also said Tau Kappa Epsilon will close the Lambda Psi Chapter for four years.</p>
<p>The announcement follows the closure of ECU's Sigma Phi Epsilon in May for similar concerns and comes during ongoing scrutiny nationally of the Greek system prompted by hazing deaths and other incidents. Virginia Hardy, ECU vice chancellor for student affairs, said the school supports the decisions by the national organization.</p> | 1,575 |
<p />
<p>Rickie Lee JonesBalm in Gilead Fantasy Records</p>
<p>It took a couple spins of <a href="http://www.rickieleejones.com/" type="external">Rickie Lee Jones</a>‘ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Balm-Gilead-Rickie-Lee-Jones/dp/B002NLI1AU" type="external">new album</a> to make me a fan. There’s nothing groundbreaking or overtly powerful about Balm in Gilead, but much like Jones’ weathered voice, its unassuming grit snuck up on me.</p>
<p>For one thing, the album moves much more slowly than I was accustomed to. But while it initially felt foreign, the record eventually felt refreshing—as if it were recorded on a back porch rather than a slick studio.</p>
<p>This authenticity is also evident in Jones’ ability to move through genres without feeling forced. While she seems most at home with bluesy romps such as “Old Enough” and “Blue Ghazel,” her smoky voice also lends itself nicely to the countrified “Remember Me” and sultry “The Moon Is Made of Gold.” Her lyrics, too, feel more sincere than cunning: It’s a dark night to feed a stranger, when I don’t have enough to feed myself, she sings affectingly on “The Gospel of Carlos, Norman and Smith.”</p>
<p>It’s these touches that ultimately make this new album intimate and real, a welcome respite from an overwrought music universe. By the time Jones croons You hurt me bad this time on one of the last and best tracks, “Bonfires,” she feels like an old, confiding friend—plaintive and genuinely heartbreaking.</p>
<p /> | Music Monday Review: Rickie Lee Jones’ Balm in Gilead | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/11/music-monday-rickie-lee-jones-balm-gilead/ | 2009-11-02 | 4left
| Music Monday Review: Rickie Lee Jones’ Balm in Gilead
<p />
<p>Rickie Lee JonesBalm in Gilead Fantasy Records</p>
<p>It took a couple spins of <a href="http://www.rickieleejones.com/" type="external">Rickie Lee Jones</a>‘ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Balm-Gilead-Rickie-Lee-Jones/dp/B002NLI1AU" type="external">new album</a> to make me a fan. There’s nothing groundbreaking or overtly powerful about Balm in Gilead, but much like Jones’ weathered voice, its unassuming grit snuck up on me.</p>
<p>For one thing, the album moves much more slowly than I was accustomed to. But while it initially felt foreign, the record eventually felt refreshing—as if it were recorded on a back porch rather than a slick studio.</p>
<p>This authenticity is also evident in Jones’ ability to move through genres without feeling forced. While she seems most at home with bluesy romps such as “Old Enough” and “Blue Ghazel,” her smoky voice also lends itself nicely to the countrified “Remember Me” and sultry “The Moon Is Made of Gold.” Her lyrics, too, feel more sincere than cunning: It’s a dark night to feed a stranger, when I don’t have enough to feed myself, she sings affectingly on “The Gospel of Carlos, Norman and Smith.”</p>
<p>It’s these touches that ultimately make this new album intimate and real, a welcome respite from an overwrought music universe. By the time Jones croons You hurt me bad this time on one of the last and best tracks, “Bonfires,” she feels like an old, confiding friend—plaintive and genuinely heartbreaking.</p>
<p /> | 1,576 |
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — The Latest on deadly Bronx apartment building fire (all times local):</p>
<p>11:15 p.m.</p>
<p>Residents of a Bronx apartment building where a deadly fire broke out are describing a chaotic scene.</p>
<p>The blaze Thursday night left 12 people dead including a child around a year old and four more people fighting for their lives.</p>
<p>Fifty-nine-year-old Thierno Diallo says he was asleep in his ground floor apartment when he heard banging on the door. Diallo says it took him a moment to realize what was happening. He says he heard people screaming, "There's a fire in the building!" He ran out in his bathrobe, jacket and sandals.</p>
<p>Neighborhood resident Robert Gonzalez, who has a friend who lives in the building, says she got out on a fire escape.</p>
<p>Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro has called the fire, "historic in its magnitude," because of the number of lives lost.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:10 p.m.</p>
<p>New York City's mayor says 12 people have been killed in a Bronx apartment building fire including a child around a year old.</p>
<p>Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio (dih BLAH'-zee-oh) said during a briefing late Thursday that additional residents of the building were fighting for their lives with serious injuries.</p>
<p>Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro called the fire, "historic in its magnitude," because of the number of lives lost.</p>
<p>The fire was reported just before 7 p.m. at a five-story building a block from the Bronx Zoo.</p>
<p>About 170 firefighters fought the fire and rescued fleeing tenants, working in temperatures in the teens.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8:50 p.m.</p>
<p>The New York City mayor's press secretary says at least six people have died in a blaze at a Bronx apartment building on a frigid night, and several more have been injured.</p>
<p>Press Secretary Eric Phillips says the eventual toll is still uncertain. The Fire Department of New York said earlier that 15 people were seriously injured in the fire near the Bronx Zoo Thursday night.</p>
<p>About 170 firefighters are at the five-story, walk-up apartment house. Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio (dih BLAH'-zee-oh) also plans to head there.</p>
<p>Temperatures are in the teens in New York, with winds making it feel like single digits.</p>
<p>One of the deadliest fires in recent memory happened elsewhere in the Bronx in 2007. Nine children and one adult died in a blaze sparked by a space heater.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8:10 p.m.</p>
<p>The Fire Department of New York says a blaze raging in a Bronx apartment building has seriously injured 15 people.</p>
<p>The FDNY says in a tweet that's the number of injuries currently reported from the fire near the Bronx Zoo.</p>
<p>FDNY photos show ladders stretched to the roof of the five-story building. Some 170 firefighters are on the scene.</p>
<p>City Department of Buildings records show the building is a walk-up apartment house.</p>
<p>City officials are advising people in the area to close their windows to keep out the smoke.</p>
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — The Latest on deadly Bronx apartment building fire (all times local):</p>
<p>11:15 p.m.</p>
<p>Residents of a Bronx apartment building where a deadly fire broke out are describing a chaotic scene.</p>
<p>The blaze Thursday night left 12 people dead including a child around a year old and four more people fighting for their lives.</p>
<p>Fifty-nine-year-old Thierno Diallo says he was asleep in his ground floor apartment when he heard banging on the door. Diallo says it took him a moment to realize what was happening. He says he heard people screaming, "There's a fire in the building!" He ran out in his bathrobe, jacket and sandals.</p>
<p>Neighborhood resident Robert Gonzalez, who has a friend who lives in the building, says she got out on a fire escape.</p>
<p>Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro has called the fire, "historic in its magnitude," because of the number of lives lost.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:10 p.m.</p>
<p>New York City's mayor says 12 people have been killed in a Bronx apartment building fire including a child around a year old.</p>
<p>Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio (dih BLAH'-zee-oh) said during a briefing late Thursday that additional residents of the building were fighting for their lives with serious injuries.</p>
<p>Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro called the fire, "historic in its magnitude," because of the number of lives lost.</p>
<p>The fire was reported just before 7 p.m. at a five-story building a block from the Bronx Zoo.</p>
<p>About 170 firefighters fought the fire and rescued fleeing tenants, working in temperatures in the teens.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8:50 p.m.</p>
<p>The New York City mayor's press secretary says at least six people have died in a blaze at a Bronx apartment building on a frigid night, and several more have been injured.</p>
<p>Press Secretary Eric Phillips says the eventual toll is still uncertain. The Fire Department of New York said earlier that 15 people were seriously injured in the fire near the Bronx Zoo Thursday night.</p>
<p>About 170 firefighters are at the five-story, walk-up apartment house. Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio (dih BLAH'-zee-oh) also plans to head there.</p>
<p>Temperatures are in the teens in New York, with winds making it feel like single digits.</p>
<p>One of the deadliest fires in recent memory happened elsewhere in the Bronx in 2007. Nine children and one adult died in a blaze sparked by a space heater.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8:10 p.m.</p>
<p>The Fire Department of New York says a blaze raging in a Bronx apartment building has seriously injured 15 people.</p>
<p>The FDNY says in a tweet that's the number of injuries currently reported from the fire near the Bronx Zoo.</p>
<p>FDNY photos show ladders stretched to the roof of the five-story building. Some 170 firefighters are on the scene.</p>
<p>City Department of Buildings records show the building is a walk-up apartment house.</p>
<p>City officials are advising people in the area to close their windows to keep out the smoke.</p> | The Latest: Residents describe chaotic Bronx fire scene | false | https://apnews.com/amp/48bca35f342a4db298a9be6f2fb7e8bc | 2017-12-29 | 2least
| The Latest: Residents describe chaotic Bronx fire scene
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — The Latest on deadly Bronx apartment building fire (all times local):</p>
<p>11:15 p.m.</p>
<p>Residents of a Bronx apartment building where a deadly fire broke out are describing a chaotic scene.</p>
<p>The blaze Thursday night left 12 people dead including a child around a year old and four more people fighting for their lives.</p>
<p>Fifty-nine-year-old Thierno Diallo says he was asleep in his ground floor apartment when he heard banging on the door. Diallo says it took him a moment to realize what was happening. He says he heard people screaming, "There's a fire in the building!" He ran out in his bathrobe, jacket and sandals.</p>
<p>Neighborhood resident Robert Gonzalez, who has a friend who lives in the building, says she got out on a fire escape.</p>
<p>Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro has called the fire, "historic in its magnitude," because of the number of lives lost.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:10 p.m.</p>
<p>New York City's mayor says 12 people have been killed in a Bronx apartment building fire including a child around a year old.</p>
<p>Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio (dih BLAH'-zee-oh) said during a briefing late Thursday that additional residents of the building were fighting for their lives with serious injuries.</p>
<p>Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro called the fire, "historic in its magnitude," because of the number of lives lost.</p>
<p>The fire was reported just before 7 p.m. at a five-story building a block from the Bronx Zoo.</p>
<p>About 170 firefighters fought the fire and rescued fleeing tenants, working in temperatures in the teens.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8:50 p.m.</p>
<p>The New York City mayor's press secretary says at least six people have died in a blaze at a Bronx apartment building on a frigid night, and several more have been injured.</p>
<p>Press Secretary Eric Phillips says the eventual toll is still uncertain. The Fire Department of New York said earlier that 15 people were seriously injured in the fire near the Bronx Zoo Thursday night.</p>
<p>About 170 firefighters are at the five-story, walk-up apartment house. Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio (dih BLAH'-zee-oh) also plans to head there.</p>
<p>Temperatures are in the teens in New York, with winds making it feel like single digits.</p>
<p>One of the deadliest fires in recent memory happened elsewhere in the Bronx in 2007. Nine children and one adult died in a blaze sparked by a space heater.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8:10 p.m.</p>
<p>The Fire Department of New York says a blaze raging in a Bronx apartment building has seriously injured 15 people.</p>
<p>The FDNY says in a tweet that's the number of injuries currently reported from the fire near the Bronx Zoo.</p>
<p>FDNY photos show ladders stretched to the roof of the five-story building. Some 170 firefighters are on the scene.</p>
<p>City Department of Buildings records show the building is a walk-up apartment house.</p>
<p>City officials are advising people in the area to close their windows to keep out the smoke.</p>
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — The Latest on deadly Bronx apartment building fire (all times local):</p>
<p>11:15 p.m.</p>
<p>Residents of a Bronx apartment building where a deadly fire broke out are describing a chaotic scene.</p>
<p>The blaze Thursday night left 12 people dead including a child around a year old and four more people fighting for their lives.</p>
<p>Fifty-nine-year-old Thierno Diallo says he was asleep in his ground floor apartment when he heard banging on the door. Diallo says it took him a moment to realize what was happening. He says he heard people screaming, "There's a fire in the building!" He ran out in his bathrobe, jacket and sandals.</p>
<p>Neighborhood resident Robert Gonzalez, who has a friend who lives in the building, says she got out on a fire escape.</p>
<p>Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro has called the fire, "historic in its magnitude," because of the number of lives lost.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:10 p.m.</p>
<p>New York City's mayor says 12 people have been killed in a Bronx apartment building fire including a child around a year old.</p>
<p>Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio (dih BLAH'-zee-oh) said during a briefing late Thursday that additional residents of the building were fighting for their lives with serious injuries.</p>
<p>Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro called the fire, "historic in its magnitude," because of the number of lives lost.</p>
<p>The fire was reported just before 7 p.m. at a five-story building a block from the Bronx Zoo.</p>
<p>About 170 firefighters fought the fire and rescued fleeing tenants, working in temperatures in the teens.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8:50 p.m.</p>
<p>The New York City mayor's press secretary says at least six people have died in a blaze at a Bronx apartment building on a frigid night, and several more have been injured.</p>
<p>Press Secretary Eric Phillips says the eventual toll is still uncertain. The Fire Department of New York said earlier that 15 people were seriously injured in the fire near the Bronx Zoo Thursday night.</p>
<p>About 170 firefighters are at the five-story, walk-up apartment house. Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio (dih BLAH'-zee-oh) also plans to head there.</p>
<p>Temperatures are in the teens in New York, with winds making it feel like single digits.</p>
<p>One of the deadliest fires in recent memory happened elsewhere in the Bronx in 2007. Nine children and one adult died in a blaze sparked by a space heater.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8:10 p.m.</p>
<p>The Fire Department of New York says a blaze raging in a Bronx apartment building has seriously injured 15 people.</p>
<p>The FDNY says in a tweet that's the number of injuries currently reported from the fire near the Bronx Zoo.</p>
<p>FDNY photos show ladders stretched to the roof of the five-story building. Some 170 firefighters are on the scene.</p>
<p>City Department of Buildings records show the building is a walk-up apartment house.</p>
<p>City officials are advising people in the area to close their windows to keep out the smoke.</p> | 1,577 |
<p>In a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, 100 Internet companies voiced opposition to proposed net neutrality rules that would allow big Internet service providers to charge online companies for faster delivery of their content.</p>
<p>Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) all voiced opposition to the rules that are expected to be voted on next week.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The companies advocated for a “free and open internet,” suggesting the proposed rules could create an Internet where wealthier companies would have a distinct advantage over smaller online companies. The letter urged the FCC to “ensure that the Internet remains an open platform for speech and commerce so that America continues to lead the world in technology markets.”</p>
<p>The note expressed concern that new rules would enable phone and cable companies to impose fees on Internet companies. “The rules should provide certainty to all market participants and keep the costs of regulation low.”</p>
<p>In April, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said he planned to show a new set of Open Internet rules on May 15th. These rules would allow broadband providers to charge Internet companies for prioritization.</p>
<p>It is unclear whether the commission will vote in support of the new guidelines. Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic member of the FCC, has asked for the new proposal to be delayed.</p>
<p>The 2010 Open Internet order prevented broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast from putting web sites in an Internet “slow lane.” A federal court struck down much of the order &#160;in January, calling into question the future of net neutrality.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>“If net neutrality isn’t preserved, it will be like putting a muzzle on innovation while allowing only well funded companies to pay to play,” says Neil Doshi, analyst at CRT Capital.</p>
<p>Other companies who participated on the letter include Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) and Twitter (NYSE:TWTR). &#160;“Such rules are essential for the future of the Internet,” they urged.</p> | 100 Internet Companies Voice Opposition to Net Neutrality Rules | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/05/08/100-internet-companies-voice-opposition-to-net-neutrality-rules.html | 2016-03-06 | 0right
| 100 Internet Companies Voice Opposition to Net Neutrality Rules
<p>In a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, 100 Internet companies voiced opposition to proposed net neutrality rules that would allow big Internet service providers to charge online companies for faster delivery of their content.</p>
<p>Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) all voiced opposition to the rules that are expected to be voted on next week.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The companies advocated for a “free and open internet,” suggesting the proposed rules could create an Internet where wealthier companies would have a distinct advantage over smaller online companies. The letter urged the FCC to “ensure that the Internet remains an open platform for speech and commerce so that America continues to lead the world in technology markets.”</p>
<p>The note expressed concern that new rules would enable phone and cable companies to impose fees on Internet companies. “The rules should provide certainty to all market participants and keep the costs of regulation low.”</p>
<p>In April, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said he planned to show a new set of Open Internet rules on May 15th. These rules would allow broadband providers to charge Internet companies for prioritization.</p>
<p>It is unclear whether the commission will vote in support of the new guidelines. Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic member of the FCC, has asked for the new proposal to be delayed.</p>
<p>The 2010 Open Internet order prevented broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast from putting web sites in an Internet “slow lane.” A federal court struck down much of the order &#160;in January, calling into question the future of net neutrality.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>“If net neutrality isn’t preserved, it will be like putting a muzzle on innovation while allowing only well funded companies to pay to play,” says Neil Doshi, analyst at CRT Capital.</p>
<p>Other companies who participated on the letter include Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) and Twitter (NYSE:TWTR). &#160;“Such rules are essential for the future of the Internet,” they urged.</p> | 1,578 |
<p>“The Egyptian voices will be heard, and if not heard, it will be only because the blood already shed has not been enough…”</p>
<p>With these words, Saad Zaghloul, one of 20th century Egypt’s most celebrated nationalist revolutionaries, gave voice to the fierce, unrelenting aspirations of a people struggling to regain their freedom. &#160;Many echo Zaghloul’s sense of righteous fury today, a year after the dawn of Egypt’s third revolution in less than a century. &#160;Far beyond anger at the glacially slow pace of prosecuting former President Hosni Mubarak and his apparatchiks, Egyptians are confronted on a daily basis with the unforgiving lead and steel of counter-revolutionary brutality, orchestrated by those with interests vested firmly in the resurrection of autocracy. &#160;This trauma extends to serving members of the military, who find themselves torn between disobeying direct orders from their superiors to assault unarmed protesters, and violating their intrinsic loyalty to their countrymen. &#160;That such a situation has come to pass is a horrific demonstration of how so many of the 25th January Revolution’s goals have been assailed by the forces of reaction.</p>
<p>The fortitude of the Egyptian people, strengthened beyond measure by the turbulence and travails of the past year, is questioned only by those given to fanciful self-delusion, particularly in circles where Orientalist thinking still prevails. Bearing the enormous hardships of a punishing economic climate, Egyptians have remained steadfast in the oaths sworn in Tahrir Square, as witnessed by the enormous participation of voters in the parliamentary elections held between November 2011 and January of this year.&#160; Yet, while the fidelity of the masses remains uncorrupted, the conduct of those whom today hold the reins of power in Egypt is far less commendable.&#160; Among the ever-increasing catalogue of crimes committed against ordinary Egyptians in the year since the Revolution are acts that would have been shocking even under the Mubarak tyranny.&#160; From the Maspero killings in October of over two dozen protesters outside the Cairo headquarters of state-run radio and television, to the continuing subjection of female protesters to so-called ‘virginity tests’, the scourge of unpunished injustice has persisted in Mubarak’s absence.&#160; This was exhibited most shamelessly in November when, before the eyes of the world, the plaintiff calls of unarmed protesters in Tahrir Square, and elsewhere were answered with bullets, and lethal gas.&#160; The fruits of this repression, uncannily reminiscent of scenes in January and February 2011, were dozens of dead civilians, and hundreds of wounded, including those whose eyes were deliberately targeted by the Ministry of the Interior’s forces with the intention to blind.</p>
<p>Each of these profane offenses shares a basic similarity – they have all transpired under the watch of the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF), the body of senior military officers appointed by then President Mubarak who have ruled Egypt extra-constitutionally since his resignation on 11th February 2011.&#160; In the exultant joy of Mubarak’s fall, through which Egypt avoided the fevered summer of bloodletting endured in neighbouring Libya, a degree of latitude was extended to SCAF, whose training in the art of war had not prepared them for the political, and bureaucratic duties of governance.&#160; Yet increasingly, cause has been given to view SCAF’s actions as having positioned it as the primary body frustrating the aims of the Revolution, and attempting to preserve as much of the decaying carcass of the old regime as possible.</p>
<p>Among the most telling of its acts was its attempt to permanently subvert civilian government through putatively non-negotiable provisos that would have granted SCAF a veto over powers central to the exercise of civilian rule, including the authority to declare war.&#160; Indeed, this flagrant challenge to the sovereignty of the people was one of the primary factors that provoked millions of Egyptians to return to the streets in protest in November, and represented yet another symptom of the inelegant and purposefully retrograde approach to reform of the constitution that has befouled the last year.&#160; Just as with the rushed and thoroughly inadequate constitutional amendment referendum in March 2011, the intention was to force through lasting changes to Egypt’s system of government that would entrench the power of the rulers over the ruled.&#160; In the opinions of many, both at home and abroad, SCAF’s desired destination for the civilian revolution has been the transformation of 21st century Egypt into a shoddy replica of the stratocracy of 20th century Turkey.&#160; That Turkey’s senior generals used their intrusion into politics to successfully execute four military coups against democratic governments between 1960 and 1997 is a fact not lost on the Egyptian people – nor perhaps on SCAF’s most enthusiastic and self-serving patron, the United States government, which continues to survey the process of popular will in Egypt with profound unease.</p>
<p>Unrepentantly using methods lifted directly from the dictators’ playbook, SCAF presents each of its actions as being in furtherance of the people’s wishes, in defence of the people’s security, and in utter accordance with the objectives of the people’s Revolution.&#160; Thus, even as political freedoms are denied, the Revolution is being served.&#160; Even as peaceful protesters are murdered, or disabled permanently by the bullets of the Ministry of the Interior, the Revolution is being served.&#160; Even as the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of the Revolution’s martyrs are molested and sexually degraded in the streets, the Revolution is being served. &#160;It is revealing that under the rule of SCAF, an institution that would quiver in terrified horripilation at the mere thought of injuring a fair-skinned citizen of a Western state, purported servants of the people have been seen fit to preside over the attack, detention, torture, and killing of their countrymen with utter insouciance.&#160; When the skulls of Egyptian civilians in Maspero are rendered planate under the wheels of tanks without punishment, one can only conclude that the abeyance of justice in Egypt has become even more profanely conspicuous.</p>
<p>Added to this host of transgressions are the alarming statistics showing that the number of military trials of civilians (in which defendants’ basic legal rights, and constitutional protections are removed) under the 12 months of SCAF’s exceeds the total number of such trials during the presidencies of both Anwar El-Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak combined.&#160; Even among the most zealous of libertarian advocates, there is the occasional grudging acceptance of the temporary of restriction on liberty in the interests of national security.&#160; Yet the seemingly inexorable increase in the use of military trials against ordinary citizens has no connection to the perseveration of law and order, or the protection of the state’s frontiers.&#160; On the contrary, routine resort to military trials is just another of the tactics of autocracy embraced with avidity by SCAF as a means of deterring legitimate, lawful dissent.</p>
