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<p>Photo by the International Bird Rescue Research Center, courtesy Wikimedia Commons</p>
<p />
<p>More injured and dead wildlife has been found in the 25 days since BP capped the well than when it was still spewing. According to the <a href="http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/08/oil_spill_plugged_but_more_oil.html" type="external">Times-Picayune</a>:</p>
<p>The growing number of bird casualties may be at least partially a result of rescuers venturing into sensitive rookeries for the first time since the spill. Earlier, at the height of the breeding season, human rescuers might have done more harm than good. Also, many fledgling birds are just now leaving the nest and encountering a fouled world for the first time.</p>
<p>Alarmingly, a high number of oiled turtles are now being found feeding on seaweed drift lines, where there’s no apparent oil in the drift lines or on the open water.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, from an overflight of&#160; Chandeleur Sound east of New Orleans, the <a href="http://blogs.nwf.org/arctic_promise/2010/08/this-just-in-nwf-overflight-finds-discolorations-in-chandeleur-sound.html" type="external">National Wildlife Federation reports</a> streams of red oil on the water surface caught in a rip line, as well as mile after mile, as far at the eye could see, of what looked like red dispersed oil just below the surface.</p>
<p>I have a lot more forthcoming on the insidious effects of dispersed oil—including what might be a clue to the mysterious oiled sea turtles—in a big MoJo article in the September/October issue, to be released online this week.</p>
<p /> | Gulf’s Wildlife Casualties Rising Fast | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/gulfs-wildlife-casualties-rising-fast/ | 2010-08-09 | 4left
| Gulf’s Wildlife Casualties Rising Fast
<p>Photo by the International Bird Rescue Research Center, courtesy Wikimedia Commons</p>
<p />
<p>More injured and dead wildlife has been found in the 25 days since BP capped the well than when it was still spewing. According to the <a href="http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/08/oil_spill_plugged_but_more_oil.html" type="external">Times-Picayune</a>:</p>
<p>The growing number of bird casualties may be at least partially a result of rescuers venturing into sensitive rookeries for the first time since the spill. Earlier, at the height of the breeding season, human rescuers might have done more harm than good. Also, many fledgling birds are just now leaving the nest and encountering a fouled world for the first time.</p>
<p>Alarmingly, a high number of oiled turtles are now being found feeding on seaweed drift lines, where there’s no apparent oil in the drift lines or on the open water.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, from an overflight of&#160; Chandeleur Sound east of New Orleans, the <a href="http://blogs.nwf.org/arctic_promise/2010/08/this-just-in-nwf-overflight-finds-discolorations-in-chandeleur-sound.html" type="external">National Wildlife Federation reports</a> streams of red oil on the water surface caught in a rip line, as well as mile after mile, as far at the eye could see, of what looked like red dispersed oil just below the surface.</p>
<p>I have a lot more forthcoming on the insidious effects of dispersed oil—including what might be a clue to the mysterious oiled sea turtles—in a big MoJo article in the September/October issue, to be released online this week.</p>
<p /> | 2,100 |
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<p />
<p>King sent the letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Strom Thurmond, a fierce segregationist. She asked him to make the letter a part of the hearing’s formal record, but he didn’t. The 10-page letter was essentially lost until last month, when The Washington Post obtained and published a copy of it.</p>
<p>“The irony of Mr. Sessions’ nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given a life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods,” King wrote in her testimony, adding, “I believe his confirmation would have a devastating effect on not only the judicial system in Alabama, but also on the progress we have made toward fulfilling my husband’s dream.” She wrote at length about Sessions’ record as a U.S. attorney in Alabama, aggressively prosecuting African-American voting-rights activists on charges of voter fraud in the case of “The Marion Three.” In that case, Albert Turner, an aide to Martin Luther King Jr., Turner’s wife, Evelyn, and Spencer Hogue were all members of the Perry County Civic League in rural Alabama. Sessions prosecuted them, alleging they tampered with ballots of elderly African-American voters.</p>
<p>The Marion Three faced well over 100 years in prison if convicted. Sessions was accused of selectively seeking cases to prosecute in “Black Belt” counties of Alabama, like Perry County, where a rising number of African-American registered voters threatened to eliminate the long-held political domination by whites. A federal judge threw out most of the charges, and a jury acquitted the three on the remaining charges.</p>
<p>“Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the ballot box,” Coretta Scott King continued. “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as federal judge.”</p>
<p>By reading King’s words, Elizabeth Warren was accused of imputing “conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a senator.” After McConnell forced her to stop speaking, Warren replied, from the floor, “I am surprised that the words of Coretta Scott King are not suitable for debate in the United States Senate. … I ask leave of the Senate to continue my remarks.” After her request was denied, she was instructed to leave. She immediately exited, and, just outside the doors to the Senate chamber, read the entire King letter, broadcasting via Facebook Live. After 20 hours online, the 15-minute video had close to 10 million views.</p>
<p>McConnell, speaking from the Senate floor, said of his decision to silence Warren: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” His words created a firestorm across social media, with posts of solidarity with Warren marked by the hashtag “#ShePersisted.” Back on the Senate floor, several of Warren’s male colleagues read King’s letter aloud. None of them were rebuked by McConnell. In fact, in 2015, when fellow Republican Ted Cruz accused McConnell himself of being a liar, McConnell did not invoke the same Senate rule to bar Cruz from speaking.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>On Wednesday evening, the Senate confirmed Jeff Sessions as the 84th attorney general of the United States, despite receiving more “no” votes – 47 – than any attorney general in U.S. history.</p>
<p>What also made history was a woman: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, bringing to life the words of another historic woman, Coretta Scott King, whose words will inform and inspire the resistance to Sessions as he assumes one of the most powerful positions in the Trump administration.</p>
<p>Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | Double standards show in Senate rebuke of Warren | false | https://abqjournal.com/947861/double-standards-show-in-senate-rebuke-of-warren.html | 2least
| Double standards show in Senate rebuke of Warren
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<p />
<p>King sent the letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Strom Thurmond, a fierce segregationist. She asked him to make the letter a part of the hearing’s formal record, but he didn’t. The 10-page letter was essentially lost until last month, when The Washington Post obtained and published a copy of it.</p>
<p>“The irony of Mr. Sessions’ nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given a life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods,” King wrote in her testimony, adding, “I believe his confirmation would have a devastating effect on not only the judicial system in Alabama, but also on the progress we have made toward fulfilling my husband’s dream.” She wrote at length about Sessions’ record as a U.S. attorney in Alabama, aggressively prosecuting African-American voting-rights activists on charges of voter fraud in the case of “The Marion Three.” In that case, Albert Turner, an aide to Martin Luther King Jr., Turner’s wife, Evelyn, and Spencer Hogue were all members of the Perry County Civic League in rural Alabama. Sessions prosecuted them, alleging they tampered with ballots of elderly African-American voters.</p>
<p>The Marion Three faced well over 100 years in prison if convicted. Sessions was accused of selectively seeking cases to prosecute in “Black Belt” counties of Alabama, like Perry County, where a rising number of African-American registered voters threatened to eliminate the long-held political domination by whites. A federal judge threw out most of the charges, and a jury acquitted the three on the remaining charges.</p>
<p>“Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the ballot box,” Coretta Scott King continued. “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as federal judge.”</p>
<p>By reading King’s words, Elizabeth Warren was accused of imputing “conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a senator.” After McConnell forced her to stop speaking, Warren replied, from the floor, “I am surprised that the words of Coretta Scott King are not suitable for debate in the United States Senate. … I ask leave of the Senate to continue my remarks.” After her request was denied, she was instructed to leave. She immediately exited, and, just outside the doors to the Senate chamber, read the entire King letter, broadcasting via Facebook Live. After 20 hours online, the 15-minute video had close to 10 million views.</p>
<p>McConnell, speaking from the Senate floor, said of his decision to silence Warren: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” His words created a firestorm across social media, with posts of solidarity with Warren marked by the hashtag “#ShePersisted.” Back on the Senate floor, several of Warren’s male colleagues read King’s letter aloud. None of them were rebuked by McConnell. In fact, in 2015, when fellow Republican Ted Cruz accused McConnell himself of being a liar, McConnell did not invoke the same Senate rule to bar Cruz from speaking.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>On Wednesday evening, the Senate confirmed Jeff Sessions as the 84th attorney general of the United States, despite receiving more “no” votes – 47 – than any attorney general in U.S. history.</p>
<p>What also made history was a woman: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, bringing to life the words of another historic woman, Coretta Scott King, whose words will inform and inspire the resistance to Sessions as he assumes one of the most powerful positions in the Trump administration.</p>
<p>Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | 2,101 |
|
<p>SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS: MEMOIRS BY JOHN UPDIKE. New York: Knopf, 1989. 257 pp. $18.95.</p>
<p>A chapter from John Updike's Self Consciousness ran some months ago in Commentary under the provocative title, "On Not Being a Dove." Updike looked back at the loneliness that overtook him during the high tide of antiwar indignation in the sixties and seventies, when he, one man against the mob, remained a supporter of American policy in Vietnam. He recalled inanities of the antiwar movement. He savored a Weather Underground vow to oppose "everything that is good and decent in honky America"; and having in that manner given the left and the peaceniks their say, he took out his trunk of still-beloved prowar arguments and unfolded each aging but intact debater's point and held it up for admiration.</p>
<p /> | John Updike's Transparent Eyeball | true | https://dissentmagazine.org/article/john-updikes-transparent-eyeball | 2018-10-02 | 4left
| John Updike's Transparent Eyeball
<p>SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS: MEMOIRS BY JOHN UPDIKE. New York: Knopf, 1989. 257 pp. $18.95.</p>
<p>A chapter from John Updike's Self Consciousness ran some months ago in Commentary under the provocative title, "On Not Being a Dove." Updike looked back at the loneliness that overtook him during the high tide of antiwar indignation in the sixties and seventies, when he, one man against the mob, remained a supporter of American policy in Vietnam. He recalled inanities of the antiwar movement. He savored a Weather Underground vow to oppose "everything that is good and decent in honky America"; and having in that manner given the left and the peaceniks their say, he took out his trunk of still-beloved prowar arguments and unfolded each aging but intact debater's point and held it up for admiration.</p>
<p /> | 2,102 |
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<p>WASHINGTON — Federal appeals judges are divided as they hear arguments over whether the president should be able to more easily fire the head of the government’s consumer finance watchdog agency.</p>
<p>The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a rare hearing Wednesday by a majority of its judges, took up the politically charged case involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the power of its director. The judges are reconsidering a three-judge panel’s 2-1 ruling last fall that would make it easier for President Donald Trump to fire CFPB Director Richard Cordray. He was appointed in 2011 by President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>Lawyers for the Trump administration and a company sanctioned by the consumer agency argued that the way the CFPB was created, by Obama and Democrats in Congress after the financial crisis, violated the Constitution, by giving the director excessive power.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The 11 judges — six appointed by Democratic presidents and five by Republicans — appeared split along ideological fault lines as they challenged, in turn, the opposing arguments put forward by the Trump administration and the CFPB.</p>
<p>In an unusual turn, the Trump Justice Department is opposing the consumer watchdog agency within its own government.</p>
<p>“This agency goes further than anything Congress has attempted to do in history,” declared Ted Olson, the prominent attorney with Supreme Court victories who represents the mortgage lender in this case, PHH Corp. The company was accused of illegal conduct by the CFPB and ordered to pay $109 million, then struck back by bringing the case that has raised constitutional issues and moved up to the nation’s second most influential court.</p>
<p>The appeals panel ruled in October that the way the CFPB is organized violates the Constitution’s separation of powers by limiting the president’s ability to remove the director. The law creating the CFPB allows its director to be removed only “for cause” — such as neglect of duty — and not over political differences. The judges said that conflicts with the Constitution, which allows the president to remove officials for any reason.</p>
<p>Olson criticized the “power concentrated in one individual” — Cordray — when the CFPB was established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law.</p>
<p>Several judges quickly jumped in and challenged Olson’s assertions.</p>
<p>Having a consumer agency board with several members could actually make them less accountable than a single director, suggested Patricia Millett, one of four judges who were named by Obama. And although the CFPB receives guaranteed funding from the Federal Reserve and thereby avoids congressional budget approval, the agency still must justify its expenditures and activities to Congress, Millett said.</p>
<p>Justice Department attorney Hashim Mooppan called the CFPB “a quintessentially executive agency” whose director can’t be distinguished in the power he wields from the Treasury secretary or other members of the president’s Cabinet.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>On the other side, attorney Lawrence DeMille-Wagman, representing the CFPB, made the case that the consumer agency works in a similar way to the Federal Trade Commission. The courts have upheld the firing-only-for-cause protection for FTC commissioners, he noted.</p>
<p>But Judge Brett Kavanaugh wryly suggested a turnaround scenario: If Trump appointed a new CFPB director after Cordray’s term expired, and that person enjoyed similar protection through a five-year term, there may be a president from another party in 2023 wanting to fire him or her.</p>
<p>“Whose ox is going to get gored? That’s going to shift,” said Kavanaugh, one of three judges appointed by George W. Bush.</p>
<p>In the FTC case, the Supreme Court allowed a similar “for-cause” restriction on the president’s power to fire a regulator. As a result, some of the judges at Wednesday’s session appeared to suggest that only the high court, not they, can rule on whether the CFPB is unconstitutional.</p>
<p>Cordray’s five-year term doesn’t end until July 2018, and he’s shown no intention of leaving. His supporters say no head of a federal agency has been fired “for cause” in modern times. Some Republican lawmakers have publicly urged Trump to fire him.</p>
<p>Cordray, a Democrat and former Ohio attorney general, is the first and only director of the young consumer agency. The CFPB has been swept up in partisan politics since its creation in 2010 by the Dodd-Frank legislation that tightened supervision of Wall Street and the financial industry following the crisis and the Great Recession. Wall Street interests, the banking and consumer finance industries and Republicans in Congress have fiercely opposed and criticized the agency, accusing it of overreaching in its regulation.</p>
<p>Democrats and consumer groups defending the CFPB point to its record. The agency, with about 1,600 employees, has taken legal action against banks, mortgage companies, credit card issuers, payday lenders, debt collectors and others. The CFPB says that over five years it has recovered $11.7 billion that it returned to more than 27 million harmed consumers. It has handled over a million complaints from consumers.</p>
<p>The case before the appeals court involves allegations that PHH was involved in a scheme to refer customers to certain mortgage insurance companies in exchange for illegal kickbacks. The CFPB ordered the company to repay $109 million in illegal payments it had received. PHH claimed its conduct was legal and challenged the agency’s structure as unconstitutional.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>This story was corrected to reflect that the number of judges was 11, not 10.</p> | Judges divided in hearing on consumer agency power | false | https://abqjournal.com/1008102/judges-divided-in-hearing-on-consumer-agency-power.html | 2017-05-24 | 2least
| Judges divided in hearing on consumer agency power
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>WASHINGTON — Federal appeals judges are divided as they hear arguments over whether the president should be able to more easily fire the head of the government’s consumer finance watchdog agency.</p>
<p>The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a rare hearing Wednesday by a majority of its judges, took up the politically charged case involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the power of its director. The judges are reconsidering a three-judge panel’s 2-1 ruling last fall that would make it easier for President Donald Trump to fire CFPB Director Richard Cordray. He was appointed in 2011 by President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>Lawyers for the Trump administration and a company sanctioned by the consumer agency argued that the way the CFPB was created, by Obama and Democrats in Congress after the financial crisis, violated the Constitution, by giving the director excessive power.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The 11 judges — six appointed by Democratic presidents and five by Republicans — appeared split along ideological fault lines as they challenged, in turn, the opposing arguments put forward by the Trump administration and the CFPB.</p>
<p>In an unusual turn, the Trump Justice Department is opposing the consumer watchdog agency within its own government.</p>
<p>“This agency goes further than anything Congress has attempted to do in history,” declared Ted Olson, the prominent attorney with Supreme Court victories who represents the mortgage lender in this case, PHH Corp. The company was accused of illegal conduct by the CFPB and ordered to pay $109 million, then struck back by bringing the case that has raised constitutional issues and moved up to the nation’s second most influential court.</p>
<p>The appeals panel ruled in October that the way the CFPB is organized violates the Constitution’s separation of powers by limiting the president’s ability to remove the director. The law creating the CFPB allows its director to be removed only “for cause” — such as neglect of duty — and not over political differences. The judges said that conflicts with the Constitution, which allows the president to remove officials for any reason.</p>
<p>Olson criticized the “power concentrated in one individual” — Cordray — when the CFPB was established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law.</p>
<p>Several judges quickly jumped in and challenged Olson’s assertions.</p>
<p>Having a consumer agency board with several members could actually make them less accountable than a single director, suggested Patricia Millett, one of four judges who were named by Obama. And although the CFPB receives guaranteed funding from the Federal Reserve and thereby avoids congressional budget approval, the agency still must justify its expenditures and activities to Congress, Millett said.</p>
<p>Justice Department attorney Hashim Mooppan called the CFPB “a quintessentially executive agency” whose director can’t be distinguished in the power he wields from the Treasury secretary or other members of the president’s Cabinet.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>On the other side, attorney Lawrence DeMille-Wagman, representing the CFPB, made the case that the consumer agency works in a similar way to the Federal Trade Commission. The courts have upheld the firing-only-for-cause protection for FTC commissioners, he noted.</p>
<p>But Judge Brett Kavanaugh wryly suggested a turnaround scenario: If Trump appointed a new CFPB director after Cordray’s term expired, and that person enjoyed similar protection through a five-year term, there may be a president from another party in 2023 wanting to fire him or her.</p>
<p>“Whose ox is going to get gored? That’s going to shift,” said Kavanaugh, one of three judges appointed by George W. Bush.</p>
<p>In the FTC case, the Supreme Court allowed a similar “for-cause” restriction on the president’s power to fire a regulator. As a result, some of the judges at Wednesday’s session appeared to suggest that only the high court, not they, can rule on whether the CFPB is unconstitutional.</p>
<p>Cordray’s five-year term doesn’t end until July 2018, and he’s shown no intention of leaving. His supporters say no head of a federal agency has been fired “for cause” in modern times. Some Republican lawmakers have publicly urged Trump to fire him.</p>
<p>Cordray, a Democrat and former Ohio attorney general, is the first and only director of the young consumer agency. The CFPB has been swept up in partisan politics since its creation in 2010 by the Dodd-Frank legislation that tightened supervision of Wall Street and the financial industry following the crisis and the Great Recession. Wall Street interests, the banking and consumer finance industries and Republicans in Congress have fiercely opposed and criticized the agency, accusing it of overreaching in its regulation.</p>
<p>Democrats and consumer groups defending the CFPB point to its record. The agency, with about 1,600 employees, has taken legal action against banks, mortgage companies, credit card issuers, payday lenders, debt collectors and others. The CFPB says that over five years it has recovered $11.7 billion that it returned to more than 27 million harmed consumers. It has handled over a million complaints from consumers.</p>
<p>The case before the appeals court involves allegations that PHH was involved in a scheme to refer customers to certain mortgage insurance companies in exchange for illegal kickbacks. The CFPB ordered the company to repay $109 million in illegal payments it had received. PHH claimed its conduct was legal and challenged the agency’s structure as unconstitutional.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>This story was corrected to reflect that the number of judges was 11, not 10.</p> | 2,103 |
<p>Dec. 12 (UPI) — President Donald Trump signed the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act into law, a $700 billion defense budget that seeks to increase military spending and operational capabilities.</p>
<p>The provisions in the 2018 NDAA includes measures like the establishment of a new U.S. Space Corps as a separate military service within the Department of the Air Force by 2019 and increases the totality of troop strength within each of the branches of the armed forces.</p>
<p>The measure also includes a 2.4 percent pay raise for troops, and special pay for things like combat and hazardous duty and bonus for re-enlistment contracts.</p>
<p>“In recent years, our military has undergone a series of deep budget cuts that have severely impacted our readiness, shrunk our capabilities, and placed substantial burdens on our warfighters,” Trump said Tuesday during a signing ceremony that Vice President Mike Pence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph F. Dunford, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry and other military officials and senior cabinet members.</p>
<p>“This legislation will enhance our readiness, expand and modernize our forces and help provide our service members with the tools they need to fight and win. We will fight and win, but hopefully with this we won’t have to fight because people will not be wanting to fight with us,” Trump said.</p>
<p>The NDAA, among other things, enables the Pentagon to procure 90 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets and 14 Navy ships from defense contractor Huntington Ingalls, in addition to authorizing $12.3 billion for missile defense.</p>
<p>Moreover, the NDAA calls for reform of the Defense Department’s acquisition process and requires service contracts be submitted through the Pentagon’s budget process in order to determine actual needs and spending patterns within the branches of the U.S. military.</p> | Trump signs $700B defense budget into law | false | https://newsline.com/trump-signs-700b-defense-budget-into-law/ | 2017-12-12 | 1right-center
| Trump signs $700B defense budget into law
<p>Dec. 12 (UPI) — President Donald Trump signed the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act into law, a $700 billion defense budget that seeks to increase military spending and operational capabilities.</p>
<p>The provisions in the 2018 NDAA includes measures like the establishment of a new U.S. Space Corps as a separate military service within the Department of the Air Force by 2019 and increases the totality of troop strength within each of the branches of the armed forces.</p>
<p>The measure also includes a 2.4 percent pay raise for troops, and special pay for things like combat and hazardous duty and bonus for re-enlistment contracts.</p>
<p>“In recent years, our military has undergone a series of deep budget cuts that have severely impacted our readiness, shrunk our capabilities, and placed substantial burdens on our warfighters,” Trump said Tuesday during a signing ceremony that Vice President Mike Pence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph F. Dunford, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry and other military officials and senior cabinet members.</p>
<p>“This legislation will enhance our readiness, expand and modernize our forces and help provide our service members with the tools they need to fight and win. We will fight and win, but hopefully with this we won’t have to fight because people will not be wanting to fight with us,” Trump said.</p>
<p>The NDAA, among other things, enables the Pentagon to procure 90 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets and 14 Navy ships from defense contractor Huntington Ingalls, in addition to authorizing $12.3 billion for missile defense.</p>
<p>Moreover, the NDAA calls for reform of the Defense Department’s acquisition process and requires service contracts be submitted through the Pentagon’s budget process in order to determine actual needs and spending patterns within the branches of the U.S. military.</p> | 2,104 |
<p>SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — The adoptive parents of two boys have filed a lawsuit against San Bernardino County's Department of Children and Family Services, claiming the agency failed to disclose the older boy's history of violent and sexually abusive behavior toward his brother.</p>
<p>The San Bernardino Sun <a href="https://www.sbsun.com/2018/01/24/lawsuit-san-bernardino-county-cfs-did-not-tell-adoptive-parents-about-boys-history-of-violence-sexual-abuse/" type="external">reports</a> the suit filed in federal court Tuesday claims the county was negligent, committed civil rights violations and violations of federal adoption and child welfare laws.</p>
<p>The parents, who adopted the boys in March 2017, are not identified in the suit.</p>
<p>According to the lawsuit, a counselor told the younger brother to not tell his prospective adoptive parents about the abuse because he would be removed from the home.</p>
<p>County spokesman David Wert did not immediately respond to the newspaper's requests for comment.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Sun, <a href="http://www.sbsun.com" type="external">http://www.sbsun.com</a></p>
<p>SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — The adoptive parents of two boys have filed a lawsuit against San Bernardino County's Department of Children and Family Services, claiming the agency failed to disclose the older boy's history of violent and sexually abusive behavior toward his brother.</p>
<p>The San Bernardino Sun <a href="https://www.sbsun.com/2018/01/24/lawsuit-san-bernardino-county-cfs-did-not-tell-adoptive-parents-about-boys-history-of-violence-sexual-abuse/" type="external">reports</a> the suit filed in federal court Tuesday claims the county was negligent, committed civil rights violations and violations of federal adoption and child welfare laws.</p>
<p>The parents, who adopted the boys in March 2017, are not identified in the suit.</p>
<p>According to the lawsuit, a counselor told the younger brother to not tell his prospective adoptive parents about the abuse because he would be removed from the home.</p>
<p>County spokesman David Wert did not immediately respond to the newspaper's requests for comment.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Sun, <a href="http://www.sbsun.com" type="external">http://www.sbsun.com</a></p> | Adoptive parents say boy's violence, abuse was not disclosed | false | https://apnews.com/amp/45989ec7d84d42959d10faf2e6f75cad | 2018-01-25 | 2least
| Adoptive parents say boy's violence, abuse was not disclosed
<p>SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — The adoptive parents of two boys have filed a lawsuit against San Bernardino County's Department of Children and Family Services, claiming the agency failed to disclose the older boy's history of violent and sexually abusive behavior toward his brother.</p>
<p>The San Bernardino Sun <a href="https://www.sbsun.com/2018/01/24/lawsuit-san-bernardino-county-cfs-did-not-tell-adoptive-parents-about-boys-history-of-violence-sexual-abuse/" type="external">reports</a> the suit filed in federal court Tuesday claims the county was negligent, committed civil rights violations and violations of federal adoption and child welfare laws.</p>
<p>The parents, who adopted the boys in March 2017, are not identified in the suit.</p>
<p>According to the lawsuit, a counselor told the younger brother to not tell his prospective adoptive parents about the abuse because he would be removed from the home.</p>
<p>County spokesman David Wert did not immediately respond to the newspaper's requests for comment.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Sun, <a href="http://www.sbsun.com" type="external">http://www.sbsun.com</a></p>
<p>SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — The adoptive parents of two boys have filed a lawsuit against San Bernardino County's Department of Children and Family Services, claiming the agency failed to disclose the older boy's history of violent and sexually abusive behavior toward his brother.</p>
<p>The San Bernardino Sun <a href="https://www.sbsun.com/2018/01/24/lawsuit-san-bernardino-county-cfs-did-not-tell-adoptive-parents-about-boys-history-of-violence-sexual-abuse/" type="external">reports</a> the suit filed in federal court Tuesday claims the county was negligent, committed civil rights violations and violations of federal adoption and child welfare laws.</p>
<p>The parents, who adopted the boys in March 2017, are not identified in the suit.</p>
<p>According to the lawsuit, a counselor told the younger brother to not tell his prospective adoptive parents about the abuse because he would be removed from the home.</p>
<p>County spokesman David Wert did not immediately respond to the newspaper's requests for comment.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Sun, <a href="http://www.sbsun.com" type="external">http://www.sbsun.com</a></p> | 2,105 |
<p>Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli troops and border police Friday near the&#160;Bituniya crossing in the West Bank.</p>
<p>Between two and three hundred Palestinian protesters were demonstrating in support of a hunger striker in Israel's Olef prison.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4345421,00.html" type="external">Ynet News reported</a>that one soldier was injured and over 100 Palestinians, as tear gas and rocks were exchanged.</p>
<p>The demonstrators were calling for the release of&#160;Samer Issawi, 35, who has been on an intermittent hunger strike in the prison for months, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=303419" type="external">reported the Jerusalem Post</a>.</p>
<p>Issawi was released from prison in 2011 in exchange for Israeli soldier captured by Hamas, Gilad Shalit, but was re-arrested by Israel authorities last year for violating his release terms.</p>
<p>He had been sentenced to prison for 26 years for "terror activity," <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/hundreds-of-palestinians-clash-with-idf-soldiers-in-rally-for-hunger-striker-1.503813" type="external">reported Ha'aretz</a> but served only six before the swap.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4345421,00.html" type="external">Ynet News reported</a>that Israeli prison authorities said that Issawi is under medical supervision.</p>
<p>Issawi's sister has also been on hunger strike for 206 days.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/hundreds-of-palestinians-clash-with-idf-soldiers-in-rally-for-hunger-striker-1.503813" type="external">Ha'aretz reported</a>that Middle East envoy Tony Blair said in a statement about the incident:&#160;</p>
<p>"This issue needs to be resolved quickly in order to avoid a tragic outcome which has the potential to destabilize the situation on the ground."</p>
<p>Other protests also took place around the West Bank and at Israeli border crossings.</p> | Palestinians, Israeli troops clash after demonstrations | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-02-15/palestinians-israeli-troops-clash-after-demonstrations | 2013-02-15 | 3left-center
| Palestinians, Israeli troops clash after demonstrations
<p>Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli troops and border police Friday near the&#160;Bituniya crossing in the West Bank.</p>
<p>Between two and three hundred Palestinian protesters were demonstrating in support of a hunger striker in Israel's Olef prison.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4345421,00.html" type="external">Ynet News reported</a>that one soldier was injured and over 100 Palestinians, as tear gas and rocks were exchanged.</p>
<p>The demonstrators were calling for the release of&#160;Samer Issawi, 35, who has been on an intermittent hunger strike in the prison for months, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=303419" type="external">reported the Jerusalem Post</a>.</p>
<p>Issawi was released from prison in 2011 in exchange for Israeli soldier captured by Hamas, Gilad Shalit, but was re-arrested by Israel authorities last year for violating his release terms.</p>
<p>He had been sentenced to prison for 26 years for "terror activity," <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/hundreds-of-palestinians-clash-with-idf-soldiers-in-rally-for-hunger-striker-1.503813" type="external">reported Ha'aretz</a> but served only six before the swap.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4345421,00.html" type="external">Ynet News reported</a>that Israeli prison authorities said that Issawi is under medical supervision.</p>
<p>Issawi's sister has also been on hunger strike for 206 days.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/hundreds-of-palestinians-clash-with-idf-soldiers-in-rally-for-hunger-striker-1.503813" type="external">Ha'aretz reported</a>that Middle East envoy Tony Blair said in a statement about the incident:&#160;</p>
<p>"This issue needs to be resolved quickly in order to avoid a tragic outcome which has the potential to destabilize the situation on the ground."</p>
<p>Other protests also took place around the West Bank and at Israeli border crossings.</p> | 2,106 |
<p />
<p>Good news for Android users who bank with Chase: Now you can leave your card at home and pay for things with your phone.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The bank now supports Google's mobile payment system, <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2492151,00.asp" type="external">Android Pay Opens a New Window.</a>, on Chase Visa cards like Freedom, Slate, Sapphire, United Mileage Explorer and Hyatt Credit Card.</p>
<p>To use it, start by downloading the free <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.walletnfcrel&amp;hl=en" type="external">Android Pay Opens a New Window.</a> app on your smartphone, if it's not already there. Note that you'll need a NFC-enabled device running Android KitKat 4.4 or higher.</p>
<p>From there, add an eligible Chase Visa credit or debit card by snapping a photo of the card, selecting it as the default account, and following the steps on screen to verify your account. When using Android Pay, you'll still get all the usual rewards and benefits of using your actual card.</p>
<p>When you're ready to make a purchase using your phone, just unlock the device and hold it at the point of sale terminal at any of the millions of store locations nationwide that accept contactless payments. You can also use Android Pay to buy things within select apps, including Grubhub and Seamless. For more on how to use Chase cards with Android Pay, <a href="https://www.chase.com/digital/digital-payments/android-pay" type="external">head here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In other Android Pay news, Google today <a href="https://android.googleblog.com/2016/09/tap-pay-yes-android-pay-welcomes-chase.html" type="external">announced Opens a New Window.</a> it is bringing the service to the mobile Web. This means you'll soon be able to use the service from the Chrome browser to pay for items on sites like Groupon.com and 1-800-Flowers.com. In the coming months, Dunkin' Donuts and Chili's will be integrating their loyalty programs with Android Pay. And, now through Oct. 15, all US Android Pay users will get 50 percent off 10 Uber rides.</p>
<p>This article <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/news/347694/android-pay-works-with-chase-visa-cards" type="external">originally appeared Opens a New Window.</a> on <a href="http://www.pcmag.com" type="external">PCMag.com Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Android Pay Works With Chase Visa Cards | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/09/07/android-pay-works-with-chase-visa-cards.html | 2016-09-07 | 0right
| Android Pay Works With Chase Visa Cards
<p />
<p>Good news for Android users who bank with Chase: Now you can leave your card at home and pay for things with your phone.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The bank now supports Google's mobile payment system, <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2492151,00.asp" type="external">Android Pay Opens a New Window.</a>, on Chase Visa cards like Freedom, Slate, Sapphire, United Mileage Explorer and Hyatt Credit Card.</p>
<p>To use it, start by downloading the free <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.walletnfcrel&amp;hl=en" type="external">Android Pay Opens a New Window.</a> app on your smartphone, if it's not already there. Note that you'll need a NFC-enabled device running Android KitKat 4.4 or higher.</p>
<p>From there, add an eligible Chase Visa credit or debit card by snapping a photo of the card, selecting it as the default account, and following the steps on screen to verify your account. When using Android Pay, you'll still get all the usual rewards and benefits of using your actual card.</p>
<p>When you're ready to make a purchase using your phone, just unlock the device and hold it at the point of sale terminal at any of the millions of store locations nationwide that accept contactless payments. You can also use Android Pay to buy things within select apps, including Grubhub and Seamless. For more on how to use Chase cards with Android Pay, <a href="https://www.chase.com/digital/digital-payments/android-pay" type="external">head here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In other Android Pay news, Google today <a href="https://android.googleblog.com/2016/09/tap-pay-yes-android-pay-welcomes-chase.html" type="external">announced Opens a New Window.</a> it is bringing the service to the mobile Web. This means you'll soon be able to use the service from the Chrome browser to pay for items on sites like Groupon.com and 1-800-Flowers.com. In the coming months, Dunkin' Donuts and Chili's will be integrating their loyalty programs with Android Pay. And, now through Oct. 15, all US Android Pay users will get 50 percent off 10 Uber rides.</p>
<p>This article <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/news/347694/android-pay-works-with-chase-visa-cards" type="external">originally appeared Opens a New Window.</a> on <a href="http://www.pcmag.com" type="external">PCMag.com Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 2,107 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Alamogordo Public Schools officials say an eighth grade student brought a bottle of Xanax to school Thursday morning and distributed the medication.</p>
<p>Xanax is a sedative used to treat anxiety or a panic disorder.</p>
<p>The Alamogordo Daily News ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2ogxsqr" type="external">http://bit.ly/2ogxsqr</a> ) reports that students who ingested the medication were taken to the hospital by either ambulance or a parent.</p>
<p>School officials say the hospitalized students are doing OK.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>They say disciplinary action will be brought against the student who brought Xanax to school and they will evaluate the students who took the medication.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Alamogordo Daily News, <a href="http://www.alamogordonews.com" type="external">http://www.alamogordonews.com</a></p> | Authorities: Alamogordo student gives Xanax to classmates | false | https://abqjournal.com/979597/authorities-alamogordo-student-gives-xanax-to-classmates.html | 2least
| Authorities: Alamogordo student gives Xanax to classmates
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Alamogordo Public Schools officials say an eighth grade student brought a bottle of Xanax to school Thursday morning and distributed the medication.</p>
<p>Xanax is a sedative used to treat anxiety or a panic disorder.</p>
<p>The Alamogordo Daily News ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2ogxsqr" type="external">http://bit.ly/2ogxsqr</a> ) reports that students who ingested the medication were taken to the hospital by either ambulance or a parent.</p>
<p>School officials say the hospitalized students are doing OK.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>They say disciplinary action will be brought against the student who brought Xanax to school and they will evaluate the students who took the medication.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Alamogordo Daily News, <a href="http://www.alamogordonews.com" type="external">http://www.alamogordonews.com</a></p> | 2,108 |
|
<p>TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisia tried to smooth out emerging tensions with the United Arab Emirates on Monday after Emirates airline barred Tunisian women from boarding its flights and the North African country responded by suspending the Dubai-based carrier's operations in the air and on the ground.</p>
<p>The spokeswoman for the Tunisian presidency dismissed any notion of a "diplomatic crisis" between the two countries, expressing Tunisia's "understanding" of a decision made by the UAE's government to "protect its territory and its airlines."</p>
<p>After the Emirates' decision caused an outcry in Tunisia, the presidential spokeswoman had to speak publicly on a radio station to explain that the ban targeting Tunisian women followed alleged serious threats of attacks.</p>
<p>The spokeswoman, Saïda Garrach, said the UAE's authorities explained that they made the decision following "serious security information" about alleged plans for attacks by Tunisian women, or women with Tunisian passports, from "tense hotbeds" in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p>UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash tweeted that the ban was temporary and due to security reasons.</p>
<p>In a later written statement, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi "called for overcoming these problems as soon as possible to preserve the relations of brotherhood and cooperation between the two peoples of Tunisia and UAE."</p>
<p>But Caid Essebsi said Tunisia will maintain the suspension of all flights by Emirates to and from Tunis until the UAE's government reconsiders its ban. He stressed the need to preserve the dignity of all Tunisian citizens in the country and abroad and to protect the rights of Tunisian women in all circumstances.</p>
<p>Tunisia summoned UAE's ambassador on Friday following Emirates' ban.</p>
<p>Speaking on Shems FM radio, Garrach, the Tunisian presidential spokeswoman, said the UAE decided on the targeted ban "swiftly, without notifying the Tunisian authorities and even their own ambassador in Tunis," given the "seriousness" of the information they held. While "understanding" the Emirati move, she said the way the UAE proceeded was "unacceptable" and required a "quick reaction" from Tunis.</p>
<p>In an apparent attempt to ease Tunisians' discontent, Gargash, the Emirati minister of state, tweeted that the UAE values Tunisian women and their "exemplary empowerment."</p>
<p>The barring of Tunisian women has caused anger among rights groups and political parties in Tunisia. In a joint statement, three rights groups described the UAE's move as "a violation of the basic rights of Tunisian women and agreements on the free movement of people."</p>
<p>A small protest was held outside the UAE Embassy in Tunis in the afternoon. Protesters called the decision "discriminatory" and "a humiliation to Tunisian women."</p>
<p>Since Friday, several Tunisian women have been barred from boarding Emirates flights in Tunis, Abu Dhabi and Beirut.</p>
<p>TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisia tried to smooth out emerging tensions with the United Arab Emirates on Monday after Emirates airline barred Tunisian women from boarding its flights and the North African country responded by suspending the Dubai-based carrier's operations in the air and on the ground.</p>
<p>The spokeswoman for the Tunisian presidency dismissed any notion of a "diplomatic crisis" between the two countries, expressing Tunisia's "understanding" of a decision made by the UAE's government to "protect its territory and its airlines."</p>
<p>After the Emirates' decision caused an outcry in Tunisia, the presidential spokeswoman had to speak publicly on a radio station to explain that the ban targeting Tunisian women followed alleged serious threats of attacks.</p>
<p>The spokeswoman, Saïda Garrach, said the UAE's authorities explained that they made the decision following "serious security information" about alleged plans for attacks by Tunisian women, or women with Tunisian passports, from "tense hotbeds" in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p>UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash tweeted that the ban was temporary and due to security reasons.</p>
<p>In a later written statement, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi "called for overcoming these problems as soon as possible to preserve the relations of brotherhood and cooperation between the two peoples of Tunisia and UAE."</p>
<p>But Caid Essebsi said Tunisia will maintain the suspension of all flights by Emirates to and from Tunis until the UAE's government reconsiders its ban. He stressed the need to preserve the dignity of all Tunisian citizens in the country and abroad and to protect the rights of Tunisian women in all circumstances.</p>
<p>Tunisia summoned UAE's ambassador on Friday following Emirates' ban.</p>
<p>Speaking on Shems FM radio, Garrach, the Tunisian presidential spokeswoman, said the UAE decided on the targeted ban "swiftly, without notifying the Tunisian authorities and even their own ambassador in Tunis," given the "seriousness" of the information they held. While "understanding" the Emirati move, she said the way the UAE proceeded was "unacceptable" and required a "quick reaction" from Tunis.</p>
<p>In an apparent attempt to ease Tunisians' discontent, Gargash, the Emirati minister of state, tweeted that the UAE values Tunisian women and their "exemplary empowerment."</p>
<p>The barring of Tunisian women has caused anger among rights groups and political parties in Tunisia. In a joint statement, three rights groups described the UAE's move as "a violation of the basic rights of Tunisian women and agreements on the free movement of people."</p>
<p>A small protest was held outside the UAE Embassy in Tunis in the afternoon. Protesters called the decision "discriminatory" and "a humiliation to Tunisian women."</p>
<p>Since Friday, several Tunisian women have been barred from boarding Emirates flights in Tunis, Abu Dhabi and Beirut.</p> | Tunisia tries to defuse tension with UAE amid airline spat | false | https://apnews.com/amp/b736ae0adc124394855399f6664c5ac1 | 2017-12-25 | 2least
| Tunisia tries to defuse tension with UAE amid airline spat
<p>TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisia tried to smooth out emerging tensions with the United Arab Emirates on Monday after Emirates airline barred Tunisian women from boarding its flights and the North African country responded by suspending the Dubai-based carrier's operations in the air and on the ground.</p>
<p>The spokeswoman for the Tunisian presidency dismissed any notion of a "diplomatic crisis" between the two countries, expressing Tunisia's "understanding" of a decision made by the UAE's government to "protect its territory and its airlines."</p>
<p>After the Emirates' decision caused an outcry in Tunisia, the presidential spokeswoman had to speak publicly on a radio station to explain that the ban targeting Tunisian women followed alleged serious threats of attacks.</p>
<p>The spokeswoman, Saïda Garrach, said the UAE's authorities explained that they made the decision following "serious security information" about alleged plans for attacks by Tunisian women, or women with Tunisian passports, from "tense hotbeds" in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p>UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash tweeted that the ban was temporary and due to security reasons.</p>
<p>In a later written statement, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi "called for overcoming these problems as soon as possible to preserve the relations of brotherhood and cooperation between the two peoples of Tunisia and UAE."</p>
<p>But Caid Essebsi said Tunisia will maintain the suspension of all flights by Emirates to and from Tunis until the UAE's government reconsiders its ban. He stressed the need to preserve the dignity of all Tunisian citizens in the country and abroad and to protect the rights of Tunisian women in all circumstances.</p>
<p>Tunisia summoned UAE's ambassador on Friday following Emirates' ban.</p>
<p>Speaking on Shems FM radio, Garrach, the Tunisian presidential spokeswoman, said the UAE decided on the targeted ban "swiftly, without notifying the Tunisian authorities and even their own ambassador in Tunis," given the "seriousness" of the information they held. While "understanding" the Emirati move, she said the way the UAE proceeded was "unacceptable" and required a "quick reaction" from Tunis.</p>
<p>In an apparent attempt to ease Tunisians' discontent, Gargash, the Emirati minister of state, tweeted that the UAE values Tunisian women and their "exemplary empowerment."</p>
<p>The barring of Tunisian women has caused anger among rights groups and political parties in Tunisia. In a joint statement, three rights groups described the UAE's move as "a violation of the basic rights of Tunisian women and agreements on the free movement of people."</p>
<p>A small protest was held outside the UAE Embassy in Tunis in the afternoon. Protesters called the decision "discriminatory" and "a humiliation to Tunisian women."</p>
<p>Since Friday, several Tunisian women have been barred from boarding Emirates flights in Tunis, Abu Dhabi and Beirut.</p>
<p>TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisia tried to smooth out emerging tensions with the United Arab Emirates on Monday after Emirates airline barred Tunisian women from boarding its flights and the North African country responded by suspending the Dubai-based carrier's operations in the air and on the ground.</p>
<p>The spokeswoman for the Tunisian presidency dismissed any notion of a "diplomatic crisis" between the two countries, expressing Tunisia's "understanding" of a decision made by the UAE's government to "protect its territory and its airlines."</p>
<p>After the Emirates' decision caused an outcry in Tunisia, the presidential spokeswoman had to speak publicly on a radio station to explain that the ban targeting Tunisian women followed alleged serious threats of attacks.</p>
<p>The spokeswoman, Saïda Garrach, said the UAE's authorities explained that they made the decision following "serious security information" about alleged plans for attacks by Tunisian women, or women with Tunisian passports, from "tense hotbeds" in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p>UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash tweeted that the ban was temporary and due to security reasons.</p>
<p>In a later written statement, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi "called for overcoming these problems as soon as possible to preserve the relations of brotherhood and cooperation between the two peoples of Tunisia and UAE."</p>
<p>But Caid Essebsi said Tunisia will maintain the suspension of all flights by Emirates to and from Tunis until the UAE's government reconsiders its ban. He stressed the need to preserve the dignity of all Tunisian citizens in the country and abroad and to protect the rights of Tunisian women in all circumstances.</p>
<p>Tunisia summoned UAE's ambassador on Friday following Emirates' ban.</p>
<p>Speaking on Shems FM radio, Garrach, the Tunisian presidential spokeswoman, said the UAE decided on the targeted ban "swiftly, without notifying the Tunisian authorities and even their own ambassador in Tunis," given the "seriousness" of the information they held. While "understanding" the Emirati move, she said the way the UAE proceeded was "unacceptable" and required a "quick reaction" from Tunis.</p>
<p>In an apparent attempt to ease Tunisians' discontent, Gargash, the Emirati minister of state, tweeted that the UAE values Tunisian women and their "exemplary empowerment."</p>
<p>The barring of Tunisian women has caused anger among rights groups and political parties in Tunisia. In a joint statement, three rights groups described the UAE's move as "a violation of the basic rights of Tunisian women and agreements on the free movement of people."</p>
<p>A small protest was held outside the UAE Embassy in Tunis in the afternoon. Protesters called the decision "discriminatory" and "a humiliation to Tunisian women."</p>
<p>Since Friday, several Tunisian women have been barred from boarding Emirates flights in Tunis, Abu Dhabi and Beirut.</p> | 2,109 |
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<p />
<p>McDonald's hopes it has a catchy, new deal that will be as hugely popular as its Dollar Menu. Early next year, the fast-food chain will launch the "McPick 2" menu, which will let customers pick two of the following items for $2: a McDouble, a McChicken, small fries and mozzarella sticks.</p>
<p>The offering has gained the necessary votes from franchisees to make it onto the national menu, and will be available in U.S. restaurants for a five-week run starting Jan. 4. After that, McDonald's said it may change the details of the offering, but that it plans to stick with the "McPick" concept and name.</p>
<p>It's just the latest effort by McDonald's to revive slumping sales with bigger moves, such as making breakfast items like Egg McMuffins available all day. The chain has also been trying to find a new way to attract deal seekers after moving away from the Dollar Menu, which was introduced more than a decade ago.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"As we moved away from the Dollar Menu, we didn't replace it with offers of an equivalent form of value. And customers have voted with their feet," CEO Steve Easterbrook said in July.</p>
<p>Whether the McPick menu catches on remains to be seen.</p>
<p>In an attempt to wean customers off the Dollar Menu in 2012, McDonald's rolled out an "Extra Value Menu" that offered items for a range of prices. After that failed to take hold, the company turned to the "Dollar Menu &amp; More," which channeled a proven name but may have confused people with its range of prices.</p>
<p>McDonald's isn't alone in struggling to get customers to let go of the $1 price. Wendy's tried replacing its 99-cent menu with a "Right Price Right Size" menu, but acknowledged the switch wasn't doing the job. Last month, it began promoting a limited-time "4 for $4" deal that includes a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger, chicken nuggets, fries and a drink.</p>
<p>Deborah Wahl, senior vice president of marketing for McDonald's U.S., said the McPick platform was designed to give people options.</p>
<p>"Customers are looking for choice and flexibility. That's sort of the new definition of value," she said.</p>
<p>While deals remain a staple in fast-food industry, striking on the right one can be tricky. Franchises pay for ingredients like beef and cheese and have to think about whether they can charge low prices and still make money. Companies, meanwhile, get a percentage of sales in royalty fees no matter what.</p>
<p>That can lead to tensions over pricing. In 2009, for instance, Burger King franchisees sued the company over a $1 double cheeseburger they said they were losing money on. The suit was later settled.</p>
<p>As for the McPick menu, McDonald's noted that it has wide support and gained a "high majority" of franchisee votes, although it declined to provide details. When asked whether franchisees in regions with higher costs such as New York might lose money on the offer, Wahl said the deal is designed to drive customer traffic into stores.</p>
<p>McDonald's Corp., based in Oak Brook, Illinois, said votes from franchisees on the McPick menu were finalized Monday, although it secured the needed votes for approval earlier.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Candice Choi at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/candicechoi" type="external">www.twitter.com/candicechoi</a></p> | ?McPick 2?: McDonald's new deal to replace Dollar Menu | false | https://abqjournal.com/676805/mcpick-2-mcdonalds-new-deal-to-replace-dollar-menu.html | 2least
| ?McPick 2?: McDonald's new deal to replace Dollar Menu
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>McDonald's hopes it has a catchy, new deal that will be as hugely popular as its Dollar Menu. Early next year, the fast-food chain will launch the "McPick 2" menu, which will let customers pick two of the following items for $2: a McDouble, a McChicken, small fries and mozzarella sticks.</p>
<p>The offering has gained the necessary votes from franchisees to make it onto the national menu, and will be available in U.S. restaurants for a five-week run starting Jan. 4. After that, McDonald's said it may change the details of the offering, but that it plans to stick with the "McPick" concept and name.</p>
<p>It's just the latest effort by McDonald's to revive slumping sales with bigger moves, such as making breakfast items like Egg McMuffins available all day. The chain has also been trying to find a new way to attract deal seekers after moving away from the Dollar Menu, which was introduced more than a decade ago.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"As we moved away from the Dollar Menu, we didn't replace it with offers of an equivalent form of value. And customers have voted with their feet," CEO Steve Easterbrook said in July.</p>
<p>Whether the McPick menu catches on remains to be seen.</p>
<p>In an attempt to wean customers off the Dollar Menu in 2012, McDonald's rolled out an "Extra Value Menu" that offered items for a range of prices. After that failed to take hold, the company turned to the "Dollar Menu &amp; More," which channeled a proven name but may have confused people with its range of prices.</p>
<p>McDonald's isn't alone in struggling to get customers to let go of the $1 price. Wendy's tried replacing its 99-cent menu with a "Right Price Right Size" menu, but acknowledged the switch wasn't doing the job. Last month, it began promoting a limited-time "4 for $4" deal that includes a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger, chicken nuggets, fries and a drink.</p>
<p>Deborah Wahl, senior vice president of marketing for McDonald's U.S., said the McPick platform was designed to give people options.</p>
<p>"Customers are looking for choice and flexibility. That's sort of the new definition of value," she said.</p>
<p>While deals remain a staple in fast-food industry, striking on the right one can be tricky. Franchises pay for ingredients like beef and cheese and have to think about whether they can charge low prices and still make money. Companies, meanwhile, get a percentage of sales in royalty fees no matter what.</p>
<p>That can lead to tensions over pricing. In 2009, for instance, Burger King franchisees sued the company over a $1 double cheeseburger they said they were losing money on. The suit was later settled.</p>
<p>As for the McPick menu, McDonald's noted that it has wide support and gained a "high majority" of franchisee votes, although it declined to provide details. When asked whether franchisees in regions with higher costs such as New York might lose money on the offer, Wahl said the deal is designed to drive customer traffic into stores.</p>
<p>McDonald's Corp., based in Oak Brook, Illinois, said votes from franchisees on the McPick menu were finalized Monday, although it secured the needed votes for approval earlier.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Candice Choi at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/candicechoi" type="external">www.twitter.com/candicechoi</a></p> | 2,110 |
|
<p>Israeli police detained billionaire Beny Steinmetz and four other men Monday, as part of an international fraud investigation spanning four continents.</p>
<p>The detainees allegedly “acted together and methodically with the prime suspect in order to create and present fictitious contracts and deals… on a foreign country in order to transfer funds and launder money,” an Israeli police spokesperson said as cited by Reuters.</p>
<p>לכל אחד מהמעורבים מיוחסות עבירות שונות, בהן הלבנת הון, זיוף מסמכים, רישום כוזב במסמכי תאגיד, מרמה והפרת אמונים, שיבוש הליכי משפט ושוחד</p>
<p>— משטרת ישראל (@IL_police) <a href="https://twitter.com/IL_police/status/896966033956888576" type="external">14 августа 2017 г.</a></p>
<p>The premises of the detainees were all searched as part of the investigation which involved the FBI, the Swiss police and the Israeli Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Prohibition Authority according to the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israeli-billionaire-arrested-in-international-money-laundering-probe-502366" type="external">Jerusalem Post</a>.</p>