<p>In this procession of repression, the discredited and despised police force, the agents of the very worst of Mubarak’s obscenities, have found a new lease of life.&#160; In the first months of the Revolution, when the citizenry’s shackles of fear had been broken, the police retreated in comparative timidity avoiding commission of many of their habitual abuses.&#160; However, anyone observing in even the most casual fashion the almost carnal demonstration of police brutality during the protests of November would note that their self-assurance has returned ebulliently.&#160; The same holds true for their paid accomplices outside of police force, who infiltrate crowds of protesters for the purposes of aiding police violence.&#160; Given the propensity for flagrant malefaction exhibited daily by what Egyptians have come to know as “the thugs”, both uniformed and in civilian garb, one cannot help but marvel at the fact that so many of those who committed crimes in service of Hosni Mubarak remain in their positions of privilege and power, permitted to greet each new day with new offences against their fellow citizens.&#160; It is all the more offensively ironic to note SCAF’s decree on 24th January, that the reviled emergency law will now be lifted except for in instances of “thuggery” or “disturbance of peace” – an exception aimed squarely at protesters, rather than the police, and the civilian bandits employed in their service.</p>
<p>Purported analogies have been drawn with the military’s role following the Revolution of 1952. However, basic examination of the two eras shows that there is no valid comparison to justify SCAF’s approach to governing the state.&#160; Unlike the 1950s, there is no foreign army of occupation on Egyptian soil, no Cold War struggle between competing superpowers, no state of war involving Egyptian forces on the eastern frontier, and no deposed king waiting in the wings to return to power from exile, but rather a former president resigned from office and now in an Egyptian prison.&#160; Moreover, unlike the aftermath of revolution in 1952, when members of the military government were the targets of reactionary plots, the most striking acts of counter-revolutionary violence and intrigue today are those conducted with the full knowledge of SCAF.&#160; In view of this dire reality, one is entitled to question the sincerity with which SCAF hailed what it termed “the victory of the people” over the old regime, whose downfall they took pains to celebrate with a military parade in Tahrir Square one week after Mubarak’s resignation.</p>
<p>Indeed, the chain of events under SCAF’s rule represents a profound threat to the dignity of the Egyptian military, which occupies a special place of reverence and affection in the hearts of the people.&#160; Military personnel, both officers and soldiers, were among the multitude of Egyptians who rose against the Mubarak dictatorship in January and February 2011, standing resolutely with the swirling mass of millions to denounce their commander-in-chief, and tear posters and banners bearing his image.&#160; It is a foul affront to such servants of the people to now be ordered to connive with Mubarak’s police force against their own kinsmen.&#160; As Egyptian history has borne witness more than once, soldiers do not wish to serve the occupants of gilded palaces, or the bearers of self-flattering titles – they wish to serve their country.&#160; The worst nightmare for a soldier is to be ordered to confront his own fellow citizen, a terror that compelled many army officers to refuse to report for duty during the November protests.</p>
<p>The recent parliamentary elections have added a further factor to the situation.&#160; In a move that testifies to the wholly dysfunctional and reactive nature of the transition process, Egypt now has a new parliament, but no amended constitution, and no president.&#160; Rather than pursuing a genuine agenda for methodical reform, the respective components of the Egyptian system of government are being set on divergent courses, the directions of which are determined by SCAF on a whim. Nonetheless, the parliament, which opened on Monday of this week, is the first for a generation whose membership was not determined in advance by the now disbanded National Democratic Party.&#160; Reaping the benefits of their immensely strong network of activists and charities, and the comparatively feeble organisational base of more centrists parties (most often labelled as ‘liberals’, regardless of the accuracy of that designation), the electoral bloc led by the Muslim Brotherhood, in the guise of the Freedom and Justice Party, secured almost 50% of the seats.&#160; While it had long been assumed that the Brotherhood would gain the highest number of seats, the sheer extent of its success has startled many, both in and outside Egypt.&#160; Even more unexpected was the rise of the Salafi Al-Nour Party, which now comprises one fifth of parliament.&#160; That the expression of Egypt’s democratic will should have rewarded political movements whose role in the outbreak of the 25th January Revolution was peripheral at best is curious to many, and confounding to the centrist political movements who view themselves as the rightful custodians of the revolutionary seal.</p>
<p>However, the ascent of religious parties merely corresponds to the fundamental realties of Egypt today.&#160; In the midst of exigent economic times, and the deliberate fostering of lawlessness by the police force eager to sow trepidation into the hearts of the populace, Egyptian voters have opted for security in certainty.&#160; The Freedom and Justice Party, and the substantially more radical Al-Nour Party campaigned on platforms of simplicity, appealing to voters’ affinity for succinctly articulated policies, and clear-cut statements of intent.&#160; This was in stark contrast to the desultory approach of centrist parties, numbered in the dozens, who were encumbered by their own lack of clarity.&#160; While the Brotherhood commanded respect for its issuance of vague yet powerful electoral messages, far too many centrist parties hindered themselves by presenting an appearance of equivocation.&#160; In the face of SCAF’s stubbornness, and police brutality, such politicians spoke softly of negotiation and co-operation, words that felt entirely meaningless amidst the blood, bullets, and gas canisters in Tahrir Square, where many of their core constituents were encamped.&#160; In this environment, it is easier to understand why the enormous manifestation of revolutionary spirit among the masses found no suitable host through which to be channelled at the polling stations.</p>
<p>As such, the Muslim Brotherhood is now placed as the dominant civilian political force, eclipsing the torchbearers of 25th January with a political agenda of its own. The question at hand is whether the Brotherhood will act in the national interest, and risk a confrontation with SCAF, or continue with the course of collusion with the military government that has so aided its meteoric rise over the past year.&#160; Adhering resolutely to the principles of self-preservation and self-aggrandisement that helped keep the movement alive and well during its years of proscription, the Brotherhood have chosen their battles with great care.&#160; When the prevailing winds have required its participation in the protest movement, the ranks of protesters have been swelled.&#160; Yet, when connivance with SCAF has offered opportunities for political advantage, the protests have been abandoned, with their participants left to be felled by the ordnance of repression.&#160; Thus, the Brotherhood can be expected to chart a course in government that permits it to continue to present itself as a proponent of change, while still flirting with reactionary elements.&#160; The consequences that this may have for Egypt’s political trajectory are uncertain.</p>
<p>On this day when Egyptians mark the beginning of their most recent revolution, the country stands at a crossroads.&#160; The Revolution’s glory is being chiselled away dramatically by its enemies, and by the growing tensions reverberating across the land, spanning the political, economic, social, and religious spheres.&#160; The common calls for liberty, dignity and social justice once dominant in the streets appear now to echo at a distance, falling on deaf ears, or drowned out by the crushing of skulls and the cutting down of protesters. &#160;The ‘temporary’ transition period has become a seemingly endless tunnel, with continually moving boundaries set by SCAF, and no genuine end in sight.&#160; Although the common stated desire has been to ensure the swift handover from military to civilian rule, there remains a lack of ability to move forward methodically. &#160;This, along with a fragile unity of purpose among political parties, has resulted in national frustration, individual anxiety, and exhaustion with the continued strife in the streets.&#160; Rather than a joyous moment of accomplishment, millions of citizens are apprehensive, and uncertain of the future. &#160;The fascination of leaderless revolution has become the frustration of incomplete revolution, whose sacrifices are mocked by the remnants of the old regime still clinging to their respective centres of power.</p>
<p>Yet, with every protest, the strength of the Revolution is rallied once more.&#160; While the full demands of the revolutionaries remain unfulfilled, with critics accusing SCAF of continuing to treat the entire country as its fiefdom, the continuing protests nonetheless forced SCAF to accelerate the election process, and made the prospects of the permanent constitutional supremacy of the military leadership all the more unlikely.&#160; It is this, and only this, that keeps the hope of true civilian government alive.&#160; Without the willingness of the people to sacrifice their bodies for the country, there would be nothing to arrest the advance of the counter-revolution – certainly not Western governments, who look on with petrified chagrin at the prospect of genuine democracy in the Arab World, lest the electoral decisions of the people conflict with the political, and corporate goals of the West.</p>
<p>As he lay on his deathbed in 1927, Saad Zaghloul is said to have expressed to his wife the dire outlook for freedom in his country – “Cover me, Safeya, for there is no hope”. &#160;Having mobilised unprecedented masses to resist alien military occupation and domestic monarchical corruption in the Revolution of 1919, Zaghloul ultimately resigned himself to the fact that he would never look upon a truly free Egypt. &#160;For him, the momentous march of liberty was to end in a cul de sac of frustration. &#160;However, while the fires of Revolution were dimmed for a time, they were never extinguished, and the banner that he held aloft was passed on to another generation, just at it had been passed to him.</p>
<p>The culmination of the journey that began one year ago today remains some distance in the future.&#160; From the broken shell of tyranny, a new edifice is still waiting to be raised.&#160; This is the job of the Egyptian people.&#160; The great pyramids did not construct themselves, nor did the splendorous lighthouse on Pharos Island, nor the historic canal, which joins the two seas on Egypt’s northern and eastern frontiers.&#160; Such wonders were achieved through the dedication, toils, and sacrifice of the Egyptian people themselves.&#160; So must it be with the new system of popular government conceived in the womb of revolution.&#160; Mindful of the melancholic pronouncement of their forefather, Saad Zaghloul, it is to this generation of Egyptians that this challenge is bestowed.</p>
<p>Tamer O. Bahgat is a transnational lawyer with an International law firm in London, with experience in corporate and international law, with a focus in economic and constitutional reform.&#160;</p>
<p>Khalid El-Sherif is a legal and policy professional with experience in regulatory reform, public and private international law, with a focus on development in the Arab World.</p> | Egypt at the Crossroads | true | https://counterpunch.org/2012/01/25/egypt-at-the-crossroads/ | 2012-01-25 | 4left
| Egypt at the Crossroads
<p>“The Egyptian voices will be heard, and if not heard, it will be only because the blood already shed has not been enough…”</p>
<p>With these words, Saad Zaghloul, one of 20th century Egypt’s most celebrated nationalist revolutionaries, gave voice to the fierce, unrelenting aspirations of a people struggling to regain their freedom. &#160;Many echo Zaghloul’s sense of righteous fury today, a year after the dawn of Egypt’s third revolution in less than a century. &#160;Far beyond anger at the glacially slow pace of prosecuting former President Hosni Mubarak and his apparatchiks, Egyptians are confronted on a daily basis with the unforgiving lead and steel of counter-revolutionary brutality, orchestrated by those with interests vested firmly in the resurrection of autocracy. &#160;This trauma extends to serving members of the military, who find themselves torn between disobeying direct orders from their superiors to assault unarmed protesters, and violating their intrinsic loyalty to their countrymen. &#160;That such a situation has come to pass is a horrific demonstration of how so many of the 25th January Revolution’s goals have been assailed by the forces of reaction.</p>
<p>The fortitude of the Egyptian people, strengthened beyond measure by the turbulence and travails of the past year, is questioned only by those given to fanciful self-delusion, particularly in circles where Orientalist thinking still prevails. Bearing the enormous hardships of a punishing economic climate, Egyptians have remained steadfast in the oaths sworn in Tahrir Square, as witnessed by the enormous participation of voters in the parliamentary elections held between November 2011 and January of this year.&#160; Yet, while the fidelity of the masses remains uncorrupted, the conduct of those whom today hold the reins of power in Egypt is far less commendable.&#160; Among the ever-increasing catalogue of crimes committed against ordinary Egyptians in the year since the Revolution are acts that would have been shocking even under the Mubarak tyranny.&#160; From the Maspero killings in October of over two dozen protesters outside the Cairo headquarters of state-run radio and television, to the continuing subjection of female protesters to so-called ‘virginity tests’, the scourge of unpunished injustice has persisted in Mubarak’s absence.&#160; This was exhibited most shamelessly in November when, before the eyes of the world, the plaintiff calls of unarmed protesters in Tahrir Square, and elsewhere were answered with bullets, and lethal gas.&#160; The fruits of this repression, uncannily reminiscent of scenes in January and February 2011, were dozens of dead civilians, and hundreds of wounded, including those whose eyes were deliberately targeted by the Ministry of the Interior’s forces with the intention to blind.</p>
<p>Each of these profane offenses shares a basic similarity – they have all transpired under the watch of the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF), the body of senior military officers appointed by then President Mubarak who have ruled Egypt extra-constitutionally since his resignation on 11th February 2011.&#160; In the exultant joy of Mubarak’s fall, through which Egypt avoided the fevered summer of bloodletting endured in neighbouring Libya, a degree of latitude was extended to SCAF, whose training in the art of war had not prepared them for the political, and bureaucratic duties of governance.&#160; Yet increasingly, cause has been given to view SCAF’s actions as having positioned it as the primary body frustrating the aims of the Revolution, and attempting to preserve as much of the decaying carcass of the old regime as possible.</p>
<p>Among the most telling of its acts was its attempt to permanently subvert civilian government through putatively non-negotiable provisos that would have granted SCAF a veto over powers central to the exercise of civilian rule, including the authority to declare war.&#160; Indeed, this flagrant challenge to the sovereignty of the people was one of the primary factors that provoked millions of Egyptians to return to the streets in protest in November, and represented yet another symptom of the inelegant and purposefully retrograde approach to reform of the constitution that has befouled the last year.&#160; Just as with the rushed and thoroughly inadequate constitutional amendment referendum in March 2011, the intention was to force through lasting changes to Egypt’s system of government that would entrench the power of the rulers over the ruled.&#160; In the opinions of many, both at home and abroad, SCAF’s desired destination for the civilian revolution has been the transformation of 21st century Egypt into a shoddy replica of the stratocracy of 20th century Turkey.&#160; That Turkey’s senior generals used their intrusion into politics to successfully execute four military coups against democratic governments between 1960 and 1997 is a fact not lost on the Egyptian people – nor perhaps on SCAF’s most enthusiastic and self-serving patron, the United States government, which continues to survey the process of popular will in Egypt with profound unease.</p>
<p>Unrepentantly using methods lifted directly from the dictators’ playbook, SCAF presents each of its actions as being in furtherance of the people’s wishes, in defence of the people’s security, and in utter accordance with the objectives of the people’s Revolution.&#160; Thus, even as political freedoms are denied, the Revolution is being served.&#160; Even as peaceful protesters are murdered, or disabled permanently by the bullets of the Ministry of the Interior, the Revolution is being served.&#160; Even as the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of the Revolution’s martyrs are molested and sexually degraded in the streets, the Revolution is being served. &#160;It is revealing that under the rule of SCAF, an institution that would quiver in terrified horripilation at the mere thought of injuring a fair-skinned citizen of a Western state, purported servants of the people have been seen fit to preside over the attack, detention, torture, and killing of their countrymen with utter insouciance.&#160; When the skulls of Egyptian civilians in Maspero are rendered planate under the wheels of tanks without punishment, one can only conclude that the abeyance of justice in Egypt has become even more profanely conspicuous.</p>
<p>Added to this host of transgressions are the alarming statistics showing that the number of military trials of civilians (in which defendants’ basic legal rights, and constitutional protections are removed) under the 12 months of SCAF’s exceeds the total number of such trials during the presidencies of both Anwar El-Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak combined.&#160; Even among the most zealous of libertarian advocates, there is the occasional grudging acceptance of the temporary of restriction on liberty in the interests of national security.&#160; Yet the seemingly inexorable increase in the use of military trials against ordinary citizens has no connection to the perseveration of law and order, or the protection of the state’s frontiers.&#160; On the contrary, routine resort to military trials is just another of the tactics of autocracy embraced with avidity by SCAF as a means of deterring legitimate, lawful dissent.</p>
<p>In this procession of repression, the discredited and despised police force, the agents of the very worst of Mubarak’s obscenities, have found a new lease of life.&#160; In the first months of the Revolution, when the citizenry’s shackles of fear had been broken, the police retreated in comparative timidity avoiding commission of many of their habitual abuses.&#160; However, anyone observing in even the most casual fashion the almost carnal demonstration of police brutality during the protests of November would note that their self-assurance has returned ebulliently.&#160; The same holds true for their paid accomplices outside of police force, who infiltrate crowds of protesters for the purposes of aiding police violence.&#160; Given the propensity for flagrant malefaction exhibited daily by what Egyptians have come to know as “the thugs”, both uniformed and in civilian garb, one cannot help but marvel at the fact that so many of those who committed crimes in service of Hosni Mubarak remain in their positions of privilege and power, permitted to greet each new day with new offences against their fellow citizens.&#160; It is all the more offensively ironic to note SCAF’s decree on 24th January, that the reviled emergency law will now be lifted except for in instances of “thuggery” or “disturbance of peace” – an exception aimed squarely at protesters, rather than the police, and the civilian bandits employed in their service.</p>
<p>Purported analogies have been drawn with the military’s role following the Revolution of 1952. However, basic examination of the two eras shows that there is no valid comparison to justify SCAF’s approach to governing the state.&#160; Unlike the 1950s, there is no foreign army of occupation on Egyptian soil, no Cold War struggle between competing superpowers, no state of war involving Egyptian forces on the eastern frontier, and no deposed king waiting in the wings to return to power from exile, but rather a former president resigned from office and now in an Egyptian prison.&#160; Moreover, unlike the aftermath of revolution in 1952, when members of the military government were the targets of reactionary plots, the most striking acts of counter-revolutionary violence and intrigue today are those conducted with the full knowledge of SCAF.&#160; In view of this dire reality, one is entitled to question the sincerity with which SCAF hailed what it termed “the victory of the people” over the old regime, whose downfall they took pains to celebrate with a military parade in Tahrir Square one week after Mubarak’s resignation.</p>
<p>Indeed, the chain of events under SCAF’s rule represents a profound threat to the dignity of the Egyptian military, which occupies a special place of reverence and affection in the hearts of the people.&#160; Military personnel, both officers and soldiers, were among the multitude of Egyptians who rose against the Mubarak dictatorship in January and February 2011, standing resolutely with the swirling mass of millions to denounce their commander-in-chief, and tear posters and banners bearing his image.&#160; It is a foul affront to such servants of the people to now be ordered to connive with Mubarak’s police force against their own kinsmen.&#160; As Egyptian history has borne witness more than once, soldiers do not wish to serve the occupants of gilded palaces, or the bearers of self-flattering titles – they wish to serve their country.&#160; The worst nightmare for a soldier is to be ordered to confront his own fellow citizen, a terror that compelled many army officers to refuse to report for duty during the November protests.</p>
<p>The recent parliamentary elections have added a further factor to the situation.&#160; In a move that testifies to the wholly dysfunctional and reactive nature of the transition process, Egypt now has a new parliament, but no amended constitution, and no president.&#160; Rather than pursuing a genuine agenda for methodical reform, the respective components of the Egyptian system of government are being set on divergent courses, the directions of which are determined by SCAF on a whim. Nonetheless, the parliament, which opened on Monday of this week, is the first for a generation whose membership was not determined in advance by the now disbanded National Democratic Party.&#160; Reaping the benefits of their immensely strong network of activists and charities, and the comparatively feeble organisational base of more centrists parties (most often labelled as ‘liberals’, regardless of the accuracy of that designation), the electoral bloc led by the Muslim Brotherhood, in the guise of the Freedom and Justice Party, secured almost 50% of the seats.&#160; While it had long been assumed that the Brotherhood would gain the highest number of seats, the sheer extent of its success has startled many, both in and outside Egypt.&#160; Even more unexpected was the rise of the Salafi Al-Nour Party, which now comprises one fifth of parliament.&#160; That the expression of Egypt’s democratic will should have rewarded political movements whose role in the outbreak of the 25th January Revolution was peripheral at best is curious to many, and confounding to the centrist political movements who view themselves as the rightful custodians of the revolutionary seal.</p>
<p>However, the ascent of religious parties merely corresponds to the fundamental realties of Egypt today.&#160; In the midst of exigent economic times, and the deliberate fostering of lawlessness by the police force eager to sow trepidation into the hearts of the populace, Egyptian voters have opted for security in certainty.&#160; The Freedom and Justice Party, and the substantially more radical Al-Nour Party campaigned on platforms of simplicity, appealing to voters’ affinity for succinctly articulated policies, and clear-cut statements of intent.&#160; This was in stark contrast to the desultory approach of centrist parties, numbered in the dozens, who were encumbered by their own lack of clarity.&#160; While the Brotherhood commanded respect for its issuance of vague yet powerful electoral messages, far too many centrist parties hindered themselves by presenting an appearance of equivocation.&#160; In the face of SCAF’s stubbornness, and police brutality, such politicians spoke softly of negotiation and co-operation, words that felt entirely meaningless amidst the blood, bullets, and gas canisters in Tahrir Square, where many of their core constituents were encamped.&#160; In this environment, it is easier to understand why the enormous manifestation of revolutionary spirit among the masses found no suitable host through which to be channelled at the polling stations.</p>
<p>As such, the Muslim Brotherhood is now placed as the dominant civilian political force, eclipsing the torchbearers of 25th January with a political agenda of its own. The question at hand is whether the Brotherhood will act in the national interest, and risk a confrontation with SCAF, or continue with the course of collusion with the military government that has so aided its meteoric rise over the past year.&#160; Adhering resolutely to the principles of self-preservation and self-aggrandisement that helped keep the movement alive and well during its years of proscription, the Brotherhood have chosen their battles with great care.&#160; When the prevailing winds have required its participation in the protest movement, the ranks of protesters have been swelled.&#160; Yet, when connivance with SCAF has offered opportunities for political advantage, the protests have been abandoned, with their participants left to be felled by the ordnance of repression.&#160; Thus, the Brotherhood can be expected to chart a course in government that permits it to continue to present itself as a proponent of change, while still flirting with reactionary elements.&#160; The consequences that this may have for Egypt’s political trajectory are uncertain.</p>
<p>On this day when Egyptians mark the beginning of their most recent revolution, the country stands at a crossroads.&#160; The Revolution’s glory is being chiselled away dramatically by its enemies, and by the growing tensions reverberating across the land, spanning the political, economic, social, and religious spheres.&#160; The common calls for liberty, dignity and social justice once dominant in the streets appear now to echo at a distance, falling on deaf ears, or drowned out by the crushing of skulls and the cutting down of protesters. &#160;The ‘temporary’ transition period has become a seemingly endless tunnel, with continually moving boundaries set by SCAF, and no genuine end in sight.&#160; Although the common stated desire has been to ensure the swift handover from military to civilian rule, there remains a lack of ability to move forward methodically. &#160;This, along with a fragile unity of purpose among political parties, has resulted in national frustration, individual anxiety, and exhaustion with the continued strife in the streets.&#160; Rather than a joyous moment of accomplishment, millions of citizens are apprehensive, and uncertain of the future. &#160;The fascination of leaderless revolution has become the frustration of incomplete revolution, whose sacrifices are mocked by the remnants of the old regime still clinging to their respective centres of power.</p>
<p>Yet, with every protest, the strength of the Revolution is rallied once more.&#160; While the full demands of the revolutionaries remain unfulfilled, with critics accusing SCAF of continuing to treat the entire country as its fiefdom, the continuing protests nonetheless forced SCAF to accelerate the election process, and made the prospects of the permanent constitutional supremacy of the military leadership all the more unlikely.&#160; It is this, and only this, that keeps the hope of true civilian government alive.&#160; Without the willingness of the people to sacrifice their bodies for the country, there would be nothing to arrest the advance of the counter-revolution – certainly not Western governments, who look on with petrified chagrin at the prospect of genuine democracy in the Arab World, lest the electoral decisions of the people conflict with the political, and corporate goals of the West.</p>