<p>Tal Silberstein, a former consultant to the Austrian chancellor and former Israeli premier Ehud Barak, and David Granot, acting chairman of the Bezeq telecoms group, were also arrested as part of the raids.</p>
<p>The Austrian chancellor terminated Silberstein’s employment Monday, reports Haaretz.</p>
<p>Steinmetz, 60, has a net worth of $1.02 billion thanks to his real estate, engineering and mining empires, reports <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/beny-steinmetz/" type="external">Forbes</a>.</p>
<p>Both Steinmetz and Silberstein will be held in custody for four more days as authorities fear they might interfere with the investigation. &#160;</p>
<p>“The man has proved to us, with his capacities to interfere, that if he were to be released, he could take actions that would interfere with the investigation,” the officer in charge of the investigation Avshalom Ahrak testified in court, as cited by <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.806776" type="external">Haaretz</a>.</p>
<p>Steinmetz and his alleged accomplices are being held for questioning under caution “on suspicion of money laundering, fraudulent filing of corporate documents, fraud and corporate breach of trust, obstruction of justice and bribery.”</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/395911-soros-netanyahu-orban-billboard/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Steinmetz called the investigation a “political war” waged by George Soros, reports <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.806776" type="external">Haaretz</a>.</p>
<p>Steinmetz was previously placed under house arrest in December 2016 for a total of two weeks as part of a probe into allegations of bribery made against him and executives from his mining firm BSG Resources (BSGR).</p>
<p>At the time, police alleged he had paid top Guinean officials tens of millions of dollars in exchange for favorable contracts and licensing deals in the Simandou deposit, one of the world’s largest iron ore reserves in 2008.</p>
<p>The Guinean government launched its own retrospective investigation into how BSGR obtained the rights to the Simandou deposit.</p>
<p>At the time of the initial investigation, billionaire George Soros was reportedly advising the Guinean government. BSGR subsequently <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Soros.pdf" type="external">sued</a> Soros for allegedly scuttling the iron ore deal with the Guinean government, claiming $10 billion in damages.</p>
<p>“Soros was motivated solely by malice, as there was no economic interest he had in Guinea,” BSGR alleged in the suit.</p>
<p>A spokesman for Soros described the claims as a “desperate PR stunt meant to deflect attention from BSGR’s mounting legal problems across multiple jurisdictions,” as cited by <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/04/22/bsg-resources-still-hopes-regain-guinea-mine-despite-legal-strife/" type="external">The Telegraph</a>.</p> | Israeli billionaire Steinmetz detained in intl. fraud, forgery & money laundering probe | false | https://newsline.com/israeli-billionaire-steinmetz-detained-in-intl-fraud-forgery-money-laundering-probe/ | 2017-08-14 | 1right-center
| Israeli billionaire Steinmetz detained in intl. fraud, forgery & money laundering probe
<p>Israeli police detained billionaire Beny Steinmetz and four other men Monday, as part of an international fraud investigation spanning four continents.</p>
<p>The detainees allegedly “acted together and methodically with the prime suspect in order to create and present fictitious contracts and deals… on a foreign country in order to transfer funds and launder money,” an Israeli police spokesperson said as cited by Reuters.</p>
<p>לכל אחד מהמעורבים מיוחסות עבירות שונות, בהן הלבנת הון, זיוף מסמכים, רישום כוזב במסמכי תאגיד, מרמה והפרת אמונים, שיבוש הליכי משפט ושוחד</p>
<p>— משטרת ישראל (@IL_police) <a href="https://twitter.com/IL_police/status/896966033956888576" type="external">14 августа 2017 г.</a></p>
<p>The premises of the detainees were all searched as part of the investigation which involved the FBI, the Swiss police and the Israeli Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Prohibition Authority according to the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israeli-billionaire-arrested-in-international-money-laundering-probe-502366" type="external">Jerusalem Post</a>.</p>
<p>Tal Silberstein, a former consultant to the Austrian chancellor and former Israeli premier Ehud Barak, and David Granot, acting chairman of the Bezeq telecoms group, were also arrested as part of the raids.</p>
<p>The Austrian chancellor terminated Silberstein’s employment Monday, reports Haaretz.</p>
<p>Steinmetz, 60, has a net worth of $1.02 billion thanks to his real estate, engineering and mining empires, reports <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/beny-steinmetz/" type="external">Forbes</a>.</p>
<p>Both Steinmetz and Silberstein will be held in custody for four more days as authorities fear they might interfere with the investigation. &#160;</p>
<p>“The man has proved to us, with his capacities to interfere, that if he were to be released, he could take actions that would interfere with the investigation,” the officer in charge of the investigation Avshalom Ahrak testified in court, as cited by <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.806776" type="external">Haaretz</a>.</p>
<p>Steinmetz and his alleged accomplices are being held for questioning under caution “on suspicion of money laundering, fraudulent filing of corporate documents, fraud and corporate breach of trust, obstruction of justice and bribery.”</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/395911-soros-netanyahu-orban-billboard/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Steinmetz called the investigation a “political war” waged by George Soros, reports <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.806776" type="external">Haaretz</a>.</p>
<p>Steinmetz was previously placed under house arrest in December 2016 for a total of two weeks as part of a probe into allegations of bribery made against him and executives from his mining firm BSG Resources (BSGR).</p>
<p>At the time, police alleged he had paid top Guinean officials tens of millions of dollars in exchange for favorable contracts and licensing deals in the Simandou deposit, one of the world’s largest iron ore reserves in 2008.</p>
<p>The Guinean government launched its own retrospective investigation into how BSGR obtained the rights to the Simandou deposit.</p>
<p>At the time of the initial investigation, billionaire George Soros was reportedly advising the Guinean government. BSGR subsequently <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Soros.pdf" type="external">sued</a> Soros for allegedly scuttling the iron ore deal with the Guinean government, claiming $10 billion in damages.</p>
<p>“Soros was motivated solely by malice, as there was no economic interest he had in Guinea,” BSGR alleged in the suit.</p>
<p>A spokesman for Soros described the claims as a “desperate PR stunt meant to deflect attention from BSGR’s mounting legal problems across multiple jurisdictions,” as cited by <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/04/22/bsg-resources-still-hopes-regain-guinea-mine-despite-legal-strife/" type="external">The Telegraph</a>.</p> | 2,111 |
<p>I met my friend Chip years ago when he contacted me out of the blue about speaking at a tea party in Quincy. I immediately thought he was crazy. He had so much energy and talked big. Most people have ideas about how to change the world, Chip actually did it. Without credit. From the inside. Behind the scenes. There exist legends about people whose hearts are so big that they give all for nothing and are&#160;satisfied&#160;in the shade. Chip was that person. He passed away this morning of a heart attack. He leaves behind a beautiful wife and daughter. Please pray for them.</p>
<p>Back in 2009, when people were threatening my family, when I was being followed from the grocery store over the Kenneth Gladney incident, when I thought for a moment about quitting it all, Chip called me up.</p>
<p>“No f*cking way,” he said, verbatim, in his trademark forthrightness. I borrowed from his strength. He and Andrew Breitbart, friends they were, saw us through that time. He arranged for security and self defense lessons. I learned better.</p>
<p>He was the strategist. His stories are legend. I’ve used that word twice now because that’s the only way I can describe the man, a friend of so many.&#160;Most people couldn’t fathom all that he contributed to our movement. They simply don’t know. They don’t know how many victories he helped win for conservatives. They don’t know how he pitched in with fundraising behind the scenes. How he worked to turn blue districts red. How he encouraged and supported the next generation of conservatives. He always answered his phone. He always had a plan. He always had advice, most often given in his fast pitch with a cigarette perched on his lip. He was a happy warrior and most of the people who hated him were confused as to whether he disliked or liked them, such was his penchant for humorous warfare. Chip was the glue that kept a lot of things and people together. He was the peacemaker. He was the biggest Bama fan I knew. He was a family man. He was a diabolical genius.</p>
<p>He met adversity with a fist, especially for his friends. There are only two people in this modern movement who were so steadfast in the face of it all, they are now both gone. Any time is always too soon for such a man. We saw him just this weekend. You never think a final goodbye is just that, but I’m glad we got one.</p>
<p>I imagine he’s now giving a big hug to Andrew. Keep his spirit going. Rolltide.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Also:&#160; <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/05/today-we-lost-a-friend-and-patriot-rest-in-peace-chip-gerdes/" type="external">Jim Hoft remembers</a>.</p>
<p>A favorite Chip story:&#160; <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/cpac-chip-terd-chip-turd-gop-operative_b98947" type="external">Last year he was “Chip Turd.” This year, he’s “Chip Terd.”</a></p>
<p>*Update: More&#160;remembrances:</p>
<p><a href="http://theothermccain.com/2013/05/06/chip-gerdes-remembered/" type="external">RS McCain</a>:</p>
<p>The first rule of Chip Gerdes was, nobody talked about Chip Gerdes. In a world of political fame-junkies, nobody was so deliberately anonymous as the man whose Twitter handle was&#160; <a href="https://twitter.com/TookieW" type="external">@TookieW</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://rebelpundit.com/" type="external">Rebel Pundit</a>&#160;and Chip:</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>*UPDATE: Rep. Ann Wagner <a href="" type="internal">honored Chip</a> from the floor of the House.</p>
<p>&amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;gt;</p> | Prayers for a great man and his family | true | http://danaloeschradio.com/prayers-for-a-great-man-and-his-family/ | 2013-05-06 | 0right
| Prayers for a great man and his family
<p>I met my friend Chip years ago when he contacted me out of the blue about speaking at a tea party in Quincy. I immediately thought he was crazy. He had so much energy and talked big. Most people have ideas about how to change the world, Chip actually did it. Without credit. From the inside. Behind the scenes. There exist legends about people whose hearts are so big that they give all for nothing and are&#160;satisfied&#160;in the shade. Chip was that person. He passed away this morning of a heart attack. He leaves behind a beautiful wife and daughter. Please pray for them.</p>
<p>Back in 2009, when people were threatening my family, when I was being followed from the grocery store over the Kenneth Gladney incident, when I thought for a moment about quitting it all, Chip called me up.</p>
<p>“No f*cking way,” he said, verbatim, in his trademark forthrightness. I borrowed from his strength. He and Andrew Breitbart, friends they were, saw us through that time. He arranged for security and self defense lessons. I learned better.</p>
<p>He was the strategist. His stories are legend. I’ve used that word twice now because that’s the only way I can describe the man, a friend of so many.&#160;Most people couldn’t fathom all that he contributed to our movement. They simply don’t know. They don’t know how many victories he helped win for conservatives. They don’t know how he pitched in with fundraising behind the scenes. How he worked to turn blue districts red. How he encouraged and supported the next generation of conservatives. He always answered his phone. He always had a plan. He always had advice, most often given in his fast pitch with a cigarette perched on his lip. He was a happy warrior and most of the people who hated him were confused as to whether he disliked or liked them, such was his penchant for humorous warfare. Chip was the glue that kept a lot of things and people together. He was the peacemaker. He was the biggest Bama fan I knew. He was a family man. He was a diabolical genius.</p>
<p>He met adversity with a fist, especially for his friends. There are only two people in this modern movement who were so steadfast in the face of it all, they are now both gone. Any time is always too soon for such a man. We saw him just this weekend. You never think a final goodbye is just that, but I’m glad we got one.</p>
<p>I imagine he’s now giving a big hug to Andrew. Keep his spirit going. Rolltide.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Also:&#160; <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/05/today-we-lost-a-friend-and-patriot-rest-in-peace-chip-gerdes/" type="external">Jim Hoft remembers</a>.</p>
<p>A favorite Chip story:&#160; <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/cpac-chip-terd-chip-turd-gop-operative_b98947" type="external">Last year he was “Chip Turd.” This year, he’s “Chip Terd.”</a></p>
<p>*Update: More&#160;remembrances:</p>
<p><a href="http://theothermccain.com/2013/05/06/chip-gerdes-remembered/" type="external">RS McCain</a>:</p>
<p>The first rule of Chip Gerdes was, nobody talked about Chip Gerdes. In a world of political fame-junkies, nobody was so deliberately anonymous as the man whose Twitter handle was&#160; <a href="https://twitter.com/TookieW" type="external">@TookieW</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://rebelpundit.com/" type="external">Rebel Pundit</a>&#160;and Chip:</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>*UPDATE: Rep. Ann Wagner <a href="" type="internal">honored Chip</a> from the floor of the House.</p>
<p>&amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;gt;</p> | 2,112 |
<p>Technology is usually seen (and sold) as a&#160; <a href="https://vimeo.com/98720197" type="external">force for good</a>.&#160;New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman famously made the case a decade ago that technological innovation is creating a&#160; <a href="http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/the-world-is-flat" type="external">“flatter”</a>&#160;world. He traveled to the tech hub of Bangalore, India, where he found workers connecting to the global economy in ways never before possible.&#160;</p>
<p>His take-away? People everywhere are&#160;"on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world&#160;—&#160;using computers, e-mail, networks, teleconferencing and dynamic new software."</p>
<p>Former Microsoft researcher and computer scientist&#160; <a href="http://geekheresy.org/author/" type="external">Kentaro Toyama</a>&#160;has also traveled to Bangalore. He&#160;led Microsoft’s efforts in India to develop technology that could support socio-economic development in very poor areas.&#160;He took away a much different lesson from his time there.&#160;</p>
<p>"The real problem is that technology ultimately amplifies whatever underlying human capacities are already there. So, technology is great for people with a solid education, with great social ties, with influential political power. But, for exactly the people who don't have it, exactly the people who in theory some of these efforts are trying to address, they're the ones who can't make use of the technology in productive ways that many of us enjoy."</p>
<p>According to the United Nations, 2.7 billion people around the world&#160; <a href="http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/resources/fastfacts_e.htm" type="external">live on less than $2 a day</a>,&#160;and&#160;100 million children don’t get a basic education. Toyama says,&#160;“The reality is that the people [in impoverished areas] need so many other things before digital technology in any way could really support them [or] help them in their daily lives.”</p>
<p>Toyama is author of the new book,&#160; <a href="http://geekheresy.org/" type="external">Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology</a>. It takes direct aim at tech companies who envision a world cured of its ills by digital gadgetry.&#160;"If anybody is going to expend resources to serve people who are very poor, possibly very undereducated, I think that digital technology is one of the last things you'd want to invest in.”&#160;</p>
<p>For one thing, technology efforts like putting tablets and laptops in the hands of those who can’t afford them,&#160; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ipad-curriculum-refund-20150415-story.html#page=1" type="external">often fail</a>.&#160;In Los Angeles earlier this year, a $1.3 billion idea to put an iPad in the hands of every student, teacher and administrator went up in digital smoke.</p>
<p>"When they handed out iPads to some of the pilot schools, older students in particular very quickly learned to hack around all of the protective software that was meant to keep them focused on education. They found ways to use Facebook and other social media such as video games. And so, effectively what this tells you is the distractive potential of technology is so high that if you give it to the average child, they're not going to learn anything. They're going to end up further distracting themselves."</p>
<p>So, what do they need? Basic education, says Toyama. He often asks this rhetorical question: What would you give up first, your education or your technological gadgets?&#160;“For most people, this is a pretty simple choice,” says Toyama. "They'd rather keep their education with the understanding that with it they can do all kinds of things which would of course make up for the lack of technology and possibly allow them later on to gain the technology that they want."</p>
<p>A version of this story first aired as&#160;an&#160; <a href="http://blogs.wgbh.org/innovation-hub/2015/7/24/toyama-geek-heresy/" type="external">interview</a>&#160;on PRI's&#160; <a href="http://blogs.wgbh.org/innovation-hub/" type="external">Innovation Hub</a>.</p> | Integrating technology too tightly with education presents its own kind of problems | false | https://pri.org/stories/2015-07-27/integrating-technology-too-tightly-education-presents-its-own-kind-problems | 2015-07-27 | 3left-center
| Integrating technology too tightly with education presents its own kind of problems
<p>Technology is usually seen (and sold) as a&#160; <a href="https://vimeo.com/98720197" type="external">force for good</a>.&#160;New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman famously made the case a decade ago that technological innovation is creating a&#160; <a href="http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/the-world-is-flat" type="external">“flatter”</a>&#160;world. He traveled to the tech hub of Bangalore, India, where he found workers connecting to the global economy in ways never before possible.&#160;</p>
<p>His take-away? People everywhere are&#160;"on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world&#160;—&#160;using computers, e-mail, networks, teleconferencing and dynamic new software."</p>
<p>Former Microsoft researcher and computer scientist&#160; <a href="http://geekheresy.org/author/" type="external">Kentaro Toyama</a>&#160;has also traveled to Bangalore. He&#160;led Microsoft’s efforts in India to develop technology that could support socio-economic development in very poor areas.&#160;He took away a much different lesson from his time there.&#160;</p>
<p>"The real problem is that technology ultimately amplifies whatever underlying human capacities are already there. So, technology is great for people with a solid education, with great social ties, with influential political power. But, for exactly the people who don't have it, exactly the people who in theory some of these efforts are trying to address, they're the ones who can't make use of the technology in productive ways that many of us enjoy."</p>
<p>According to the United Nations, 2.7 billion people around the world&#160; <a href="http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/resources/fastfacts_e.htm" type="external">live on less than $2 a day</a>,&#160;and&#160;100 million children don’t get a basic education. Toyama says,&#160;“The reality is that the people [in impoverished areas] need so many other things before digital technology in any way could really support them [or] help them in their daily lives.”</p>
<p>Toyama is author of the new book,&#160; <a href="http://geekheresy.org/" type="external">Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology</a>. It takes direct aim at tech companies who envision a world cured of its ills by digital gadgetry.&#160;"If anybody is going to expend resources to serve people who are very poor, possibly very undereducated, I think that digital technology is one of the last things you'd want to invest in.”&#160;</p>
<p>For one thing, technology efforts like putting tablets and laptops in the hands of those who can’t afford them,&#160; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ipad-curriculum-refund-20150415-story.html#page=1" type="external">often fail</a>.&#160;In Los Angeles earlier this year, a $1.3 billion idea to put an iPad in the hands of every student, teacher and administrator went up in digital smoke.</p>
<p>"When they handed out iPads to some of the pilot schools, older students in particular very quickly learned to hack around all of the protective software that was meant to keep them focused on education. They found ways to use Facebook and other social media such as video games. And so, effectively what this tells you is the distractive potential of technology is so high that if you give it to the average child, they're not going to learn anything. They're going to end up further distracting themselves."</p>
<p>So, what do they need? Basic education, says Toyama. He often asks this rhetorical question: What would you give up first, your education or your technological gadgets?&#160;“For most people, this is a pretty simple choice,” says Toyama. "They'd rather keep their education with the understanding that with it they can do all kinds of things which would of course make up for the lack of technology and possibly allow them later on to gain the technology that they want."</p>
<p>A version of this story first aired as&#160;an&#160; <a href="http://blogs.wgbh.org/innovation-hub/2015/7/24/toyama-geek-heresy/" type="external">interview</a>&#160;on PRI's&#160; <a href="http://blogs.wgbh.org/innovation-hub/" type="external">Innovation Hub</a>.</p> | 2,113 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Xavier Nelson, 22, the driver of the car that is believed to have initiated the crash, was arrested and charged with reckless driving resulting in death, according to a criminal complaint provided by police.</p>
<p>Xavier Nelson, 22. (MDC)</p>
<p>The crash happened around 12:30 a.m. on southbound Interstate 25 near Montaño, APD officer Simon Drobik said.</p>
<p>Multiple witnesses reported seeing two cars racing on southbound I-25 at speeds between 85 to 110 mph, he said.</p>
<p>It appears Nelson’s car hit the back of a sport-utility vehicle traveling in the center lane at normal speeds, both vehicles rolled, and the girl was ejected from the SUV, according the complaint.</p>
<p>She died at the scene.</p>
<p>Three other passengers in the same vehicle were transported to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Drobik said the passengers taken to the hospital were the parents and sibling of the girl.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Police did not release the name of the victim.</p>
<p>While being searched after his arrest, officers found a bottle of unmarked prescription sedatives in Nelson’s pocket, according to the complaint. He is also being charged with the unlawful means of obtaining drugs.</p>
<p>Drobik said Nelson did not exhibit any signs of intoxication during the arrest.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 10-year-old girl dead after rollover in Albuquerque | false | https://abqjournal.com/887892/young-girl-killed-in-wreck-police-probe-report-of-racing.html | 2016-11-12 | 2least
| 10-year-old girl dead after rollover in Albuquerque
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Xavier Nelson, 22, the driver of the car that is believed to have initiated the crash, was arrested and charged with reckless driving resulting in death, according to a criminal complaint provided by police.</p>
<p>Xavier Nelson, 22. (MDC)</p>
<p>The crash happened around 12:30 a.m. on southbound Interstate 25 near Montaño, APD officer Simon Drobik said.</p>
<p>Multiple witnesses reported seeing two cars racing on southbound I-25 at speeds between 85 to 110 mph, he said.</p>
<p>It appears Nelson’s car hit the back of a sport-utility vehicle traveling in the center lane at normal speeds, both vehicles rolled, and the girl was ejected from the SUV, according the complaint.</p>
<p>She died at the scene.</p>
<p>Three other passengers in the same vehicle were transported to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Drobik said the passengers taken to the hospital were the parents and sibling of the girl.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Police did not release the name of the victim.</p>
<p>While being searched after his arrest, officers found a bottle of unmarked prescription sedatives in Nelson’s pocket, according to the complaint. He is also being charged with the unlawful means of obtaining drugs.</p>
<p>Drobik said Nelson did not exhibit any signs of intoxication during the arrest.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 2,114 |
<p />
<p>Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has made no bones about the fact that he <a href="" type="internal">plans to “investigate”</a> climate science and climate scientists when he chairs the House Oversight Committee in the next Congress. Same goes for Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), who wants to keep the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming alive only so he can make a mockery of the science.</p>
<p>So it was somewhat bizarre that Greg Sargent <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/11/eis_gop_really_holding_hearing.html" type="external">headlined a post yesterday</a>, “GOP leadership cool to hearings into ‘scientific fraud’ underlying global warming.” The post says that Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who hopes to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee, doesn’t plan to hold hearings on the science of climate change—only on the Environmental Protection Agency’s planned regulations for greenhouse gases, the stuff that’s warming the planet.</p>
<p>Where to begin? Well, first, this ignores that Issa has stated very clearly that he intends to hold hearings on the subject, among the <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Hundreds-of-Investigations-of-Obama-Administration-on-the-Horizon-5710" type="external">280 hearings</a> he has planned for 2011. We also have Sensenbrenner looking to rehash the science, though he, too, framed it as a regulatory oversight mission rather than an investigation of the science in an op-ed in Roll Call yesterday. “Now that Republicans have retaken the House, the Select Committee is more qualified than any other Congressional institution to ensure the administration doesn’t bend to unrealistic international demands—and that the EPA doesn’t attempt to do what Congress wouldn’t,” <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/128229-sensenbrenner-keep-house-climate-panel-as-a-check-against-epa" type="external">he wrote</a>.</p>
<p>Here’s the deal though. The idea that hearings about EPA regulations are not going to be about the underlying science is patently absurd. Barton and Sensenbrenner want to paint this as all about jobs and whether greenhouse gas regs are worth any possible cost to the economy. But neither Sensenbrenner, nor Barton, nor the vast majority of their Republican colleagues think that the planet is warming due to human activity. Thus, they will never agree that the EPA is right in their finding that greenhouse gases are a threat that needs to be regulated, or that any action is “worth” it, whether from the EPA or Congress. Barton and friends reject the fact that, under the direction of the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, the EPA determined that greenhouse gases do in fact pose a threat to human health and well-being and thus the agency is legally obligated to take action to reduce those emissions. Barton has been clear that he wants to go after the endangerment finding—which, by nature, is an assault on the scientific conclusion that these gases are warming the planet and putting humans in harm’s way.</p>
<p>Sargent’s post hints at the fact that the economic approach is just a different, more strategic way of coming at the issue, without recognizing that these same Republicans don’t think global warming is an issue in the first place:</p>
<p>Separately, the GOP leadership is apparently aware what a circus hearings into the allegedly fraudulent science underlying global warming would be — and how it would play into Dem efforts to paint Republicans as hostage to extremists.</p>
<p>“It’s just not the best strategy,” a senior GOP aide says. “The most effective way to fight the national energy tax is to talk about the economic effect and jobs.”</p>
<p>So GOP leaders realize that painting this as an assault on the science will only come across as loony to the American public, most of whom recognize that climate change is a threat. They’re shrewd enough to recast it as an economic issue, but all that doesn’t change the fact that we’re endangering ourselves by not taking action. Denying that is an assault on science, no matter how they frame it.</p>
<p /> | The Coming Assault on Climate Science | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/issa-barton-climate-science-epa/ | 2010-11-09 | 4left
| The Coming Assault on Climate Science
<p />
<p>Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has made no bones about the fact that he <a href="" type="internal">plans to “investigate”</a> climate science and climate scientists when he chairs the House Oversight Committee in the next Congress. Same goes for Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), who wants to keep the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming alive only so he can make a mockery of the science.</p>
<p>So it was somewhat bizarre that Greg Sargent <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/11/eis_gop_really_holding_hearing.html" type="external">headlined a post yesterday</a>, “GOP leadership cool to hearings into ‘scientific fraud’ underlying global warming.” The post says that Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who hopes to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee, doesn’t plan to hold hearings on the science of climate change—only on the Environmental Protection Agency’s planned regulations for greenhouse gases, the stuff that’s warming the planet.</p>
<p>Where to begin? Well, first, this ignores that Issa has stated very clearly that he intends to hold hearings on the subject, among the <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Hundreds-of-Investigations-of-Obama-Administration-on-the-Horizon-5710" type="external">280 hearings</a> he has planned for 2011. We also have Sensenbrenner looking to rehash the science, though he, too, framed it as a regulatory oversight mission rather than an investigation of the science in an op-ed in Roll Call yesterday. “Now that Republicans have retaken the House, the Select Committee is more qualified than any other Congressional institution to ensure the administration doesn’t bend to unrealistic international demands—and that the EPA doesn’t attempt to do what Congress wouldn’t,” <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/128229-sensenbrenner-keep-house-climate-panel-as-a-check-against-epa" type="external">he wrote</a>.</p>
<p>Here’s the deal though. The idea that hearings about EPA regulations are not going to be about the underlying science is patently absurd. Barton and Sensenbrenner want to paint this as all about jobs and whether greenhouse gas regs are worth any possible cost to the economy. But neither Sensenbrenner, nor Barton, nor the vast majority of their Republican colleagues think that the planet is warming due to human activity. Thus, they will never agree that the EPA is right in their finding that greenhouse gases are a threat that needs to be regulated, or that any action is “worth” it, whether from the EPA or Congress. Barton and friends reject the fact that, under the direction of the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, the EPA determined that greenhouse gases do in fact pose a threat to human health and well-being and thus the agency is legally obligated to take action to reduce those emissions. Barton has been clear that he wants to go after the endangerment finding—which, by nature, is an assault on the scientific conclusion that these gases are warming the planet and putting humans in harm’s way.</p>
<p>Sargent’s post hints at the fact that the economic approach is just a different, more strategic way of coming at the issue, without recognizing that these same Republicans don’t think global warming is an issue in the first place:</p>
<p>Separately, the GOP leadership is apparently aware what a circus hearings into the allegedly fraudulent science underlying global warming would be — and how it would play into Dem efforts to paint Republicans as hostage to extremists.</p>
<p>“It’s just not the best strategy,” a senior GOP aide says. “The most effective way to fight the national energy tax is to talk about the economic effect and jobs.”</p>
<p>So GOP leaders realize that painting this as an assault on the science will only come across as loony to the American public, most of whom recognize that climate change is a threat. They’re shrewd enough to recast it as an economic issue, but all that doesn’t change the fact that we’re endangering ourselves by not taking action. Denying that is an assault on science, no matter how they frame it.</p>
<p /> | 2,115 |
<p>SEOUL - South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won offered to resign Sunday over the government response to the ferry disaster, in which it was first announced that everyone had been rescued.</p>
<p>The Sewol ferry sank on a routine trip south from the port of Incheon to the traditional holiday island of Jeju on April 16.</p>
<p>More than 300 people, most of them students and teachers on a field trip from the Danwon High School on the outskirts of Seoul, have died or are missing and presumed dead.</p>
<p>The children on board the Sewol were told to stay put in their cabins, where they waited for further orders. The confirmed death toll on Sunday was 187.</p>
<p>As part of the investigation, prosecutors raided two shipping safety watchdogs and a coastguard office. They have also raided two vessel service centers, which act as maritime traffic control.</p>
<p>Chung's offer to resign has to be approved by President Park Geun-hye, who has the most power in government.</p>
<p>"Keeping my post too great a burden on the administration," a somber Chung said in a brief announcement. "... On behalf of the government, I apologize for many problems from the prevention of the accident to the early handling of the disaster."</p>
<p>Chung was booed and someone threw a water bottle at him when he visited grieving parents the day after the disaster. President Park was also booed by some relatives when she visited a gym where families of the missing were staying.</p>
<p>Tempers have frayed over the slow pace of the recovery and frequent changes in information provided by the government.</p>
<p>The Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education sent text messages to parents that "All Danwon High School students are rescued" in the hours after the disaster, media reported.</p> | South Korea Prime Minister Offers Resignation in Ferry Disaster | false | http://nbcnews.com/storyline/south-korea-ferry-disaster/south-korea-prime-minister-offers-resignation-ferry-disaster-n90591 | 2014-04-27 | 3left-center
| South Korea Prime Minister Offers Resignation in Ferry Disaster
<p>SEOUL - South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won offered to resign Sunday over the government response to the ferry disaster, in which it was first announced that everyone had been rescued.</p>
<p>The Sewol ferry sank on a routine trip south from the port of Incheon to the traditional holiday island of Jeju on April 16.</p>
<p>More than 300 people, most of them students and teachers on a field trip from the Danwon High School on the outskirts of Seoul, have died or are missing and presumed dead.</p>
<p>The children on board the Sewol were told to stay put in their cabins, where they waited for further orders. The confirmed death toll on Sunday was 187.</p>
<p>As part of the investigation, prosecutors raided two shipping safety watchdogs and a coastguard office. They have also raided two vessel service centers, which act as maritime traffic control.</p>
<p>Chung's offer to resign has to be approved by President Park Geun-hye, who has the most power in government.</p>
<p>"Keeping my post too great a burden on the administration," a somber Chung said in a brief announcement. "... On behalf of the government, I apologize for many problems from the prevention of the accident to the early handling of the disaster."</p>
<p>Chung was booed and someone threw a water bottle at him when he visited grieving parents the day after the disaster. President Park was also booed by some relatives when she visited a gym where families of the missing were staying.</p>
<p>Tempers have frayed over the slow pace of the recovery and frequent changes in information provided by the government.</p>
<p>The Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education sent text messages to parents that "All Danwon High School students are rescued" in the hours after the disaster, media reported.</p> | 2,116 |
<p />
<p />
<p>Recently, it was <a href="http://www.kvoa.com/news/prayer-on-the-playing-field-football-coach-says-he-was-let-go-for-letting-players-pray/" type="external">reported</a> (above) reported that Catalina Foothills High School volunteer freshman football coach Gary Weiss was dismissed from his position. And the reason will infuriate you!</p>
<p />
<p>Weiss claimed he was told by the local Arizona school district to tell the football player players to stop praying before and after games or he would be let go. However, when he refused to do so, he was escorted off school property. The coach said he was concerned about the rights of the students to religious expression, guaranteed by the Constitution.</p>
<p />
<p>But Superintendent Mary Kamerzell said:</p>
<p>Nothing limits the authority of the school/district to maintain order and discipline on school premises, to protect the well-being of students, and to assure that participation in such an activity is voluntary on the part of the students.</p>
<p>“Nothing limits” the power of the school to stop teams from praying together? And how is praying dangerous to their well-being?</p>
<p />
<p>Do you support Coach Weiss and the other Arizona coaches who are standing up for the 1st Amendment and religious expression? Please share this story and leave us a comment.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/ElainaMatte/status/510857479589093376" type="external" /></p>
<p /> | School Tells Football Team to STOP PRAYING… But the Coach Refuses to Comply | true | http://thepoliticalinsider.com/school-tells-football-team-stop-praying-coach-refuses-comply/ | 2014-09-29 | 0right
| School Tells Football Team to STOP PRAYING… But the Coach Refuses to Comply
<p />
<p />
<p>Recently, it was <a href="http://www.kvoa.com/news/prayer-on-the-playing-field-football-coach-says-he-was-let-go-for-letting-players-pray/" type="external">reported</a> (above) reported that Catalina Foothills High School volunteer freshman football coach Gary Weiss was dismissed from his position. And the reason will infuriate you!</p>
<p />
<p>Weiss claimed he was told by the local Arizona school district to tell the football player players to stop praying before and after games or he would be let go. However, when he refused to do so, he was escorted off school property. The coach said he was concerned about the rights of the students to religious expression, guaranteed by the Constitution.</p>
<p />
<p>But Superintendent Mary Kamerzell said:</p>
<p>Nothing limits the authority of the school/district to maintain order and discipline on school premises, to protect the well-being of students, and to assure that participation in such an activity is voluntary on the part of the students.</p>
<p>“Nothing limits” the power of the school to stop teams from praying together? And how is praying dangerous to their well-being?</p>
<p />
<p>Do you support Coach Weiss and the other Arizona coaches who are standing up for the 1st Amendment and religious expression? Please share this story and leave us a comment.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/ElainaMatte/status/510857479589093376" type="external" /></p>
<p /> | 2,117 |
<p />
<p>As part of our special investigation “ <a href="/news/feature/2008/09/mission-creep.html" type="external">Mission Creep: US Military Presence Worldwide</a>,” we asked a host of military thinkers to contribute their two cents on topics relating to global Pentagon strategy. (You can access the archive <a href="/news/feature/2008/10/military-dispatches.html" type="external">here</a>.)</p>
<p>The following dispatch comes from <a href="http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/william_d_hartung" type="external">William D. Hartung</a>, director of the <a href="http://www.newamerica.net/programs/american_strategy/arms_security" type="external">Arms and Security Initiative</a> at the New America Foundation and coeditor (with Miriam Pemberton) of the recent book <a href="http://www.newamerica.net/publications/books/lessons_iraq" type="external">Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War</a>.</p>
<p>How Can We Reduce the US Military Footprint?</p>
<p>Mother Jones‘ map and articles on the US global military footprint are mind-boggling, but rather than be intimidated by these facts on the ground, we need to think about what can be done about them. Chalmers Johnson <a href="/news/feature/2008/09/chalmers-johnson-on-pentagon.html" type="external">suggests</a> that the US empire may be the last of its kind, with the main political issue soon becoming “empire liquidation—peaceful or otherwise.” As he rightly notes, maintaining 761 military facilities in 192 UN member states is “a remarkable example of imperial overstretch.” The question of whether US imperial decline will be peaceful or violent hinges on two key questions, one culturally and psychologically driven, and one militarily driven.</p>
<p>A peaceful retreat from military globalism will require a psychological shift for many Americans who view being citizens of the greatest military power on earth as part of their birthright. If this hurdle can be overcome, the next issue will be reducing the materialist impulse that reinforces the disproportionate use of the world’s resources by the United States. The greatest contribution to this effort would be a genuine policy for reducing energy usage and implementing clean-energy solutions; a policy of this sort would diminish US dependence on corrupt tyrants while reducing the likelihood of conflict with major powers like <a href="/news/feature/2008/01/the-last-empire.html" type="external">China</a> and <a href="/arts/books/2007/06/anna.html" type="external">Russia</a>—not to mention helping to head off catastrophic climate change.</p>
<p>A second key to a graceful fall from empire is the elaboration of a more practical military policy. As <a href="/commentary/tomdispatch/2008/08/is-perpetual-war-our-future.html" type="external">Andrew Bacevich notes</a>, we don’t need a bigger military; we need a more modest set of military objectives. Defending the US and its key allies against military attack is one sort of policy; the Bush policy of preventive war—attacking countries like Iraq that may or may not pose a threat to US interests at some time in the future—is quite another. And even the notion of a defensive posture must take into account the fact that many US allies are quite capable of defending themselves, thereby further undercutting the argument for sustaining an extensive global network of military facilities.</p>
<p>The issue of the US military footprint is not being discussed by the presidential contenders. That said, <a href="" type="internal">Zbigniew Brzezinski’s suggestion</a> for a panel to review US global military commitments and cut back those that aren’t essential to US security offers a glimmer of hope that there could be a rational discussion of this matter in establishment circles.</p>
<p>While closing major bases can have many benefits, from restoring sovereignty to the people whose land these facilities occupy to eliminating sources of environmental degradation, the larger question goes beyond bases. As Herbert Docena indicates in <a href="/news/feature/2008/09/filipinos-gis-pentagon.html" type="external">his analysis</a> of the evolving US presence in the Philippines, a country can serve the same functions that used to be supplied by large military bases via a more diffuse and episodic presence. Why should Washington seek to restore access to large, provocative bases like those at Clark and Subic Bay when the US military can conduct 37 exercises in the Philippines in a single year and build US-friendly military infrastructure for use as needed?</p>
<p>The bottom line is whether the United States should continue to pursue the capacity to intervene militarily in virtually every country on the planet—via aircraft carrier task forces, or long-range conventional weapons systems, or, eventually, even space-based armaments. This question needs to be part of any debate about US overseas bases.</p>
<p>More Dispatches</p>
<p><a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9722_mission_creep_d.html" type="external">Robert Kaplan</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9729_mission_creep_d_1.html" type="external">Katherine McCaffrey</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9731_mission-creep-winslow-wheeler.html" type="external">Winslow Wheeler</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9733_mission-creep-steven-metz.html" type="external">Steven Metz</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9775_mission-creep-douglas-lummis.html" type="external">C. Douglas Lummis</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9777_mission-creep-douglas-macgregor.html" type="external">Douglas Macgregor</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9778_mission-creep-john-nagl.html" type="external">John Nagl</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9789_mission-creep-john-lindsay-poland.html" type="external">John Lindsay-Poland</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9791_mission-creep-john-feffer.html" type="external">John Feffer</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9932_mission-creep-catherine-lutz.html" type="external">Catherine Lutz</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9956_mission-creep-peter-beck.html" type="external">Peter Beck</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/10/9957_mission-creep-nick-turse.html" type="external">Nick Turse</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/10/10037_mission-creep-john-pike.html" type="external">John Pike</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/10/9958_mission-creep-mark-selden.html" type="external">Mark Selden</a></p>
<p /> | Mission Creep Dispatch: William Hartung | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2008/09/mission-creep-dispatch-william-hartung/ | 2008-09-24 | 4left
| Mission Creep Dispatch: William Hartung
<p />
<p>As part of our special investigation “ <a href="/news/feature/2008/09/mission-creep.html" type="external">Mission Creep: US Military Presence Worldwide</a>,” we asked a host of military thinkers to contribute their two cents on topics relating to global Pentagon strategy. (You can access the archive <a href="/news/feature/2008/10/military-dispatches.html" type="external">here</a>.)</p>
<p>The following dispatch comes from <a href="http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/william_d_hartung" type="external">William D. Hartung</a>, director of the <a href="http://www.newamerica.net/programs/american_strategy/arms_security" type="external">Arms and Security Initiative</a> at the New America Foundation and coeditor (with Miriam Pemberton) of the recent book <a href="http://www.newamerica.net/publications/books/lessons_iraq" type="external">Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War</a>.</p>
<p>How Can We Reduce the US Military Footprint?</p>
<p>Mother Jones‘ map and articles on the US global military footprint are mind-boggling, but rather than be intimidated by these facts on the ground, we need to think about what can be done about them. Chalmers Johnson <a href="/news/feature/2008/09/chalmers-johnson-on-pentagon.html" type="external">suggests</a> that the US empire may be the last of its kind, with the main political issue soon becoming “empire liquidation—peaceful or otherwise.” As he rightly notes, maintaining 761 military facilities in 192 UN member states is “a remarkable example of imperial overstretch.” The question of whether US imperial decline will be peaceful or violent hinges on two key questions, one culturally and psychologically driven, and one militarily driven.</p>
<p>A peaceful retreat from military globalism will require a psychological shift for many Americans who view being citizens of the greatest military power on earth as part of their birthright. If this hurdle can be overcome, the next issue will be reducing the materialist impulse that reinforces the disproportionate use of the world’s resources by the United States. The greatest contribution to this effort would be a genuine policy for reducing energy usage and implementing clean-energy solutions; a policy of this sort would diminish US dependence on corrupt tyrants while reducing the likelihood of conflict with major powers like <a href="/news/feature/2008/01/the-last-empire.html" type="external">China</a> and <a href="/arts/books/2007/06/anna.html" type="external">Russia</a>—not to mention helping to head off catastrophic climate change.</p>
<p>A second key to a graceful fall from empire is the elaboration of a more practical military policy. As <a href="/commentary/tomdispatch/2008/08/is-perpetual-war-our-future.html" type="external">Andrew Bacevich notes</a>, we don’t need a bigger military; we need a more modest set of military objectives. Defending the US and its key allies against military attack is one sort of policy; the Bush policy of preventive war—attacking countries like Iraq that may or may not pose a threat to US interests at some time in the future—is quite another. And even the notion of a defensive posture must take into account the fact that many US allies are quite capable of defending themselves, thereby further undercutting the argument for sustaining an extensive global network of military facilities.</p>
<p>The issue of the US military footprint is not being discussed by the presidential contenders. That said, <a href="" type="internal">Zbigniew Brzezinski’s suggestion</a> for a panel to review US global military commitments and cut back those that aren’t essential to US security offers a glimmer of hope that there could be a rational discussion of this matter in establishment circles.</p>
<p>While closing major bases can have many benefits, from restoring sovereignty to the people whose land these facilities occupy to eliminating sources of environmental degradation, the larger question goes beyond bases. As Herbert Docena indicates in <a href="/news/feature/2008/09/filipinos-gis-pentagon.html" type="external">his analysis</a> of the evolving US presence in the Philippines, a country can serve the same functions that used to be supplied by large military bases via a more diffuse and episodic presence. Why should Washington seek to restore access to large, provocative bases like those at Clark and Subic Bay when the US military can conduct 37 exercises in the Philippines in a single year and build US-friendly military infrastructure for use as needed?</p>
<p>The bottom line is whether the United States should continue to pursue the capacity to intervene militarily in virtually every country on the planet—via aircraft carrier task forces, or long-range conventional weapons systems, or, eventually, even space-based armaments. This question needs to be part of any debate about US overseas bases.</p>
<p>More Dispatches</p>
<p><a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9722_mission_creep_d.html" type="external">Robert Kaplan</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9729_mission_creep_d_1.html" type="external">Katherine McCaffrey</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9731_mission-creep-winslow-wheeler.html" type="external">Winslow Wheeler</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9733_mission-creep-steven-metz.html" type="external">Steven Metz</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9775_mission-creep-douglas-lummis.html" type="external">C. Douglas Lummis</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9777_mission-creep-douglas-macgregor.html" type="external">Douglas Macgregor</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9778_mission-creep-john-nagl.html" type="external">John Nagl</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9789_mission-creep-john-lindsay-poland.html" type="external">John Lindsay-Poland</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9791_mission-creep-john-feffer.html" type="external">John Feffer</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9932_mission-creep-catherine-lutz.html" type="external">Catherine Lutz</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9956_mission-creep-peter-beck.html" type="external">Peter Beck</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/10/9957_mission-creep-nick-turse.html" type="external">Nick Turse</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/10/10037_mission-creep-john-pike.html" type="external">John Pike</a> <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/10/9958_mission-creep-mark-selden.html" type="external">Mark Selden</a></p>
<p /> | 2,118 |
<p>The director of the popular video " <a href="http://www.kony2012.com/" type="external">Kony 2012</a>" about brutal African warlord Joseph Kony has been diagnosed with a mental condition commonly triggered by trauma or stress.</p>
<p>His wife says he is likely to stay in the hospital for weeks, according to the <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/wife-kony-2012-director-suffers-psychosis-153859750.html" type="external">Associated Press</a>.</p>
<p>Jason Russell was hospitalized last week in San Diego after witnesses saw him running through the streets in his underwear, incoherently banging his fists on the pavement.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/120317/kony-2012-uganda-prime-minister-amama-mbabazi-makes-youtube-rebu" type="external">Uganda Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi makes a YouTube rebuttal</a></p>
<p>His family now says the outburst was not due to alcohol or drugs, but instead, doctors say Russell has "reactive psychosis," in which a person displays sudden psychotic behavior, according to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17468999" type="external">BBC</a>.</p>
<p>"Doctors say this is a common experience given the great mental, emotional and physical shock his body has gone through in these last two weeks," Danica Russell said. "Even for us, it's hard to understand the sudden transition from relative anonymity to worldwide attention - both raves and ridicules," the AP reported.</p>
<p>It is believed that the episode was brought on by the stress and scrunity he has received since his video went viral on the internet. "Kony 2012" has been viewed by an estimated 83 million people on YouTube.</p>
<p>His success has also brought attention, some negative, to his group <a href="http://www.invisiblechildren.com/" type="external">Invisible Children</a>, which he co-founded in 2005 to fight African war atrocities.</p>
<p>Critics say the 30-minute campaign <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/Africa-Monitor/2012/0321/Kony-2012-Five-heretical-thoughts-on-the-fracas" type="external">video is simplistic</a>and does not explain what lead to the rise of Kony's Lord's Resistance Army or the current situation in Uganda.</p> | 'Kony 2012' director is treated for psychosis, wife says | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-03-22/kony-2012-director-treated-psychosis-wife-says | 2012-03-22 | 3left-center
| 'Kony 2012' director is treated for psychosis, wife says
<p>The director of the popular video " <a href="http://www.kony2012.com/" type="external">Kony 2012</a>" about brutal African warlord Joseph Kony has been diagnosed with a mental condition commonly triggered by trauma or stress.</p>
<p>His wife says he is likely to stay in the hospital for weeks, according to the <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/wife-kony-2012-director-suffers-psychosis-153859750.html" type="external">Associated Press</a>.</p>
<p>Jason Russell was hospitalized last week in San Diego after witnesses saw him running through the streets in his underwear, incoherently banging his fists on the pavement.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/120317/kony-2012-uganda-prime-minister-amama-mbabazi-makes-youtube-rebu" type="external">Uganda Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi makes a YouTube rebuttal</a></p>
<p>His family now says the outburst was not due to alcohol or drugs, but instead, doctors say Russell has "reactive psychosis," in which a person displays sudden psychotic behavior, according to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17468999" type="external">BBC</a>.</p>
<p>"Doctors say this is a common experience given the great mental, emotional and physical shock his body has gone through in these last two weeks," Danica Russell said. "Even for us, it's hard to understand the sudden transition from relative anonymity to worldwide attention - both raves and ridicules," the AP reported.</p>
<p>It is believed that the episode was brought on by the stress and scrunity he has received since his video went viral on the internet. "Kony 2012" has been viewed by an estimated 83 million people on YouTube.</p>
<p>His success has also brought attention, some negative, to his group <a href="http://www.invisiblechildren.com/" type="external">Invisible Children</a>, which he co-founded in 2005 to fight African war atrocities.</p>
<p>Critics say the 30-minute campaign <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/Africa-Monitor/2012/0321/Kony-2012-Five-heretical-thoughts-on-the-fracas" type="external">video is simplistic</a>and does not explain what lead to the rise of Kony's Lord's Resistance Army or the current situation in Uganda.</p> | 2,119 |
<p />
<p>The Government has secretly ramped up a controversial programme that strips people of their British citizenship on national security grounds – with two of the men subsequently killed by American drone attacks.</p>
<p>An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for&#160;The Independent&#160;has established that since 2010, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, has revoked the passports of 16 individuals, many of whom are alleged to have had links to militant or terrorist groups.</p>
<p>Critics of the programme warn that it allows ministers to “wash their hands” of British nationals suspected of terrorism who could be subject to torture and illegal detention abroad.</p>
<p>They add that it also allows those stripped of their citizenship to be killed or “rendered” without any onus on the British Government to intervene.</p>
<p>At least five of those deprived of their UK nationality by the Coalition were born in Britain, and one man had lived in the country for almost 50 years. Those affected have their passports cancelled, and lose their right to enter the UK – making it very difficult to appeal against the Home Secretary’s decision. Last night the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader Simon Hughes said he was writing to Ms May to call for an urgent review into how the law was being implemented.</p>
<p>The leading human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce said the present situation “smacked of mediaeval exile, just as cruel and just as arbitrary”.</p>
<p>Ian Macdonald QC, the president of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, described the citizenship orders as “sinister”.</p>
<p>“They’re using executive powers and I think they’re using them quite wrongly,” he said.&#160; “It’s not open government; it’s closed, and it needs to be exposed.”</p>
<p>Laws were passed in 2002 enabling the Home Secretary to remove the citizenship of any dual nationals who had done something “seriously prejudicial” to the UK, but the power had rarely been used before the current government took office.</p>
<p>The Bureau’s investigation has established the identities of all but four of the 21 British passport holders who have lost their citizenship, and their subsequent fates. Only two have successfully appealed – one of whom has since been extradited to the US.</p>
<p>In many cases those involved cannot be named because of ongoing legal action. The Bureau has also found evidence that government officials act when people are out of the country – on two occasions while on holiday – before cancelling passports and revoking citizenships.</p>
<p>Those targeted include Bilal al-Berjawi, a British-Lebanese citizen who came to the UK as a baby and grew up in London, but left for Somalia in 2009 with his close friend the British-born Mohamed Sakr, who also held Egyptian nationality.</p>
<p>Both had been the subject of extensive surveillance by British intelligence, with the security services concerned they were involved in terrorist activities.</p>
<p>Once in Somalia, the two reportedly became involved with al-Shabaab, the Islamist militant group with links to al-Qa’ida. Mr Berjawi was said to have risen to a senior position in the organisation, with Mr Sakr his “right-hand man”.</p>
<p>In 2010, Theresa May stripped both men of their British nationalities and they soon became targets in an ultimately lethal US manhunt.</p>
<p>In June 2011 Mr Berjawi was wounded in the first known US drone strike in Somalia and last year he was killed by a drone strike – within hours of calling his wife in London to congratulate her on the birth of their first son.</p>
<p>His family have claimed that US forces were able to pinpoint his location by monitoring the call he made to his wife in the UK. Mr Sakr, too, was killed in a US airstrike in February 2012, although his British origins have not been revealed until now.</p>
<p>Mr Sakr’s former UK solicitor said there appeared to be a link between the Home Secretary removing citizenships and subsequent US actions.</p>
<p>“It appears that the process of deprivation of citizenship made it easier for the US to then designate Mr Sakr as an enemy combatant, to whom the UK owes no responsibility whatsoever,” Saghir Hussain said.</p>
<p>Mr Macdonald added that depriving people of their citizenship “means that the British government can completely wash their hands if the security services give information to the Americans who use their drones to track someone and kill them.”</p>
<p>The campaign group CagePrisoners is in touch with many families of those affected. Its executive director Asim Qureshi said the Bureau’s findings were deeply troubling for Britons from an ethnic minority background.</p>
<p>“We all feel just as British as everybody else, and yet just because our parents came from another country, we can be subjected to an arbitrary process where we are no longer members of this country any more,” he said.</p>
<p>“I think that’s extremely dangerous because it will speak to people’s fears about how they’re viewed by their own government, especially when they come from certain areas of the world.”</p>
<p>The Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes said that, while he accepted there were often real security concerns, he was worried that those who were innocent of Home Office charges against them and were trying to appeal risked finding themselves in a “political and constitutional limbo”.</p>