<p>As he lay on his deathbed in 1927, Saad Zaghloul is said to have expressed to his wife the dire outlook for freedom in his country – “Cover me, Safeya, for there is no hope”. &#160;Having mobilised unprecedented masses to resist alien military occupation and domestic monarchical corruption in the Revolution of 1919, Zaghloul ultimately resigned himself to the fact that he would never look upon a truly free Egypt. &#160;For him, the momentous march of liberty was to end in a cul de sac of frustration. &#160;However, while the fires of Revolution were dimmed for a time, they were never extinguished, and the banner that he held aloft was passed on to another generation, just at it had been passed to him.</p>
<p>The culmination of the journey that began one year ago today remains some distance in the future.&#160; From the broken shell of tyranny, a new edifice is still waiting to be raised.&#160; This is the job of the Egyptian people.&#160; The great pyramids did not construct themselves, nor did the splendorous lighthouse on Pharos Island, nor the historic canal, which joins the two seas on Egypt’s northern and eastern frontiers.&#160; Such wonders were achieved through the dedication, toils, and sacrifice of the Egyptian people themselves.&#160; So must it be with the new system of popular government conceived in the womb of revolution.&#160; Mindful of the melancholic pronouncement of their forefather, Saad Zaghloul, it is to this generation of Egyptians that this challenge is bestowed.</p>
<p>Tamer O. Bahgat is a transnational lawyer with an International law firm in London, with experience in corporate and international law, with a focus in economic and constitutional reform.&#160;</p>
<p>Khalid El-Sherif is a legal and policy professional with experience in regulatory reform, public and private international law, with a focus on development in the Arab World.</p> | 1,579 |
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<p>Image source: Dave &amp; Buster's.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Dave &amp; Buster's (NASDAQ: PLAY)has been bucking the "restaurant recession" all year long. Shares of the "eatertainment" leader have soared 34% in 2016, and that was before SunTrust initiated coverage of the chain with a buy rating last night.</p>
<p>SunTrust's price target of $68 implies another 21% of upside from here. Factor in the stock's 53% surge in 2015 -- its first full year on the market since its late 2014 IPO -- and you have a stock that has been reborn as a growth stock darling in its latest incarnation as a public company.</p>
<p>There are a few reasons to feel that that Dave &amp; Buster's will deliver double-digit percentage growth again for investors in the year ahead. Let's go over a few reasons whythe company behind big-box restaurants that combine casual dining, sports bars, and massive high-tech gaming arcades will win again in 2017.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Dave &amp; Buster's runs high-volume eateries, and over the past year, it has grown from 77 to 88 locations. It's not going to slow down in 2017, aiming to open another 11 or 12 units.</p>
<p>This isn't a small-box concept where several locations can exist within the same market. Dave &amp; Buster's won't have the same kind of ceiling as smaller lower volume eateries. The peak will be in the hundreds, not thousands. However, we're not there yet -- and we haven't even considered the international appeal. We're eyeing double-digit percentage growth for the next few years.</p>
<p>The popularity of Dave &amp; Buster's is undeniable. Comps soared 5.9% in its latest quarter, and that's no fluke. The chain has beaten the competitive casual-dining benchmark for 18 consecutive quarters.</p>
<p>Dave &amp; Buster's was born after a restaurant owner and bar owner noticed that patrons of one concept would frequent the other. They teamed up, creating a mammoth restaurant where bar games and other high-tech diversions entertain customers between bites and sips.</p>
<p>Dave &amp; Buster's is unique. Less than half of its money is generated from food and beverages, 44% in its latest quarter to be exact. The balance of its net sales are generated from high-margin video games and other entertainment offerings. An arcade or a restaurant on its own would be a risky proposition, but combined, they create the built-in audience for the other part of the model's business.</p>
<p>It's not a coincidence that serial market thumpers when it comes to earnings expectations also crank out big stock gains. Dave &amp; Buster's has now delivered nine quarters as a public company, and every single time it has blown Wall Street profit targets out of the water.</p>
<p>Data source: Yahoo! Finance.</p>
<p>The last quarter was a <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/12/07/3-reasons-why-dave-busters-is-bucking-the-restaura.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">thing of beauty Opens a New Window.</a>. Net income more than doubled. Dave &amp; Buster's landed 79% ahead of where the pros were parked.</p>
<p>If you think a restaurant stock climbing 34% so far this year is impressive, keep in mind that net income has soared 73% through the first nine months of the year. Dave &amp; Buster's has more than lived up to expectations, yet earnings continue to grow faster than its stock price. In short, the stock is cheaper now -- with a lower trailing earnings multiple -- than it was when the year began. After another four quarters of beating Wall Street through 2016, the stock heads into the new year in great shape.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Dave and Buster's Entertainment When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=035a8486-c6e0-405a-a940-029fe2b7a231&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Dave and Buster's Entertainment wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=035a8486-c6e0-405a-a940-029fe2b7a231&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of Nov. 7, 2016</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBreakerRick/info.aspx" type="external">Rick Munarriz Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Dave and Buster's Entertainment. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 3 Reasons Why Dave & Buster's Will Keep Winning in 2017 | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/12/21/3-reasons-why-dave-buster-will-keep-winning-in-2017.html | 2016-12-21 | 0right
| 3 Reasons Why Dave & Buster's Will Keep Winning in 2017
<p />
<p>Image source: Dave &amp; Buster's.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Dave &amp; Buster's (NASDAQ: PLAY)has been bucking the "restaurant recession" all year long. Shares of the "eatertainment" leader have soared 34% in 2016, and that was before SunTrust initiated coverage of the chain with a buy rating last night.</p>
<p>SunTrust's price target of $68 implies another 21% of upside from here. Factor in the stock's 53% surge in 2015 -- its first full year on the market since its late 2014 IPO -- and you have a stock that has been reborn as a growth stock darling in its latest incarnation as a public company.</p>
<p>There are a few reasons to feel that that Dave &amp; Buster's will deliver double-digit percentage growth again for investors in the year ahead. Let's go over a few reasons whythe company behind big-box restaurants that combine casual dining, sports bars, and massive high-tech gaming arcades will win again in 2017.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Dave &amp; Buster's runs high-volume eateries, and over the past year, it has grown from 77 to 88 locations. It's not going to slow down in 2017, aiming to open another 11 or 12 units.</p>
<p>This isn't a small-box concept where several locations can exist within the same market. Dave &amp; Buster's won't have the same kind of ceiling as smaller lower volume eateries. The peak will be in the hundreds, not thousands. However, we're not there yet -- and we haven't even considered the international appeal. We're eyeing double-digit percentage growth for the next few years.</p>
<p>The popularity of Dave &amp; Buster's is undeniable. Comps soared 5.9% in its latest quarter, and that's no fluke. The chain has beaten the competitive casual-dining benchmark for 18 consecutive quarters.</p>
<p>Dave &amp; Buster's was born after a restaurant owner and bar owner noticed that patrons of one concept would frequent the other. They teamed up, creating a mammoth restaurant where bar games and other high-tech diversions entertain customers between bites and sips.</p>
<p>Dave &amp; Buster's is unique. Less than half of its money is generated from food and beverages, 44% in its latest quarter to be exact. The balance of its net sales are generated from high-margin video games and other entertainment offerings. An arcade or a restaurant on its own would be a risky proposition, but combined, they create the built-in audience for the other part of the model's business.</p>
<p>It's not a coincidence that serial market thumpers when it comes to earnings expectations also crank out big stock gains. Dave &amp; Buster's has now delivered nine quarters as a public company, and every single time it has blown Wall Street profit targets out of the water.</p>
<p>Data source: Yahoo! Finance.</p>
<p>The last quarter was a <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/12/07/3-reasons-why-dave-busters-is-bucking-the-restaura.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">thing of beauty Opens a New Window.</a>. Net income more than doubled. Dave &amp; Buster's landed 79% ahead of where the pros were parked.</p>
<p>If you think a restaurant stock climbing 34% so far this year is impressive, keep in mind that net income has soared 73% through the first nine months of the year. Dave &amp; Buster's has more than lived up to expectations, yet earnings continue to grow faster than its stock price. In short, the stock is cheaper now -- with a lower trailing earnings multiple -- than it was when the year began. After another four quarters of beating Wall Street through 2016, the stock heads into the new year in great shape.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Dave and Buster's Entertainment When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=035a8486-c6e0-405a-a940-029fe2b7a231&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Dave and Buster's Entertainment wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=035a8486-c6e0-405a-a940-029fe2b7a231&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of Nov. 7, 2016</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBreakerRick/info.aspx" type="external">Rick Munarriz Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Dave and Buster's Entertainment. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 1,580 |
<p>Christopher Steele, the ex-MI6 spy who produced a dossier allegedly revealing that&#160;Donald Trump was involved in&#160;sexual acts and other improprieties performed while visiting Russia years ago, has been asked to&#160;testify before the U.S. Senate.</p>
<p>The British spy is being sought after to explain his report and the details held within, which were <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia?utm_term=.cn52AeOnow#.kpJKpVl2zn" type="external">released in full by Buzzfeed News</a> in January. The documents explain that Trump, while on a business trip in Russia, paid prostitutes to urinate on a bed that had been used previously by then-President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.</p>
<p>The documents allegedly shed more details of wrongdoings, including coordination with the Russians <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/trump-golden-shower-gate-file-to-reopen/" type="external">to influence the 2016 presidential election</a> to ensure Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's defeat.</p>
<p>Steele has himself been in hiding since his dossier was released, and thus was not available for comment about meeting with the Senate. However, according to the Independent, U.S. lawmakers (both Democratic and Republican) <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-russia-christopher-steele-dossier-us-senate-intelligence-hotel-british-spy-mi6-evidence-a7608456.html" type="external">are open to meeting with Steele</a> in the United Kingdom itself, or on more neutral territory, in order to provide him a guarantee of security and safety during proceedings. Friends of Steele have also stated he&#160;might be open to such a meeting should certain&#160;security concerns be met.</p>
<p>The Trump transition team, upon hearing of these allegations in early January, categorically denied them. "Clearly the person who created this did so from their imagination," special counsel to Trump <a href="https://mic.com/articles/165050/michael-cohen-trump-s-lawyer-emphatically-denies-claims-about-trump-golden-shower#.j2rgurCdJ" type="external">Michael Cohen said at the time</a>.</p>
<p>Trump himself went to Twitter to express his feelings on the matter as well:</p>
<p />
<p>Several parts of the dossier are unverified at this time, but with additional connections between <a href="" type="internal">the Trump administration and&#160;the Russian government</a> being revealed daily, it seems lawmakers are hoping that Steele can at least meet with them to defend his allegations in person,&#160;so that they can determine for themselves what they believe.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Chris Walker has been writing about political issues for the past decade, including for sites such as Elite Daily, AMERICAblog, and Mic. You can follow him on Twitter&#160; <a href="http://twitter.com/thatchriswalker" type="external">@thatchriswalker</a>.</p> | US Senate calls on British spy to testify about explosive Trump-Russia dossier | true | http://resistancereport.com/news/dossier-senate-trump-russia/ | 2017-03-03 | 4left
| US Senate calls on British spy to testify about explosive Trump-Russia dossier
<p>Christopher Steele, the ex-MI6 spy who produced a dossier allegedly revealing that&#160;Donald Trump was involved in&#160;sexual acts and other improprieties performed while visiting Russia years ago, has been asked to&#160;testify before the U.S. Senate.</p>
<p>The British spy is being sought after to explain his report and the details held within, which were <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia?utm_term=.cn52AeOnow#.kpJKpVl2zn" type="external">released in full by Buzzfeed News</a> in January. The documents explain that Trump, while on a business trip in Russia, paid prostitutes to urinate on a bed that had been used previously by then-President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.</p>
<p>The documents allegedly shed more details of wrongdoings, including coordination with the Russians <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/trump-golden-shower-gate-file-to-reopen/" type="external">to influence the 2016 presidential election</a> to ensure Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's defeat.</p>
<p>Steele has himself been in hiding since his dossier was released, and thus was not available for comment about meeting with the Senate. However, according to the Independent, U.S. lawmakers (both Democratic and Republican) <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-russia-christopher-steele-dossier-us-senate-intelligence-hotel-british-spy-mi6-evidence-a7608456.html" type="external">are open to meeting with Steele</a> in the United Kingdom itself, or on more neutral territory, in order to provide him a guarantee of security and safety during proceedings. Friends of Steele have also stated he&#160;might be open to such a meeting should certain&#160;security concerns be met.</p>
<p>The Trump transition team, upon hearing of these allegations in early January, categorically denied them. "Clearly the person who created this did so from their imagination," special counsel to Trump <a href="https://mic.com/articles/165050/michael-cohen-trump-s-lawyer-emphatically-denies-claims-about-trump-golden-shower#.j2rgurCdJ" type="external">Michael Cohen said at the time</a>.</p>
<p>Trump himself went to Twitter to express his feelings on the matter as well:</p>
<p />
<p>Several parts of the dossier are unverified at this time, but with additional connections between <a href="" type="internal">the Trump administration and&#160;the Russian government</a> being revealed daily, it seems lawmakers are hoping that Steele can at least meet with them to defend his allegations in person,&#160;so that they can determine for themselves what they believe.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Chris Walker has been writing about political issues for the past decade, including for sites such as Elite Daily, AMERICAblog, and Mic. You can follow him on Twitter&#160; <a href="http://twitter.com/thatchriswalker" type="external">@thatchriswalker</a>.</p> | 1,581 |
<p>One of the most respected National Hockey League (NHL) players of Russian origin, Viacheslav Fetisov says NHL players will not risk losing their club contracts to play at 2018 Winter Olympic Games.</p>
<p>Former Detroit Red Wings and NHL All-Star Team defenseman Fetisov commented on the NHL’s decision, according to which the league will not allow its players to participate in the upcoming Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.</p>
<p>The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) head Rene Fasel also recently <a href="http://www.sport-express.ru/olympics/pyeongchang2018/reviews/rene-fazel-esli-my-dadim-sygrat-ovechkinu-na-olimpiade-nhl-mozhet-otomstit-1306337/" type="external">said</a>, talking to Russian outlet Sport-Express, that his federation “respects and will respect the NHL contracts” and will not back players wanting to compete at the Games despite the ban.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/sport/383625-olympic-ice-hockey-summer-nhl/" type="external">READ MORE:&#160;‘We’d back Olympic ice hockey tournament in summer’ – NHL</a></p>
<p>“No idiot will terminate the contract with the NHL club to play the Olympics,” said Fetisov to RT.</p>
<p>“For Alexander Ovechkin, the current situation is an unpleasant thing. He will miss his chance to become an Olympic champion. Although in 2022 at the Games in Beijing, Alexander might get another chance,” added Fetisov.</p>
<p>Fetisov, a member of the legendary Russian Five of Detroit Red Wings, also stressed that the absence of the NHL players will negatively affect the level of competition at the Olympic tournament.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/sport/383458-nhl-cancels-participation-2018-olympics/" type="external" /></p>
<p>“Of course, the hockey tournament in South Korea will lose on the entertainment part because of the lack of NHL players. But interrupting of the season for the Olympic Games would cost the league (NHL) a lot of money. I know they were looking to get some sort of compensation from the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and IIHF.</p>
<p>“But Thomas Bach’s institution (IOC) does not share with anyone, despite earning huge money, while Rene Fasel does not have funds for insurance of the players. Plus there was a misunderstanding regarding the live broadcast. Although, I think the NHL was not right when they decided to keep the players.”</p>
<p>He also said that the upcoming Games will give a chance for the players in the Russian-based Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), which have an Olympic break, to display their best at the iconic hockey competition.</p>
<p>“The guys from the KHL have a great chance to prove themselves. I hope they understand this, and Russia will regain the champion title,” concluded Fetisov.</p>
<p>The NHL has officially announced that it will not participate at the 2018 Winter Olympics in April.</p>
<p>The decision centers on NHL fears over player injuries and financial concerns, and means that the league will not take an Olympic break during the 2017-2018 season.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/sport/396144-khl-schedule-olympic-break/" type="external">READ MORE:&#160;KHL announces schedule for new season including biggest Olympic break in its history</a></p>
<p>Russian star forward and Washington Capitals captain Ovechkin earlier stated his intention to visit the Games despite the ban from the NHL.</p> | ‘No idiot will break NHL contract for Olympics’ – two-time Stanley Cup champ Fetisov to RT | false | https://newsline.com/no-idiot-will-break-nhl-contract-for-olympics-two-time-stanley-cup-champ-fetisov-to-rt/ | 2017-09-08 | 1right-center
| ‘No idiot will break NHL contract for Olympics’ – two-time Stanley Cup champ Fetisov to RT
<p>One of the most respected National Hockey League (NHL) players of Russian origin, Viacheslav Fetisov says NHL players will not risk losing their club contracts to play at 2018 Winter Olympic Games.</p>
<p>Former Detroit Red Wings and NHL All-Star Team defenseman Fetisov commented on the NHL’s decision, according to which the league will not allow its players to participate in the upcoming Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.</p>
<p>The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) head Rene Fasel also recently <a href="http://www.sport-express.ru/olympics/pyeongchang2018/reviews/rene-fazel-esli-my-dadim-sygrat-ovechkinu-na-olimpiade-nhl-mozhet-otomstit-1306337/" type="external">said</a>, talking to Russian outlet Sport-Express, that his federation “respects and will respect the NHL contracts” and will not back players wanting to compete at the Games despite the ban.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/sport/383625-olympic-ice-hockey-summer-nhl/" type="external">READ MORE:&#160;‘We’d back Olympic ice hockey tournament in summer’ – NHL</a></p>
<p>“No idiot will terminate the contract with the NHL club to play the Olympics,” said Fetisov to RT.</p>
<p>“For Alexander Ovechkin, the current situation is an unpleasant thing. He will miss his chance to become an Olympic champion. Although in 2022 at the Games in Beijing, Alexander might get another chance,” added Fetisov.</p>
<p>Fetisov, a member of the legendary Russian Five of Detroit Red Wings, also stressed that the absence of the NHL players will negatively affect the level of competition at the Olympic tournament.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/sport/383458-nhl-cancels-participation-2018-olympics/" type="external" /></p>
<p>“Of course, the hockey tournament in South Korea will lose on the entertainment part because of the lack of NHL players. But interrupting of the season for the Olympic Games would cost the league (NHL) a lot of money. I know they were looking to get some sort of compensation from the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and IIHF.</p>
<p>“But Thomas Bach’s institution (IOC) does not share with anyone, despite earning huge money, while Rene Fasel does not have funds for insurance of the players. Plus there was a misunderstanding regarding the live broadcast. Although, I think the NHL was not right when they decided to keep the players.”</p>
<p>He also said that the upcoming Games will give a chance for the players in the Russian-based Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), which have an Olympic break, to display their best at the iconic hockey competition.</p>
<p>“The guys from the KHL have a great chance to prove themselves. I hope they understand this, and Russia will regain the champion title,” concluded Fetisov.</p>
<p>The NHL has officially announced that it will not participate at the 2018 Winter Olympics in April.</p>
<p>The decision centers on NHL fears over player injuries and financial concerns, and means that the league will not take an Olympic break during the 2017-2018 season.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/sport/396144-khl-schedule-olympic-break/" type="external">READ MORE:&#160;KHL announces schedule for new season including biggest Olympic break in its history</a></p>
<p>Russian star forward and Washington Capitals captain Ovechkin earlier stated his intention to visit the Games despite the ban from the NHL.</p> | 1,582 |
<p />
<p>There’s a holy war online. On one side is a network of Al Qaeda propagandists eager to use the Web to spread their message and broaden their influence in the Muslim world. On the other is a group of Saudi religious scholars who are prowling the Internet for Islamic extremists who they can convert to moderation. Based in Riyadh, members of the so-called Sakinah (“Tranquility”) Campaign have been infiltrating extremist websites and chat rooms since 2004, seeking to engage Islamist sympathizers in religious dialogue. Their aim is to steer potential terrorists away from Al Qaeda, which has used the Web as its primary <a href="http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/IslamistReport.pdf%20" type="external">recruiting ground</a>.</p>
<p>The Internet is a relatively recent phenomenon in Saudi Arabia, introduced only in 1999 after the Saudi government devised ways to filter out unwanted content, primarily pornography and online gambling. By 2000, some 500,000 Saudis were already surfing the Web; seven years later, that number had ballooned to an estimated 4.7 million, or approximately 17 percent of the population. As the Internet has caught on in the kingdom, so too has concern over its usefulness to terrorists. The number of Islamic extremist websites has exploded from a handful to as many as 17,000 sites that “fuel Al Qaeda ideology,” according to a December 2007 estimate from Saudi security officials speaking at a technology and national security conference in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. These range from official Al Qaeda propaganda sites operated by the group’s “Media Committee,” As-Sahab, to less slick but ever-increasing numbers of amateur sites maintained by sympathizers around the globe.</p>
<p>In 2004, as extremist sites continued to multiply, a small group of volunteers founded Sakinah, based in Riyadh, to challenge Al Qaeda’s growing online presence. Since then, the organization has grown to include about 70 volunteers (religious scholars, academics, sociologists, and psychiatrists, among others), divided into two main groups. The first is building a library of extremist propaganda found on the Internet, such as video and audio recordings, Islamist news reports, and religious documents—all of it collected to gain a fuller understanding of the shifting currents of extremist thought and help Sakinah’s volunteers to confront Islamists on their own terms. The second group, Sakinah’s operational component, infiltrates Islamist chat rooms, where volunteers monitor conversations and seize upon opportunities to initiate debate. According to <a href="http://www.gwumc.edu/hspi/fellows/Ansary_bio.htm" type="external">Abdullah Ansary</a>, a fellow at George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute and author of a <a href="http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol15/2toc.asp" type="external">study</a> of counter-extremism tactics in the summer 2008 issue of Middle East Policy, chat room visitors are typically young people under the age of 25, whose presence there usually owes more to curiosity than religious zealotry. But left alone, so goes the fear, they become easy prey for Al Qaeda propagandists. As one of the group’s founders explained to a Saudi newspaper reporter shortly after its launch, “Our aim [is] to conduct dialogue with those who [have] expressed solidarity with the operations of violence and terror, but [have] not participated in them, in order to prevent them from doing so—because those who express solidarity are likely in the future to turn into assistants and perpetrators.”</p>
<p>In chat rooms, Sakinah volunteers raise controversial subjects and then invite those who respond to engage in a private discussion. This may take the form of a single exchange, or grow into a series of conversations stretching over several weeks or months. Sakinah volunteers “ask them why they’re thinking what they’re thinking, and try to steer them towards the right path,” says <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/index.cfm?fa=expert_view&amp;expert_id=403&amp;prog=zgp&amp;proj=zme" type="external">Christopher Boucek</a>, a Middle East scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and one of the few Western experts to have studied Sakinah. “The interesting thing about this program is that after the back-and-forth dialogue, [it’s] posted online for other people to read.”</p>