<p>“There was clearly always a risk when the law was changed seven years ago that the executive could act to take citizenship away in circumstances that were more frequent or more extensive than those envisaged by ministers at the time,” he said.</p>
<p>“I’m concerned at the growing number of people who appear to have lost their right to citizenship. I plan to write to the Home Secretary and the Home Affairs Select Committee to ask for their assessment of the situation, and for a review of whether the act is working as intended.”</p>
<p>Ms Peirce, a leading immigration defence lawyer, said, “British citizens are being banished from their own country, being stripped of a core part of their identity yet without a single word of explanation of why they have been singled out and dubbed a risk,” she said.</p>
<p>Families are sometimes affected by the Home Secretary’s decisions. Parents may have to choose whether their British children remain in the UK, or join their father in exile abroad.</p>
<p>In a case known only as L1, a Sudanese-British man took his four British children on holiday to Sudan, along with his wife, who had limited leave to remain in the UK. Four days after his departure, Theresa May decided to strip him of his citizenship.</p>
<p>With their father excluded from the UK and their mother’s lack of permanent right to remain, the order effectively blocks the children from growing up in Britain. At the time of the order the children were aged between eight and 13 months.</p>
<p>The judge, despite recognising their right to be brought up in Britain, ruled that the grounds on which their father’s citizenship was revoked “outweighed” the rights of the children.</p>
<p>Mr Justice Mitting, sitting in the semi-secret Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac), said: “We accept it is unlikely to be in the best interests of the appellant’s children that he should be deprived of his British citizenship…</p>
<p>“They are British citizens, with a right of abode in the UK.</p>
<p>“They are of an age when that right cannot, in practice, be enjoyed if both of their parents cannot return to the United Kingdom.”</p>
<p>Yet he added that Theresa May was “unlikely to have made that decision without substantial and plausible grounds”.</p>
<p>In another case, a man born in Newcastle in 1963 and three of his London-born sons all lost their citizenship two years ago while in Pakistan.</p>
<p>An expert witness told Siac that those in the family’s situation may be at risk&#160; from the country’s government agencies and militant groups. Yet Siac recently ruled that the UK “owed no obligation” to those at risk of “any subsequent act of the Pakistani state or of non-state actors [militant groups] in Pakistan”.</p>
<p>The mother, herself a naturalised British citizen, now wants to return here in the interests of her youngest son, who has developmental needs. Although 15, he is said to be “dependent upon [his mother and father] for emotional and practical support”.</p>
<p>His mother claimed he “has no hope of education in Pakistan’. But the mother has diabetes and mobility problems that mean she “does not feel able to return on her own, with or without [her son].”</p>
<p>Mr Justice Mitting ruled that the deprivation of citizenship of the family’s father had “undoubtedly had an impact on the private and family life of his wife and youngest son, both of whom remain British citizens”. But he added that the father posed such a threat to national security that the “unavoidable incidental impact” on his wife and youngest son was “justifiable”, and dismissed the appeal.</p>
<p>A Home Office spokeswoman said: “Citizenship is a privilege not a right. The Home Secretary has the power to remove citizenship from individuals where she considers it is conducive to the public good. An individual subject to deprivation can appeal to the courts.”</p>
<p>She added: “We don’t routinely comment on individual deprivation cases.”</p>
<p>Asked whether intelligence was provided to foreign governments, she said: “We don’t comment on intelligence issues. Drone strikes are a matter for the states concerned.”</p>
<p>Mahdi Hashi: From Camden care worker to US prisoner</p>
<p>Mahdi Hashi, a former care worker from Camden in north London, was well known to Britain’s security services – in fact they tried to recruit him when he was 19.</p>
<p>Now 23, Mr Hashi is in a high-security US prison having been secretly “rendered” from the African state of Djibouti last year.</p>
<p>Mr Hashi claims that before being sent to the US on charges of working with the terrorist group al-Shabaab he witnessed torture in an African prison, before being handed over to the CIA and forced to sign a confession.</p>
<p>Despite Mr Hashi being brought up in the UK, the British Government has washed its hands of him, having stripped him of his citizenship shortly before he disappeared in Somalia last summer.</p>
<p>His UK family say that when they lost contact with their son they approached the Foreign Office for help. But they were told by officials that they could not provide assistance because the Home Secretary had issued an order depriving him of his British citizenship.</p>
<p>It was only five months later, when he re-appeared in the US, that they were able to contact him again. The family’s lawyer, Saghir Hussain, said at the time: “The UK Government has a lot of explaining to do. What role did it play in getting him kidnapped, held in secret detention and renditioned to the US?”</p>
<p>The case has led to allegations that Britain may have conspired with the US to strip Mr Hashi of his citizenship knowing he would be arrested in Africa. They have no further obligations towards him and can avoid potentially embarrassing questions about his treatment before his rendition.</p>
<p>The case is all the more bizarre as Mr Hashi gave an interview to&#160;The Independent&#160;in 2009 when he alleged that MI5 had attempted to recruit him. He claimed that on a previous trip to Africa he was held for 16 hours in a cell at Djibouti airport, and that when he was returned to the UK he was met by an MI5 agent who told him his terror-suspect status would remain until he agreed to work for the Security Service. He alleges he was to be given the job of informing on his friends by encouraging them to talk about jihad.</p>
<p>Mohamed Sakr: The British car valet killed by a drone strike</p>
<p>In February last year, international agencies in Africa reported that “four foreign Islamist militants” had been killed in a drone strike south of Somalia’s capital, a day after the country’s Prime Minister called for foreign air strikes against the terror group al-Shabaab.</p>
<p>At the time a senior Western intelligence officer was quoted as saying that a “very senior Egyptian was killed” in the raid, along with three Kenyans and a Somali.</p>
<p>That was technically true – but in reality the Egyptian had not even been born in the country for which he held a passport. It would have been more accurate to describe him as a British terror suspect who once ran a car valeting business in London.</p>
<p>The Bureau has established that the victim of the February air strike was Mohamed Sakr, who was born and brought up in the UK before having his citizenship revoked in September 2010 by the Home Secretary, Theresa May.</p>
<p>Sakr appears to have come to the attention of UK intelligence officials after he visited Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Dubai in 2007. He was then repeatedly targeted by counter-terrorism officers over a two-year period, according to reports.</p>
<p>It was this, it is alleged, that drove Sakr out of the country; he left Britain in late 2009 for Somalia.</p>
<p>The law allowing the Home Secretary to remove citizenship was in place when Sakr left the UK, but it was not until after the Coalition came to power that it was used in his case.</p>
<p>It would be another year and a half before he was killed.</p> | Suspected Terrorists: Brits are quietly stripped of citizenship… then killed by drones | true | http://21stcenturywire.com/2013/02/28/suspected-terrorists-quietly-stripped-of-citizenship-then-killed-by-drones/ | 2013-02-28 | 4left
| Suspected Terrorists: Brits are quietly stripped of citizenship… then killed by drones
<p />
<p>The Government has secretly ramped up a controversial programme that strips people of their British citizenship on national security grounds – with two of the men subsequently killed by American drone attacks.</p>
<p>An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for&#160;The Independent&#160;has established that since 2010, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, has revoked the passports of 16 individuals, many of whom are alleged to have had links to militant or terrorist groups.</p>
<p>Critics of the programme warn that it allows ministers to “wash their hands” of British nationals suspected of terrorism who could be subject to torture and illegal detention abroad.</p>
<p>They add that it also allows those stripped of their citizenship to be killed or “rendered” without any onus on the British Government to intervene.</p>
<p>At least five of those deprived of their UK nationality by the Coalition were born in Britain, and one man had lived in the country for almost 50 years. Those affected have their passports cancelled, and lose their right to enter the UK – making it very difficult to appeal against the Home Secretary’s decision. Last night the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader Simon Hughes said he was writing to Ms May to call for an urgent review into how the law was being implemented.</p>
<p>The leading human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce said the present situation “smacked of mediaeval exile, just as cruel and just as arbitrary”.</p>
<p>Ian Macdonald QC, the president of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, described the citizenship orders as “sinister”.</p>
<p>“They’re using executive powers and I think they’re using them quite wrongly,” he said.&#160; “It’s not open government; it’s closed, and it needs to be exposed.”</p>
<p>Laws were passed in 2002 enabling the Home Secretary to remove the citizenship of any dual nationals who had done something “seriously prejudicial” to the UK, but the power had rarely been used before the current government took office.</p>
<p>The Bureau’s investigation has established the identities of all but four of the 21 British passport holders who have lost their citizenship, and their subsequent fates. Only two have successfully appealed – one of whom has since been extradited to the US.</p>
<p>In many cases those involved cannot be named because of ongoing legal action. The Bureau has also found evidence that government officials act when people are out of the country – on two occasions while on holiday – before cancelling passports and revoking citizenships.</p>
<p>Those targeted include Bilal al-Berjawi, a British-Lebanese citizen who came to the UK as a baby and grew up in London, but left for Somalia in 2009 with his close friend the British-born Mohamed Sakr, who also held Egyptian nationality.</p>
<p>Both had been the subject of extensive surveillance by British intelligence, with the security services concerned they were involved in terrorist activities.</p>
<p>Once in Somalia, the two reportedly became involved with al-Shabaab, the Islamist militant group with links to al-Qa’ida. Mr Berjawi was said to have risen to a senior position in the organisation, with Mr Sakr his “right-hand man”.</p>
<p>In 2010, Theresa May stripped both men of their British nationalities and they soon became targets in an ultimately lethal US manhunt.</p>
<p>In June 2011 Mr Berjawi was wounded in the first known US drone strike in Somalia and last year he was killed by a drone strike – within hours of calling his wife in London to congratulate her on the birth of their first son.</p>
<p>His family have claimed that US forces were able to pinpoint his location by monitoring the call he made to his wife in the UK. Mr Sakr, too, was killed in a US airstrike in February 2012, although his British origins have not been revealed until now.</p>
<p>Mr Sakr’s former UK solicitor said there appeared to be a link between the Home Secretary removing citizenships and subsequent US actions.</p>
<p>“It appears that the process of deprivation of citizenship made it easier for the US to then designate Mr Sakr as an enemy combatant, to whom the UK owes no responsibility whatsoever,” Saghir Hussain said.</p>
<p>Mr Macdonald added that depriving people of their citizenship “means that the British government can completely wash their hands if the security services give information to the Americans who use their drones to track someone and kill them.”</p>
<p>The campaign group CagePrisoners is in touch with many families of those affected. Its executive director Asim Qureshi said the Bureau’s findings were deeply troubling for Britons from an ethnic minority background.</p>
<p>“We all feel just as British as everybody else, and yet just because our parents came from another country, we can be subjected to an arbitrary process where we are no longer members of this country any more,” he said.</p>
<p>“I think that’s extremely dangerous because it will speak to people’s fears about how they’re viewed by their own government, especially when they come from certain areas of the world.”</p>
<p>The Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes said that, while he accepted there were often real security concerns, he was worried that those who were innocent of Home Office charges against them and were trying to appeal risked finding themselves in a “political and constitutional limbo”.</p>
<p>“There was clearly always a risk when the law was changed seven years ago that the executive could act to take citizenship away in circumstances that were more frequent or more extensive than those envisaged by ministers at the time,” he said.</p>
<p>“I’m concerned at the growing number of people who appear to have lost their right to citizenship. I plan to write to the Home Secretary and the Home Affairs Select Committee to ask for their assessment of the situation, and for a review of whether the act is working as intended.”</p>
<p>Ms Peirce, a leading immigration defence lawyer, said, “British citizens are being banished from their own country, being stripped of a core part of their identity yet without a single word of explanation of why they have been singled out and dubbed a risk,” she said.</p>
<p>Families are sometimes affected by the Home Secretary’s decisions. Parents may have to choose whether their British children remain in the UK, or join their father in exile abroad.</p>
<p>In a case known only as L1, a Sudanese-British man took his four British children on holiday to Sudan, along with his wife, who had limited leave to remain in the UK. Four days after his departure, Theresa May decided to strip him of his citizenship.</p>
<p>With their father excluded from the UK and their mother’s lack of permanent right to remain, the order effectively blocks the children from growing up in Britain. At the time of the order the children were aged between eight and 13 months.</p>
<p>The judge, despite recognising their right to be brought up in Britain, ruled that the grounds on which their father’s citizenship was revoked “outweighed” the rights of the children.</p>
<p>Mr Justice Mitting, sitting in the semi-secret Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac), said: “We accept it is unlikely to be in the best interests of the appellant’s children that he should be deprived of his British citizenship…</p>
<p>“They are British citizens, with a right of abode in the UK.</p>
<p>“They are of an age when that right cannot, in practice, be enjoyed if both of their parents cannot return to the United Kingdom.”</p>
<p>Yet he added that Theresa May was “unlikely to have made that decision without substantial and plausible grounds”.</p>
<p>In another case, a man born in Newcastle in 1963 and three of his London-born sons all lost their citizenship two years ago while in Pakistan.</p>
<p>An expert witness told Siac that those in the family’s situation may be at risk&#160; from the country’s government agencies and militant groups. Yet Siac recently ruled that the UK “owed no obligation” to those at risk of “any subsequent act of the Pakistani state or of non-state actors [militant groups] in Pakistan”.</p>
<p>The mother, herself a naturalised British citizen, now wants to return here in the interests of her youngest son, who has developmental needs. Although 15, he is said to be “dependent upon [his mother and father] for emotional and practical support”.</p>
<p>His mother claimed he “has no hope of education in Pakistan’. But the mother has diabetes and mobility problems that mean she “does not feel able to return on her own, with or without [her son].”</p>
<p>Mr Justice Mitting ruled that the deprivation of citizenship of the family’s father had “undoubtedly had an impact on the private and family life of his wife and youngest son, both of whom remain British citizens”. But he added that the father posed such a threat to national security that the “unavoidable incidental impact” on his wife and youngest son was “justifiable”, and dismissed the appeal.</p>
<p>A Home Office spokeswoman said: “Citizenship is a privilege not a right. The Home Secretary has the power to remove citizenship from individuals where she considers it is conducive to the public good. An individual subject to deprivation can appeal to the courts.”</p>
<p>She added: “We don’t routinely comment on individual deprivation cases.”</p>
<p>Asked whether intelligence was provided to foreign governments, she said: “We don’t comment on intelligence issues. Drone strikes are a matter for the states concerned.”</p>
<p>Mahdi Hashi: From Camden care worker to US prisoner</p>
<p>Mahdi Hashi, a former care worker from Camden in north London, was well known to Britain’s security services – in fact they tried to recruit him when he was 19.</p>
<p>Now 23, Mr Hashi is in a high-security US prison having been secretly “rendered” from the African state of Djibouti last year.</p>
<p>Mr Hashi claims that before being sent to the US on charges of working with the terrorist group al-Shabaab he witnessed torture in an African prison, before being handed over to the CIA and forced to sign a confession.</p>
<p>Despite Mr Hashi being brought up in the UK, the British Government has washed its hands of him, having stripped him of his citizenship shortly before he disappeared in Somalia last summer.</p>
<p>His UK family say that when they lost contact with their son they approached the Foreign Office for help. But they were told by officials that they could not provide assistance because the Home Secretary had issued an order depriving him of his British citizenship.</p>
<p>It was only five months later, when he re-appeared in the US, that they were able to contact him again. The family’s lawyer, Saghir Hussain, said at the time: “The UK Government has a lot of explaining to do. What role did it play in getting him kidnapped, held in secret detention and renditioned to the US?”</p>
<p>The case has led to allegations that Britain may have conspired with the US to strip Mr Hashi of his citizenship knowing he would be arrested in Africa. They have no further obligations towards him and can avoid potentially embarrassing questions about his treatment before his rendition.</p>
<p>The case is all the more bizarre as Mr Hashi gave an interview to&#160;The Independent&#160;in 2009 when he alleged that MI5 had attempted to recruit him. He claimed that on a previous trip to Africa he was held for 16 hours in a cell at Djibouti airport, and that when he was returned to the UK he was met by an MI5 agent who told him his terror-suspect status would remain until he agreed to work for the Security Service. He alleges he was to be given the job of informing on his friends by encouraging them to talk about jihad.</p>
<p>Mohamed Sakr: The British car valet killed by a drone strike</p>
<p>In February last year, international agencies in Africa reported that “four foreign Islamist militants” had been killed in a drone strike south of Somalia’s capital, a day after the country’s Prime Minister called for foreign air strikes against the terror group al-Shabaab.</p>
<p>At the time a senior Western intelligence officer was quoted as saying that a “very senior Egyptian was killed” in the raid, along with three Kenyans and a Somali.</p>
<p>That was technically true – but in reality the Egyptian had not even been born in the country for which he held a passport. It would have been more accurate to describe him as a British terror suspect who once ran a car valeting business in London.</p>
<p>The Bureau has established that the victim of the February air strike was Mohamed Sakr, who was born and brought up in the UK before having his citizenship revoked in September 2010 by the Home Secretary, Theresa May.</p>
<p>Sakr appears to have come to the attention of UK intelligence officials after he visited Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Dubai in 2007. He was then repeatedly targeted by counter-terrorism officers over a two-year period, according to reports.</p>
<p>It was this, it is alleged, that drove Sakr out of the country; he left Britain in late 2009 for Somalia.</p>
<p>The law allowing the Home Secretary to remove citizenship was in place when Sakr left the UK, but it was not until after the Coalition came to power that it was used in his case.</p>
<p>It would be another year and a half before he was killed.</p> | 2,120 |
<p>Swedish telecoms firm Telia Company AB agreed to pay nearly $1 billion to U.S. and Dutch authorities to settle allegations that the company and a subsidiary paid about $331 million in bribes in Uzbekistan.</p>
<p>Telia, which is partly owned by the Swedish government, said the resolution brings to an end all known corruption investigations into the company. It remains part of a broader probe by U.S. authorities into corruption in Uzbekistan.</p>
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<p>Telia agreed on Thursday to pay a total of $965 million in penalties and fines, the criminal portion of which will be equally split between the U.S. and Dutch authorities. The total penalty amount also includes a $457 million disgorgement to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Stockholm-based firm entered into a deferred-prosecution agreement in the U.S. charging the company with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars the use of bribes to foreign officials to get or keep business. The subsidiary pleaded guilty.</p>
<p>Prosecutors said Telia and the subsidiary admitted to paying the bribes to what prosecutors called a "close relative" of the deceased former Uzbek president, Islam Karimov. That relative has been identified as his daughter, Gulnara Karimova; Uzbek authorities said in June she was detained on corruption charges. Ms. Karimova has previously denied wrongdoing. She couldn't be reached for comment.</p>
<p>The bribes were paid, prosecutors said, so that Telia could enter the Uzbek market and the subsidiary could gain telecom assets and continue operating in the country. The companies admitted they concealed and structured the bribes through various payments, including to a shell company that members of management knew was controlled by Ms. Karimova. The money, prosecutors said, was wired through New York banks.</p>
<p>"If your securities trade on our exchanges and you use our banks to move ill-gotten money, then you have to abide by our country's laws," said Joon Kim, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a statement.</p>
<p>The settlement brings an end to an unfortunate chapter in the company's history, said Johan Dennelind, Telia's president and chief executive, in a statement. Since 2013, a new board and management have worked on understanding what happened, remedied it and sought to regain trust from stakeholders, he said.</p>
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<p>"We have come a long way to establish a more sustainable company with a strong focus on governance and compliance, but it is a never-ending journey as we aspire to embed this into our culture making sure that all employees understand the importance of doing the right thing all the time," said Mr. Dennelind.</p>
<p>"The resolution and related financial sanction that we announce today is a painful reminder of what happens if we don't," he said.</p>
<p>The bribery accusations in the broader investigation first surfaced in 2012, when Swiss authorities named Ms. Karimova in a corruption probe. SInce then, U.S. and European authorities joined the investigation. U.S. and Dutch authorities had asked last year for $1.4 billion in penalties from Telia.</p>
<p>Telia is the second company to settle with U.S. authorities in the investigation. Dutch telecom VimpelCom agreed in February 2016 to pay $795 million in penalties.</p>
<p>Write to Samuel Rubenfeld at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>September 21, 2017 17:09 ET (21:09 GMT)</p> | Telia to Pay Nearly $1 Billion to Settle Uzbek Bribery Claims | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/09/21/telia-to-pay-nearly-1-billion-to-settle-uzbek-bribery-claims.html | 2017-09-21 | 0right
| Telia to Pay Nearly $1 Billion to Settle Uzbek Bribery Claims
<p>Swedish telecoms firm Telia Company AB agreed to pay nearly $1 billion to U.S. and Dutch authorities to settle allegations that the company and a subsidiary paid about $331 million in bribes in Uzbekistan.</p>
<p>Telia, which is partly owned by the Swedish government, said the resolution brings to an end all known corruption investigations into the company. It remains part of a broader probe by U.S. authorities into corruption in Uzbekistan.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Telia agreed on Thursday to pay a total of $965 million in penalties and fines, the criminal portion of which will be equally split between the U.S. and Dutch authorities. The total penalty amount also includes a $457 million disgorgement to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Stockholm-based firm entered into a deferred-prosecution agreement in the U.S. charging the company with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars the use of bribes to foreign officials to get or keep business. The subsidiary pleaded guilty.</p>
<p>Prosecutors said Telia and the subsidiary admitted to paying the bribes to what prosecutors called a "close relative" of the deceased former Uzbek president, Islam Karimov. That relative has been identified as his daughter, Gulnara Karimova; Uzbek authorities said in June she was detained on corruption charges. Ms. Karimova has previously denied wrongdoing. She couldn't be reached for comment.</p>
<p>The bribes were paid, prosecutors said, so that Telia could enter the Uzbek market and the subsidiary could gain telecom assets and continue operating in the country. The companies admitted they concealed and structured the bribes through various payments, including to a shell company that members of management knew was controlled by Ms. Karimova. The money, prosecutors said, was wired through New York banks.</p>
<p>"If your securities trade on our exchanges and you use our banks to move ill-gotten money, then you have to abide by our country's laws," said Joon Kim, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a statement.</p>
<p>The settlement brings an end to an unfortunate chapter in the company's history, said Johan Dennelind, Telia's president and chief executive, in a statement. Since 2013, a new board and management have worked on understanding what happened, remedied it and sought to regain trust from stakeholders, he said.</p>
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<p>"We have come a long way to establish a more sustainable company with a strong focus on governance and compliance, but it is a never-ending journey as we aspire to embed this into our culture making sure that all employees understand the importance of doing the right thing all the time," said Mr. Dennelind.</p>
<p>"The resolution and related financial sanction that we announce today is a painful reminder of what happens if we don't," he said.</p>
<p>The bribery accusations in the broader investigation first surfaced in 2012, when Swiss authorities named Ms. Karimova in a corruption probe. SInce then, U.S. and European authorities joined the investigation. U.S. and Dutch authorities had asked last year for $1.4 billion in penalties from Telia.</p>
<p>Telia is the second company to settle with U.S. authorities in the investigation. Dutch telecom VimpelCom agreed in February 2016 to pay $795 million in penalties.</p>
<p>Write to Samuel Rubenfeld at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>September 21, 2017 17:09 ET (21:09 GMT)</p> | 2,121 |
<p>A driverless car future is looking less like an "if" and more like a "when" every week.</p>
<p>On this industrials segment from <a href="http://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Industry Focus Opens a New Window.</a>, The Motley Fool's Sean O'Reilly and Taylor Muckerman talk about what investors need to know about the companies that will be retrofitting vehicles to be compatible with autonomous software.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</p>
<p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2692&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>This podcast was recorded on Sept. 1, 2016.</p>
<p>Sean O'Reilly: We have a mailbag question that I wanted to answer from Bill Melton, who emailed us at <a href="http://mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected] Opens a New Window.</a>. He asked, "All of the discussion was around new driverless cars." He's referring to my recent episode with Mr. John Rosevear. "Is there a company or companies that would be positioned to profit from upgrading existing cars to a driverless state?"</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>This actually reminded me of Back to the Future Part II, when Marty sees the ad for upgrading your car to flight.</p>
<p>Taylor Muckerman: That seems a little bit more complicated.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Someday.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah, maybe.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Bill, that is a great question. I can't thank you enough for writing in. To our knowledge, there are no direct plays on retrofitting regular cars for driverless functionality. There's no auto body shop or chain, or anything that's doing this. There are companies that are working on this, as well as other stuff. Anybody that's going to be working on upgrading a non-driverless car to driverless functionality in any capacity is probably going to be working on the same thing for new autonomous vehicles. One of the leaders in this was recently acquired by General Motors(NYSE: GM) for $1 billion back in March, it's what's now called their Cruise Division. It was just called Cruise. They were literally a Silicon Valley start-up that focused on creating a self-driving car kit for everybody's cars.</p>
<p>You've, of course, also got, I expect, in the future -- these are publicly traded options -- Delphi Automotive(NYSE: DLPH), which, of course, just announced their team-up with Mobileye(NYSE: MBLY) to offer an entire system that will be available to any automaker for new cars. I would assume that Mobileye and Delphi will have something available for regular cars. You also have a bunch of private companies that are in on this. One of which -- a coworker mentioned to me -- was a Silicon Valley start-up, drive.ai. They're focusing more on the software, as I understand it. The bottom line is, Delphi and Mobileye will probably get in on it. Cruise has a system. But this isn't even the first inning. I don't think we've had the first pitch thrown in the game of retrofitting cars.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah, that seems like a very complicated and expensive process.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: And, would you want to do that? It's a gamble.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBuckeye/info.aspx" type="external">Sean O'Reilly Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFrunAMuck/info.aspx" type="external">Taylor Muckerman Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors. 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> | Can I Invest In Driverless Car Retrofitting? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/09/19/can-invest-in-driverless-car-retrofitting.html | 2016-09-19 | 0right
| Can I Invest In Driverless Car Retrofitting?
<p>A driverless car future is looking less like an "if" and more like a "when" every week.</p>
<p>On this industrials segment from <a href="http://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Industry Focus Opens a New Window.</a>, The Motley Fool's Sean O'Reilly and Taylor Muckerman talk about what investors need to know about the companies that will be retrofitting vehicles to be compatible with autonomous software.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</p>
<p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2692&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>This podcast was recorded on Sept. 1, 2016.</p>
<p>Sean O'Reilly: We have a mailbag question that I wanted to answer from Bill Melton, who emailed us at <a href="http://mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected] Opens a New Window.</a>. He asked, "All of the discussion was around new driverless cars." He's referring to my recent episode with Mr. John Rosevear. "Is there a company or companies that would be positioned to profit from upgrading existing cars to a driverless state?"</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>This actually reminded me of Back to the Future Part II, when Marty sees the ad for upgrading your car to flight.</p>
<p>Taylor Muckerman: That seems a little bit more complicated.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Someday.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah, maybe.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Bill, that is a great question. I can't thank you enough for writing in. To our knowledge, there are no direct plays on retrofitting regular cars for driverless functionality. There's no auto body shop or chain, or anything that's doing this. There are companies that are working on this, as well as other stuff. Anybody that's going to be working on upgrading a non-driverless car to driverless functionality in any capacity is probably going to be working on the same thing for new autonomous vehicles. One of the leaders in this was recently acquired by General Motors(NYSE: GM) for $1 billion back in March, it's what's now called their Cruise Division. It was just called Cruise. They were literally a Silicon Valley start-up that focused on creating a self-driving car kit for everybody's cars.</p>
<p>You've, of course, also got, I expect, in the future -- these are publicly traded options -- Delphi Automotive(NYSE: DLPH), which, of course, just announced their team-up with Mobileye(NYSE: MBLY) to offer an entire system that will be available to any automaker for new cars. I would assume that Mobileye and Delphi will have something available for regular cars. You also have a bunch of private companies that are in on this. One of which -- a coworker mentioned to me -- was a Silicon Valley start-up, drive.ai. They're focusing more on the software, as I understand it. The bottom line is, Delphi and Mobileye will probably get in on it. Cruise has a system. But this isn't even the first inning. I don't think we've had the first pitch thrown in the game of retrofitting cars.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah, that seems like a very complicated and expensive process.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: And, would you want to do that? It's a gamble.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBuckeye/info.aspx" type="external">Sean O'Reilly Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFrunAMuck/info.aspx" type="external">Taylor Muckerman Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors. 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> | 2,122 |
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<p>WASHINGTON — A buying spree in the Midwest spurred new U.S. home sales last month to the fastest pace since July.</p>
<p>The Commerce Department said Friday that new-home sales in November rose 5.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate 592,000. It was the fastest pace since July’s 622,000. Sales were up 16.5 percent from November 2015.</p>
<p>Sales in the Midwest shot up 43.8 percent, the region’s biggest monthly increase since October 2012. Sales were up 7.7 percent in the West, flat in the Northeast and down 3.1 percent in the South.</p>
<p>The median price of new home sold last month was $305,400.</p>
<p>Demand for houses has been strong this year, helped by a healthy job market and low mortgage rates. The unemployment rate is at a nine-year low 4.6 percent, and most workers enjoy job security.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that Americans bought existing homes last month at the fastest pace since February 2007.</p>
<p>But the cheap loans that have supported stronger sales may be vanishing. Long-term mortgage rates have quickly risen since the election. The average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rose to 4.30 percent this week, the highest level since April 2014.</p>
<p>Investors have bid rates higher because they believe President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for tax cuts and higher infrastructure spending will drive up economic growth and inflation. And last week, the Federal Reserve, citing improvement in the U.S. economy, raised short-term U.S. interest rates for only the second time in a decade.</p>
<p>More people are at risk of being priced out of the housing market because rates are rising at a time when there is a shortage of properties for sale, driving bids higher.</p>
<p>“Housing demand clearly continues to be strong,” Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpoint Securities, said in a research note. But he noted that the November sales numbers mostly came in before the sharp rise in rates: “Higher mortgage rates could produce renewed caution heading into next year.”</p> | Midwest buying spree lifted US new-home sales in November | false | https://abqjournal.com/914981/midwest-buying-spree-lifted-us-new-home-sales-in-november.html | 2016-12-23 | 2least
| Midwest buying spree lifted US new-home sales in November
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>WASHINGTON — A buying spree in the Midwest spurred new U.S. home sales last month to the fastest pace since July.</p>
<p>The Commerce Department said Friday that new-home sales in November rose 5.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate 592,000. It was the fastest pace since July’s 622,000. Sales were up 16.5 percent from November 2015.</p>
<p>Sales in the Midwest shot up 43.8 percent, the region’s biggest monthly increase since October 2012. Sales were up 7.7 percent in the West, flat in the Northeast and down 3.1 percent in the South.</p>
<p>The median price of new home sold last month was $305,400.</p>
<p>Demand for houses has been strong this year, helped by a healthy job market and low mortgage rates. The unemployment rate is at a nine-year low 4.6 percent, and most workers enjoy job security.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that Americans bought existing homes last month at the fastest pace since February 2007.</p>
<p>But the cheap loans that have supported stronger sales may be vanishing. Long-term mortgage rates have quickly risen since the election. The average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rose to 4.30 percent this week, the highest level since April 2014.</p>
<p>Investors have bid rates higher because they believe President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for tax cuts and higher infrastructure spending will drive up economic growth and inflation. And last week, the Federal Reserve, citing improvement in the U.S. economy, raised short-term U.S. interest rates for only the second time in a decade.</p>
<p>More people are at risk of being priced out of the housing market because rates are rising at a time when there is a shortage of properties for sale, driving bids higher.</p>
<p>“Housing demand clearly continues to be strong,” Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpoint Securities, said in a research note. But he noted that the November sales numbers mostly came in before the sharp rise in rates: “Higher mortgage rates could produce renewed caution heading into next year.”</p> | 2,123 |
<p>In the name of compromise, bipartisanship and the satisfaction of a ruling class that is indifferent to the suffering of ordinary Americans, President Obama is ready to sell parts of Social Security and Medicare in his attempt to strike an annual budget that satisfies Republicans and reduces the long-term deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years, administration officials say.</p>
<p>The New York Times called the move a “political risk,” as if congressional Democrats would not simply bow their heads and go along with the decisions of their leader no matter how antithetical those decisions are to some part of their party’s historic legacy, namely the creation of those programs the president is ready to weaken.</p>
<p>One third of the $1.8 trillion deficit reduction plan — $600 billion — would come as new revenue from tax increases on higher income individuals. That tax increase is half the amount the president called for in an earlier proposal, which Congress has consistently ignored. Deficits would be reduced $930 billion more through 2023 via spending cuts and other acts of ravaging domestic programs. An additional $200 billion would come from reduced interest payments on the federal debt.</p>
<p>The Social Security cuts consist of a reduction in cost of living payments for Social Security benefits.</p>
<p />
<p>The president’s proposed cuts include about $400 billion from health programs and $200 billion from other areas. Those include farm subsidies, federal employee retirement programs, the Postal Service and the unemployment compensation scheme.</p>
<p>The Medicare savings would mostly come from payments to health care providers, including hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, with higher-income beneficiaries paying more for coverage.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p>The New York Times:</p>
<p>Besides the tax increases that most Republicans continue to oppose, Mr. Obama’s budget will propose a new inflation formula that would have the effect of reducing cost-of-living payments for Social Security benefits, though with financial protections for low-income and very old beneficiaries, administration officials said. The idea, known as chained C.P.I., has infuriated some Democrats and advocacy groups to Mr. Obama’s left, and they have already mobilized in opposition.</p>
<p>As Mr. Obama has before, his budget documents will emphasize that he would support the cost-of-living change, as well as other reductions that Republicans have called for in the popular programs for older Americans, only if Republicans agree to additional taxes on the wealthy and infrastructure investments that the president called for in last year’s offer to Mr. Boehner.</p>
<p>… Of the more than $2.5 trillion to date in projected 10-year budget savings, nearly 80 percent would result from spending cuts. The rest would derive from tax increases on high incomes that became law on Jan. 1, in the tax agreement that the two parties reached at year-end when the efforts for a broader deficit-reduction deal collapsed.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/us/social-programs-face-cutback-in-obama-budget.html?nl=todaysheadlines&amp;emc=edit_th_20130405&amp;_r=2&amp;pagewanted=all&amp;" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Obama to Formally Propose Social Security Cuts | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/obama-to-formally-propose-social-security-cuts/ | 2013-04-05 | 4left
| Obama to Formally Propose Social Security Cuts
<p>In the name of compromise, bipartisanship and the satisfaction of a ruling class that is indifferent to the suffering of ordinary Americans, President Obama is ready to sell parts of Social Security and Medicare in his attempt to strike an annual budget that satisfies Republicans and reduces the long-term deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years, administration officials say.</p>
<p>The New York Times called the move a “political risk,” as if congressional Democrats would not simply bow their heads and go along with the decisions of their leader no matter how antithetical those decisions are to some part of their party’s historic legacy, namely the creation of those programs the president is ready to weaken.</p>
<p>One third of the $1.8 trillion deficit reduction plan — $600 billion — would come as new revenue from tax increases on higher income individuals. That tax increase is half the amount the president called for in an earlier proposal, which Congress has consistently ignored. Deficits would be reduced $930 billion more through 2023 via spending cuts and other acts of ravaging domestic programs. An additional $200 billion would come from reduced interest payments on the federal debt.</p>
<p>The Social Security cuts consist of a reduction in cost of living payments for Social Security benefits.</p>
<p />
<p>The president’s proposed cuts include about $400 billion from health programs and $200 billion from other areas. Those include farm subsidies, federal employee retirement programs, the Postal Service and the unemployment compensation scheme.</p>
<p>The Medicare savings would mostly come from payments to health care providers, including hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, with higher-income beneficiaries paying more for coverage.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p>The New York Times:</p>
<p>Besides the tax increases that most Republicans continue to oppose, Mr. Obama’s budget will propose a new inflation formula that would have the effect of reducing cost-of-living payments for Social Security benefits, though with financial protections for low-income and very old beneficiaries, administration officials said. The idea, known as chained C.P.I., has infuriated some Democrats and advocacy groups to Mr. Obama’s left, and they have already mobilized in opposition.</p>
<p>As Mr. Obama has before, his budget documents will emphasize that he would support the cost-of-living change, as well as other reductions that Republicans have called for in the popular programs for older Americans, only if Republicans agree to additional taxes on the wealthy and infrastructure investments that the president called for in last year’s offer to Mr. Boehner.</p>
<p>… Of the more than $2.5 trillion to date in projected 10-year budget savings, nearly 80 percent would result from spending cuts. The rest would derive from tax increases on high incomes that became law on Jan. 1, in the tax agreement that the two parties reached at year-end when the efforts for a broader deficit-reduction deal collapsed.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/us/social-programs-face-cutback-in-obama-budget.html?nl=todaysheadlines&amp;emc=edit_th_20130405&amp;_r=2&amp;pagewanted=all&amp;" type="external">Read more</a></p> | 2,124 |
<p>PayPal CEO Daniel Schulman. PayPal has dropped plans for its global operations center in North Carolina because of House Bill 2. (Photo by PopTech / Kris Klug; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)</p>
<p>North Carolina’s anti-gay legislation House Bill 2 is having strong repercussions on the economy in the state. Individuals, big business and the entertainment community are speaking out against this bill that legalizes discrimination.</p>
<p>Last June some in the LGBT community were critical of the business community having too large a role in some of our Pride parades. Today we see again as we did when anti-gay legislation was passed and signed into law by Gov. Pence (R-Ind.) why it is important for us to welcome allies in the business community who are willing to stand with us.</p>
<p>According to the New York Times “PayPal said it had dropped plans to put in global operations center in Charlotte, N.C., because of the state’s recent passage of a law banning anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and requiring transgender people in government buildings and public schools to use bathrooms that match the gender on their birth certificates. PayPal had pledged to bring 400 jobs and invest $3.6 million in the area by the end of 2017.” “PayPal had already joined more than 120 other business leaders in signing a letter to Mr. McCrory objecting to the law.”</p>
<p>They went on to report “Some, like Google Ventures’ chief executive, Bill Maris, pledged not to make any new investments in the state until the law was repealed. Other signatories included Apple; Facebook and Charlotte-based Bank of America, the largest corporation in North Carolina. Mayors and governors of other states, including New York, Vermont and Washington, D.C, have banned most state-sponsored travel there.”</p>
<p>WBTV.com reported the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority (CRVA) says “four conventions have officially canceled their dates in Charlotte, citing House Bill 2. Officials say that translates to 1,137 room nights gone for hotels in Charlotte.”</p>
<p>In addition to that “nine other conventions who were looking at Charlotte are saying they will no longer be looking at the city to be the host. That’s considered a ‘lost opportunity’ and translates into a potential 12,231 room nights not used.” The CRVA also said “29 other groups have now said they are “hesitant” about bringing their convention to Charlotte. If all these groups pulled out, that’s 89,723 room nights that will be lost.”</p>
<p>Since the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage constitutional we are seeing the backlash against the LGBT community from people in states across the nation from Mississippi to Maine. In some states we and our allies are able to fight back and defeat these bills before they pass in others we will need to count on the power of the almighty dollar to help us.</p>
<p>The religious right and the far-right of the Republican Party are fighting to their last breath to hold back the tide of acceptance and trying to get government to legalize discrimination in any way they can. Today the LGBT community can have no better allies then big business and other organizations, such as those who book meetings and conventions, who stand with us and fight to ensure we can gain our full human and civil rights.</p>
<p>It is just one of the reasons the upcoming presidential election is so crucially important. We cannot afford to go backwards which would happen faster than anyone realizes if a Republican takes the White House.</p>
<p>While I would have liked an even stronger statement than the one made recently by the CRVA, “We are extremely concerned about the state legislation in place as we continue to hear negative feedback and potential event cancellations from our customers. Our city has worked incredibly hard to build a thriving visitor economy over the last 20 years, which has welcomed major events and conventions that greatly give back to the city and the state of North Carolina’s economy and overall quality of life. This issue is in danger of setting us back from the progress we’ve made in positioning Charlotte as an attractive, inclusive destination. Our city has long had a track record of creating an environment that not only values diversity, but strongly embraces it. On behalf of the visitor economy that represents one in nine jobs across the Charlotte region, we strongly urge that state and local leaders find a resolution that represents the best interests of our city and state” it shows us how economics will make a difference.</p>
<p>While some politicians always demonize big banks and big business as the enemy, it is time to recognize they are not all the devil-incarnate and can also be important allies.</p>
<p />
<p>Peter Rosenstein is a longtime Democratic Party and LGBT rights activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">bathroom bill</a> <a href="" type="internal">Bill Maris</a> <a href="" type="internal">Business</a> <a href="" type="internal">Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority</a> <a href="" type="internal">CRVA</a> <a href="" type="internal">Dan Schulman</a> <a href="" type="internal">Daniel Schulman</a> <a href="" type="internal">Google Ventures</a> <a href="" type="internal">HB 2</a> <a href="" type="internal">Indiana</a> <a href="" type="internal">LGBT</a> <a href="" type="internal">Mike Pence</a> <a href="" type="internal">New York Times</a> <a href="" type="internal">North Carolina</a> <a href="" type="internal">Obergefell v. Hodges</a> <a href="" type="internal">Paypal</a> <a href="" type="internal">Republican Party</a> <a href="" type="internal">United States Supreme Court</a></p> | Businesses take a stand for LGBT rights | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2016/04/14/businesses-take-stand-lgbt-rights/ | 3left-center
| Businesses take a stand for LGBT rights
<p>PayPal CEO Daniel Schulman. PayPal has dropped plans for its global operations center in North Carolina because of House Bill 2. (Photo by PopTech / Kris Klug; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)</p>
<p>North Carolina’s anti-gay legislation House Bill 2 is having strong repercussions on the economy in the state. Individuals, big business and the entertainment community are speaking out against this bill that legalizes discrimination.</p>
<p>Last June some in the LGBT community were critical of the business community having too large a role in some of our Pride parades. Today we see again as we did when anti-gay legislation was passed and signed into law by Gov. Pence (R-Ind.) why it is important for us to welcome allies in the business community who are willing to stand with us.</p>
<p>According to the New York Times “PayPal said it had dropped plans to put in global operations center in Charlotte, N.C., because of the state’s recent passage of a law banning anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and requiring transgender people in government buildings and public schools to use bathrooms that match the gender on their birth certificates. PayPal had pledged to bring 400 jobs and invest $3.6 million in the area by the end of 2017.” “PayPal had already joined more than 120 other business leaders in signing a letter to Mr. McCrory objecting to the law.”</p>
<p>They went on to report “Some, like Google Ventures’ chief executive, Bill Maris, pledged not to make any new investments in the state until the law was repealed. Other signatories included Apple; Facebook and Charlotte-based Bank of America, the largest corporation in North Carolina. Mayors and governors of other states, including New York, Vermont and Washington, D.C, have banned most state-sponsored travel there.”</p>
<p>WBTV.com reported the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority (CRVA) says “four conventions have officially canceled their dates in Charlotte, citing House Bill 2. Officials say that translates to 1,137 room nights gone for hotels in Charlotte.”</p>
<p>In addition to that “nine other conventions who were looking at Charlotte are saying they will no longer be looking at the city to be the host. That’s considered a ‘lost opportunity’ and translates into a potential 12,231 room nights not used.” The CRVA also said “29 other groups have now said they are “hesitant” about bringing their convention to Charlotte. If all these groups pulled out, that’s 89,723 room nights that will be lost.”</p>
<p>Since the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage constitutional we are seeing the backlash against the LGBT community from people in states across the nation from Mississippi to Maine. In some states we and our allies are able to fight back and defeat these bills before they pass in others we will need to count on the power of the almighty dollar to help us.</p>
<p>The religious right and the far-right of the Republican Party are fighting to their last breath to hold back the tide of acceptance and trying to get government to legalize discrimination in any way they can. Today the LGBT community can have no better allies then big business and other organizations, such as those who book meetings and conventions, who stand with us and fight to ensure we can gain our full human and civil rights.</p>
<p>It is just one of the reasons the upcoming presidential election is so crucially important. We cannot afford to go backwards which would happen faster than anyone realizes if a Republican takes the White House.</p>
<p>While I would have liked an even stronger statement than the one made recently by the CRVA, “We are extremely concerned about the state legislation in place as we continue to hear negative feedback and potential event cancellations from our customers. Our city has worked incredibly hard to build a thriving visitor economy over the last 20 years, which has welcomed major events and conventions that greatly give back to the city and the state of North Carolina’s economy and overall quality of life. This issue is in danger of setting us back from the progress we’ve made in positioning Charlotte as an attractive, inclusive destination. Our city has long had a track record of creating an environment that not only values diversity, but strongly embraces it. On behalf of the visitor economy that represents one in nine jobs across the Charlotte region, we strongly urge that state and local leaders find a resolution that represents the best interests of our city and state” it shows us how economics will make a difference.</p>
<p>While some politicians always demonize big banks and big business as the enemy, it is time to recognize they are not all the devil-incarnate and can also be important allies.</p>
<p />
<p>Peter Rosenstein is a longtime Democratic Party and LGBT rights activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">bathroom bill</a> <a href="" type="internal">Bill Maris</a> <a href="" type="internal">Business</a> <a href="" type="internal">Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority</a> <a href="" type="internal">CRVA</a> <a href="" type="internal">Dan Schulman</a> <a href="" type="internal">Daniel Schulman</a> <a href="" type="internal">Google Ventures</a> <a href="" type="internal">HB 2</a> <a href="" type="internal">Indiana</a> <a href="" type="internal">LGBT</a> <a href="" type="internal">Mike Pence</a> <a href="" type="internal">New York Times</a> <a href="" type="internal">North Carolina</a> <a href="" type="internal">Obergefell v. Hodges</a> <a href="" type="internal">Paypal</a> <a href="" type="internal">Republican Party</a> <a href="" type="internal">United States Supreme Court</a></p> | 2,125 |
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<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/infrogmation/3216700056/"&gt;Infrogmation&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external" />This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175445/tomgram%3A_pepe_escobar%2C_will_asia_save_global_capitalism_/" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p>
<p>More than 10 years ago, before 9/11, Goldman Sachs was predicting that the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) would make the world economy’s top ten—but not until 2040. Skip a decade and the Chinese economy already has the number two spot all to itself, Brazil is number seven, India 10, and even Russia is creeping closer. In purchasing power parity, or PPP, things look <a href="http://www.therichest.org/world/worlds-largest-economies/" type="external">even better</a>. There, China is in second place, India is now fourth, Russia sixth, and Brazil seventh.</p>
<p>No wonder Jim O’Neill, who coined the neologism BRIC and is now chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, has been <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/article/goldman-aligns-itself-against-us-uk-and-europe-alongside-china-choice-next-imf-head" type="external">stressing</a> that “the world is no longer dependent on the leadership of the US and Europe.” After all, since 2007, China’s economy has grown by 45 percent, the American economy by less than 1 percent—figures startling enough to make anyone take back their predictions. American anxiety and puzzlement reached new heights when the latest International Monetary Fund <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25" type="external">projections</a> indicated that, at least by certain measurements, the Chinese economy would overtake the US by 2016. (Until recently, Goldman Sachs was pointing towards 2050 for that first-place exchange.)</p>
<p>Within the next 30 years, the top five will, <a href="http://www2.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/index.html" type="external">according to</a> Goldman Sachs, likely be China, the US, India, Brazil, and Mexico. Western Europe? Bye-bye!</p>
<p>A System Stripped to Its Essence</p>
<p>Increasing numbers of experts agree that Asia is now leading the way for the world, even as it lays bare glaring gaps in the West’s narrative of civilization. Yet to talk about “the decline of the West” is a dangerous proposition. A key historical reference is Oswald Spengler’s 1918 essay with that title. Spengler, a man of his times, thought that humanity functioned through unique cultural systems, and that Western ideas would not be pertinent for, or transferable to, other regions of the planet. (Tell that howler to the young Egyptians in Tahrir Square.)</p>
<p>Spengler, of course, captured the Western-dominated zeitgeist of another century. He saw cultures as living and dying organisms, each with a unique soul. The East or Orient was “magical,” while the West was “Faustian.” A reactionary misanthrope, he was convinced that the West had already reached the supreme status available to a democratic civilization—and so was destined to experience the “decline” of his title.</p>
<p>If you’re thinking that this sounds like an avant-la-lettre Huntingtonesque “clash of civilizations,” you can be excused, because that’s exactly what it was.</p>
<p>Speaking of civilizational clashes, did anyone notice that “maybe” in a recent TIME <a href="http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20110822,00.html" type="external">cover</a> story picking up on Spenglerian themes and headlined “The Decline and Fall of Europe (and Maybe the West)”? In our post-Spenglerian moment, the “West” is surely the United States, and how could that magazine get it so wrong? Maybe? After all, a Europe now in deep financial crisis will be “in decline” as long as it remains inextricably intertwined with and continues to defer to “the West”—that is, Washington—even as it witnesses the simultaneous economic ascent of what’s sometimes derisively referred to as “the South.”</p>
<p>Think of the present global capitalist moment not as a “clash,” but a “cash of civilizations.”</p>
<p>If Washington is now stunned and operating on autopilot, that’s in part because, historically speaking, its moment as the globe’s “sole superpower” or even “hyperpower” barely outlasted Andy Warhol’s notorious 15 minutes of fame—from the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union to 9/11 and the Bush doctrine. The new American century was swiftly throttled in three hubris-filled stages: 9/11 (blowback); the invasion of Iraq (preemptive war); and the 2008 Wall Street meltdown (casino capitalism).</p>
<p>Meanwhile, one may argue that Europe still has its non-Western opportunities, that, in fact, the periphery increasingly dreams with European—not American—subtitles. The Arab Spring, for instance, was focused on European-style parliamentary democracies, not an American presidential system. In addition, however financially anxious it may be, Europe remains the world’s largest market. In an array of technological fields, it now rivals or outpaces the US, while regressive Persian Gulf monarchies splurge on euros (and prime real estate in Paris and London) to diversify their portfolios.</p>
<p>Yet, with “leaders” like the neo-Napoleonic Nicolas Sarkozy, David (of Arabia) Cameron, Silvio (“bunga bunga”) Berlusconi, and Angela (“Dear Prudence”) Merkel largely lacking imagination or striking competence, Europe certainly doesn’t need enemies. Decline or not, it might find a whole new lease on life by sidelining its Atlanticism and boldly betting on its Euro-Asian destiny. It could open up its societies, economies, and cultures to China, India, and Russia, while pushing southern Europe to connect far more deeply with a rising Turkey, the rest of the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa (and not via further NATO “humanitarian” bombings either).</p>
<p>Otherwise, the facts on the ground spell out something that goes well beyond the decline of the West: it’s the decline of a system in the West that, in these last years, is being stripped to its grim essence. Historian Eric Hobsbawm caught the mood of the moment when he wrote in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300176163/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">How to Change the World</a> that “the world transformed by capitalism,” which Karl Marx described in 1848 “in passages of dark, laconic eloquence is recognisably the world of the early twenty-first century.”</p>
<p>In a landscape in which politics is being reduced to a (broken) mirror reflecting finance, and in which producing and saving have been superseded by consuming, something systemic comes into view. As in the famous line of poet William Butler Yeats, “the center cannot hold”—and it won’t either.</p>
<p>If the West ceases to be the center, what exactly went wrong?</p>
<p>Are You With Me or Against Me?</p>
<p>It’s worth remembering that capitalism was “civilized” thanks to the unrelenting pressure of gritty working-class movements and the ever-present threat of strikes and even revolutions. The existence of the Soviet bloc, an alternate model of economic development (however warped), also helped. To counteract the USSR, Washington’s and Europe’s ruling groups had to buy the support of their masses in defending what no one blushed about calling “the Western way of life.” A complex social contract was forged, and it involved capital making concessions.</p>
<p>No more. Not in Washington, that’s obvious. And increasingly, not in Europe either. That system started breaking down as soon as—talk about total ideological triumph!—neoliberalism became the only show in town. There was a single superhighway from there and it swept the most fragile strands of the middle class directly into a new post-industrial proletariat, or simply into unemployable status.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1934840831/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />If neoliberalism is the victor for now, it’s because no realist, alternative developmental model exists, and yet what it has won is ever more in question. Meanwhile, except in the Middle East, progressives the world over are paralyzed, as if expecting the old order to dissolve by itself. Unfortunately, history teaches us that, at similar crossroads in the past, you are as likely to find the grapes of wrath, right-wing populist-style, as anything else—or worse yet, outright fascism.</p>
<p>“The West against the rest” is a simplistic formula that doesn’t begin to describe such a world. Imagine instead, a planet in which “the rest” are trying to step beyond the West in a variety of ways, but also have absorbed that West in ways too deep to describe. Here’s the irony, then: Yes, the West will “decline,” Washington included, and still it will leave itself behind everywhere.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Sorry, Your Model Sucks</p>
<p>Suppose you’re a developing country, shopping in the developmental supermarket. You look at China and think you see something new—a consensus model that’s turning on the lights everywhere—or do you? After all, the Chinese version of an economic boom with no political freedom may not turn out to be much of a model for other countries to follow. In many ways, it may be more like an inapplicable lethal artifact, a cluster bomb made up of shards of the Western concept of modernity married to a Leninist-based formula where a single party controls personnel, propaganda, and—crucially—the People’s Liberation Army.</p>
<p>At the same time, this is a system evidently trying to prove that, even though the West unified the world—from neocolonialism to globalization—that shouldn’t imply it’s bound to rule forever in material or intellectual terms.</p>
<p>For its part, Europe is hawking a model of supra-national integration as a means of solving problems and conflicts from the Middle East to Africa. But any shopper can now see evidence of a European Union on the verge of cracking amid non-stop inter-European bickering that includes national revolts against the euro, discontent over NATO’s role as a global Robocop, and a style of ongoing European cultural arrogance that makes it incapable of recognizing, to take one example, why the Chinese model is so successful in Africa.</p>
<p>Or let’s say our shopper looks to the United States, that country still being, after all, the world’s number one economy, its dollar still the world’s reserve currency, and its military still number one in destructive power and still garrisoning much of the globe. That would indeed seem impressive, if it weren’t for the fact that Washington is visibly on the decline, oscillating wildly between a lame populism and a stale orthodoxy, and shilling for casino capitalism on a side street in its spare time. It’s a giant power enveloped in political and economic paralysis for all the world to see, and no less visibly incapable of coming up with an exit strategy.</p>
<p>Really, would you buy a model from any of them? In fact, where in a world in escalating disarray is anyone supposed to look these days when it comes to models?</p>
<p>One of the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175419/christian_parenti_reading_the_world_in_a_loaf_of_bread" type="external">key reasons</a> for the Arab Spring was out-of-control food prices, driven significantly by speculation. Protests and riots in Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Austria, and Turkey were direct consequences of the global recession. In Spain, nearly half of 16- to 29-year-olds—an overeducated “lost generation”—are now out of jobs, a European record.</p>
<p>That may be the worst in Europe, but in Britain, 20 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds are unemployed, about average for the rest of the European Union. In London, almost 25 percent of working-age people are unemployed. In France, 13.5 percent of the population is now officially poor—that is, living on less than $1,300 a month.</p>
<p>As many across Western Europe see it, the state has already breached the social contract. The indignados of Madrid have caught the spirit of the moment perfectly: “We’re not against the system, it’s the system that is against us.”</p>
<p>This spells out the essence of the abject failure of neoliberal capitalism, as David Harvey explained in his latest book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199836841/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The Enigma of Capital</a>. He makes clear how a political economy “of mass dispossession, of predatory practices to the point of daylight robbery, particularly of the poor and the vulnerable, the unsophisticated and the legally unprotected, has become the order of the day.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Will Asia Save Global Capitalism?</p>
<p>Meanwhile Beijing is too busy remixing its destiny as the global Middle Kingdom—deploying engineers, architects, and infrastructure workers of the non-bombing variety from Canada to Brazil, Cuba to Angola—to be much distracted by the Atlanticist travails in MENA (aka the region that includes the Middle East and Northern Africa).</p>
<p>If the West is in trouble, global capitalism is being given a reprieve—how brief we don’t know—by the emergence of an Asian middle class, not only in China and India, but also in Indonesia (240 million people in boom mode) and Vietnam (85 million). I never cease to marvel when I compare the instant wonders and real-estate bubble of the present moment in Asia to my first experiences living there in 1994, when such countries were still in the “Asian tiger,” pre-1997-financial-crisis years.</p>
<p>In China alone 300 million people—”only” 23 percent of the total population—now live in medium-sized to major urban areas and enjoy what’s always called “disposable incomes.” They, in fact, constitute something like a nation unto themselves, an economy already two-thirds that of Germany’s.</p>
<p>The McKinsey Global Institute <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/china_urban_billion/executive_summary.asp" type="external">notes</a> that the Chinese middle class now comprises 29 percent of the Middle Kingdom’s 190 million households, and will reach a staggering 75 percent of 372 million households by 2025 (if, of course, China’s capitalist experiment hasn’t gone off some cliff by then and its potential real-estate/finance bubble hasn’t popped and drowned the society).</p>
<p>In India, with its population of 1.2 billion, there are already, according to McKinsey, 15 million households with an annual income of up to $10,000; in five years, a projected 40 million households, or 200 million people, will be in that income range. And in India in 2011, as in China in 2001, the only way is up (again as long as that reprieve lasts).</p>
<p>Americans may find it surreal (or start packing their expat bags), but an annual income of less than $10,000 means a comfortable life in China or Indonesia, while in the United States, with a median household income of roughly $50,000, one is practically poor.</p>