<p>One such <a href="http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&amp;Area=ia&amp;ID=IA26006%20" type="external">exchange</a>, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit group that monitors Arabic-language press, begins with a young man calling himself Zaman Al-Dajajila (a moniker that translates to “the time of the false prophets”) explaining to a Sakinah volunteer that the division of the world is clear. “There is a camp of belief versus a camp of unbelief.” By the end of the exchange, however, his views appear to have completely turned around. “By Allah, I feel like I’m in a volcano and an earthquake!” he writes. “I didn’t mean any harm. I thought that this was what the religion demanded. You are a blessing [that came to me] from the Lord.” Another purportedly successful interaction involved what the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan described as a “former high-ranking female member of one of Al Qaeda’s women’s organizations.” She described how her contact with Sakinah affected her thinking: “Those who choose the path [of jihad] are usually not afraid of being shot or jailed. Alongside the focus on this military conflict, there must also be a focus on the ideological conflict, [through] dialogue and the spreading of correct shari’a knowledge and views…These [people] raised in me, and in many other women I know, serious doubts and questions regarding the beliefs we held so deeply.”</p>
<p>In January 2008, Sakinah announced that it was monitoring more than 1,500 Islamist websites and had successfully changed the beliefs of 722 men and 155 women—about 70 percent of them hailing from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, the others scattered throughout the rest of the Arab world and the West. The reliability of such numbers is uncertain, says Boucek, and glowing reports published in government-controlled Saudi newspapers, for example, should be treated with a generous dose of skepticism. (Until recently, the Saudi government claimed that a separate prison-based program to rehabilitate captured Al Qaeda operatives had met with great success, but earlier this month <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1877121-1,00.html" type="external">admitted</a> that at least 11 graduates of the program—repatriated from Guantanamo—appear to have returned to the extremist underground.) For its part, Sakinah is sensitive to accusations that it is nothing more than a propaganda tool for the Saudi royal family. It is a nongovernmental organization, after all, but one that is loosely affiliated with the Saudi Ministry of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs. The opaque nature of this relationship is not unusual, says Boucek. “Saudi Arabia is not a place where there are a lot of direct lines of control,” he says. The group’s volunteers “might be affiliated with a lot of different organizations and government ministries, but that doesn’t mean it has official government authorization.”</p>
<p>Perhaps imitation is a better measure of success. According to Boucek, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Algeria, and the United Kingdom have all approached Sakinah seeking advice on how to set up online counter-radicalization programs. In late 2006, the United States launched its own effort—though unlike Sakinah, one that eschews any participation in religious debate. Having begun with a staff of two, the State Department’s Digital Outreach Team now employs nine full-time bloggers—speakers of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, who post comments to news sites, discussion boards, and sometimes even personal blogs. Brent Blaschke, a career Foreign Service Officer who oversees the program, emphasized that his bloggers stay away from tricky discussions about jihad and the “nitty-gritty of the Koran” in favor of explaining US foreign policy. Respondents are usually hostile, in part because, unlike other governments deploying propagandists to the online world, the bloggers identify themselves as State Department employees representing the views of the US government. “If you don’t say who you are, you’re just another person with a keyboard and an opinion,” Blaschke says. The program was originally founded during the tenure of the Bush administration’s public diplomacy guru Karen Hughes, who believed—naively, many would argue—that the Islamic world’s anger with the United States emanated from a simple lack of understanding of US positions on various issues. Blaschke is more realistic in his expectations, explaining that “we’re not out to make everyone who reads our stuff flag-waving American patriots; we simply want them to take a second look at their views.” Have they been successful? It’s impossible to say, Blaschke admits. “We have little anecdotes suggesting some people like what we’re saying…but in terms of swaying opinions, I couldn’t give you a good answer.”</p>
<p /> | Al Qaeda, Online | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/02/al-qaeda-online/ | 2009-02-16 | 4left
| Al Qaeda, Online
<p />
<p>There’s a holy war online. On one side is a network of Al Qaeda propagandists eager to use the Web to spread their message and broaden their influence in the Muslim world. On the other is a group of Saudi religious scholars who are prowling the Internet for Islamic extremists who they can convert to moderation. Based in Riyadh, members of the so-called Sakinah (“Tranquility”) Campaign have been infiltrating extremist websites and chat rooms since 2004, seeking to engage Islamist sympathizers in religious dialogue. Their aim is to steer potential terrorists away from Al Qaeda, which has used the Web as its primary <a href="http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/IslamistReport.pdf%20" type="external">recruiting ground</a>.</p>
<p>The Internet is a relatively recent phenomenon in Saudi Arabia, introduced only in 1999 after the Saudi government devised ways to filter out unwanted content, primarily pornography and online gambling. By 2000, some 500,000 Saudis were already surfing the Web; seven years later, that number had ballooned to an estimated 4.7 million, or approximately 17 percent of the population. As the Internet has caught on in the kingdom, so too has concern over its usefulness to terrorists. The number of Islamic extremist websites has exploded from a handful to as many as 17,000 sites that “fuel Al Qaeda ideology,” according to a December 2007 estimate from Saudi security officials speaking at a technology and national security conference in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. These range from official Al Qaeda propaganda sites operated by the group’s “Media Committee,” As-Sahab, to less slick but ever-increasing numbers of amateur sites maintained by sympathizers around the globe.</p>
<p>In 2004, as extremist sites continued to multiply, a small group of volunteers founded Sakinah, based in Riyadh, to challenge Al Qaeda’s growing online presence. Since then, the organization has grown to include about 70 volunteers (religious scholars, academics, sociologists, and psychiatrists, among others), divided into two main groups. The first is building a library of extremist propaganda found on the Internet, such as video and audio recordings, Islamist news reports, and religious documents—all of it collected to gain a fuller understanding of the shifting currents of extremist thought and help Sakinah’s volunteers to confront Islamists on their own terms. The second group, Sakinah’s operational component, infiltrates Islamist chat rooms, where volunteers monitor conversations and seize upon opportunities to initiate debate. According to <a href="http://www.gwumc.edu/hspi/fellows/Ansary_bio.htm" type="external">Abdullah Ansary</a>, a fellow at George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute and author of a <a href="http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol15/2toc.asp" type="external">study</a> of counter-extremism tactics in the summer 2008 issue of Middle East Policy, chat room visitors are typically young people under the age of 25, whose presence there usually owes more to curiosity than religious zealotry. But left alone, so goes the fear, they become easy prey for Al Qaeda propagandists. As one of the group’s founders explained to a Saudi newspaper reporter shortly after its launch, “Our aim [is] to conduct dialogue with those who [have] expressed solidarity with the operations of violence and terror, but [have] not participated in them, in order to prevent them from doing so—because those who express solidarity are likely in the future to turn into assistants and perpetrators.”</p>
<p>In chat rooms, Sakinah volunteers raise controversial subjects and then invite those who respond to engage in a private discussion. This may take the form of a single exchange, or grow into a series of conversations stretching over several weeks or months. Sakinah volunteers “ask them why they’re thinking what they’re thinking, and try to steer them towards the right path,” says <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/index.cfm?fa=expert_view&amp;expert_id=403&amp;prog=zgp&amp;proj=zme" type="external">Christopher Boucek</a>, a Middle East scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and one of the few Western experts to have studied Sakinah. “The interesting thing about this program is that after the back-and-forth dialogue, [it’s] posted online for other people to read.”</p>
<p>One such <a href="http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&amp;Area=ia&amp;ID=IA26006%20" type="external">exchange</a>, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit group that monitors Arabic-language press, begins with a young man calling himself Zaman Al-Dajajila (a moniker that translates to “the time of the false prophets”) explaining to a Sakinah volunteer that the division of the world is clear. “There is a camp of belief versus a camp of unbelief.” By the end of the exchange, however, his views appear to have completely turned around. “By Allah, I feel like I’m in a volcano and an earthquake!” he writes. “I didn’t mean any harm. I thought that this was what the religion demanded. You are a blessing [that came to me] from the Lord.” Another purportedly successful interaction involved what the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan described as a “former high-ranking female member of one of Al Qaeda’s women’s organizations.” She described how her contact with Sakinah affected her thinking: “Those who choose the path [of jihad] are usually not afraid of being shot or jailed. Alongside the focus on this military conflict, there must also be a focus on the ideological conflict, [through] dialogue and the spreading of correct shari’a knowledge and views…These [people] raised in me, and in many other women I know, serious doubts and questions regarding the beliefs we held so deeply.”</p>
<p>In January 2008, Sakinah announced that it was monitoring more than 1,500 Islamist websites and had successfully changed the beliefs of 722 men and 155 women—about 70 percent of them hailing from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, the others scattered throughout the rest of the Arab world and the West. The reliability of such numbers is uncertain, says Boucek, and glowing reports published in government-controlled Saudi newspapers, for example, should be treated with a generous dose of skepticism. (Until recently, the Saudi government claimed that a separate prison-based program to rehabilitate captured Al Qaeda operatives had met with great success, but earlier this month <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1877121-1,00.html" type="external">admitted</a> that at least 11 graduates of the program—repatriated from Guantanamo—appear to have returned to the extremist underground.) For its part, Sakinah is sensitive to accusations that it is nothing more than a propaganda tool for the Saudi royal family. It is a nongovernmental organization, after all, but one that is loosely affiliated with the Saudi Ministry of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs. The opaque nature of this relationship is not unusual, says Boucek. “Saudi Arabia is not a place where there are a lot of direct lines of control,” he says. The group’s volunteers “might be affiliated with a lot of different organizations and government ministries, but that doesn’t mean it has official government authorization.”</p>
<p>Perhaps imitation is a better measure of success. According to Boucek, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Algeria, and the United Kingdom have all approached Sakinah seeking advice on how to set up online counter-radicalization programs. In late 2006, the United States launched its own effort—though unlike Sakinah, one that eschews any participation in religious debate. Having begun with a staff of two, the State Department’s Digital Outreach Team now employs nine full-time bloggers—speakers of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, who post comments to news sites, discussion boards, and sometimes even personal blogs. Brent Blaschke, a career Foreign Service Officer who oversees the program, emphasized that his bloggers stay away from tricky discussions about jihad and the “nitty-gritty of the Koran” in favor of explaining US foreign policy. Respondents are usually hostile, in part because, unlike other governments deploying propagandists to the online world, the bloggers identify themselves as State Department employees representing the views of the US government. “If you don’t say who you are, you’re just another person with a keyboard and an opinion,” Blaschke says. The program was originally founded during the tenure of the Bush administration’s public diplomacy guru Karen Hughes, who believed—naively, many would argue—that the Islamic world’s anger with the United States emanated from a simple lack of understanding of US positions on various issues. Blaschke is more realistic in his expectations, explaining that “we’re not out to make everyone who reads our stuff flag-waving American patriots; we simply want them to take a second look at their views.” Have they been successful? It’s impossible to say, Blaschke admits. “We have little anecdotes suggesting some people like what we’re saying…but in terms of swaying opinions, I couldn’t give you a good answer.”</p>
<p /> | 1,583 |
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<p />
<p>In a statement, the company detailed some of its early findings from an internal review. The Nasdaq blamed “a confluence of unprecedented events” that overwhelmed the exchange’s system for handling price information. It said the catalyst was a torrent of messages from a trading platform run by the New York Stock Exchange, Arca.</p>
<p>“NASDAQ OMX is deeply disappointed in the events of August 22,” the statement said, “and our performance is unacceptable to our members, issuers and the investing public.”</p>
<p>The outage cracked the midday calm of a quiet summer day on Wall Street, sending brokers and traders scrambling to figure out what went wrong. Suspicion immediately fell on high-speed trading.</p>
<p>But on Thursday, the Nasdaq absolved high-speed trading of any blame. “Our review indicates that high frequency trading played no role in the technology events of August 22,” the company’s statement said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The trouble started in the morning, according to Nasdaq’s version of events, when Arca tried to connect and disconnect more than 20 times with the Nasdaq’s information processing system. Arca then sent a stream of price quotes for inaccurate stock symbols. The flood of data amounted to more than double the amount Nasdaq’s processing system was tested to handle and 26 times the average flow. As a result, the company’s processing system failed, which revealed a flaw in the system’s software.</p>
<p>Shortly after noon, the Nasdaq sent out an alert that said it was stopping trading in shares listed on its exchange.</p>
<p>In its statement, the company said it had fixed the problem within 30 minutes but needed time to test its systems “to ensure that trading could be resumed in a fair and orderly manner.”</p> | Nasdaq takes some blame for 3-hour breakdown | false | https://abqjournal.com/255258/nasdaq-takes-some-blame-for-3hour-breakdown.html | 2013-08-29 | 2least
| Nasdaq takes some blame for 3-hour breakdown
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>In a statement, the company detailed some of its early findings from an internal review. The Nasdaq blamed “a confluence of unprecedented events” that overwhelmed the exchange’s system for handling price information. It said the catalyst was a torrent of messages from a trading platform run by the New York Stock Exchange, Arca.</p>
<p>“NASDAQ OMX is deeply disappointed in the events of August 22,” the statement said, “and our performance is unacceptable to our members, issuers and the investing public.”</p>
<p>The outage cracked the midday calm of a quiet summer day on Wall Street, sending brokers and traders scrambling to figure out what went wrong. Suspicion immediately fell on high-speed trading.</p>
<p>But on Thursday, the Nasdaq absolved high-speed trading of any blame. “Our review indicates that high frequency trading played no role in the technology events of August 22,” the company’s statement said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The trouble started in the morning, according to Nasdaq’s version of events, when Arca tried to connect and disconnect more than 20 times with the Nasdaq’s information processing system. Arca then sent a stream of price quotes for inaccurate stock symbols. The flood of data amounted to more than double the amount Nasdaq’s processing system was tested to handle and 26 times the average flow. As a result, the company’s processing system failed, which revealed a flaw in the system’s software.</p>
<p>Shortly after noon, the Nasdaq sent out an alert that said it was stopping trading in shares listed on its exchange.</p>
<p>In its statement, the company said it had fixed the problem within 30 minutes but needed time to test its systems “to ensure that trading could be resumed in a fair and orderly manner.”</p> | 1,584 |
<p>(cc image: Darren Barefoot)</p>
<p>On the verge of an IPO, Twitter is <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/twitter-confidentially-submits-plans-for-i-p-o/" type="external">estimated</a> to have a market value of $15-16 billion. What does that mean for our society?</p>
<p>In theory, stocks are valuable because they entitle you to a share of a corporation’s profits. The relationship of a stock’s price to the earnings per share varies widely, but a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93earnings_ratio" type="external">price/earnings ratio</a> of around 15 could be considered fairly normal.</p>
<p>As a still-private company, Twitter doesn’t reveal its profits to the public, but its profits if any right now are relatively small, and would give the company an enormous p/e ratio. Its value, though, is based on perceptions of future earnings–so a value of $15 billion could be taken to mean that investors eventually hope it’ll be making a profit of at least a billion dollars a year.</p>
<p>A profitable tech company might have a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/sector-profit-margins-sp-500-2012-8" type="external">profit margin</a> in the range of 25 percent. So let’s say that a profit of $1 billion implies revenues of $4 billion</p>
<p>Twitter derives its income from advertising–so that $4 billion comes from companies paying Twitter to reach its users with “sponsored tweets” in hopes of influencing their economic decisions. Obviously, these for-profit companies are hoping to take in from consumers more than they’re paying out for advertising; a study by Nielsen Analytic Consulting ( <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2009/maximize-the-return-on-your-advertising-spend.html" type="external">12/1/09</a>)&#160; found that online advertising got a particularly high return on investment, with businesses getting $218 more in increased sales for every $100 they spent on online ads. To avoid misleading precision on these back-of-the-envelope calculations, let’s say advertisers are expecting to get back $2 for every dollar spent on Twitter.</p>
<p>That means that the corporate world thinks Twitter can get you to spend about $8 billion you otherwise would not have–very roughly half the value of the company. Twitter now has about <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20130913/does-twitter-have-a-growth-problem/" type="external">240 million users</a>, so in round numbers that’s about $32 a user. (Discount that by however many people you think investors eventually expect to be using the service.)</p>
<p>So can Twitter get you to see four movies that you wouldn’t have gone to otherwise, or eat eight more Big Macs? I can’t remember any buying decisions that I’ve made that were influenced at all by a sponsored tweet, but I guess it’s the nature of effective marketing to go unnoticed.</p>
<p>Every media business dependent on advertising leaves a footprint on the economy–if not measurable, at least estimatable.&#160;Facebook‘s market value recently <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-26/facebook-market-value-tops-100-billion-amid-mobile-ad-push.html" type="external">surpassed $100 billion</a>, which implies that investors think the social media site will eventually be able to drive roughly $50 billion a year in sales to advertisers. With more than a billion Facebook accounts worldwide, that’s less than $50 per user per year–though that’s a harder target to hit in countries like India and Indonesia, No. 2 and No. 4 in number of Facebook users, where $50 is more than 1 percent of the annual per capita income.</p>
<p>In the end, people are going to spend about as much income as they have (if they invest some of it instead, well, mutual funds advertise too), so advertising does not actually increase the size of the economy; instead, it shifts demand from one product to another.</p>
<p>Does advertising help to distribute demand in a more optimal way, to better meet consumer needs? It’s hard to make that case with a straight face after thinking about the substance-free emotional manipulation that is the content of most ads.</p>
<p>So the cost of “free” media really is a cost: The price of using a social media site without charge is allowing corporate advertisers to reprogram our minds to buy products we would not otherwise want. When you see the gushing business page stories about the fortunes being made from the latest Internet IPO, remember that the enormous sums mentioned are a price tag placed on us.</p> | The Price of Twitter Is Based on the Cost of You | true | http://fair.org/blog/2013/09/18/the-price-of-twitter-is-based-on-the-cost-of-you/ | 2013-09-18 | 4left
| The Price of Twitter Is Based on the Cost of You
<p>(cc image: Darren Barefoot)</p>
<p>On the verge of an IPO, Twitter is <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/twitter-confidentially-submits-plans-for-i-p-o/" type="external">estimated</a> to have a market value of $15-16 billion. What does that mean for our society?</p>
<p>In theory, stocks are valuable because they entitle you to a share of a corporation’s profits. The relationship of a stock’s price to the earnings per share varies widely, but a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93earnings_ratio" type="external">price/earnings ratio</a> of around 15 could be considered fairly normal.</p>
<p>As a still-private company, Twitter doesn’t reveal its profits to the public, but its profits if any right now are relatively small, and would give the company an enormous p/e ratio. Its value, though, is based on perceptions of future earnings–so a value of $15 billion could be taken to mean that investors eventually hope it’ll be making a profit of at least a billion dollars a year.</p>
<p>A profitable tech company might have a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/sector-profit-margins-sp-500-2012-8" type="external">profit margin</a> in the range of 25 percent. So let’s say that a profit of $1 billion implies revenues of $4 billion</p>
<p>Twitter derives its income from advertising–so that $4 billion comes from companies paying Twitter to reach its users with “sponsored tweets” in hopes of influencing their economic decisions. Obviously, these for-profit companies are hoping to take in from consumers more than they’re paying out for advertising; a study by Nielsen Analytic Consulting ( <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2009/maximize-the-return-on-your-advertising-spend.html" type="external">12/1/09</a>)&#160; found that online advertising got a particularly high return on investment, with businesses getting $218 more in increased sales for every $100 they spent on online ads. To avoid misleading precision on these back-of-the-envelope calculations, let’s say advertisers are expecting to get back $2 for every dollar spent on Twitter.</p>
<p>That means that the corporate world thinks Twitter can get you to spend about $8 billion you otherwise would not have–very roughly half the value of the company. Twitter now has about <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20130913/does-twitter-have-a-growth-problem/" type="external">240 million users</a>, so in round numbers that’s about $32 a user. (Discount that by however many people you think investors eventually expect to be using the service.)</p>
<p>So can Twitter get you to see four movies that you wouldn’t have gone to otherwise, or eat eight more Big Macs? I can’t remember any buying decisions that I’ve made that were influenced at all by a sponsored tweet, but I guess it’s the nature of effective marketing to go unnoticed.</p>
<p>Every media business dependent on advertising leaves a footprint on the economy–if not measurable, at least estimatable.&#160;Facebook‘s market value recently <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-26/facebook-market-value-tops-100-billion-amid-mobile-ad-push.html" type="external">surpassed $100 billion</a>, which implies that investors think the social media site will eventually be able to drive roughly $50 billion a year in sales to advertisers. With more than a billion Facebook accounts worldwide, that’s less than $50 per user per year–though that’s a harder target to hit in countries like India and Indonesia, No. 2 and No. 4 in number of Facebook users, where $50 is more than 1 percent of the annual per capita income.</p>
<p>In the end, people are going to spend about as much income as they have (if they invest some of it instead, well, mutual funds advertise too), so advertising does not actually increase the size of the economy; instead, it shifts demand from one product to another.</p>
<p>Does advertising help to distribute demand in a more optimal way, to better meet consumer needs? It’s hard to make that case with a straight face after thinking about the substance-free emotional manipulation that is the content of most ads.</p>
<p>So the cost of “free” media really is a cost: The price of using a social media site without charge is allowing corporate advertisers to reprogram our minds to buy products we would not otherwise want. When you see the gushing business page stories about the fortunes being made from the latest Internet IPO, remember that the enormous sums mentioned are a price tag placed on us.</p> | 1,585 |
<p>Image source: Apple.</p>
<p>Apple stock pays a modest dividend yield, and the company comes well behind other big tech players such as Microsoft , IBM , and Cisco in that regard. Make no mistake, though, Apple is positioned for big dividend growth in the years ahead, and this has huge implications for investors.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Small dividends and big room for growthApple, Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco are fairly different companies, operating in their own sectors, and with their particular weaknesses and strengths. On the other hand, the four companies also offer some important similarities for investors. Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco are among the biggest and most stable tech corporations in the world, and they look quite attractive from a dividend investing perspective.</p>
<p>Apple comes well behind its peers in terms of dividend yield. The iPhone maker is yielding 2.1% at current prices, while Microsoft pays a dividend yield of 2.8% and both Cisco and IBM offer much higher yields in the neighborhood of 3.9%.</p>
<p>However, it's of utmost importance to note that Apple has enormous room to raise dividends in the future. Apple has a dividend payout ratio in the neighborhood of 23% of earnings forecasts for the current fiscal year, this is much lower than the payout ratios offered by comparable tech companies: Microsoft distributes nearly 52% of earnings as dividends, IBM ha a payout ratio around 39%, and Cisco is in the area of 36%.</p>
<p>Apple CEO promises to sustain dividend growthApple reinstated its dividends in 2012, and the company has raised payments every year since then. Speaking at the company's annual shareholder meeting last Friday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that management is committed to increasing dividends annually, since Apple typically announces its dividend increases when it reports earnings for the March quarter, chances are that Apple's next earnings report will include a new and enlarged dividend.</p>
<p>Not only is Apple's dividend relatively low in comparison to the company's earnings, cash flows also provide enormous room to increase dividends in the future. Apple produced $27.5 billion in operating cash flow last quarter, and capital expenditures consumed $3.6 billion of that money, leaving Apple with almost $24 billion in free cash flow. Dividend payments during the period amounted to less than $3 billion, or a remarkably low 12.5% of free cash flow. In addition, Apple is sitting on a gargantuan cash hoard of nearly $216 billion in cash and investments on its balance sheet.</p>
<p>Management is clearly committed to raising dividends over the coming years, and Apple has more than enough financial resources to put its money where its mouth is, so the company has the willingness and the ability to sustain dividend growth.</p>
<p>Why dividend growth mattersDividends provide predictable cash payments to investors, and this can be a major advantage to keep in mind when analyzing investment decisions. Even more important, dividends say a lot about the health of the business. When a company has the financial strength to sustain dividend growth over the years, this shows that the business is healthy enough to produce consistently growing cash flows over time.</p>
<p>Goldman Sachs measured the returns of different kinds of companies based on their dividend policies over the long term, and the results are quite interesting. Dividend-paying stocks typically perform much better than stocks paying no dividends, and companies with consistently growing dividend payments materially outperform both those with stable dividends and companies paying no dividends at all.</p>
<p>According to this research report from Goldman Sachs, a $10,000 investment in non-dividend stocks on Jan. 31, 1972, would have turned into $30,316 at the end of 2014. The same amount of money invested in dividend-paying stocks would have an ending value of $461,904, while investing in companies starting new dividends or increasing their dividend payments every year would have resulted in a much bigger ending capital of $630,024.</p>
<p>Apple has the financial strength to continue increasing dividends in the future, and CEO Tim Cook has recently confirmed that the company is in fact planning to raise dividends on an annual basis. Considering the historical evidence about the positive impact of consistent dividend growth on investment returns, this is clearly a major positive for investors in Apple stock.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/29/apple-ceo-promises-to-increase-dividends-what-you.aspx" type="external">Apple CEO Promises to Increase Dividends: What You Need to Know Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/acardenal/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Andrs Cardenal Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Apple and International Business Machines. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Cisco Systems. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Apple CEO Promises to Increase Dividends: What You Need to Know | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/02/29/apple-ceo-promises-to-increase-dividends-what-need-to-know.html | 2016-02-29 | 0right
| Apple CEO Promises to Increase Dividends: What You Need to Know
<p>Image source: Apple.</p>
<p>Apple stock pays a modest dividend yield, and the company comes well behind other big tech players such as Microsoft , IBM , and Cisco in that regard. Make no mistake, though, Apple is positioned for big dividend growth in the years ahead, and this has huge implications for investors.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Small dividends and big room for growthApple, Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco are fairly different companies, operating in their own sectors, and with their particular weaknesses and strengths. On the other hand, the four companies also offer some important similarities for investors. Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco are among the biggest and most stable tech corporations in the world, and they look quite attractive from a dividend investing perspective.</p>
<p>Apple comes well behind its peers in terms of dividend yield. The iPhone maker is yielding 2.1% at current prices, while Microsoft pays a dividend yield of 2.8% and both Cisco and IBM offer much higher yields in the neighborhood of 3.9%.</p>
<p>However, it's of utmost importance to note that Apple has enormous room to raise dividends in the future. Apple has a dividend payout ratio in the neighborhood of 23% of earnings forecasts for the current fiscal year, this is much lower than the payout ratios offered by comparable tech companies: Microsoft distributes nearly 52% of earnings as dividends, IBM ha a payout ratio around 39%, and Cisco is in the area of 36%.</p>
<p>Apple CEO promises to sustain dividend growthApple reinstated its dividends in 2012, and the company has raised payments every year since then. Speaking at the company's annual shareholder meeting last Friday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that management is committed to increasing dividends annually, since Apple typically announces its dividend increases when it reports earnings for the March quarter, chances are that Apple's next earnings report will include a new and enlarged dividend.</p>
<p>Not only is Apple's dividend relatively low in comparison to the company's earnings, cash flows also provide enormous room to increase dividends in the future. Apple produced $27.5 billion in operating cash flow last quarter, and capital expenditures consumed $3.6 billion of that money, leaving Apple with almost $24 billion in free cash flow. Dividend payments during the period amounted to less than $3 billion, or a remarkably low 12.5% of free cash flow. In addition, Apple is sitting on a gargantuan cash hoard of nearly $216 billion in cash and investments on its balance sheet.</p>
<p>Management is clearly committed to raising dividends over the coming years, and Apple has more than enough financial resources to put its money where its mouth is, so the company has the willingness and the ability to sustain dividend growth.</p>
<p>Why dividend growth mattersDividends provide predictable cash payments to investors, and this can be a major advantage to keep in mind when analyzing investment decisions. Even more important, dividends say a lot about the health of the business. When a company has the financial strength to sustain dividend growth over the years, this shows that the business is healthy enough to produce consistently growing cash flows over time.</p>
<p>Goldman Sachs measured the returns of different kinds of companies based on their dividend policies over the long term, and the results are quite interesting. Dividend-paying stocks typically perform much better than stocks paying no dividends, and companies with consistently growing dividend payments materially outperform both those with stable dividends and companies paying no dividends at all.</p>
<p>According to this research report from Goldman Sachs, a $10,000 investment in non-dividend stocks on Jan. 31, 1972, would have turned into $30,316 at the end of 2014. The same amount of money invested in dividend-paying stocks would have an ending value of $461,904, while investing in companies starting new dividends or increasing their dividend payments every year would have resulted in a much bigger ending capital of $630,024.</p>
<p>Apple has the financial strength to continue increasing dividends in the future, and CEO Tim Cook has recently confirmed that the company is in fact planning to raise dividends on an annual basis. Considering the historical evidence about the positive impact of consistent dividend growth on investment returns, this is clearly a major positive for investors in Apple stock.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/29/apple-ceo-promises-to-increase-dividends-what-you.aspx" type="external">Apple CEO Promises to Increase Dividends: What You Need to Know Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/acardenal/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Andrs Cardenal Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Apple and International Business Machines. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Cisco Systems. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | 1,586 |
<p>After the healthcare reform failed before it even reached the floor, President Donald Trump wanted to move onto tax reform. But he recently told The Wall Street Journal that he wants to return to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-shifts-back-to-health-care-1492131535" type="external">healthcare</a>:</p>
<p>Three weeks later, he said he is determined to resurrect the health-care bill even if it means delaying the tax overhaul, telling The Wall Street Journal in an interview: “I want to get health care done…I think I will get it done.”</p>
<p>The tax overhaul, he said, would have to wait.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Triump <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-shifts-back-to-health-care-1492131535" type="external">also expressed</a> “a renewed confidence in Freedom Caucus,” which is the main group in Congress that kept the GOP from even taking its bill to a vote:</p>
<p>“They want to do the right thing and they do like me and they do like their president,” he said.</p>
<p>Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a prominent House Republican and leader of the Freedom Caucus, said he had conversations with the president and his staff in which he set out a potential path to yes on a health-care deal for a number of conservative members and others.</p>
<p>He declined to discuss the specifics of that path, but praised the president’s past business history in making deals where no deals seemed to be in sight.</p>
<p>Trump had previously threatened to target members of the caucus during midterm elections next year.</p>
<p>However, Trump’s decision to return to healthcare has caused a few problems because the GOP in Congress has started <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-shifts-back-to-health-care-1492131535" type="external">tax reform talks</a>:</p>
<p>“We don’t get it. What a waste of time and political capital to return to the quagmire of health reform,” said Greg Valliere, chief global strategist at Horizon Investments, a North Carolina investment firm, in a client note Wednesday. Unlike taxes or infrastructure, he said the health bill is “clearly a no-win issue for the Republicans.”</p>
<p>The renewed focus on health care also raises the prospect of a second embarrassing defeat that would raise more questions about the new administration’s ability to shepherd complicated legislation through Congress.</p>
<p>But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/paul-ryan-on-house-intel-chairman-devin-nunes-trump-russia-gop-health-care/" type="external">has always</a> insisted that healthcare reform must happen before anything else. As Ed Morrissey <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2017/04/13/trump-third-thought-lets-repeal-obamacare-tax-reform/" type="external">points out</a> at Hot Air, the GOP healthcare bill “does repeal a number of taxes built into ObamaCare that a separate tax reform bill can’t do.”</p>
<p>On Thursday, the administration <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2017-07712.pdf" type="external">released</a> a few fixes to Obamacare. From <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-obamacare-changes_us_58eff57ce4b0bb9638e2b3b0" type="external">The Huffington Post</a>:</p>
<p>The regulation published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Thursday is a response to insurers’ demands that federal authorities take steps to limit consumers’ ability to drop in and out of the insurance market. Such “gaming” of the system drives up costs for the carriers that must cover the consumers’ claims.</p>
<p>The overall consequence of the new rules is that health insurance will be harder to buy in 2018, especially for people whose circumstances change during the year, enabling them to buy policies outside the annual sign-up period. The length of that sign-up period is also cut in half.</p>
<p>Other aspects of the regulation could make coverage less comprehensive, reduce the value of the tax credit subsidies that make premiums more affordable for low- and middle-income people, and allow insurers to offer plans with fewer medical providers in their networks.</p> | Trump Wants to Concentrate on Healthcare, Not Tax Reform | true | http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/04/trump-wants-to-concentrate-on-healthcare-not-tax-reform/ | 2017-04-14 | 0right
| Trump Wants to Concentrate on Healthcare, Not Tax Reform
<p>After the healthcare reform failed before it even reached the floor, President Donald Trump wanted to move onto tax reform. But he recently told The Wall Street Journal that he wants to return to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-shifts-back-to-health-care-1492131535" type="external">healthcare</a>:</p>
<p>Three weeks later, he said he is determined to resurrect the health-care bill even if it means delaying the tax overhaul, telling The Wall Street Journal in an interview: “I want to get health care done…I think I will get it done.”</p>
<p>The tax overhaul, he said, would have to wait.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Triump <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-shifts-back-to-health-care-1492131535" type="external">also expressed</a> “a renewed confidence in Freedom Caucus,” which is the main group in Congress that kept the GOP from even taking its bill to a vote:</p>
<p>“They want to do the right thing and they do like me and they do like their president,” he said.</p>
<p>Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a prominent House Republican and leader of the Freedom Caucus, said he had conversations with the president and his staff in which he set out a potential path to yes on a health-care deal for a number of conservative members and others.</p>
<p>He declined to discuss the specifics of that path, but praised the president’s past business history in making deals where no deals seemed to be in sight.</p>
<p>Trump had previously threatened to target members of the caucus during midterm elections next year.</p>
<p>However, Trump’s decision to return to healthcare has caused a few problems because the GOP in Congress has started <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-shifts-back-to-health-care-1492131535" type="external">tax reform talks</a>:</p>
<p>“We don’t get it. What a waste of time and political capital to return to the quagmire of health reform,” said Greg Valliere, chief global strategist at Horizon Investments, a North Carolina investment firm, in a client note Wednesday. Unlike taxes or infrastructure, he said the health bill is “clearly a no-win issue for the Republicans.”</p>
<p>The renewed focus on health care also raises the prospect of a second embarrassing defeat that would raise more questions about the new administration’s ability to shepherd complicated legislation through Congress.</p>
<p>But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/paul-ryan-on-house-intel-chairman-devin-nunes-trump-russia-gop-health-care/" type="external">has always</a> insisted that healthcare reform must happen before anything else. As Ed Morrissey <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2017/04/13/trump-third-thought-lets-repeal-obamacare-tax-reform/" type="external">points out</a> at Hot Air, the GOP healthcare bill “does repeal a number of taxes built into ObamaCare that a separate tax reform bill can’t do.”</p>
<p>On Thursday, the administration <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2017-07712.pdf" type="external">released</a> a few fixes to Obamacare. From <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-obamacare-changes_us_58eff57ce4b0bb9638e2b3b0" type="external">The Huffington Post</a>:</p>
<p>The regulation published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Thursday is a response to insurers’ demands that federal authorities take steps to limit consumers’ ability to drop in and out of the insurance market. Such “gaming” of the system drives up costs for the carriers that must cover the consumers’ claims.</p>
<p>The overall consequence of the new rules is that health insurance will be harder to buy in 2018, especially for people whose circumstances change during the year, enabling them to buy policies outside the annual sign-up period. The length of that sign-up period is also cut in half.</p>
<p>Other aspects of the regulation could make coverage less comprehensive, reduce the value of the tax credit subsidies that make premiums more affordable for low- and middle-income people, and allow insurers to offer plans with fewer medical providers in their networks.</p> | 1,587 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Economic Policy. The unemployment rate was 4.8 percent in January and dropped down to 4.4 percent in June. This statistic reflects the optimism of employers that hired more workers in the wake of the presidential election. In particular, the optimism of the business sector stems from the president rolling back disruptive regulations.</p>
<p>The centerpiece of President Trump’s announced economic policy is a substantial tax cut, in the vein of the historic tax cuts implemented earlier by presidents – Kennedy, Reagan and Bush II – that lifted the economy out of three severe slumps. In particular, the president plans to cut the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 15 percent. Lowering the tax would repatriate most of American corporations abroad, and consequently give a huge boost to production and employment at home.</p>
<p>If President Trump, together with Congress, would be able to repeal the crumbling Obamacare – the Affordable Care Act – the economy will benefit from two additional fiscal bonuses: First, Obamacare slapped the medical devices industry with a 2.3 percent tax levied on revenue. This senseless tax raises the cost of medical services and simultaneously generates the revenue to pay for it. Second, Obamacare slapped a 3.8 percent surtax on dividends, capital gains and interest – income earned from investment in capital. This tax – which is imposed only on the “rich” – is the foe of economic growth and its elimination would increase employment. For the sake of economic growth, may President Trump sway Congress to cut the corporate income tax and repeal Obamacare.</p>
<p>Foreign Policy. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process eluded many previous presidents. Trump’s approach has a chance of succeeding. About five months after his inauguration, President Obama travelled to Cairo where, on June 9, 2009, he delivered a speech to the Muslim world. In his speech, Obama praised the contributions of Islam to literature, mathematics and sciences. All this would have been just fine had he not skipped Jerusalem on the way back to Washington….</p>
<p>Israel’s only bargaining chip with the Palestinians in any peace negotiations was, and still is, land for peace, where “land” means some parts of the West Bank. In May 2011, President Obama altered 40 years of U.S. policy by endorsing the 1967 lines – basically the Palestinian position – as the basis for peace-making.</p>
<p>In contrast, four months after his inauguration, on May 20, President Trump travelled to Riyadh where he met with King Salman of Saudi Arabia. On May 22, President Trump created a political precedent when he flew from an Arab country directly to Israel. …</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>President Trump surprised the Israeli-Palestinian-peace-process mavens when he said: “I am looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like.” In other words, the only reliable solution can be achieved by the two parties negotiating without any suggestion or pressure from outsiders – how wise!</p>
<p>In Syria, responding to dictator Bashar al-Assad launching chemical bombs on innocent civilians, President Trump did not worry about “red lines” that he has not drawn in the sand. After properly notifying the Russians, the president ordered the U.S. Navy to attack a Syrian-government airfield with 59 Tomahawk missiles. I thank President Trump for not disregarding the history of World War II.</p>
<p>Almost daily, watching news bulletins on national TV, we observe ballistic missiles rising over the hills of North Korea. The “dynamic” leader of the poor North Koreans promises that soon they will carry atomic warheads to our West coast – maybe even reaching Denver and Albuquerque. Trump’s response: “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Trump is correct. This can should not be kicked any further.</p>
<p>These wise economic and foreign policies, rather than Trump’s diplomatic clumsiness, represent the relevant President Donald J. Trump.</p>
<p /> | Wise policies represent the relevant President Trump | false | https://abqjournal.com/1051903/wise-policies-represent-the-relevant-president-trump.html | 2least
| Wise policies represent the relevant President Trump
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Economic Policy. The unemployment rate was 4.8 percent in January and dropped down to 4.4 percent in June. This statistic reflects the optimism of employers that hired more workers in the wake of the presidential election. In particular, the optimism of the business sector stems from the president rolling back disruptive regulations.</p>
<p>The centerpiece of President Trump’s announced economic policy is a substantial tax cut, in the vein of the historic tax cuts implemented earlier by presidents – Kennedy, Reagan and Bush II – that lifted the economy out of three severe slumps. In particular, the president plans to cut the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 15 percent. Lowering the tax would repatriate most of American corporations abroad, and consequently give a huge boost to production and employment at home.</p>
<p>If President Trump, together with Congress, would be able to repeal the crumbling Obamacare – the Affordable Care Act – the economy will benefit from two additional fiscal bonuses: First, Obamacare slapped the medical devices industry with a 2.3 percent tax levied on revenue. This senseless tax raises the cost of medical services and simultaneously generates the revenue to pay for it. Second, Obamacare slapped a 3.8 percent surtax on dividends, capital gains and interest – income earned from investment in capital. This tax – which is imposed only on the “rich” – is the foe of economic growth and its elimination would increase employment. For the sake of economic growth, may President Trump sway Congress to cut the corporate income tax and repeal Obamacare.</p>
<p>Foreign Policy. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process eluded many previous presidents. Trump’s approach has a chance of succeeding. About five months after his inauguration, President Obama travelled to Cairo where, on June 9, 2009, he delivered a speech to the Muslim world. In his speech, Obama praised the contributions of Islam to literature, mathematics and sciences. All this would have been just fine had he not skipped Jerusalem on the way back to Washington….</p>
<p>Israel’s only bargaining chip with the Palestinians in any peace negotiations was, and still is, land for peace, where “land” means some parts of the West Bank. In May 2011, President Obama altered 40 years of U.S. policy by endorsing the 1967 lines – basically the Palestinian position – as the basis for peace-making.</p>
<p>In contrast, four months after his inauguration, on May 20, President Trump travelled to Riyadh where he met with King Salman of Saudi Arabia. On May 22, President Trump created a political precedent when he flew from an Arab country directly to Israel. …</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>President Trump surprised the Israeli-Palestinian-peace-process mavens when he said: “I am looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like.” In other words, the only reliable solution can be achieved by the two parties negotiating without any suggestion or pressure from outsiders – how wise!</p>
<p>In Syria, responding to dictator Bashar al-Assad launching chemical bombs on innocent civilians, President Trump did not worry about “red lines” that he has not drawn in the sand. After properly notifying the Russians, the president ordered the U.S. Navy to attack a Syrian-government airfield with 59 Tomahawk missiles. I thank President Trump for not disregarding the history of World War II.</p>
<p>Almost daily, watching news bulletins on national TV, we observe ballistic missiles rising over the hills of North Korea. The “dynamic” leader of the poor North Koreans promises that soon they will carry atomic warheads to our West coast – maybe even reaching Denver and Albuquerque. Trump’s response: “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Trump is correct. This can should not be kicked any further.</p>
<p>These wise economic and foreign policies, rather than Trump’s diplomatic clumsiness, represent the relevant President Donald J. Trump.</p>
<p /> | 1,588 |
|
<p>Published time: 11 Nov, 2017 14:09</p>
<p>The Eternal City that is Rome is going through somewhat of a budgetary crisis at the moment, and with cash in short supply, officials are now even eyeing up the city’s iconic Trevi Fountain.</p>
<p>Every year, millions of tourists flock to the former seat of empire to view the city’s many sites. A good deal of these toss coins into the near 300-year-old fountain, the haul of which&#160; <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-is-thrown-into-romes-trevi-fountain-and-where-it-goes-2017-6?r=US&amp;IR=T" type="external">reportedly</a>&#160;hit $1.5 million in 2016 alone, chump change compared to the city’s&#160; <a href="https://www.money.it/Quanti-dipendenti-ha-il-Comune-di-Roma" type="external">estimated</a>&#160;€12 billion ($14 billion) debt.</p>
<p>It’s believed that anyone who turns their back on the baroque masterpiece and tosses a coin into the fountain is destined to return. The cash is usually scooped up and given to Catholic charity Caritas, but not from April 2018, if Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi has her way.</p>
<p />
<p>Harvesting coins at Trevi Fountain. Tourist coin toss, right hand over left shoulder (means you’ll be back) = $1.5+ mill to charities yrly <a href="https://t.co/qUWyH7KS9v" type="external">pic.twitter.com/qUWyH7KS9v</a></p>
<p>— Megan Williams (@MKWilliamsRome) <a href="https://twitter.com/MKWilliamsRome/status/874210839447961600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">June 12, 2017</a></p>
<p />
<p>It’s understood that it’s not only the Trevi Fountain that is being targeted but all of the city’s monumental fountains. Raggi has <a href="http://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/cronaca/roma-cambiano-le-regole-per-gestire-il-tesoro-delle-fontane_3105716-201702a.shtml" type="external">reportedly</a> earmarked the coveted cash for projects yet to be decided on by city hall, although <a href="http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/cronache/fontana-trevi-e-tesoretto-raggi-1461948.html" type="external">il Giornale</a> reports that some of the money will be redirected to “social welfare projects.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/397486-vatican-fountains-rome-drought/" type="external">READ MORE: Pope shuts off Vatican fountains for&#160;first&#160;time in living memory as Rome hit with drought</a></p>
<p>The city’s debt essentially consists of financial and commercial debt, with other types affecting the figure to a lesser extent. Basically, and perhaps unsurprisingly, more than half of the debt is in the hands of banks, whereas private debt makes up just over a quarter of the €12 billion.</p>
<p>It’s unclear how tourists will feel about the city pilfering the fountain, where Swedish beauty Anita Ekberg took her infamous dip in Federico Fellini’s classic film ‘La Dolce Vita’.</p> | Broke Rome eyes up Trevi Fountain cash to bolster city finances | false | https://newsline.com/broke-rome-eyes-up-trevi-fountain-cash-to-bolster-city-finances/ | 2017-11-11 | 1right-center
| Broke Rome eyes up Trevi Fountain cash to bolster city finances
<p>Published time: 11 Nov, 2017 14:09</p>
<p>The Eternal City that is Rome is going through somewhat of a budgetary crisis at the moment, and with cash in short supply, officials are now even eyeing up the city’s iconic Trevi Fountain.</p>
<p>Every year, millions of tourists flock to the former seat of empire to view the city’s many sites. A good deal of these toss coins into the near 300-year-old fountain, the haul of which&#160; <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-is-thrown-into-romes-trevi-fountain-and-where-it-goes-2017-6?r=US&amp;IR=T" type="external">reportedly</a>&#160;hit $1.5 million in 2016 alone, chump change compared to the city’s&#160; <a href="https://www.money.it/Quanti-dipendenti-ha-il-Comune-di-Roma" type="external">estimated</a>&#160;€12 billion ($14 billion) debt.</p>
<p>It’s believed that anyone who turns their back on the baroque masterpiece and tosses a coin into the fountain is destined to return. The cash is usually scooped up and given to Catholic charity Caritas, but not from April 2018, if Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi has her way.</p>