<p>Nomura Securities <a href="http://www.investmentu.com/2011/February/asia-emerging-middle-class-consumer.html" type="external">predicts</a> that in a mere three years, retail sales in China will overtake the US and that, in this way, the Asian middle class may indeed “save” global capitalism for a time—but at a price so steep that Mother Nature is plotting some seriously catastrophic revenge in the form of what used to be called climate change and is now more vividly known simply as “weird weather.”</p>
<p>Back in the USA</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the United States, Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Barack Obama continues to insist that we all live on an American planet, exceptionally so. If that line still resonates at home, though, it’s an ever harder sell in a world in which the first Chinese stealth fighter jet <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/11/world/main7234921.shtml" type="external">goes for a test spin</a> while the American Secretary of Defense is visiting China. Or when the news agency Xinhua, echoing its master Beijing, <a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2011-07/28/c_131015312.htm" type="external">fumes against</a> the “irresponsible” Washington politicians who starred in the recent debt-ceiling circus, and points to the fragility of a system “saved ” from free fall by the Fed’s promise to shower free money on banks for at least two years.</p>
<p>Nor is Washington being exactly clever in confronting the leadership of its <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/44044859/China_Tells_US_Good_Old_Days_of_Borrowing_Over" type="external">largest creditor</a>, which holds $3.2 trillion in US currency reserves, 40 percent of the global total, and is always puzzled by the continued lethal export of “democracy for dummies” from American shores to the Af-Pak war zones, Iraq, Libya, and other hot spots in the Greater Middle East. Beijing knows well that any further US-generated turbulence in global capitalism could slash its exports, collapse its property bubble, and throw the Chinese working classes into a pretty <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175386/tom_engelhardt_China_as_number_one" type="external">hardcore revolutionary mode</a>.</p>
<p>This means—despite rising voices of the Rick Perry/Michele Bachmann variety in the US—that there’s no “evil” Chinese conspiracy against Washington or the West. In fact, behind China’s leap beyond Germany as the world’s top exporter and its designation as the factory of the world lies a significant amount of production that’s actually controlled by American, European, and Japanese companies. Again, the decline of the West, yes — but the West is already so deep in China that it’s not going away any time soon. Whoever rises or falls, there remains, as of this moment, only a one-stop-shopping developmental system in the world, fraying in the Atlantic, booming in the Pacific.</p>
<p>If any Washington hopes about “changing” China are a mirage, when it comes to capitalism’s global monopoly, who knows what reality may turn out to be?</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Wasteland Redux</p>
<p>The proverbial bogeymen of our world—Osama, Saddam, Gaddafi, Ahmadinejad (how curious, all Muslims!)—are clearly meant to act like so many mini-black holes absorbing all our fears. But they won’t save the West from its decline, or the former sole superpower from its comeuppance.</p>
<p>Yale’s Paul Kennedy, that <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679720197/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">historian of decline</a>, would undoubtedly remind us that history will sweep away American hegemony as surely as autumn replaces summer (as surely as European colonialism was swept away, NATO’s “humanitarian” wars notwithstanding). Already in 2002, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, world-system expert Immanuel Wallerstein was framing the debate this way in his book The Decline of American Power: the question wasn’t whether the United States was in decline, but if it could find a way to fall gracefully, without too much damage to itself or the world. The answer in the years since has been clear enough: no.</p>
<p>Who can doubt that, 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, the great global story of 2011 has been the Arab Spring, itself certainly a subplot in the decline of the West? As the West wallowed in a mire of fear, Islamophobia, financial and economic crisis, and even, in Britain, riots and looting, from Northern Africa to the Middle East, people risked their lives to have a crack at Western democracy.</p>
<p>Of course, that dream has been at least partially derailed, thanks to the medieval House of Saud and its Persian Gulf minions barging in with a ruthless strategy of counter-revolution, while NATO lent a helping hand by changing the narrative to a “humanitarian” bombing campaign meant to reassert Western greatness. As NATO’s secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903461304576524503625829970.html" type="external">put the matter</a> bluntly, “If you’re not able to deploy troops beyond your borders, then you can’t exert influence internationally, and then that gap will be filled by emerging powers that don’t necessarily share your values and thinking.”</p>
<p>So let’s break the situation down as 2011 heads for winter. As far as MENA is concerned, NATO’s business is to keep the US and Europe in the game, the BRICS members out of it, and the “natives” in their places. Meanwhile, in the Atlantic world, the middle classes barely hang on in quiet desperation, even as, in the Pacific, China booms, and globally the whole world holds its breath for the next economic shoe to drop in the West (and then the one after that).</p>
<p>Pity there’s no neo-T.S. Eliot to chronicle this shabby, neo-medievalist wasteland taking over the Atlanticist axis. When capitalism hits the intensive care unit, the ones who pay the hospital bill are always the most vulnerable—and the bill is invariably paid in blood.</p>
<p>Pepe Escobar is the <a href="http://atimes.com/atimes/others/Pepe2011.html" type="external">roving correspondent</a> for <a href="http://www.atimes.com/" type="external">Asia Times</a> and a <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175366/pepe_escobar_mummies_and_models" type="external">TomDispatch.com regular</a>. His latest book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1934840831/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Obama does Globalistan</a> (Nimble Books, 2009). To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Escobar reflects on the fate of the global economy click <a href="http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/2011/09/west-and-rest.html" type="external">here</a>, or download it to your iPod <a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=j0SS4Al/iVI&amp;amp;subid=&amp;amp;offerid=146261.1&amp;amp;type=10&amp;amp;tmpid=5573&amp;amp;RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Ftomcast-from-tomdispatch-com%2Fid357095817" type="external">here</a>. He may be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href="https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:Join/signupId:43308/acctId:25612" type="external">here</a>.</p> | The Decline of the West | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/western-decline-bric-countries-rising/ | 2011-09-26 | 4left
| The Decline of the West
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/infrogmation/3216700056/"&gt;Infrogmation&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external" />This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175445/tomgram%3A_pepe_escobar%2C_will_asia_save_global_capitalism_/" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p>
<p>More than 10 years ago, before 9/11, Goldman Sachs was predicting that the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) would make the world economy’s top ten—but not until 2040. Skip a decade and the Chinese economy already has the number two spot all to itself, Brazil is number seven, India 10, and even Russia is creeping closer. In purchasing power parity, or PPP, things look <a href="http://www.therichest.org/world/worlds-largest-economies/" type="external">even better</a>. There, China is in second place, India is now fourth, Russia sixth, and Brazil seventh.</p>
<p>No wonder Jim O’Neill, who coined the neologism BRIC and is now chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, has been <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/article/goldman-aligns-itself-against-us-uk-and-europe-alongside-china-choice-next-imf-head" type="external">stressing</a> that “the world is no longer dependent on the leadership of the US and Europe.” After all, since 2007, China’s economy has grown by 45 percent, the American economy by less than 1 percent—figures startling enough to make anyone take back their predictions. American anxiety and puzzlement reached new heights when the latest International Monetary Fund <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25" type="external">projections</a> indicated that, at least by certain measurements, the Chinese economy would overtake the US by 2016. (Until recently, Goldman Sachs was pointing towards 2050 for that first-place exchange.)</p>
<p>Within the next 30 years, the top five will, <a href="http://www2.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/index.html" type="external">according to</a> Goldman Sachs, likely be China, the US, India, Brazil, and Mexico. Western Europe? Bye-bye!</p>
<p>A System Stripped to Its Essence</p>
<p>Increasing numbers of experts agree that Asia is now leading the way for the world, even as it lays bare glaring gaps in the West’s narrative of civilization. Yet to talk about “the decline of the West” is a dangerous proposition. A key historical reference is Oswald Spengler’s 1918 essay with that title. Spengler, a man of his times, thought that humanity functioned through unique cultural systems, and that Western ideas would not be pertinent for, or transferable to, other regions of the planet. (Tell that howler to the young Egyptians in Tahrir Square.)</p>
<p>Spengler, of course, captured the Western-dominated zeitgeist of another century. He saw cultures as living and dying organisms, each with a unique soul. The East or Orient was “magical,” while the West was “Faustian.” A reactionary misanthrope, he was convinced that the West had already reached the supreme status available to a democratic civilization—and so was destined to experience the “decline” of his title.</p>
<p>If you’re thinking that this sounds like an avant-la-lettre Huntingtonesque “clash of civilizations,” you can be excused, because that’s exactly what it was.</p>
<p>Speaking of civilizational clashes, did anyone notice that “maybe” in a recent TIME <a href="http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20110822,00.html" type="external">cover</a> story picking up on Spenglerian themes and headlined “The Decline and Fall of Europe (and Maybe the West)”? In our post-Spenglerian moment, the “West” is surely the United States, and how could that magazine get it so wrong? Maybe? After all, a Europe now in deep financial crisis will be “in decline” as long as it remains inextricably intertwined with and continues to defer to “the West”—that is, Washington—even as it witnesses the simultaneous economic ascent of what’s sometimes derisively referred to as “the South.”</p>
<p>Think of the present global capitalist moment not as a “clash,” but a “cash of civilizations.”</p>
<p>If Washington is now stunned and operating on autopilot, that’s in part because, historically speaking, its moment as the globe’s “sole superpower” or even “hyperpower” barely outlasted Andy Warhol’s notorious 15 minutes of fame—from the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union to 9/11 and the Bush doctrine. The new American century was swiftly throttled in three hubris-filled stages: 9/11 (blowback); the invasion of Iraq (preemptive war); and the 2008 Wall Street meltdown (casino capitalism).</p>
<p>Meanwhile, one may argue that Europe still has its non-Western opportunities, that, in fact, the periphery increasingly dreams with European—not American—subtitles. The Arab Spring, for instance, was focused on European-style parliamentary democracies, not an American presidential system. In addition, however financially anxious it may be, Europe remains the world’s largest market. In an array of technological fields, it now rivals or outpaces the US, while regressive Persian Gulf monarchies splurge on euros (and prime real estate in Paris and London) to diversify their portfolios.</p>
<p>Yet, with “leaders” like the neo-Napoleonic Nicolas Sarkozy, David (of Arabia) Cameron, Silvio (“bunga bunga”) Berlusconi, and Angela (“Dear Prudence”) Merkel largely lacking imagination or striking competence, Europe certainly doesn’t need enemies. Decline or not, it might find a whole new lease on life by sidelining its Atlanticism and boldly betting on its Euro-Asian destiny. It could open up its societies, economies, and cultures to China, India, and Russia, while pushing southern Europe to connect far more deeply with a rising Turkey, the rest of the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa (and not via further NATO “humanitarian” bombings either).</p>
<p>Otherwise, the facts on the ground spell out something that goes well beyond the decline of the West: it’s the decline of a system in the West that, in these last years, is being stripped to its grim essence. Historian Eric Hobsbawm caught the mood of the moment when he wrote in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300176163/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">How to Change the World</a> that “the world transformed by capitalism,” which Karl Marx described in 1848 “in passages of dark, laconic eloquence is recognisably the world of the early twenty-first century.”</p>
<p>In a landscape in which politics is being reduced to a (broken) mirror reflecting finance, and in which producing and saving have been superseded by consuming, something systemic comes into view. As in the famous line of poet William Butler Yeats, “the center cannot hold”—and it won’t either.</p>
<p>If the West ceases to be the center, what exactly went wrong?</p>
<p>Are You With Me or Against Me?</p>
<p>It’s worth remembering that capitalism was “civilized” thanks to the unrelenting pressure of gritty working-class movements and the ever-present threat of strikes and even revolutions. The existence of the Soviet bloc, an alternate model of economic development (however warped), also helped. To counteract the USSR, Washington’s and Europe’s ruling groups had to buy the support of their masses in defending what no one blushed about calling “the Western way of life.” A complex social contract was forged, and it involved capital making concessions.</p>
<p>No more. Not in Washington, that’s obvious. And increasingly, not in Europe either. That system started breaking down as soon as—talk about total ideological triumph!—neoliberalism became the only show in town. There was a single superhighway from there and it swept the most fragile strands of the middle class directly into a new post-industrial proletariat, or simply into unemployable status.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1934840831/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />If neoliberalism is the victor for now, it’s because no realist, alternative developmental model exists, and yet what it has won is ever more in question. Meanwhile, except in the Middle East, progressives the world over are paralyzed, as if expecting the old order to dissolve by itself. Unfortunately, history teaches us that, at similar crossroads in the past, you are as likely to find the grapes of wrath, right-wing populist-style, as anything else—or worse yet, outright fascism.</p>
<p>“The West against the rest” is a simplistic formula that doesn’t begin to describe such a world. Imagine instead, a planet in which “the rest” are trying to step beyond the West in a variety of ways, but also have absorbed that West in ways too deep to describe. Here’s the irony, then: Yes, the West will “decline,” Washington included, and still it will leave itself behind everywhere.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Sorry, Your Model Sucks</p>
<p>Suppose you’re a developing country, shopping in the developmental supermarket. You look at China and think you see something new—a consensus model that’s turning on the lights everywhere—or do you? After all, the Chinese version of an economic boom with no political freedom may not turn out to be much of a model for other countries to follow. In many ways, it may be more like an inapplicable lethal artifact, a cluster bomb made up of shards of the Western concept of modernity married to a Leninist-based formula where a single party controls personnel, propaganda, and—crucially—the People’s Liberation Army.</p>
<p>At the same time, this is a system evidently trying to prove that, even though the West unified the world—from neocolonialism to globalization—that shouldn’t imply it’s bound to rule forever in material or intellectual terms.</p>
<p>For its part, Europe is hawking a model of supra-national integration as a means of solving problems and conflicts from the Middle East to Africa. But any shopper can now see evidence of a European Union on the verge of cracking amid non-stop inter-European bickering that includes national revolts against the euro, discontent over NATO’s role as a global Robocop, and a style of ongoing European cultural arrogance that makes it incapable of recognizing, to take one example, why the Chinese model is so successful in Africa.</p>
<p>Or let’s say our shopper looks to the United States, that country still being, after all, the world’s number one economy, its dollar still the world’s reserve currency, and its military still number one in destructive power and still garrisoning much of the globe. That would indeed seem impressive, if it weren’t for the fact that Washington is visibly on the decline, oscillating wildly between a lame populism and a stale orthodoxy, and shilling for casino capitalism on a side street in its spare time. It’s a giant power enveloped in political and economic paralysis for all the world to see, and no less visibly incapable of coming up with an exit strategy.</p>
<p>Really, would you buy a model from any of them? In fact, where in a world in escalating disarray is anyone supposed to look these days when it comes to models?</p>
<p>One of the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175419/christian_parenti_reading_the_world_in_a_loaf_of_bread" type="external">key reasons</a> for the Arab Spring was out-of-control food prices, driven significantly by speculation. Protests and riots in Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Austria, and Turkey were direct consequences of the global recession. In Spain, nearly half of 16- to 29-year-olds—an overeducated “lost generation”—are now out of jobs, a European record.</p>
<p>That may be the worst in Europe, but in Britain, 20 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds are unemployed, about average for the rest of the European Union. In London, almost 25 percent of working-age people are unemployed. In France, 13.5 percent of the population is now officially poor—that is, living on less than $1,300 a month.</p>
<p>As many across Western Europe see it, the state has already breached the social contract. The indignados of Madrid have caught the spirit of the moment perfectly: “We’re not against the system, it’s the system that is against us.”</p>
<p>This spells out the essence of the abject failure of neoliberal capitalism, as David Harvey explained in his latest book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199836841/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The Enigma of Capital</a>. He makes clear how a political economy “of mass dispossession, of predatory practices to the point of daylight robbery, particularly of the poor and the vulnerable, the unsophisticated and the legally unprotected, has become the order of the day.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Will Asia Save Global Capitalism?</p>
<p>Meanwhile Beijing is too busy remixing its destiny as the global Middle Kingdom—deploying engineers, architects, and infrastructure workers of the non-bombing variety from Canada to Brazil, Cuba to Angola—to be much distracted by the Atlanticist travails in MENA (aka the region that includes the Middle East and Northern Africa).</p>
<p>If the West is in trouble, global capitalism is being given a reprieve—how brief we don’t know—by the emergence of an Asian middle class, not only in China and India, but also in Indonesia (240 million people in boom mode) and Vietnam (85 million). I never cease to marvel when I compare the instant wonders and real-estate bubble of the present moment in Asia to my first experiences living there in 1994, when such countries were still in the “Asian tiger,” pre-1997-financial-crisis years.</p>
<p>In China alone 300 million people—”only” 23 percent of the total population—now live in medium-sized to major urban areas and enjoy what’s always called “disposable incomes.” They, in fact, constitute something like a nation unto themselves, an economy already two-thirds that of Germany’s.</p>
<p>The McKinsey Global Institute <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/china_urban_billion/executive_summary.asp" type="external">notes</a> that the Chinese middle class now comprises 29 percent of the Middle Kingdom’s 190 million households, and will reach a staggering 75 percent of 372 million households by 2025 (if, of course, China’s capitalist experiment hasn’t gone off some cliff by then and its potential real-estate/finance bubble hasn’t popped and drowned the society).</p>
<p>In India, with its population of 1.2 billion, there are already, according to McKinsey, 15 million households with an annual income of up to $10,000; in five years, a projected 40 million households, or 200 million people, will be in that income range. And in India in 2011, as in China in 2001, the only way is up (again as long as that reprieve lasts).</p>
<p>Americans may find it surreal (or start packing their expat bags), but an annual income of less than $10,000 means a comfortable life in China or Indonesia, while in the United States, with a median household income of roughly $50,000, one is practically poor.</p>
<p>Nomura Securities <a href="http://www.investmentu.com/2011/February/asia-emerging-middle-class-consumer.html" type="external">predicts</a> that in a mere three years, retail sales in China will overtake the US and that, in this way, the Asian middle class may indeed “save” global capitalism for a time—but at a price so steep that Mother Nature is plotting some seriously catastrophic revenge in the form of what used to be called climate change and is now more vividly known simply as “weird weather.”</p>
<p>Back in the USA</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the United States, Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Barack Obama continues to insist that we all live on an American planet, exceptionally so. If that line still resonates at home, though, it’s an ever harder sell in a world in which the first Chinese stealth fighter jet <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/11/world/main7234921.shtml" type="external">goes for a test spin</a> while the American Secretary of Defense is visiting China. Or when the news agency Xinhua, echoing its master Beijing, <a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2011-07/28/c_131015312.htm" type="external">fumes against</a> the “irresponsible” Washington politicians who starred in the recent debt-ceiling circus, and points to the fragility of a system “saved ” from free fall by the Fed’s promise to shower free money on banks for at least two years.</p>
<p>Nor is Washington being exactly clever in confronting the leadership of its <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/44044859/China_Tells_US_Good_Old_Days_of_Borrowing_Over" type="external">largest creditor</a>, which holds $3.2 trillion in US currency reserves, 40 percent of the global total, and is always puzzled by the continued lethal export of “democracy for dummies” from American shores to the Af-Pak war zones, Iraq, Libya, and other hot spots in the Greater Middle East. Beijing knows well that any further US-generated turbulence in global capitalism could slash its exports, collapse its property bubble, and throw the Chinese working classes into a pretty <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175386/tom_engelhardt_China_as_number_one" type="external">hardcore revolutionary mode</a>.</p>
<p>This means—despite rising voices of the Rick Perry/Michele Bachmann variety in the US—that there’s no “evil” Chinese conspiracy against Washington or the West. In fact, behind China’s leap beyond Germany as the world’s top exporter and its designation as the factory of the world lies a significant amount of production that’s actually controlled by American, European, and Japanese companies. Again, the decline of the West, yes — but the West is already so deep in China that it’s not going away any time soon. Whoever rises or falls, there remains, as of this moment, only a one-stop-shopping developmental system in the world, fraying in the Atlantic, booming in the Pacific.</p>
<p>If any Washington hopes about “changing” China are a mirage, when it comes to capitalism’s global monopoly, who knows what reality may turn out to be?</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Wasteland Redux</p>
<p>The proverbial bogeymen of our world—Osama, Saddam, Gaddafi, Ahmadinejad (how curious, all Muslims!)—are clearly meant to act like so many mini-black holes absorbing all our fears. But they won’t save the West from its decline, or the former sole superpower from its comeuppance.</p>
<p>Yale’s Paul Kennedy, that <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679720197/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">historian of decline</a>, would undoubtedly remind us that history will sweep away American hegemony as surely as autumn replaces summer (as surely as European colonialism was swept away, NATO’s “humanitarian” wars notwithstanding). Already in 2002, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, world-system expert Immanuel Wallerstein was framing the debate this way in his book The Decline of American Power: the question wasn’t whether the United States was in decline, but if it could find a way to fall gracefully, without too much damage to itself or the world. The answer in the years since has been clear enough: no.</p>
<p>Who can doubt that, 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, the great global story of 2011 has been the Arab Spring, itself certainly a subplot in the decline of the West? As the West wallowed in a mire of fear, Islamophobia, financial and economic crisis, and even, in Britain, riots and looting, from Northern Africa to the Middle East, people risked their lives to have a crack at Western democracy.</p>
<p>Of course, that dream has been at least partially derailed, thanks to the medieval House of Saud and its Persian Gulf minions barging in with a ruthless strategy of counter-revolution, while NATO lent a helping hand by changing the narrative to a “humanitarian” bombing campaign meant to reassert Western greatness. As NATO’s secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903461304576524503625829970.html" type="external">put the matter</a> bluntly, “If you’re not able to deploy troops beyond your borders, then you can’t exert influence internationally, and then that gap will be filled by emerging powers that don’t necessarily share your values and thinking.”</p>
<p>So let’s break the situation down as 2011 heads for winter. As far as MENA is concerned, NATO’s business is to keep the US and Europe in the game, the BRICS members out of it, and the “natives” in their places. Meanwhile, in the Atlantic world, the middle classes barely hang on in quiet desperation, even as, in the Pacific, China booms, and globally the whole world holds its breath for the next economic shoe to drop in the West (and then the one after that).</p>
<p>Pity there’s no neo-T.S. Eliot to chronicle this shabby, neo-medievalist wasteland taking over the Atlanticist axis. When capitalism hits the intensive care unit, the ones who pay the hospital bill are always the most vulnerable—and the bill is invariably paid in blood.</p>
<p>Pepe Escobar is the <a href="http://atimes.com/atimes/others/Pepe2011.html" type="external">roving correspondent</a> for <a href="http://www.atimes.com/" type="external">Asia Times</a> and a <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175366/pepe_escobar_mummies_and_models" type="external">TomDispatch.com regular</a>. His latest book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1934840831/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Obama does Globalistan</a> (Nimble Books, 2009). To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Escobar reflects on the fate of the global economy click <a href="http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/2011/09/west-and-rest.html" type="external">here</a>, or download it to your iPod <a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=j0SS4Al/iVI&amp;amp;subid=&amp;amp;offerid=146261.1&amp;amp;type=10&amp;amp;tmpid=5573&amp;amp;RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Ftomcast-from-tomdispatch-com%2Fid357095817" type="external">here</a>. He may be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href="https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:Join/signupId:43308/acctId:25612" type="external">here</a>.</p> | 2,126 |
<p />
<p>Is the collapse imminent, and our very way of life under threat of total global meltdown?</p>
<p>Perhaps the <a href="" type="internal">signs</a> and <a href="" type="internal">warnings</a> are there, at every level, for those who want to see it.</p>
<p>An outright panic has taken hold over many who see <a href="" type="internal">September 2015</a> as a <a href="" type="internal">convergence of ominous events</a> – including the Pope’s visit to America, the United Nations summit on <a href="https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/summit" type="external">Agenda 21-like development</a>, expectations for a stunning policy change at the Federal Reserve, unprecedented experiments at <a href="" type="internal">CERN</a> and the end of the seven year business cycle, a date that has already seen the tragic events of 9/11 and the 2008 economic collapse in this century.</p>
<p>For many economic experts, it is a dangerous and capricious time for global finance, with many warning that a <a href="http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/it-starts-today-a-financial-collapse-is-imminent-within-this-six-month-time-period_07152015" type="external">massive global collapse is imminent.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.rt.com/op-edge/312576-september-economy-crash-eclipse/" type="external">RT profiled</a> several who are bracing for next month’s signposts of doom:</p>
<p>Jeff Berwick, Canadian entrepreneur and editor of The Dollar Vigilante, recently told Gordon T. Long in an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O20n_oDUx54" type="external">interview</a>: “There’s enough going on in September to have me incredibly curious and concerned about what’s going to happen.”</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>Doug Casey, [head of Casey Research said] “With these stupid governments printing trillions and trillions of new currency units,”Casey, describing the US Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program, “it’s building up to a catastrophe of historic proportions.”</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>Gerald Celente, [founder of Trends Research said]&#160;“You’re going to see a global stock market crash… There’s going to be panic on the streets&#160;from Wall Street to Shanghai, to the UK down to Brazil.”</p>
<p>“You’re going to see one market after another begin to collapse.”</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>Larry Edelson [Research Director for Weiss Research said] “On October 7, 2015, the first economic super cycle since 1929 will trigger a global financial crisis of epic proportions. It will bring Europe, Japan and the United States to their knees, sending nearly one billion human beings on a roller-coaster ride through hell for the next five years. A ride like no generation has ever seen. I am 100 percent confident it will hit within the next few months.”</p>
<p>Obviously, these are not vague or uncertain predictions.</p>
<p>And they aren’t alone – there is a <a href="http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/the-market-is-uniquely-crash-prone-experts-fear-financial-collapse-imminent_08052015" type="external">chorus of prominent voices warning</a> plainly that something big is coming soon, and quite possibly specifically in <a href="" type="internal">September</a>.</p>
<p>Are they right?</p>
<p>Will this be revealed to be a baseless panic, or are these the last weeks above ground?</p>
<p>Only time will tell, but take heed according to what information is out there.</p>
<p>Just <a href="" type="internal">be ready</a> if it really does happen.</p>
<p>Courtesy of <a href="http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/economists-brace-for-september-building-up-to-catastrophe-of-historic-proportions_08182015" type="external">SHTFplan.com</a></p>
<p />
<p /> | Economists Brace for September: “Building Up to Catastrophe of Historic Proportions” | true | http://dcclothesline.com/2015/08/18/economists-brace-for-september-building-up-to-catastrophe-of-historic-proportions/ | 2015-08-18 | 0right
| Economists Brace for September: “Building Up to Catastrophe of Historic Proportions”
<p />
<p>Is the collapse imminent, and our very way of life under threat of total global meltdown?</p>
<p>Perhaps the <a href="" type="internal">signs</a> and <a href="" type="internal">warnings</a> are there, at every level, for those who want to see it.</p>
<p>An outright panic has taken hold over many who see <a href="" type="internal">September 2015</a> as a <a href="" type="internal">convergence of ominous events</a> – including the Pope’s visit to America, the United Nations summit on <a href="https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/summit" type="external">Agenda 21-like development</a>, expectations for a stunning policy change at the Federal Reserve, unprecedented experiments at <a href="" type="internal">CERN</a> and the end of the seven year business cycle, a date that has already seen the tragic events of 9/11 and the 2008 economic collapse in this century.</p>
<p>For many economic experts, it is a dangerous and capricious time for global finance, with many warning that a <a href="http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/it-starts-today-a-financial-collapse-is-imminent-within-this-six-month-time-period_07152015" type="external">massive global collapse is imminent.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.rt.com/op-edge/312576-september-economy-crash-eclipse/" type="external">RT profiled</a> several who are bracing for next month’s signposts of doom:</p>
<p>Jeff Berwick, Canadian entrepreneur and editor of The Dollar Vigilante, recently told Gordon T. Long in an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O20n_oDUx54" type="external">interview</a>: “There’s enough going on in September to have me incredibly curious and concerned about what’s going to happen.”</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>Doug Casey, [head of Casey Research said] “With these stupid governments printing trillions and trillions of new currency units,”Casey, describing the US Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program, “it’s building up to a catastrophe of historic proportions.”</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>Gerald Celente, [founder of Trends Research said]&#160;“You’re going to see a global stock market crash… There’s going to be panic on the streets&#160;from Wall Street to Shanghai, to the UK down to Brazil.”</p>
<p>“You’re going to see one market after another begin to collapse.”</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>Larry Edelson [Research Director for Weiss Research said] “On October 7, 2015, the first economic super cycle since 1929 will trigger a global financial crisis of epic proportions. It will bring Europe, Japan and the United States to their knees, sending nearly one billion human beings on a roller-coaster ride through hell for the next five years. A ride like no generation has ever seen. I am 100 percent confident it will hit within the next few months.”</p>
<p>Obviously, these are not vague or uncertain predictions.</p>
<p>And they aren’t alone – there is a <a href="http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/the-market-is-uniquely-crash-prone-experts-fear-financial-collapse-imminent_08052015" type="external">chorus of prominent voices warning</a> plainly that something big is coming soon, and quite possibly specifically in <a href="" type="internal">September</a>.</p>
<p>Are they right?</p>
<p>Will this be revealed to be a baseless panic, or are these the last weeks above ground?</p>
<p>Only time will tell, but take heed according to what information is out there.</p>
<p>Just <a href="" type="internal">be ready</a> if it really does happen.</p>
<p>Courtesy of <a href="http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/economists-brace-for-september-building-up-to-catastrophe-of-historic-proportions_08182015" type="external">SHTFplan.com</a></p>
<p />
<p /> | 2,127 |
<p>“I hate Ted Cruz,” said Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/al-franken-i-hate-ted-cruz/article/2623991" type="external">earlier this week</a> in an interview with USA Today while promoting a new book in which he described himself as a " <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Al-Franken-Giant-Senate/dp/1455540412/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1495668858&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=al+franken" type="external">Giant of the Senate</a>." Below are five noteworthy elements and moments of Franken's senatorial history.</p>
<p>1. HE SAYS IT’S ‘RACIST’ TO MOCK FAUXCAHONTAS</p>
<p>Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) regularly describes herself as having Native American heritage. She denies that this self-description has ever afforded her any professional or academic advantages via formal or informal racial quotas.</p>
<p>It’s “racist” to mock Warren as “Pocahontas,” said Franken to CNN’s Jake Tapper in a <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1702/12/sotu.01.html" type="external">February interview</a> with State of the Union. President Donald Trump has often mocked Warren as "Pocahontas" given her false <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2012/05/09/151784645/in-mass-senate-race-warren-on-defense-over-native-american-heritage" type="external">self-description</a> as possessing Native American heritage.</p>
<p>2. HE SAYS CONSTITUTIONAL ORIGINALISM IS AN INFECTION</p>
<p>During confirmation hearings for then Supreme Court justice nominee Neil Gorsuch, Franken described the judicial philosophy of originalism as an infection. Jurisprudence should not be grounded in application of the law as written and intended by its drafters, but with a push toward “common ground” and “consensus” among justices:</p>
<p>But your record suggests that, if confirmed, you will espouse an ideology that I believe has already infected the bench — an ideology that backs big business over individual Americans and refuses to see our country as the dynamic and diverse nation that my constituents wake up in every morning.</p>
<p>He also implored Gorsuch to <a href="" type="internal">protect the bureaucracy</a> — “the administrative state” — from what he described as the dual threat posed to it in the form of White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon and President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Franken won his 2008 Senate election in Minnesota against then Republican incumbent Norm Coleman by a margin of 312 votes. The election saw ballots cast by 1,099 felons who were ineligible to vote.</p>
<p>The initial election results had Coleman victorious with a margin of 725 votes. Franken and his political team then waged lawfare to secure the senatorship, as writes Byron York in <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/york-when-1099-felons-vote-in-race-won-by-312-ballots/article/2504163" type="external">The Washington Examiner</a>:</p>
<p>In the '08 campaign, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman was running for re-election against Democrat Al Franken. It was impossibly close; on the morning after the election, after 2.9 million people had voted, Coleman led Franken by 725 votes.</p>
<p>Franken and his Democratic allies dispatched an army of lawyers to challenge the results. After the first canvass, Coleman's lead was down to 206 votes. That was followed by months of wrangling and litigation. In the end, Franken was declared the winner by 312 votes. He was sworn into office in July 2009, eight months after the election.</p>
<p>During the controversy a conservative group called Minnesota Majority began to look into claims of voter fraud. Comparing criminal records with voting rolls, the group identified 1,099 felons — all ineligible to vote — who had voted in the Franken-Coleman race.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | Al Franken: ‘I Hate Ted Cruz.’ That’s Okay. Here Are 5 Reasons To Hate Al Franken. | true | https://dailywire.com/news/16845/al-franken-i-hate-ted-cruz-thats-okay-here-are-5-robert-kraychik | 2017-05-24 | 0right
| Al Franken: ‘I Hate Ted Cruz.’ That’s Okay. Here Are 5 Reasons To Hate Al Franken.