<p />
<p>Harvesting coins at Trevi Fountain. Tourist coin toss, right hand over left shoulder (means you’ll be back) = $1.5+ mill to charities yrly <a href="https://t.co/qUWyH7KS9v" type="external">pic.twitter.com/qUWyH7KS9v</a></p>
<p>— Megan Williams (@MKWilliamsRome) <a href="https://twitter.com/MKWilliamsRome/status/874210839447961600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">June 12, 2017</a></p>
<p />
<p>It’s understood that it’s not only the Trevi Fountain that is being targeted but all of the city’s monumental fountains. Raggi has <a href="http://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/cronaca/roma-cambiano-le-regole-per-gestire-il-tesoro-delle-fontane_3105716-201702a.shtml" type="external">reportedly</a> earmarked the coveted cash for projects yet to be decided on by city hall, although <a href="http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/cronache/fontana-trevi-e-tesoretto-raggi-1461948.html" type="external">il Giornale</a> reports that some of the money will be redirected to “social welfare projects.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/397486-vatican-fountains-rome-drought/" type="external">READ MORE: Pope shuts off Vatican fountains for&#160;first&#160;time in living memory as Rome hit with drought</a></p>
<p>The city’s debt essentially consists of financial and commercial debt, with other types affecting the figure to a lesser extent. Basically, and perhaps unsurprisingly, more than half of the debt is in the hands of banks, whereas private debt makes up just over a quarter of the €12 billion.</p>
<p>It’s unclear how tourists will feel about the city pilfering the fountain, where Swedish beauty Anita Ekberg took her infamous dip in Federico Fellini’s classic film ‘La Dolce Vita’.</p> | 1,589 |
<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) — The battle brewing over the estate of Charles Manson entered court Monday, though it remains unclear where it will ultimately be fought or whether others will join a pen pal and purported grandson laying claim to the cult leader’s possessions and body.</p>
<p>The issue of venue is clouded because Manson, 83, died at a hospital in Kern County in November but was incarcerated in Corcoran State Prison in neighboring Kings County. His body is still being held at the coroner’s office in Bakersfield.</p>
<p>Attorney Alan Davis, representing the proposed administrator of the estate for purported grandson Jason Freeman, said Los Angeles County is the proper venue because Manson lived there before he was imprisoned for orchestrating the 1969 killings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and eight other people.</p>
<p>Judge David Cowan said it was premature to make the determination and he scheduled a hearing Jan. 26 to determine where the two separate matters — who controls his estate and who gets his remains — should be decided.</p>
<p>Michael Channels, who said he became friends with Manson decades ago after repeatedly writing him in prison, challenged the Freeman claim. He holds a will that he said Manson signed and sent him 16 years ago.</p>
<p>The two-page document said Manson disinherited two known sons and any unknown children and leaves Channels the entire estate, which includes potentially lucrative rights to his image and music he wrote and recorded.</p>
<p>Guns N’ Roses 1993 recorded a Manson song, “Look at Your Game, Girl,” though royalties went to victims under a court order. Manson was also an acquaintance of Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson in 1968, and the band recorded a variation of a Manson song under the title “Never Learn Not To Love.”</p>
<p>Channels, a contractor who said he has troves of Manson memorabilia including clothing and letters, and has sold autographed cassettes and CDs of the convict’s music, disputed there’s much value to the estate.</p>
<p>“I feel sorry for the other side if they do win because there’s a lot bad juju that comes along with Charles Manson,” Channels said. “It’s not all roses.”</p>
<p>Others have suggested Channels intends to profit off Manson’s will if he prevails.</p>
<p>Channels, who said he couldn’t find a lawyer willing to take the case and represents himself, said his mission is only to make sure his friend can rest in peace. He said Manson feared his body could be mutilated and tattoos put on display and ashes worn in pendants.</p>
<p>Court documents filed by Davis claim Freeman is the son of the late Charles Manson Jr. and the grandson of Charles Manson and his first wife, Rosalie Willis.</p>
<p>A man who believes Manson fathered him during a Wisconsin orgy in the late 1960s also plans to make a claim to the estate.</p>
<p>Matt Lentz, a Los Angeles-area musician who goes by the name Matthew Roberts, has a will Manson purportedly signed in January 2017 naming him as beneficiary, said his agent, Mike Smith. He said Manson gave the will to friend and memorabilia collector Ben Gurecki, who is named as executor.</p>
<p>Lentz was expected in court, but didn’t show up Monday. Smith said Lentz was also having trouble finding a lawyer to take the case.</p>
<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) — The battle brewing over the estate of Charles Manson entered court Monday, though it remains unclear where it will ultimately be fought or whether others will join a pen pal and purported grandson laying claim to the cult leader’s possessions and body.</p>
<p>The issue of venue is clouded because Manson, 83, died at a hospital in Kern County in November but was incarcerated in Corcoran State Prison in neighboring Kings County. His body is still being held at the coroner’s office in Bakersfield.</p>
<p>Attorney Alan Davis, representing the proposed administrator of the estate for purported grandson Jason Freeman, said Los Angeles County is the proper venue because Manson lived there before he was imprisoned for orchestrating the 1969 killings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and eight other people.</p>
<p>Judge David Cowan said it was premature to make the determination and he scheduled a hearing Jan. 26 to determine where the two separate matters — who controls his estate and who gets his remains — should be decided.</p>
<p>Michael Channels, who said he became friends with Manson decades ago after repeatedly writing him in prison, challenged the Freeman claim. He holds a will that he said Manson signed and sent him 16 years ago.</p>
<p>The two-page document said Manson disinherited two known sons and any unknown children and leaves Channels the entire estate, which includes potentially lucrative rights to his image and music he wrote and recorded.</p>
<p>Guns N’ Roses 1993 recorded a Manson song, “Look at Your Game, Girl,” though royalties went to victims under a court order. Manson was also an acquaintance of Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson in 1968, and the band recorded a variation of a Manson song under the title “Never Learn Not To Love.”</p>
<p>Channels, a contractor who said he has troves of Manson memorabilia including clothing and letters, and has sold autographed cassettes and CDs of the convict’s music, disputed there’s much value to the estate.</p>
<p>“I feel sorry for the other side if they do win because there’s a lot bad juju that comes along with Charles Manson,” Channels said. “It’s not all roses.”</p>
<p>Others have suggested Channels intends to profit off Manson’s will if he prevails.</p>
<p>Channels, who said he couldn’t find a lawyer willing to take the case and represents himself, said his mission is only to make sure his friend can rest in peace. He said Manson feared his body could be mutilated and tattoos put on display and ashes worn in pendants.</p>
<p>Court documents filed by Davis claim Freeman is the son of the late Charles Manson Jr. and the grandson of Charles Manson and his first wife, Rosalie Willis.</p>
<p>A man who believes Manson fathered him during a Wisconsin orgy in the late 1960s also plans to make a claim to the estate.</p>
<p>Matt Lentz, a Los Angeles-area musician who goes by the name Matthew Roberts, has a will Manson purportedly signed in January 2017 naming him as beneficiary, said his agent, Mike Smith. He said Manson gave the will to friend and memorabilia collector Ben Gurecki, who is named as executor.</p>
<p>Lentz was expected in court, but didn’t show up Monday. Smith said Lentz was also having trouble finding a lawyer to take the case.</p> | Fight over Charles Manson’s estate, remains in need of venue | false | https://apnews.com/49f2752b901b478fa4a3f37d0efd75d5 | 2018-01-09 | 2least
| Fight over Charles Manson’s estate, remains in need of venue
<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) — The battle brewing over the estate of Charles Manson entered court Monday, though it remains unclear where it will ultimately be fought or whether others will join a pen pal and purported grandson laying claim to the cult leader’s possessions and body.</p>
<p>The issue of venue is clouded because Manson, 83, died at a hospital in Kern County in November but was incarcerated in Corcoran State Prison in neighboring Kings County. His body is still being held at the coroner’s office in Bakersfield.</p>
<p>Attorney Alan Davis, representing the proposed administrator of the estate for purported grandson Jason Freeman, said Los Angeles County is the proper venue because Manson lived there before he was imprisoned for orchestrating the 1969 killings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and eight other people.</p>
<p>Judge David Cowan said it was premature to make the determination and he scheduled a hearing Jan. 26 to determine where the two separate matters — who controls his estate and who gets his remains — should be decided.</p>
<p>Michael Channels, who said he became friends with Manson decades ago after repeatedly writing him in prison, challenged the Freeman claim. He holds a will that he said Manson signed and sent him 16 years ago.</p>
<p>The two-page document said Manson disinherited two known sons and any unknown children and leaves Channels the entire estate, which includes potentially lucrative rights to his image and music he wrote and recorded.</p>
<p>Guns N’ Roses 1993 recorded a Manson song, “Look at Your Game, Girl,” though royalties went to victims under a court order. Manson was also an acquaintance of Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson in 1968, and the band recorded a variation of a Manson song under the title “Never Learn Not To Love.”</p>
<p>Channels, a contractor who said he has troves of Manson memorabilia including clothing and letters, and has sold autographed cassettes and CDs of the convict’s music, disputed there’s much value to the estate.</p>
<p>“I feel sorry for the other side if they do win because there’s a lot bad juju that comes along with Charles Manson,” Channels said. “It’s not all roses.”</p>
<p>Others have suggested Channels intends to profit off Manson’s will if he prevails.</p>
<p>Channels, who said he couldn’t find a lawyer willing to take the case and represents himself, said his mission is only to make sure his friend can rest in peace. He said Manson feared his body could be mutilated and tattoos put on display and ashes worn in pendants.</p>
<p>Court documents filed by Davis claim Freeman is the son of the late Charles Manson Jr. and the grandson of Charles Manson and his first wife, Rosalie Willis.</p>
<p>A man who believes Manson fathered him during a Wisconsin orgy in the late 1960s also plans to make a claim to the estate.</p>
<p>Matt Lentz, a Los Angeles-area musician who goes by the name Matthew Roberts, has a will Manson purportedly signed in January 2017 naming him as beneficiary, said his agent, Mike Smith. He said Manson gave the will to friend and memorabilia collector Ben Gurecki, who is named as executor.</p>
<p>Lentz was expected in court, but didn’t show up Monday. Smith said Lentz was also having trouble finding a lawyer to take the case.</p>
<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) — The battle brewing over the estate of Charles Manson entered court Monday, though it remains unclear where it will ultimately be fought or whether others will join a pen pal and purported grandson laying claim to the cult leader’s possessions and body.</p>
<p>The issue of venue is clouded because Manson, 83, died at a hospital in Kern County in November but was incarcerated in Corcoran State Prison in neighboring Kings County. His body is still being held at the coroner’s office in Bakersfield.</p>
<p>Attorney Alan Davis, representing the proposed administrator of the estate for purported grandson Jason Freeman, said Los Angeles County is the proper venue because Manson lived there before he was imprisoned for orchestrating the 1969 killings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and eight other people.</p>
<p>Judge David Cowan said it was premature to make the determination and he scheduled a hearing Jan. 26 to determine where the two separate matters — who controls his estate and who gets his remains — should be decided.</p>
<p>Michael Channels, who said he became friends with Manson decades ago after repeatedly writing him in prison, challenged the Freeman claim. He holds a will that he said Manson signed and sent him 16 years ago.</p>
<p>The two-page document said Manson disinherited two known sons and any unknown children and leaves Channels the entire estate, which includes potentially lucrative rights to his image and music he wrote and recorded.</p>
<p>Guns N’ Roses 1993 recorded a Manson song, “Look at Your Game, Girl,” though royalties went to victims under a court order. Manson was also an acquaintance of Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson in 1968, and the band recorded a variation of a Manson song under the title “Never Learn Not To Love.”</p>
<p>Channels, a contractor who said he has troves of Manson memorabilia including clothing and letters, and has sold autographed cassettes and CDs of the convict’s music, disputed there’s much value to the estate.</p>
<p>“I feel sorry for the other side if they do win because there’s a lot bad juju that comes along with Charles Manson,” Channels said. “It’s not all roses.”</p>
<p>Others have suggested Channels intends to profit off Manson’s will if he prevails.</p>
<p>Channels, who said he couldn’t find a lawyer willing to take the case and represents himself, said his mission is only to make sure his friend can rest in peace. He said Manson feared his body could be mutilated and tattoos put on display and ashes worn in pendants.</p>
<p>Court documents filed by Davis claim Freeman is the son of the late Charles Manson Jr. and the grandson of Charles Manson and his first wife, Rosalie Willis.</p>
<p>A man who believes Manson fathered him during a Wisconsin orgy in the late 1960s also plans to make a claim to the estate.</p>
<p>Matt Lentz, a Los Angeles-area musician who goes by the name Matthew Roberts, has a will Manson purportedly signed in January 2017 naming him as beneficiary, said his agent, Mike Smith. He said Manson gave the will to friend and memorabilia collector Ben Gurecki, who is named as executor.</p>
<p>Lentz was expected in court, but didn’t show up Monday. Smith said Lentz was also having trouble finding a lawyer to take the case.</p> | 1,590 |
<p>In 2011, the United States experienced its biggest year ever in weapons exports: According to an annual study by the Congressional Research Service [ <a href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R42678.pdf" type="external">PDF</a>] released earlier this week, the US overseas weapons sales jumped to $66.3 billion last year ( <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/world/middleeast/us-foreign-arms-sales-reach-66-3-billion-in-2011.html" type="external">77.7 percent</a> of the $85.3 billion global market in 2011), from $21.4 billion in deals in 2010.&#160;</p>
<p>In just one year, the US more than tripled its revenue in arms deals with foreign countries. The $66.3 billion also sets a new cash total record, easily surpassing the previous record of $31 billion in sales in fiscal year 2009.</p>
<p>If you’re having trouble putting those hefty sums in perspective, $66.3 billion is amounts to an extra <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-weapon-sales-top-66-billion-thats-950-for-everyone-on-the-planet-20120828-24xuv.html" type="external">$9.50</a> in lunch money for every man, woman, and child alive today. And if you’re still having some trouble putting this in perspective, here’s a pie chart that shows just how much our global share in arms deals with developing countries ticked up in that one year:</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Yep. That’s us, on the right, doing a reverse- <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2yo_r0kj2o" type="external">Pac-Man</a>-death on overseas arms transfer agreements between 2010 and 2011.</p>
<p>The uptick was mostly fueled by demand in developing countries, which accounted for over $56 billion in sales from the US. Here are two more charts illustrating in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_dollars" type="external">constant</a> dollars how America definitively pwns all others in flooding the arms market in the developing world:</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>Illustrations by <a href="https://twitter.com/daudig" type="external">Dave Gilson</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Much of the surge was driven exclusively by the ongoing freak-out over Iran: <a href="" type="internal">Saudi Arabia</a>, Oman, and the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/07/uaes-ambassador-endorses-an-american-strike-on-iran-contd/59257/" type="external">United Arab Emirates</a> (all Persian Gulf allies or partners of the United States) in particular started buying missile defense systems, fighter jets, and other hardware from the US at record levels, just in case Iran ever <a href="" type="internal">goes nuclear</a> and tries to throw its weight around West Asia and the Gulf. Saudi Arabia’s <a href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R42678.pdf" type="external">$33.4 billion</a> deal included dozens of F-15 fighter jets and Black Hawk helicopters. The UAE threw down $4.5 billion for a missile shield and other toys.</p>
<p>And in case you were wondering: In arms sales to both developing and developed nations, our closest competitor is Russia, which came in at a total of $4.8 billion in 2011—roughly 7 percent of what the United States hauled in that same year:</p>
<p />
<p /> | CHARTS: US Overseas Arms Sales More Than Tripled in 2011 | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/08/charts-us-arms-sales-overseas-triples/ | 2012-08-29 | 4left
| CHARTS: US Overseas Arms Sales More Than Tripled in 2011
<p>In 2011, the United States experienced its biggest year ever in weapons exports: According to an annual study by the Congressional Research Service [ <a href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R42678.pdf" type="external">PDF</a>] released earlier this week, the US overseas weapons sales jumped to $66.3 billion last year ( <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/world/middleeast/us-foreign-arms-sales-reach-66-3-billion-in-2011.html" type="external">77.7 percent</a> of the $85.3 billion global market in 2011), from $21.4 billion in deals in 2010.&#160;</p>
<p>In just one year, the US more than tripled its revenue in arms deals with foreign countries. The $66.3 billion also sets a new cash total record, easily surpassing the previous record of $31 billion in sales in fiscal year 2009.</p>
<p>If you’re having trouble putting those hefty sums in perspective, $66.3 billion is amounts to an extra <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-weapon-sales-top-66-billion-thats-950-for-everyone-on-the-planet-20120828-24xuv.html" type="external">$9.50</a> in lunch money for every man, woman, and child alive today. And if you’re still having some trouble putting this in perspective, here’s a pie chart that shows just how much our global share in arms deals with developing countries ticked up in that one year:</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Yep. That’s us, on the right, doing a reverse- <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2yo_r0kj2o" type="external">Pac-Man</a>-death on overseas arms transfer agreements between 2010 and 2011.</p>
<p>The uptick was mostly fueled by demand in developing countries, which accounted for over $56 billion in sales from the US. Here are two more charts illustrating in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_dollars" type="external">constant</a> dollars how America definitively pwns all others in flooding the arms market in the developing world:</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>Illustrations by <a href="https://twitter.com/daudig" type="external">Dave Gilson</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Much of the surge was driven exclusively by the ongoing freak-out over Iran: <a href="" type="internal">Saudi Arabia</a>, Oman, and the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/07/uaes-ambassador-endorses-an-american-strike-on-iran-contd/59257/" type="external">United Arab Emirates</a> (all Persian Gulf allies or partners of the United States) in particular started buying missile defense systems, fighter jets, and other hardware from the US at record levels, just in case Iran ever <a href="" type="internal">goes nuclear</a> and tries to throw its weight around West Asia and the Gulf. Saudi Arabia’s <a href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R42678.pdf" type="external">$33.4 billion</a> deal included dozens of F-15 fighter jets and Black Hawk helicopters. The UAE threw down $4.5 billion for a missile shield and other toys.</p>
<p>And in case you were wondering: In arms sales to both developing and developed nations, our closest competitor is Russia, which came in at a total of $4.8 billion in 2011—roughly 7 percent of what the United States hauled in that same year:</p>
<p />
<p /> | 1,591 |
<p>Jan 22 (Reuters) - Western Copper And Gold Corp:</p> * WESTERN COPPER AND GOLD ANNOUNCES PRIVATE PLACEMENT
<p>* WESTERN COPPER AND GOLD CORP SAYS PLANS TO CONDUCT A NON-BROKERED PRIVATE PLACEMENT OF UP TO 2.6 MILLION UNITS AT A PRICE OF $1.15 PER UNIT</p>
<p>* WESTERN COPPER AND GOLD CORP SAYS INTENDS TO USE NET PROCEEDS FROM PRIVATE PLACEMENT FOR PERMITTING AND DEVELOPMENT OF CASINO PROJECT Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - President Donald Trump has told advisers he wants an early exit of U.S. troops from Syria, two senior administration officials said on Friday, a stance that may put him at odds with U.S. military officials who see the fight against Islamic State as nowhere near complete.</p>
<p>A National Security Council meeting is set for early next week to discuss the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State in Syria, according to U.S. officials familiar with the plan.</p>
<p>Two other administration officials confirmed a Wall Street Journal report on Friday that said Trump had ordered the State Department to freeze more than $200 million in funds for recovery efforts in Syria while his administration reassesses Washington’s role in the conflict there.</p>
<p>Trump called for the freeze after reading a news report that the U.S. had recently committed an additional $200 million to stabilize areas recaptured from Islamic State, the paper said.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-usa-trump-syria-wsj/trump-freezes-funds-for-syria-signals-exit-wall-street-journal-idUSKBN1H7006" type="external">Trump freezes funds for Syria; signals exit: Wall Street Journal</a>
<p>The funding was announced by departing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in February at a meeting in Kuwait of the global coalition against Islamic State.</p>
<p>The decision to freeze the funds was in line with Trump’s declaration during a speech in Richfield, Ohio, on Thursday, where he said it was time for America to exit Syria.</p>
<p>A spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said that “in line with the President’s guidance, the Department of State continually re-evaluates appropriate assistance levels and how best they might be utilized, which they do on an ongoing basis.”</p>
<p>Trump is spending Easter weekend at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate.</p>
<p>“We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon,” Trump said on Thursday, based on allied victories against Islamic State militants.</p>
<p>“Let the other people take care of it now.&#160;Very soon, very soon, we’re coming out,” Trump said. “We’re going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be.”</p>
<p>Trump’s comments came as France said on Friday it could increase its military presence in Syria to bolster the U.S.-led campaign.</p>
<p>While the Pentagon has estimated that Islamic State has lost about 98 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, U.S. military officials have warned that the militants could regain the freed areas quickly unless they are stabilized.</p>
<p>Trump still needs to be convinced of that, said the U.S. officials with knowledge of the NSC meeting.</p> FILE PHOTO: A U.S. fighter stands near a military vehicle, north of Raqqa city, Syria November 6, 2016. REUTERS/Rodi Said U.S. DELIBERATIONS
<p>The two administration officials who confirmed the Wall Street Journal report and spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said Trump’s comments on Thursday reflected internal deliberations with advisers in which he has wondered aloud why U.S. forces should remain with the militants on their heels.</p>
<p>Trump has made clear that “once ISIS and its remnants are destroyed that the United States would be looking toward having countries in the region playing a larger role in ensuring security and leaving it at that,” one official said.</p>
<p>Such a policy is nowhere near complete, however, the official added.</p>
<p>The second official said Trump’s national security advisers have told him U.S. forces should stay in small numbers for at least a couple of years to make sure gains against the militants are held and ensure Syria does not essentially become a permanent Iranian base.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport, Florida, U.S., for the Easter weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
<p>Top national security aides discussed Syria in a White House meeting recently but have yet to settle on a strategy for U.S. forces in Syria to recommend to Trump going forward, the official said.</p>
<p>“So far he has not given an order to just get out,” the official said. About 2,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Syria.</p>
<p>Trump last year went through a similar wrenching debate over whether to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, ultimately agreeing to keep them there but only after repeatedly raising questions of why they should stay.</p>
<p>Trump’s view on Syria may put him at odds with those of former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, named by Trump a week ago to replace H.R. McMaster as White House national security adviser.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton, John Walcott and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio, Susan Thomas and Tom Hogue</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - A white Louisiana police officer was fired on Friday and a second suspended for the killing of Alton Sterling, a black man shot in a 2016 incident that inflamed the U.S. debate on racial bias in law enforcement, a police official said.</p>
<p>Baton Rouge officer Blane Salamoni, who shot Sterling in a confrontation outside a convenience store, was dismissed for violating department standards on use of force and for losing his temper, Police Chief Murphy Paul told a news conference.</p>
<p>The second officer, Howie Lake, was suspended for three days for failing to maintain his composure. The decisions followed an administrative review of the July 2016 shooting, and both officers plan to appeal, Paul said.</p>
<p>The steps are designed “to bring closure to a cloud that has been over our community for far too long,” he said.</p>
<p>Sterling was among black men slain by police whose deaths sparked U.S. protests and helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement.</p>
<p>Police released four videos of the confrontation with Sterling outside a convenience store, where he was selling CDs.</p>
<p>Paul called the footage from a police dash camera, officers’ body cameras, and a store surveillance camera “graphic and shocking to the conscience.”</p>
<p>Salamoni’s camera shows him yelling at Sterling with expletives to put his hands on a car. He points a gun at his Sterling’s head and shouts he will shoot him if he moves.</p>
<p>While struggling with Sterling, both officers’ cameras came loose. Lake’s footage ends by showing Sterling on his back in the parking lot, blood draining from his body.</p>
<p>Sterling, 37, was shot after a resident reported he had been threatened by a black man selling CDs. Police said Sterling was trying to pull a loaded gun out of his pocket when Salamoni opened fire.</p>
<p>Lawyers representing Sterling’s five children applauded Salamoni’s firing, but expressed disappointment that the officers would not face charges.</p>
<p>“The person who was out of control was Blane Salamoni,” attorney Michael Adams said at a news conference. “The person who stood by and let him be out of control was Howie Lake. That’s a tragedy.”</p>
<p>Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said this week that Lake and Salamoni would not face charges since they had reason to believe that Sterling was armed and was resisting arrest.</p> FILE PHOTO: A boy sits next to a makeshift memorial outside the Triple S Food Mart where Alton Sterling was fatally shot by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S. July 7, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman/File Photo
<p>The U.S. Department of Justice declined to prosecute the officers for civil rights violations in 2017, citing insufficient evidence.</p>
<p>Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge ruled that women accusing Goldman Sachs Group Inc of discriminating against them in pay, promotions and performance reviews may pursue their claims as a group in a class-action lawsuit.</p> FILE PHOTO: The logo of Goldman Sachs is displayed in their office located in Sydney, Australia, May 18, 2016. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo
<p>The decision late Friday afternoon by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan covers female associates and vice presidents who have worked in Goldman’s investment banking, investment management and securities divisions since September 2004, and employees in New York City since July 2002.</p>
<p>Goldman was accused of systematically paying women less than men, and giving them weaker performance reviews that impeded their career growth.</p>
<p>Class certification can help plaintiffs achieve greater awards at lower costs than if they sued individually. Kelly Dermody, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, estimated that more than 2,000 people are in the certified class.</p>
<p>Goldman had no immediate comment.</p>
<p>The lawsuit is one of the highest-profile cases targeting Wall Street’s alleged unequal treatment of women, a claim raised in a variety of litigation against many banks for decades.</p>
<p>In her 49-page decision, Torres said the plaintiffs provided “significant proof of discriminatory disparate treatment” at Goldman.</p>
<p>She cited as an example an expert’s report that female vice presidents and associates were on average paid a respective 21 percent and 8 percent less than their male counterparts.</p>
<p>The judge also said the plaintiffs provided proof that Goldman was “aware of gender disparities and gender bias,” but did not adjust its policies.</p>
<p>“We obviously are very, very pleased,” Dermody said in a phone interview. “This case is eight years old, and sometimes it’s worth the wait.”</p>
<p>The plaintiffs were led by Cristina Chen-Oster, Mary De Luis and Allison Gamba, who were all vice presidents, and Shanna Orlich, who was an associate.</p>
<p>Torres said the class action will not include the claim that Goldman maintained a “boys’ club atmosphere” where women were allegedly subjected to unwanted stereotyping, harassment and retaliation.</p>
<p>She said this was because “individual” rather than “common” issues would predominate.</p>
<p>The lawsuit began in September 2010, and according to Torres was delayed largely by a dispute over the kind of relief that former employees could obtain.</p>
<p>The case is Chen-Oster et al v. Goldman Sachs &amp; Co et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 10-06950.</p>
<p>Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Susan Thomas</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) - At least 16 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured on Friday by Israeli security forces confronting one of the largest Palestinian demonstrations along the Israel-Gaza border in recent years, Gaza medical officials said.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands of Palestinians, pressing for a right of return for refugees to what is now Israel, gathered along the fenced 65-km (40-mile) frontier where tents were erected for a planned six-week protest, local officials said. The Israeli military estimate was 30,000.</p>
<p>The United Nations Security Council was briefed on the violence in Gaza on Friday at the request of Kuwait. Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour told the council at least 17 Palestinian civilians were killed and more than 1,400 injured.</p>
<p>Families brought their children to the encampments just a few hundred meters (yards) from the Israeli security barrier with the Hamas Islamist-run enclave, and football fields were marked in the sand and scout bands played.</p>
<p>But as the day wore on, hundreds of Palestinian youths ignored calls from the organizers and the Israeli military to stay away from the frontier, where Israeli soldiers across the border kept watch from dirt mound embankments.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-israel-palestinians-un-guterres/u-n-chief-calls-for-independent-investigation-into-gaza-deaths-idUSKBN1H700W" type="external">U.N. chief calls for independent investigation into Gaza deaths</a>
<a href="/article/us-israel-palestinians-un/u-n-fears-gaza-situation-might-deteriorate-in-coming-days-idUSKBN1H61SX" type="external">U.N. fears Gaza situation might deteriorate in coming days</a>
<p>The military said its troops had used live fire only against people trying to sabotage the border security fence, some of them rolling burning tyres and throwing rocks, and that at least two of the dead were Hamas operatives.</p>
<p>Palestinian health officials said Israeli forces used mostly gunfire against the protesters, in addition to tear gas and rubber bullets. Witnesses said the military had deployed a drone over at least one location to drop tear gas.</p>
<p>One of the dead was aged 16 and at least 400 people were wounded by live gunfire, while others were struck by rubber bullets or treated for tear gas inhalation, Gaza health officials said.</p>
<p>Two Palestinians were killed by tank fire, the Gaza Health Ministry said. The Israeli military said the two were militants who had opened fire at troops across the border.</p>
<p>Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement that Israel was responsible for the violence and declared Saturday a national day of mourning.</p>
<p>U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an independent, transparent investigation and appealed “to those concerned to refrain from any act that could lead to further casualties and in particular any measures that could place civilians in harm’s way,” his spokesman said in a statement.</p>
<p>A senior U.N. official told the U.N. Security Council there are fears the situation in Gaza “might deteriorate in the coming days.”</p>
<p>The United States, a close Israel ally, told the council it was “deeply saddened” by the loss of life.</p>
<p>“We urge those involved to take steps to lower tensions and reduce the risk of new clashes. Bad actors who use protests as a cover to incite violence endanger innocent lives,” U.S. diplomat Walter said.</p> RIGHT OF RETURN
<p>The protest presented a rare show of unity among rival Palestinian factions in the impoverished Gaza Strip, where pressure has been building on Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah movement to end a decade-old rift. Reconciliation efforts to end the feud have been faltering for months.</p>
<p>The demonstration was launched on “Land Day,” an annual commemoration of the deaths of six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces during demonstrations over government land confiscations in northern Israel in 1976.</p>
<p>But its main focus was a demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed the right of return to towns and villages which their families fled from, or were driven out of, when the state of Israel was created in 1948.</p> A Palestinian runs during clashes with Israeli troops, during a tent city protest along the Israel border with Gaza, demanding the right to return to their homeland, the southern Gaza Strip March 30, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
<p>In a statement, the Israeli military accused Hamas of “cynically exploiting women and children, sending them to the security fence and endangering their lives”.</p>
<p>The military said that more than 100 army sharpshooters had been deployed in the area.</p>
<p>Hamas, which seeks Israel’s destruction, had earlier urged protesters to adhere to the “peaceful nature” of the protest.</p>
<p>Israel has long ruled out any right of return, fearing an influx of Arabs that would wipe out its Jewish majority. It argues that refugees should resettle in a future state the Palestinians seek in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Peace talks to that end collapsed in 2014.</p>
<p>There were also small protests in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and about 65 Palestinians were injured.</p> Slideshow (24 Images)
<p>In Gaza, the protest was dubbed “The March of Return” and some of the tents bore names of the refugees’ original villages in what is now Israel, written in Arabic and Hebrew alike.</p>
<p>Citing security concerns, Israel, which withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, blockades the coastal territory, maintaining tight restrictions on the movement of Palestinians and goods across the frontier. Egypt, battling an Islamist insurgency in neighboring Sinai, keeps its border with Gaza largely closed.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Writing by Ori Lewis and Stephen Farrell; Editing by Larry King and Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | BRIEF-Western Copper And Gold Announces Private Placement Trump tells advisers he wants U.S. out of Syria: senior officials White Baton Rouge policeman fired over shooting of black man U.S. judge certifies Goldman Sachs gender bias class action Israeli forces kill 16 Palestinians in Gaza border protests: Gaza medics | false | https://reuters.com/article/brief-western-copper-and-gold-announces/brief-western-copper-and-gold-announces-private-placement-idUSASB0C1O5 | 2018-01-22 | 2least
| BRIEF-Western Copper And Gold Announces Private Placement Trump tells advisers he wants U.S. out of Syria: senior officials White Baton Rouge policeman fired over shooting of black man U.S. judge certifies Goldman Sachs gender bias class action Israeli forces kill 16 Palestinians in Gaza border protests: Gaza medics
<p>Jan 22 (Reuters) - Western Copper And Gold Corp:</p> * WESTERN COPPER AND GOLD ANNOUNCES PRIVATE PLACEMENT
<p>* WESTERN COPPER AND GOLD CORP SAYS PLANS TO CONDUCT A NON-BROKERED PRIVATE PLACEMENT OF UP TO 2.6 MILLION UNITS AT A PRICE OF $1.15 PER UNIT</p>
<p>* WESTERN COPPER AND GOLD CORP SAYS INTENDS TO USE NET PROCEEDS FROM PRIVATE PLACEMENT FOR PERMITTING AND DEVELOPMENT OF CASINO PROJECT Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - President Donald Trump has told advisers he wants an early exit of U.S. troops from Syria, two senior administration officials said on Friday, a stance that may put him at odds with U.S. military officials who see the fight against Islamic State as nowhere near complete.</p>
<p>A National Security Council meeting is set for early next week to discuss the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State in Syria, according to U.S. officials familiar with the plan.</p>
<p>Two other administration officials confirmed a Wall Street Journal report on Friday that said Trump had ordered the State Department to freeze more than $200 million in funds for recovery efforts in Syria while his administration reassesses Washington’s role in the conflict there.</p>
<p>Trump called for the freeze after reading a news report that the U.S. had recently committed an additional $200 million to stabilize areas recaptured from Islamic State, the paper said.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-usa-trump-syria-wsj/trump-freezes-funds-for-syria-signals-exit-wall-street-journal-idUSKBN1H7006" type="external">Trump freezes funds for Syria; signals exit: Wall Street Journal</a>
<p>The funding was announced by departing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in February at a meeting in Kuwait of the global coalition against Islamic State.</p>
<p>The decision to freeze the funds was in line with Trump’s declaration during a speech in Richfield, Ohio, on Thursday, where he said it was time for America to exit Syria.</p>
<p>A spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said that “in line with the President’s guidance, the Department of State continually re-evaluates appropriate assistance levels and how best they might be utilized, which they do on an ongoing basis.”</p>
<p>Trump is spending Easter weekend at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate.</p>
<p>“We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon,” Trump said on Thursday, based on allied victories against Islamic State militants.</p>
<p>“Let the other people take care of it now.&#160;Very soon, very soon, we’re coming out,” Trump said. “We’re going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be.”</p>
<p>Trump’s comments came as France said on Friday it could increase its military presence in Syria to bolster the U.S.-led campaign.</p>
<p>While the Pentagon has estimated that Islamic State has lost about 98 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, U.S. military officials have warned that the militants could regain the freed areas quickly unless they are stabilized.</p>
<p>Trump still needs to be convinced of that, said the U.S. officials with knowledge of the NSC meeting.</p> FILE PHOTO: A U.S. fighter stands near a military vehicle, north of Raqqa city, Syria November 6, 2016. REUTERS/Rodi Said U.S. DELIBERATIONS
<p>The two administration officials who confirmed the Wall Street Journal report and spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said Trump’s comments on Thursday reflected internal deliberations with advisers in which he has wondered aloud why U.S. forces should remain with the militants on their heels.</p>
<p>Trump has made clear that “once ISIS and its remnants are destroyed that the United States would be looking toward having countries in the region playing a larger role in ensuring security and leaving it at that,” one official said.</p>
<p>Such a policy is nowhere near complete, however, the official added.</p>
<p>The second official said Trump’s national security advisers have told him U.S. forces should stay in small numbers for at least a couple of years to make sure gains against the militants are held and ensure Syria does not essentially become a permanent Iranian base.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport, Florida, U.S., for the Easter weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
<p>Top national security aides discussed Syria in a White House meeting recently but have yet to settle on a strategy for U.S. forces in Syria to recommend to Trump going forward, the official said.</p>
<p>“So far he has not given an order to just get out,” the official said. About 2,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Syria.</p>
<p>Trump last year went through a similar wrenching debate over whether to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, ultimately agreeing to keep them there but only after repeatedly raising questions of why they should stay.</p>
<p>Trump’s view on Syria may put him at odds with those of former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, named by Trump a week ago to replace H.R. McMaster as White House national security adviser.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton, John Walcott and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio, Susan Thomas and Tom Hogue</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - A white Louisiana police officer was fired on Friday and a second suspended for the killing of Alton Sterling, a black man shot in a 2016 incident that inflamed the U.S. debate on racial bias in law enforcement, a police official said.</p>
<p>Baton Rouge officer Blane Salamoni, who shot Sterling in a confrontation outside a convenience store, was dismissed for violating department standards on use of force and for losing his temper, Police Chief Murphy Paul told a news conference.</p>
<p>The second officer, Howie Lake, was suspended for three days for failing to maintain his composure. The decisions followed an administrative review of the July 2016 shooting, and both officers plan to appeal, Paul said.</p>
<p>The steps are designed “to bring closure to a cloud that has been over our community for far too long,” he said.</p>
<p>Sterling was among black men slain by police whose deaths sparked U.S. protests and helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement.</p>
<p>Police released four videos of the confrontation with Sterling outside a convenience store, where he was selling CDs.</p>
<p>Paul called the footage from a police dash camera, officers’ body cameras, and a store surveillance camera “graphic and shocking to the conscience.”</p>
<p>Salamoni’s camera shows him yelling at Sterling with expletives to put his hands on a car. He points a gun at his Sterling’s head and shouts he will shoot him if he moves.</p>
<p>While struggling with Sterling, both officers’ cameras came loose. Lake’s footage ends by showing Sterling on his back in the parking lot, blood draining from his body.</p>
<p>Sterling, 37, was shot after a resident reported he had been threatened by a black man selling CDs. Police said Sterling was trying to pull a loaded gun out of his pocket when Salamoni opened fire.</p>
<p>Lawyers representing Sterling’s five children applauded Salamoni’s firing, but expressed disappointment that the officers would not face charges.</p>
<p>“The person who was out of control was Blane Salamoni,” attorney Michael Adams said at a news conference. “The person who stood by and let him be out of control was Howie Lake. That’s a tragedy.”</p>
<p>Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said this week that Lake and Salamoni would not face charges since they had reason to believe that Sterling was armed and was resisting arrest.</p> FILE PHOTO: A boy sits next to a makeshift memorial outside the Triple S Food Mart where Alton Sterling was fatally shot by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S. July 7, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman/File Photo
<p>The U.S. Department of Justice declined to prosecute the officers for civil rights violations in 2017, citing insufficient evidence.</p>
<p>Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge ruled that women accusing Goldman Sachs Group Inc of discriminating against them in pay, promotions and performance reviews may pursue their claims as a group in a class-action lawsuit.</p> FILE PHOTO: The logo of Goldman Sachs is displayed in their office located in Sydney, Australia, May 18, 2016. REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo
<p>The decision late Friday afternoon by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan covers female associates and vice presidents who have worked in Goldman’s investment banking, investment management and securities divisions since September 2004, and employees in New York City since July 2002.</p>
<p>Goldman was accused of systematically paying women less than men, and giving them weaker performance reviews that impeded their career growth.</p>
<p>Class certification can help plaintiffs achieve greater awards at lower costs than if they sued individually. Kelly Dermody, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, estimated that more than 2,000 people are in the certified class.</p>
<p>Goldman had no immediate comment.</p>
<p>The lawsuit is one of the highest-profile cases targeting Wall Street’s alleged unequal treatment of women, a claim raised in a variety of litigation against many banks for decades.</p>
<p>In her 49-page decision, Torres said the plaintiffs provided “significant proof of discriminatory disparate treatment” at Goldman.</p>
<p>She cited as an example an expert’s report that female vice presidents and associates were on average paid a respective 21 percent and 8 percent less than their male counterparts.</p>
<p>The judge also said the plaintiffs provided proof that Goldman was “aware of gender disparities and gender bias,” but did not adjust its policies.</p>
<p>“We obviously are very, very pleased,” Dermody said in a phone interview. “This case is eight years old, and sometimes it’s worth the wait.”</p>
<p>The plaintiffs were led by Cristina Chen-Oster, Mary De Luis and Allison Gamba, who were all vice presidents, and Shanna Orlich, who was an associate.</p>
<p>Torres said the class action will not include the claim that Goldman maintained a “boys’ club atmosphere” where women were allegedly subjected to unwanted stereotyping, harassment and retaliation.</p>
<p>She said this was because “individual” rather than “common” issues would predominate.</p>
<p>The lawsuit began in September 2010, and according to Torres was delayed largely by a dispute over the kind of relief that former employees could obtain.</p>
<p>The case is Chen-Oster et al v. Goldman Sachs &amp; Co et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 10-06950.</p>
<p>Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Susan Thomas</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) - At least 16 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured on Friday by Israeli security forces confronting one of the largest Palestinian demonstrations along the Israel-Gaza border in recent years, Gaza medical officials said.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands of Palestinians, pressing for a right of return for refugees to what is now Israel, gathered along the fenced 65-km (40-mile) frontier where tents were erected for a planned six-week protest, local officials said. The Israeli military estimate was 30,000.</p>
<p>The United Nations Security Council was briefed on the violence in Gaza on Friday at the request of Kuwait. Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour told the council at least 17 Palestinian civilians were killed and more than 1,400 injured.</p>
<p>Families brought their children to the encampments just a few hundred meters (yards) from the Israeli security barrier with the Hamas Islamist-run enclave, and football fields were marked in the sand and scout bands played.</p>
<p>But as the day wore on, hundreds of Palestinian youths ignored calls from the organizers and the Israeli military to stay away from the frontier, where Israeli soldiers across the border kept watch from dirt mound embankments.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-israel-palestinians-un-guterres/u-n-chief-calls-for-independent-investigation-into-gaza-deaths-idUSKBN1H700W" type="external">U.N. chief calls for independent investigation into Gaza deaths</a>
<a href="/article/us-israel-palestinians-un/u-n-fears-gaza-situation-might-deteriorate-in-coming-days-idUSKBN1H61SX" type="external">U.N. fears Gaza situation might deteriorate in coming days</a>
<p>The military said its troops had used live fire only against people trying to sabotage the border security fence, some of them rolling burning tyres and throwing rocks, and that at least two of the dead were Hamas operatives.</p>
<p>Palestinian health officials said Israeli forces used mostly gunfire against the protesters, in addition to tear gas and rubber bullets. Witnesses said the military had deployed a drone over at least one location to drop tear gas.</p>
<p>One of the dead was aged 16 and at least 400 people were wounded by live gunfire, while others were struck by rubber bullets or treated for tear gas inhalation, Gaza health officials said.</p>
<p>Two Palestinians were killed by tank fire, the Gaza Health Ministry said. The Israeli military said the two were militants who had opened fire at troops across the border.</p>
<p>Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement that Israel was responsible for the violence and declared Saturday a national day of mourning.</p>
<p>U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an independent, transparent investigation and appealed “to those concerned to refrain from any act that could lead to further casualties and in particular any measures that could place civilians in harm’s way,” his spokesman said in a statement.</p>
<p>A senior U.N. official told the U.N. Security Council there are fears the situation in Gaza “might deteriorate in the coming days.”</p>
<p>The United States, a close Israel ally, told the council it was “deeply saddened” by the loss of life.</p>
<p>“We urge those involved to take steps to lower tensions and reduce the risk of new clashes. Bad actors who use protests as a cover to incite violence endanger innocent lives,” U.S. diplomat Walter said.</p> RIGHT OF RETURN
<p>The protest presented a rare show of unity among rival Palestinian factions in the impoverished Gaza Strip, where pressure has been building on Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah movement to end a decade-old rift. Reconciliation efforts to end the feud have been faltering for months.</p>
<p>The demonstration was launched on “Land Day,” an annual commemoration of the deaths of six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces during demonstrations over government land confiscations in northern Israel in 1976.</p>
<p>But its main focus was a demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed the right of return to towns and villages which their families fled from, or were driven out of, when the state of Israel was created in 1948.</p> A Palestinian runs during clashes with Israeli troops, during a tent city protest along the Israel border with Gaza, demanding the right to return to their homeland, the southern Gaza Strip March 30, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
<p>In a statement, the Israeli military accused Hamas of “cynically exploiting women and children, sending them to the security fence and endangering their lives”.</p>
<p>The military said that more than 100 army sharpshooters had been deployed in the area.</p>
<p>Hamas, which seeks Israel’s destruction, had earlier urged protesters to adhere to the “peaceful nature” of the protest.</p>
<p>Israel has long ruled out any right of return, fearing an influx of Arabs that would wipe out its Jewish majority. It argues that refugees should resettle in a future state the Palestinians seek in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Peace talks to that end collapsed in 2014.</p>
<p>There were also small protests in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and about 65 Palestinians were injured.</p> Slideshow (24 Images)
<p>In Gaza, the protest was dubbed “The March of Return” and some of the tents bore names of the refugees’ original villages in what is now Israel, written in Arabic and Hebrew alike.</p>
<p>Citing security concerns, Israel, which withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, blockades the coastal territory, maintaining tight restrictions on the movement of Palestinians and goods across the frontier. Egypt, battling an Islamist insurgency in neighboring Sinai, keeps its border with Gaza largely closed.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Writing by Ori Lewis and Stephen Farrell; Editing by Larry King and Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | 1,592 |
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<p><a href="" type="internal" />ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — “Pink Ribbon Blues: How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women’s Health,” by Gayle A. Sulik</p>
<p>Do pink ribbons undermine the women’s health movement? Gayle Sulik, a medical sociologist, thinks so.</p>
<p>In “Pink Ribbon Blues,” a 2010 book that was updated and re-released this month, Sulik says that the movement surrounding the breast cancer cause isn’t actually doing much to help eradicate the disease, and that some money for the “cure” effort comes from companies that add to a more carcinogenic environment.</p>
<p>Sulik examines advertisements, walks “for the cure” and awareness campaigns, and includes interviews with those affected by the disease. “As the inner workings of pink culture and industry become more visible, largely through the misconduct of breast cancer charities and profit-driven industries, growing numbers are calling for transparency, accountability, and alternatives,” she writes.</p>
<p>While Sulik criticizes the breast cancer industry — including its pub crawls and fashion shows — she highlights possible institutional fixes and some organizations that she believes can help to “recalibrate a system gone awry.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Does “Breast Cancer Culture” Help? | false | https://abqjournal.com/511186/does-breast-cancer-culture-help-2.html | 2least
| Does “Breast Cancer Culture” Help?
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<p><a href="" type="internal" />ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — “Pink Ribbon Blues: How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women’s Health,” by Gayle A. Sulik</p>
<p>Do pink ribbons undermine the women’s health movement? Gayle Sulik, a medical sociologist, thinks so.</p>
<p>In “Pink Ribbon Blues,” a 2010 book that was updated and re-released this month, Sulik says that the movement surrounding the breast cancer cause isn’t actually doing much to help eradicate the disease, and that some money for the “cure” effort comes from companies that add to a more carcinogenic environment.</p>
<p>Sulik examines advertisements, walks “for the cure” and awareness campaigns, and includes interviews with those affected by the disease. “As the inner workings of pink culture and industry become more visible, largely through the misconduct of breast cancer charities and profit-driven industries, growing numbers are calling for transparency, accountability, and alternatives,” she writes.</p>
<p>While Sulik criticizes the breast cancer industry — including its pub crawls and fashion shows — she highlights possible institutional fixes and some organizations that she believes can help to “recalibrate a system gone awry.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 1,593 |
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<p>Hong Kong—usually an orderly finance haven—erupted over the weekend as police used teargas and pepper spray to break up a three-day student sit-in that occupied the central business district. Thousands of protesters have deployed umbrellas to protect themselves from the chemical attack—some people are dubbing it the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/29/hong-kong_n_5899116.html" type="external">Umbrella Revolution</a>—and <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/28/6860493/hong-kong-protests-mike-brown-ferguson" type="external">have even picked up the hands-up “don’t shoot” gesture from protests in Ferguson, Missouri</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>The protests were the culmination of a campaign organized last year by the&#160;student group “Occupy Central,” calling for free elections and more autonomy for Hong Kong, which is controlled by the Communist Party in Beijing.</p>
<p>At issue are assurances China made to Hong Kong when it took the reins back from Britain in 1997. Under the so-called “one country, two systems” deal, Hong Kong was allowed to keep its common-law system and enjoy greater rights than those on the mainland (where news of the protests has been aggressively censored). By 2017, Hong Kong residents hoped they would be able to elect their own chief executive—the top representative of their so-called Special Administrative Region. But now, China appears to be reneging on the spirit of its deal. President Xi Jinping has firmly rejected open nominations for candidates, and says they will continue to be vetted by a central committee in Beijing.</p>
<p>The government’s crackdown has been unsuccessful in dispersing the protesters, who are still out on the streets—and solidarity marches are taking place in cities <a href="http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/from-around-the-world-support-for-hong-kong-protesters/?_php=true&amp;_type=blogs&amp;_php=true&amp;_type=blogs&amp;module=BlogPost-Title&amp;version=Blog+Main&amp;contentCollection=World&amp;action=Click&amp;pgtype=Blogs&amp;region=Body&amp;_r=1&amp;utm_content=buffer0b826&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer&amp;" type="external">around the world</a>, including Ferguson.&#160;Here’s a wrap-up of photos from the weekend.</p>
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<p /> | These Insane Photos Show What the Hell Is Happening in Hong Kong | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/insane-photos-hong-kong-democracy-protests-china/ | 2014-09-29 | 4left
| These Insane Photos Show What the Hell Is Happening in Hong Kong
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<p>Hong Kong—usually an orderly finance haven—erupted over the weekend as police used teargas and pepper spray to break up a three-day student sit-in that occupied the central business district. Thousands of protesters have deployed umbrellas to protect themselves from the chemical attack—some people are dubbing it the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/29/hong-kong_n_5899116.html" type="external">Umbrella Revolution</a>—and <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/28/6860493/hong-kong-protests-mike-brown-ferguson" type="external">have even picked up the hands-up “don’t shoot” gesture from protests in Ferguson, Missouri</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>The protests were the culmination of a campaign organized last year by the&#160;student group “Occupy Central,” calling for free elections and more autonomy for Hong Kong, which is controlled by the Communist Party in Beijing.</p>
<p>At issue are assurances China made to Hong Kong when it took the reins back from Britain in 1997. Under the so-called “one country, two systems” deal, Hong Kong was allowed to keep its common-law system and enjoy greater rights than those on the mainland (where news of the protests has been aggressively censored). By 2017, Hong Kong residents hoped they would be able to elect their own chief executive—the top representative of their so-called Special Administrative Region. But now, China appears to be reneging on the spirit of its deal. President Xi Jinping has firmly rejected open nominations for candidates, and says they will continue to be vetted by a central committee in Beijing.</p>
<p>The government’s crackdown has been unsuccessful in dispersing the protesters, who are still out on the streets—and solidarity marches are taking place in cities <a href="http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/from-around-the-world-support-for-hong-kong-protesters/?_php=true&amp;_type=blogs&amp;_php=true&amp;_type=blogs&amp;module=BlogPost-Title&amp;version=Blog+Main&amp;contentCollection=World&amp;action=Click&amp;pgtype=Blogs&amp;region=Body&amp;_r=1&amp;utm_content=buffer0b826&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer&amp;" type="external">around the world</a>, including Ferguson.&#160;Here’s a wrap-up of photos from the weekend.</p>
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<p>Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) expects to start layoffs at its studio and consumer product divisions within the next two weeks, according to a Reuters report.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The report, which cited a source with knowledge of the situation, said the move comes as a result of a company-wide review. Job cuts at Disney’s studio will focus on the marketing and home video units, as well as some layoffs from the animation wing.</p>
<p>It was unclear how many job cuts will occur, Reuters said.</p>
<p>A Disney spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p>Earlier this week, Disney announced it closed down and began layoffs at the LucasArts game studio, which the company took over through its acquisition of George Lucas’ film company last year.</p>
<p>Disney shares were down 1.46% at $56.75 in pre-market trading Friday.</p> | Disney to Begin Layoffs in Studio, Consumer Products | true | http://foxbusiness.com/news/2013/04/04/exclusive-disney-to-begin-layoffs-in-studio-consumer-products-source.html | 2016-03-05 | 0right
| Disney to Begin Layoffs in Studio, Consumer Products
<p />
<p>Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) expects to start layoffs at its studio and consumer product divisions within the next two weeks, according to a Reuters report.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The report, which cited a source with knowledge of the situation, said the move comes as a result of a company-wide review. Job cuts at Disney’s studio will focus on the marketing and home video units, as well as some layoffs from the animation wing.</p>
<p>It was unclear how many job cuts will occur, Reuters said.</p>
<p>A Disney spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p>Earlier this week, Disney announced it closed down and began layoffs at the LucasArts game studio, which the company took over through its acquisition of George Lucas’ film company last year.</p>
<p>Disney shares were down 1.46% at $56.75 in pre-market trading Friday.</p> | 1,595 |
<p />
<p>They give it a “6.4.” No, seriously, this is kind of odd: last month, a hard drive containing music files belonging to Death Cab bassist Chris Walla was seized by U.S. Customs officials when a studio employee tried to take it back into Washington State from Canada. The story started to make the rounds last week, with Walla joking about his hard drive being “waterboarded” and wondering aloud if the overtly political content of some of the songs might pose a problem. Well that got a Customs guy all perturbed: MTV News <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1572314/20071018/index.jhtml" type="external">quotes representative Mike Milne</a> as saying Walla’s comments to the press “got my ire up,” that the hard drive was only seized because of commercial merchandise paperwork issues, and besides, they’d been trying to return it. Wow, a couple news stories come out, and suddenly Homeland Security is a service-oriented organization.</p>
<p>Barsuk Records founder Josh Rosenfeld doesn’t believe that the album’s political content had anything to do with the seizure—after all, how could they have listened to the files beforehand?—but finds the random seizure of personal property a bit disturbing, saying “this is a case of a U.S. artist who went into Canada to record and then wanted to bring the fruits of that recording back home… it doesn’t seem like a commercial product to me.” Well, in any event, they had master tapes, and the album is coming out on schedule, and now, as Rosenfeld says, “at least everyone knows Chris Walla has a solo record coming out.” Hmm, now who’s the conspiracy theorist?</p>
<p /> | US Customs Returns Death Cab for Cutie Bassist’s Hard Drive | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/10/us-customs-returns-death-cab-cutie-bassists-hard-drive/ | 2007-10-22 | 4left
| US Customs Returns Death Cab for Cutie Bassist’s Hard Drive
<p />
<p>They give it a “6.4.” No, seriously, this is kind of odd: last month, a hard drive containing music files belonging to Death Cab bassist Chris Walla was seized by U.S. Customs officials when a studio employee tried to take it back into Washington State from Canada. The story started to make the rounds last week, with Walla joking about his hard drive being “waterboarded” and wondering aloud if the overtly political content of some of the songs might pose a problem. Well that got a Customs guy all perturbed: MTV News <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1572314/20071018/index.jhtml" type="external">quotes representative Mike Milne</a> as saying Walla’s comments to the press “got my ire up,” that the hard drive was only seized because of commercial merchandise paperwork issues, and besides, they’d been trying to return it. Wow, a couple news stories come out, and suddenly Homeland Security is a service-oriented organization.</p>
<p>Barsuk Records founder Josh Rosenfeld doesn’t believe that the album’s political content had anything to do with the seizure—after all, how could they have listened to the files beforehand?—but finds the random seizure of personal property a bit disturbing, saying “this is a case of a U.S. artist who went into Canada to record and then wanted to bring the fruits of that recording back home… it doesn’t seem like a commercial product to me.” Well, in any event, they had master tapes, and the album is coming out on schedule, and now, as Rosenfeld says, “at least everyone knows Chris Walla has a solo record coming out.” Hmm, now who’s the conspiracy theorist?</p>
<p /> | 1,596 |
<p>The US Justice Department faced tough questioning Tuesday as it urged a court of appeals to reinstate President Donald Trump's travel ban targeting citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries —&#160;put on hold by the courts last week.</p>
<p>The latest twist in the legal showdown comes four days after a federal judge suspended Trump's decree, opening US borders back up to the thousands of refugees and travelers it had suddenly barred from the country.</p>
<p>Three judges from an appellate court in San Francisco chaired the hour-long telephone hearing followed online by more than 130,000 people — a record, the court said —&#160;and broadcast live to millions more on television.</p>
<p>The high-stakes hearing saw an attorney for the government argue that Trump's immigration curbs were motivated by national security concerns and that the federal judge had overstepped his authority in suspending them.</p>
<p>"This is a traditional national security judgment that is assigned to the political branches and the president," argued the Justice Department lawyer, August Flentje.</p>
<p>He said Trump acted perfectly within his constitutional powers and those delegated to him by Congress in issuing the January 27 executive order in the interest of the United States.</p>
<p>Tuesday's hearing was focused on whether to lift the suspension of the ban, not on the constitutionality of the decree itself —&#160;a broader battle which looks likely to go all the way to the Supreme Court. A court spokesman said a ruling was likely later this week.</p>
<p>During the hearing the three-judge panel often appeared skeptical, with Judge Richard Clifton saying at one point that the government's argument was "pretty abstract."</p>
<p>The judges questioned Flentje about the evidence connecting the seven countries targeted to terrorism, and pressed him on whether the ban amounts to religious discrimination — as its opponents claim.</p>
<p>The White House insists the decree is in the interest of national security, giving the new administration time to beef up vetting procedures to keep potential terrorists out of the country.</p>
<p>Its detractors claim that it violates the US Constitution by targeting people based on their religion.</p>
<p>An attorney representing the states of Washington and Minnesota —&#160;which brought the federal lawsuit against Trump's ban with support from numerous advocacy groups -- urged the judges to keep the decree on hold while the case runs its course.</p>
<p>"It has always been the judicial branch's role to say what the law is and to serve as a check on abuses by the executive branch," said Solicitor General Noah Purcell.</p>
<p>"That judicial rule has never been more important in recent memory than it is today, but the president is asking... to reinstate the executive order without full judicial review and throw this country back into chaos," Purcell added.</p>
<p>The states' counsel also came under sustained questioning, with Judge Clifton, a George W. Bush nominee, appearing unconvinced by his arguments that the ban amounted to religious discrimination.</p>
<p>"I have trouble understanding why we're supposed to infer religious animus when in fact the vast majority of Muslims would not be affected," Clifton said, pointing out that less than 15 percent of the world's Muslims were affected.</p>
<p>Purcell argued that the states were not required to show that all Muslims would be affected but only that the ban was "motivated in part by a desire to harm Muslims."</p>
<p>Trump's executive order barred entry to all refugees for 120 days, and to travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, triggering chaos at US airports and worldwide condemnation. Refugees from Syria are barred indefinitely.</p>
<p>Appearing to lay the groundwork for a setback, the White House earlier Tuesday sought to play down the significance of the upcoming ruling.</p>
<p>"All that's at issue tonight is the hearing is an interim decision on whether the president's order is enforced or not until the case is heard on the actual merits of the order," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters.&#160;</p>
<p>"That's why I think we feel confident."</p>
<p>Hosting a group of American sheriffs at the White House on Tuesday, Trump hammered home the rationale for his decree as "common sense."&#160;</p>
<p>Trump has lashed out at the Seattle judge who suspended his order, James Robart, as a "so-called" judge -- a slur that drew criticism from his own Republican camp -- and sought to pin blame on him, and courts in general, for potential future attacks on US soil.</p>
<p>"Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!" he tweeted on Sunday.</p> | Court expresses skepticism of government arguments in favor of Trump's immigration ban | false | https://pri.org/stories/2017-02-07/watch-live-court-hears-arguments-trumps-immigration-ban | 2017-02-07 | 3left-center
| Court expresses skepticism of government arguments in favor of Trump's immigration ban
<p>The US Justice Department faced tough questioning Tuesday as it urged a court of appeals to reinstate President Donald Trump's travel ban targeting citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries —&#160;put on hold by the courts last week.</p>
<p>The latest twist in the legal showdown comes four days after a federal judge suspended Trump's decree, opening US borders back up to the thousands of refugees and travelers it had suddenly barred from the country.</p>
<p>Three judges from an appellate court in San Francisco chaired the hour-long telephone hearing followed online by more than 130,000 people — a record, the court said —&#160;and broadcast live to millions more on television.</p>
<p>The high-stakes hearing saw an attorney for the government argue that Trump's immigration curbs were motivated by national security concerns and that the federal judge had overstepped his authority in suspending them.</p>
<p>"This is a traditional national security judgment that is assigned to the political branches and the president," argued the Justice Department lawyer, August Flentje.</p>
<p>He said Trump acted perfectly within his constitutional powers and those delegated to him by Congress in issuing the January 27 executive order in the interest of the United States.</p>
<p>Tuesday's hearing was focused on whether to lift the suspension of the ban, not on the constitutionality of the decree itself —&#160;a broader battle which looks likely to go all the way to the Supreme Court. A court spokesman said a ruling was likely later this week.</p>
<p>During the hearing the three-judge panel often appeared skeptical, with Judge Richard Clifton saying at one point that the government's argument was "pretty abstract."</p>
<p>The judges questioned Flentje about the evidence connecting the seven countries targeted to terrorism, and pressed him on whether the ban amounts to religious discrimination — as its opponents claim.</p>
<p>The White House insists the decree is in the interest of national security, giving the new administration time to beef up vetting procedures to keep potential terrorists out of the country.</p>
<p>Its detractors claim that it violates the US Constitution by targeting people based on their religion.</p>
<p>An attorney representing the states of Washington and Minnesota —&#160;which brought the federal lawsuit against Trump's ban with support from numerous advocacy groups -- urged the judges to keep the decree on hold while the case runs its course.</p>
<p>"It has always been the judicial branch's role to say what the law is and to serve as a check on abuses by the executive branch," said Solicitor General Noah Purcell.</p>
<p>"That judicial rule has never been more important in recent memory than it is today, but the president is asking... to reinstate the executive order without full judicial review and throw this country back into chaos," Purcell added.</p>
<p>The states' counsel also came under sustained questioning, with Judge Clifton, a George W. Bush nominee, appearing unconvinced by his arguments that the ban amounted to religious discrimination.</p>
<p>"I have trouble understanding why we're supposed to infer religious animus when in fact the vast majority of Muslims would not be affected," Clifton said, pointing out that less than 15 percent of the world's Muslims were affected.</p>
<p>Purcell argued that the states were not required to show that all Muslims would be affected but only that the ban was "motivated in part by a desire to harm Muslims."</p>
<p>Trump's executive order barred entry to all refugees for 120 days, and to travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, triggering chaos at US airports and worldwide condemnation. Refugees from Syria are barred indefinitely.</p>
<p>Appearing to lay the groundwork for a setback, the White House earlier Tuesday sought to play down the significance of the upcoming ruling.</p>
<p>"All that's at issue tonight is the hearing is an interim decision on whether the president's order is enforced or not until the case is heard on the actual merits of the order," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters.&#160;</p>
<p>"That's why I think we feel confident."</p>
<p>Hosting a group of American sheriffs at the White House on Tuesday, Trump hammered home the rationale for his decree as "common sense."&#160;</p>
<p>Trump has lashed out at the Seattle judge who suspended his order, James Robart, as a "so-called" judge -- a slur that drew criticism from his own Republican camp -- and sought to pin blame on him, and courts in general, for potential future attacks on US soil.</p>
<p>"Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!" he tweeted on Sunday.</p> | 1,597 |
<p>Although the timing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s arrest and proposed extradition to Sweden seemed a tad conspicuous, what with the site’s recent big release that angered and embarrassed several powers that be around the globe, Sweden is denying that political pressure played a part in his apprehension.</p>
<p>One Jonas Björk, correspondent for TV4, echoed the sentiment expressed by Sweden’s justice department: “I believe the politicians when they say they haven’t had any pressure from abroad,” he said Thursday. –KA</p>
<p>The Guardian:</p>
<p>Swedish media and politicians have rejected speculation that political pressure from abroad was exerted on the country’s justice system to secure Julian Assange’s arrest and extradition. Martin Valfridsson, a spokesman for the Swedish minister of justice, Beatrice Ask, said yesterday the suggestion was “completely wrong”.</p>
<p />
<p>“As far as I know no such pressure has been put on Sweden,” he said.</p>
<p>Jonas Björk, a correspondent with the TV4 channel, said the idea that the original rape allegations were a part of a conspiracy to attack the WikiLeaks founder stretched credibility.</p>
<p>“For it to have been a honey-trap operation would have been so complicated that I can’t see how it could have been pulled off; if it was, then I tip my hat to the CIA,” he said.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/09/sweden-julian-assange-case-wikileaks" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Sweden Says No Political Pressure Spurred Assange Arrest | true | http://truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/sweden_says_no_political_pressure_spurred_assange_arrest_20101209/ | 2010-12-10 | 4left
| Sweden Says No Political Pressure Spurred Assange Arrest
<p>Although the timing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s arrest and proposed extradition to Sweden seemed a tad conspicuous, what with the site’s recent big release that angered and embarrassed several powers that be around the globe, Sweden is denying that political pressure played a part in his apprehension.</p>
<p>One Jonas Björk, correspondent for TV4, echoed the sentiment expressed by Sweden’s justice department: “I believe the politicians when they say they haven’t had any pressure from abroad,” he said Thursday. –KA</p>
<p>The Guardian:</p>
<p>Swedish media and politicians have rejected speculation that political pressure from abroad was exerted on the country’s justice system to secure Julian Assange’s arrest and extradition. Martin Valfridsson, a spokesman for the Swedish minister of justice, Beatrice Ask, said yesterday the suggestion was “completely wrong”.</p>
<p />
<p>“As far as I know no such pressure has been put on Sweden,” he said.</p>
<p>Jonas Björk, a correspondent with the TV4 channel, said the idea that the original rape allegations were a part of a conspiracy to attack the WikiLeaks founder stretched credibility.</p>
<p>“For it to have been a honey-trap operation would have been so complicated that I can’t see how it could have been pulled off; if it was, then I tip my hat to the CIA,” he said.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/09/sweden-julian-assange-case-wikileaks" type="external">Read more</a></p> | 1,598 |
<p />
<p>Summer is an especially hectic time for many industries. Restaurants and shops frequently extend their hours of operation to accommodate increased foot traffic from students who are out of school for the season. Outdoor-based businesses take advantage of good weather and longer daylight hours to get in as much work as they can. This upswing in business means that companies in these industries often hire temporary help to handle the increased workload.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Smaller businesses that are just starting out may get inundated right at the beginning of the season, before they realize they need a few extra employees. Established companies usually know they'll require extra hands on deck months in advance, but might still find themselves a bit short-staffed as the summer rush picks up. No matter what stage of growth you're in, here are a few things to keep in mind when looking for short-term workers.</p>
<p>Decide if you need an employee or a contractor</p>
<p>Worker classification is an incredibly important part of taking on any hired help. Depending on the type of business you run, you may have a choice between bringing in a regular employee and an independent contractor.</p>
<p>"Whether it's long- or short-term, judge your demand and decide which [type of worker] you need," said Steve DelVecchia, founder of online staffing platform Adaptive Professional Solutions.</p>
<p>A worker's status is usually dictated by the level of control the employer has over the individual's daily tasks, as well as the worker's overall contributions to the business. The key difference is that employees are listed on payroll and covered by a company's benefits and insurance, whereas contractors are not. This can make a huge difference in the time and money you spend bringing a particular worker into your business. Alternatively, DelVecchia suggested using a staffing firm for temporary help to avoid the hassle of payroll and HR paperwork. <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6509-business-labor-laws.html" type="external">[MORE: Labor Laws That All Business Owners Should Understand] Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Recruit with social media</p>
<p>Companies increasingly use social media to find the best and brightest full-time talent. C.J. Reuter, senior director of global client success at social recruiting solution Work4, said that social media can also be a great recruiting tool for employers who need seasonal help.</p>
<p>"Leverage what your marketing team has already done to market yourself as an employer on social media," Reuter told Business News Daily. "Social media shows [candidates] what it's like to be there. You can publish photos on social networks showing the behind-the-scenes, day-to-day culture. It's more believable, especially to the younger generation."</p>
<p>Since seasonal hiring tends to be very geo-specific, you can use social media to find qualified candidates in your local area and reach out to them throughout the year, Reuter said. This will put your company on local workers' radar when they're looking for a part-time seasonal job or internship.</p>
<p>Don't forget about insurance coverage</p>
<p>Since seasonal hires are frequently part-time and will only spend a few months with you, it's easy to forget what this means for your insurance policy. Don't make the mistake of assuming all of your workers are automatically covered.</p>
<p>"It's important to look out for all workers, regardless of employment status," said Steve Carlson, vice president of select worker's compensation for Travelers Insurance's small commercial department. "Think about what insurance coverage you need and don't need, and what the cost will be [if you don't have it]."</p>
<p>Carlson advised speaking with your insurance agent about the types of employees you're taking on — part-time, full-time, paid interns, volunteers, etc. — and finding out what that means in terms of your local labor laws. Depending on their status, employees may not be covered by your worker's compensation policy, so you'll need to research the proper steps to take should they be injured on the job.</p>
<p>Treat them like your regular employees</p>
<p>Although they will only work with you temporarily, you and your seasonal hires should get the most out of that time. Once you've hired the right people for the position, train them efficiently and well so they can do the best job possible while they're there.</p>
<p>"Bringing someone new on is about training them and making sure they understand what's involved in the job," said Scott Humphrey, director of technical services at Travelers' risk control department. "Summer hires are usually college kids who are somewhat new to the workforce. They're eager to do a good job and get something done as quickly as possible, but as an employer, you want them to take their time and do it right. Supervise them and give them feedback about what to do and not do — the same way you would treat any employee."</p>
<p>Originally published on <a href="http://businessnewsdaily.com/" type="external">Business News Daily. Opens a New Window.</a></p> | Summer Hiring: 4 Tips for Employers | true | http://foxbusiness.com/sbc/2014/06/23/summer-hiring-4-tips-for-employers.html | 2016-04-07 | 0right
| Summer Hiring: 4 Tips for Employers
<p />
<p>Summer is an especially hectic time for many industries. Restaurants and shops frequently extend their hours of operation to accommodate increased foot traffic from students who are out of school for the season. Outdoor-based businesses take advantage of good weather and longer daylight hours to get in as much work as they can. This upswing in business means that companies in these industries often hire temporary help to handle the increased workload.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Smaller businesses that are just starting out may get inundated right at the beginning of the season, before they realize they need a few extra employees. Established companies usually know they'll require extra hands on deck months in advance, but might still find themselves a bit short-staffed as the summer rush picks up. No matter what stage of growth you're in, here are a few things to keep in mind when looking for short-term workers.</p>
<p>Decide if you need an employee or a contractor</p>
<p>Worker classification is an incredibly important part of taking on any hired help. Depending on the type of business you run, you may have a choice between bringing in a regular employee and an independent contractor.</p>
<p>"Whether it's long- or short-term, judge your demand and decide which [type of worker] you need," said Steve DelVecchia, founder of online staffing platform Adaptive Professional Solutions.</p>
<p>A worker's status is usually dictated by the level of control the employer has over the individual's daily tasks, as well as the worker's overall contributions to the business. The key difference is that employees are listed on payroll and covered by a company's benefits and insurance, whereas contractors are not. This can make a huge difference in the time and money you spend bringing a particular worker into your business. Alternatively, DelVecchia suggested using a staffing firm for temporary help to avoid the hassle of payroll and HR paperwork. <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6509-business-labor-laws.html" type="external">[MORE: Labor Laws That All Business Owners Should Understand] Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Recruit with social media</p>
<p>Companies increasingly use social media to find the best and brightest full-time talent. C.J. Reuter, senior director of global client success at social recruiting solution Work4, said that social media can also be a great recruiting tool for employers who need seasonal help.</p>
<p>"Leverage what your marketing team has already done to market yourself as an employer on social media," Reuter told Business News Daily. "Social media shows [candidates] what it's like to be there. You can publish photos on social networks showing the behind-the-scenes, day-to-day culture. It's more believable, especially to the younger generation."</p>
<p>Since seasonal hiring tends to be very geo-specific, you can use social media to find qualified candidates in your local area and reach out to them throughout the year, Reuter said. This will put your company on local workers' radar when they're looking for a part-time seasonal job or internship.</p>
<p>Don't forget about insurance coverage</p>
<p>Since seasonal hires are frequently part-time and will only spend a few months with you, it's easy to forget what this means for your insurance policy. Don't make the mistake of assuming all of your workers are automatically covered.</p>
<p>"It's important to look out for all workers, regardless of employment status," said Steve Carlson, vice president of select worker's compensation for Travelers Insurance's small commercial department. "Think about what insurance coverage you need and don't need, and what the cost will be [if you don't have it]."</p>
<p>Carlson advised speaking with your insurance agent about the types of employees you're taking on — part-time, full-time, paid interns, volunteers, etc. — and finding out what that means in terms of your local labor laws. Depending on their status, employees may not be covered by your worker's compensation policy, so you'll need to research the proper steps to take should they be injured on the job.</p>
<p>Treat them like your regular employees</p>
<p>Although they will only work with you temporarily, you and your seasonal hires should get the most out of that time. Once you've hired the right people for the position, train them efficiently and well so they can do the best job possible while they're there.</p>
<p>"Bringing someone new on is about training them and making sure they understand what's involved in the job," said Scott Humphrey, director of technical services at Travelers' risk control department. "Summer hires are usually college kids who are somewhat new to the workforce. They're eager to do a good job and get something done as quickly as possible, but as an employer, you want them to take their time and do it right. Supervise them and give them feedback about what to do and not do — the same way you would treat any employee."</p>
<p>Originally published on <a href="http://businessnewsdaily.com/" type="external">Business News Daily. Opens a New Window.</a></p> | 1,599 |
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