<p>“I hate Ted Cruz,” said Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/al-franken-i-hate-ted-cruz/article/2623991" type="external">earlier this week</a> in an interview with USA Today while promoting a new book in which he described himself as a " <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Al-Franken-Giant-Senate/dp/1455540412/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1495668858&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=al+franken" type="external">Giant of the Senate</a>." Below are five noteworthy elements and moments of Franken's senatorial history.</p>
<p>1. HE SAYS IT’S ‘RACIST’ TO MOCK FAUXCAHONTAS</p>
<p>Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) regularly describes herself as having Native American heritage. She denies that this self-description has ever afforded her any professional or academic advantages via formal or informal racial quotas.</p>
<p>It’s “racist” to mock Warren as “Pocahontas,” said Franken to CNN’s Jake Tapper in a <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1702/12/sotu.01.html" type="external">February interview</a> with State of the Union. President Donald Trump has often mocked Warren as "Pocahontas" given her false <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2012/05/09/151784645/in-mass-senate-race-warren-on-defense-over-native-american-heritage" type="external">self-description</a> as possessing Native American heritage.</p>
<p>2. HE SAYS CONSTITUTIONAL ORIGINALISM IS AN INFECTION</p>
<p>During confirmation hearings for then Supreme Court justice nominee Neil Gorsuch, Franken described the judicial philosophy of originalism as an infection. Jurisprudence should not be grounded in application of the law as written and intended by its drafters, but with a push toward “common ground” and “consensus” among justices:</p>
<p>But your record suggests that, if confirmed, you will espouse an ideology that I believe has already infected the bench — an ideology that backs big business over individual Americans and refuses to see our country as the dynamic and diverse nation that my constituents wake up in every morning.</p>
<p>He also implored Gorsuch to <a href="" type="internal">protect the bureaucracy</a> — “the administrative state” — from what he described as the dual threat posed to it in the form of White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon and President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Franken won his 2008 Senate election in Minnesota against then Republican incumbent Norm Coleman by a margin of 312 votes. The election saw ballots cast by 1,099 felons who were ineligible to vote.</p>
<p>The initial election results had Coleman victorious with a margin of 725 votes. Franken and his political team then waged lawfare to secure the senatorship, as writes Byron York in <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/york-when-1099-felons-vote-in-race-won-by-312-ballots/article/2504163" type="external">The Washington Examiner</a>:</p>
<p>In the '08 campaign, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman was running for re-election against Democrat Al Franken. It was impossibly close; on the morning after the election, after 2.9 million people had voted, Coleman led Franken by 725 votes.</p>
<p>Franken and his Democratic allies dispatched an army of lawyers to challenge the results. After the first canvass, Coleman's lead was down to 206 votes. That was followed by months of wrangling and litigation. In the end, Franken was declared the winner by 312 votes. He was sworn into office in July 2009, eight months after the election.</p>
<p>During the controversy a conservative group called Minnesota Majority began to look into claims of voter fraud. Comparing criminal records with voting rolls, the group identified 1,099 felons — all ineligible to vote — who had voted in the Franken-Coleman race.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | 2,128 |
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<p>The justices ruled that sharing corporate secrets with friends or relatives is illegal even if the insider providing the tip doesn’t receive anything of value in return.</p>
<p>The ruling upheld the conviction of Bassam Yacoub Salman, an Illinois man convicted of making investments based on inside information he received from a member of his extended family. It also limited the impact of a 2014 ruling from the federal appeals court in Manhattan that had raised doubts about the scope of insider trading laws.</p>
<p>Prosecutors have relied on a broad reading of the law to support aggressive anti-corruption efforts that have netted more than 80 arrests and 70 convictions for insider trading over several years.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Writing for the court, Justice Samuel Alito rejected arguments that insider trading prosecutions should be limited to those who make secret profits from revealing confidential data. Government officials had argued that sharing corporate secrets with friends or family is just as damaging to the integrity of financial markets.</p>
<p>Salman was prosecuted for earning more than $1.5 million in profits from trading on nonpublic information he received about future health care deals. The tip originated with Salman’s brother-in-law, Maher Kara, an investment banker at Citigroup Global Markets in New York. Kara passed the tip on to his own brother, Michael Kara, who then gave it to Salman.</p>
<p>Salman was aware that Maher Kara was the source. Kara pleaded guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud charges.</p>
<p>“Salman’s jury was properly instructed that a personal benefit includes the benefit one would obtain from simply making a gift of confidential information to a trading relative,” Alito said.</p>
<p>Alito said that Maher Kara disclosed confidential information as a gift to his brother with the expectation that his brother would trade on it. That was a breach of his duty of trust to Citigroup, Alito said, and that breach of duty continued when Salman received the information and traded on it.</p>
<p>Prosecutors had suffered a blow two years ago when the federal appeals court in Manhattan overturned the conviction of hedge fund managers Todd Newman and Anthony Chiasson after finding they were too far removed from inside information to be prosecuted.</p>
<p>The Manhattan court said Newman and Chiasson got their information through a chain of traders who didn’t have a close personal relationship with them. The ruling forced Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara to drop some cases and put others on hold.</p>
<p>Alito specifically noted the Manhattan ruling and rejected any notion that an insider doesn’t violate the law unless he receives something of value when giving confidential information to a friend or relative.</p>
<p>Bharara said in a statement that the Supreme Court “easily” rejected the Manhattan court’s “novel interpretation of insider trading laws.”</p>
<p>“The Court stood up for common sense and affirmed what we have been arguing from the outset — that the law absolutely prohibits insiders from advantaging their friends and relatives at the expense of the trading public,” Bharara said. “Today’s decision is a victory for fair markets and those who believe that the system should not be rigged.”</p>
<p>The ruling is likely to affect high-profile hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman, who earlier this year was accused by federal regulators of illegally trading on confidential information he learned from a company executive. Cooperman had told his investors in a letter that federal prosecutors were holding off on pursuing charges until the Supreme Court ruled in the Salman case.</p> | Supreme Court upholds broad power to curb insider trading | false | https://abqjournal.com/903142/supreme-court-upholds-broad-power-to-curb-insider-trading.html | 2016-12-06 | 2least
| Supreme Court upholds broad power to curb insider trading
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<p>The justices ruled that sharing corporate secrets with friends or relatives is illegal even if the insider providing the tip doesn’t receive anything of value in return.</p>
<p>The ruling upheld the conviction of Bassam Yacoub Salman, an Illinois man convicted of making investments based on inside information he received from a member of his extended family. It also limited the impact of a 2014 ruling from the federal appeals court in Manhattan that had raised doubts about the scope of insider trading laws.</p>
<p>Prosecutors have relied on a broad reading of the law to support aggressive anti-corruption efforts that have netted more than 80 arrests and 70 convictions for insider trading over several years.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Writing for the court, Justice Samuel Alito rejected arguments that insider trading prosecutions should be limited to those who make secret profits from revealing confidential data. Government officials had argued that sharing corporate secrets with friends or family is just as damaging to the integrity of financial markets.</p>
<p>Salman was prosecuted for earning more than $1.5 million in profits from trading on nonpublic information he received about future health care deals. The tip originated with Salman’s brother-in-law, Maher Kara, an investment banker at Citigroup Global Markets in New York. Kara passed the tip on to his own brother, Michael Kara, who then gave it to Salman.</p>
<p>Salman was aware that Maher Kara was the source. Kara pleaded guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud charges.</p>
<p>“Salman’s jury was properly instructed that a personal benefit includes the benefit one would obtain from simply making a gift of confidential information to a trading relative,” Alito said.</p>
<p>Alito said that Maher Kara disclosed confidential information as a gift to his brother with the expectation that his brother would trade on it. That was a breach of his duty of trust to Citigroup, Alito said, and that breach of duty continued when Salman received the information and traded on it.</p>
<p>Prosecutors had suffered a blow two years ago when the federal appeals court in Manhattan overturned the conviction of hedge fund managers Todd Newman and Anthony Chiasson after finding they were too far removed from inside information to be prosecuted.</p>
<p>The Manhattan court said Newman and Chiasson got their information through a chain of traders who didn’t have a close personal relationship with them. The ruling forced Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara to drop some cases and put others on hold.</p>
<p>Alito specifically noted the Manhattan ruling and rejected any notion that an insider doesn’t violate the law unless he receives something of value when giving confidential information to a friend or relative.</p>
<p>Bharara said in a statement that the Supreme Court “easily” rejected the Manhattan court’s “novel interpretation of insider trading laws.”</p>
<p>“The Court stood up for common sense and affirmed what we have been arguing from the outset — that the law absolutely prohibits insiders from advantaging their friends and relatives at the expense of the trading public,” Bharara said. “Today’s decision is a victory for fair markets and those who believe that the system should not be rigged.”</p>
<p>The ruling is likely to affect high-profile hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman, who earlier this year was accused by federal regulators of illegally trading on confidential information he learned from a company executive. Cooperman had told his investors in a letter that federal prosecutors were holding off on pursuing charges until the Supreme Court ruled in the Salman case.</p> | 2,129 |
<p>The former chair of the Donald Trump campaign in Campbell County, KY has been charged with multiple felonies, including human trafficking of a minor, inducing a minor to engage in sex and a third count of giving alcohol to a minor.</p>
<p>Former Judge Tim Nolan <a href="http://www.rcnky.com/articles/2017/04/21/campbell-co-school-board-member-former-judge-indicted-human-trafficking-charges" type="external">subjected a minor</a> to “commercial sexual activity” while still serving as the chair of Trump’s campaign in August of 2016 – just three months before being elected to serve as a school board member for a suburban Cincinnati district.</p>
<p>“We are immensely troubled and saddened to hear of the arrest of Mr. Nolan and grieve as a district for those impacted,”&#160; <a href="http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/04/21/former-district-judge-indicted-human-trafficking/100756290/" type="external">said Connie Pohlgeers, director of school improvement from Nolan’s district, in a statement.</a></p>
<p>“I can’t imagine what he did,” Foellger added. “I don’t want to speculate. It’s mind-boggling that he would be with an underage girl.”</p>
<p>Nolan was an outspoken Tea Party advocate who “leaned to the tougher” side of sentencing, according to Foellger. Republican website <a href="http://gopfacts.org/nolan.htm" type="external">GOPFacts.org called Nolan</a> “one of Campbell County’s most vehement racists” and shared a picture off of Nolan’s Facebook timeline which seemed to feature him wearing a Klan uniform. (Nolan has since filed a defamation suit against the site, which is still pending.)</p>
<p />
<p>Nolan was led to court yesterday wearing handcuffs, but was released on a $50,000 bond with&#160;an ankle monitor. His first preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 5th.</p>
<p>Nathan Wellman is a Los Angeles-based journalist, author, and playwright. His less-political Youtube channel&#160; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgTX2M68DdRvR5Jd2YHEH7A" type="external">can be found here</a>.&#160;Follow him on Twitter: @LightningWOW</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Trump’s former Kentucky campaign chair was just indicted for sex trafficking of a minor | true | http://resistancereport.com/news/trumps-former-kentucky-campaign-chair-just-indicted-sex-trafficking-minor/ | 2017-04-22 | 4left
| Trump’s former Kentucky campaign chair was just indicted for sex trafficking of a minor
<p>The former chair of the Donald Trump campaign in Campbell County, KY has been charged with multiple felonies, including human trafficking of a minor, inducing a minor to engage in sex and a third count of giving alcohol to a minor.</p>
<p>Former Judge Tim Nolan <a href="http://www.rcnky.com/articles/2017/04/21/campbell-co-school-board-member-former-judge-indicted-human-trafficking-charges" type="external">subjected a minor</a> to “commercial sexual activity” while still serving as the chair of Trump’s campaign in August of 2016 – just three months before being elected to serve as a school board member for a suburban Cincinnati district.</p>
<p>“We are immensely troubled and saddened to hear of the arrest of Mr. Nolan and grieve as a district for those impacted,”&#160; <a href="http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/04/21/former-district-judge-indicted-human-trafficking/100756290/" type="external">said Connie Pohlgeers, director of school improvement from Nolan’s district, in a statement.</a></p>
<p>“I can’t imagine what he did,” Foellger added. “I don’t want to speculate. It’s mind-boggling that he would be with an underage girl.”</p>
<p>Nolan was an outspoken Tea Party advocate who “leaned to the tougher” side of sentencing, according to Foellger. Republican website <a href="http://gopfacts.org/nolan.htm" type="external">GOPFacts.org called Nolan</a> “one of Campbell County’s most vehement racists” and shared a picture off of Nolan’s Facebook timeline which seemed to feature him wearing a Klan uniform. (Nolan has since filed a defamation suit against the site, which is still pending.)</p>
<p />
<p>Nolan was led to court yesterday wearing handcuffs, but was released on a $50,000 bond with&#160;an ankle monitor. His first preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 5th.</p>
<p>Nathan Wellman is a Los Angeles-based journalist, author, and playwright. His less-political Youtube channel&#160; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgTX2M68DdRvR5Jd2YHEH7A" type="external">can be found here</a>.&#160;Follow him on Twitter: @LightningWOW</p>
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<p>Hoping to help their daughter, Bubar-Martinez’s parents enrolled her in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program when she was about 8 years old.</p>
<p>“My parents thought it would be a great way to get me out of the house,” she said. “And help with my shyness.”</p>
<p>Bubar-Martinez credits the program with helping her be more open with other people, raise her grades, and acquire more professional skills.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The organization matches young girls and boys with an older individual with whom they can do activities and hopefully form a personal relationship. The traditional Big Brothers Big Sisters program ends when the child enters high school.</p>
<p>Giovianna Burrell, assistant manager of education programs, said the local organization, following the example of other chapters, has expanded its program to serve some high school and college students. Five years ago Big Brothers Big Sisters started Mentor 2.0, which matched high school students with a mentor, at Amy Biehl High School and South Valley Academy. This May it launched Mentor 3.0, so those same students could continue their relationship with their mentors after graduating from high school.</p>
<p>“When you get to college, it can be lonely,” Burrell said. “Especially at a commuter college. The program provides someone they can talk to comfortably.”</p>
<p>Bubar-Martinez, a freshman at Central New Mexico Community College, is one of those students who elected to participate in Mentor 3.0. During her freshman year of high school at Amy Biehl charter school, she was matched with Sara Crecca, an attorney who has built a career advocating for abused, neglected and injured children. Bubar-Martinez said she decided to participate in Mentor 3.0 because of the great connection she has with Crecca. Bubar-Martinez’s parents attended college but she said she likes having that extra support.</p>
<p>The two see each other at least once a month but text almost daily.</p>
<p>“Out of this relationship I get a lot of things,” Bubar-Martinez said. “To name a few, I get a friend, mentor, someone to call when I’m stressed, someone to ask questions to, and another person in my life to help me stay focused on school.”</p>
<p>Crecca was on the board at Amy Biehl when she learned the program would be coming to the school. Having been a mentor early in her career, she knew the benefits. As a college student and professional, she believed she had useful insights to offer. Crecca had an older brother and sister and her parents who had attended college, paving the way for her, offering tips and support. She wanted to do that for someone else.</p>
<p>Often, Crecca’s biggest jobs are being a cheerleader and an emotional guide.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“The bureaucracy of school itself can be overwhelming,” she said. “It’s hard for 18-year-olds. They have not been out in the world. They are not confident they will succeed. … Because I have experience, I can see it will be OK. When you’re that age (18), everything is an emergency.”</p>
<p>Bubar-Martinez is working toward an associate degree in nursing.</p>
<p>Young adults can participate in Mentor 3.0 until they are 25, which Burrell calls “emerging adulthood.” In addition to being matched with a mentor, participants must complete a variety of tasks tailored either to their schooling or job. They are required to text information to their mentor or Burrell about things such as when their school orientation is, how many credit hours they are taking, when they will have winter break and finals. They are also instructed to meet one of their professors during office hours as an encouragement to form relationships on campus. For those working, they have to share things like their weekly work schedule and supervisor’s name.</p>
<p>Burrell said often when a child reaches adulthood they are sent into the world, told good luck and expected to act like adults. But she said transforming into an adult doesn’t happen when they become 18 and happens gradually over time, which means they might need some guidance.</p>
<p>“There’s something to be said about someone checking in on you,” Burrell said. “Having someone just say ‘Are you OK?'”</p>
<p /> | Paving the way | false | https://abqjournal.com/1097411/paving-the-way.html | 2least
| Paving the way
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<p />
<p>Hoping to help their daughter, Bubar-Martinez’s parents enrolled her in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program when she was about 8 years old.</p>
<p>“My parents thought it would be a great way to get me out of the house,” she said. “And help with my shyness.”</p>
<p>Bubar-Martinez credits the program with helping her be more open with other people, raise her grades, and acquire more professional skills.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The organization matches young girls and boys with an older individual with whom they can do activities and hopefully form a personal relationship. The traditional Big Brothers Big Sisters program ends when the child enters high school.</p>
<p>Giovianna Burrell, assistant manager of education programs, said the local organization, following the example of other chapters, has expanded its program to serve some high school and college students. Five years ago Big Brothers Big Sisters started Mentor 2.0, which matched high school students with a mentor, at Amy Biehl High School and South Valley Academy. This May it launched Mentor 3.0, so those same students could continue their relationship with their mentors after graduating from high school.</p>
<p>“When you get to college, it can be lonely,” Burrell said. “Especially at a commuter college. The program provides someone they can talk to comfortably.”</p>
<p>Bubar-Martinez, a freshman at Central New Mexico Community College, is one of those students who elected to participate in Mentor 3.0. During her freshman year of high school at Amy Biehl charter school, she was matched with Sara Crecca, an attorney who has built a career advocating for abused, neglected and injured children. Bubar-Martinez said she decided to participate in Mentor 3.0 because of the great connection she has with Crecca. Bubar-Martinez’s parents attended college but she said she likes having that extra support.</p>
<p>The two see each other at least once a month but text almost daily.</p>
<p>“Out of this relationship I get a lot of things,” Bubar-Martinez said. “To name a few, I get a friend, mentor, someone to call when I’m stressed, someone to ask questions to, and another person in my life to help me stay focused on school.”</p>
<p>Crecca was on the board at Amy Biehl when she learned the program would be coming to the school. Having been a mentor early in her career, she knew the benefits. As a college student and professional, she believed she had useful insights to offer. Crecca had an older brother and sister and her parents who had attended college, paving the way for her, offering tips and support. She wanted to do that for someone else.</p>
<p>Often, Crecca’s biggest jobs are being a cheerleader and an emotional guide.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“The bureaucracy of school itself can be overwhelming,” she said. “It’s hard for 18-year-olds. They have not been out in the world. They are not confident they will succeed. … Because I have experience, I can see it will be OK. When you’re that age (18), everything is an emergency.”</p>
<p>Bubar-Martinez is working toward an associate degree in nursing.</p>
<p>Young adults can participate in Mentor 3.0 until they are 25, which Burrell calls “emerging adulthood.” In addition to being matched with a mentor, participants must complete a variety of tasks tailored either to their schooling or job. They are required to text information to their mentor or Burrell about things such as when their school orientation is, how many credit hours they are taking, when they will have winter break and finals. They are also instructed to meet one of their professors during office hours as an encouragement to form relationships on campus. For those working, they have to share things like their weekly work schedule and supervisor’s name.</p>
<p>Burrell said often when a child reaches adulthood they are sent into the world, told good luck and expected to act like adults. But she said transforming into an adult doesn’t happen when they become 18 and happens gradually over time, which means they might need some guidance.</p>
<p>“There’s something to be said about someone checking in on you,” Burrell said. “Having someone just say ‘Are you OK?'”</p>
<p /> | 2,131 |
|
<p>Pete Souza, who worked as&#160;the White House photographer for former President Barack Obama, sent President Trump a subtle message on his Instagram.</p>
<p>On Wednesday night, Trump hosted right-wing provocateur Ted Nugent, failed vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, and shitty musician Kid Rock for dinner at the White House, in what looked like <a href="" type="internal">a white trash gathering for the ages</a>.</p>
<p>The pictures included Nugent sporting a shit-eating grin while shaking hands at the Oval Office with Trump at his desk, who was grinning like a cheshire cat as he sat next to a man who once <a href="https://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/03/22/nra-board-member-ted-nugent-compares-obama-to-a/193199" type="external">compared former President Barack Obama to a Nazi</a>&#160;and called slain unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin a “ <a href="http://rare.us/uncategorized/nugent-zimmerman-verdict-vindicates-citizen-patrols-self-defense/?SSFEAT=1085RareHomeMostPopular-1363822740419&amp;SREF=CustomerSite&amp;SFBState=Unknown" type="external">dope smoking, racist gangsta wannabe</a>.”</p>
<p />
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<p>A truly repugnant scene from Wednesday night was a photo of Ted Nugent, Sarah Palin, and Kid Rock standing underneath an official portrait of former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while making exaggerated poses and cheesy grins. In a post to her verified Facebook page, Shemane Nugent — wife of Ted — tagged the three using their official Facebook handles, but tagged the 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee with the words “Fuck Fake Bitches.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>In response to the photo, Pete Souza simply posted a photo from the Obama era, in which President Obama is seen with White House chief of staff Bill Daley, sitting underneath a portrait of President Ronald Reagan, a conservative icon. In the photo, the two appear to be discussing presidential business. Souza captioned the photo with the words, “Being respectful.”</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>While Souza didn’t publicly acknowledge the disrespectful photo Trump’s guests took next to the Clinton portrait, the timing of the photo is an obvious nod, given Souza’s penchant for using his Instagram platform to compare Trump’s behavior to Obama’s.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Jamie Green is a contributor for the Resistance Report covering the Trump administration, and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.</p> | Sarah Palin mocks Clinton’s White House portrait. Obama’s photographer’s response is classy. | true | http://resistancereport.com/politics/obama-white-house-photographer/ | 2017-04-20 | 4left
| Sarah Palin mocks Clinton’s White House portrait. Obama’s photographer’s response is classy.
<p>Pete Souza, who worked as&#160;the White House photographer for former President Barack Obama, sent President Trump a subtle message on his Instagram.</p>
<p>On Wednesday night, Trump hosted right-wing provocateur Ted Nugent, failed vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, and shitty musician Kid Rock for dinner at the White House, in what looked like <a href="" type="internal">a white trash gathering for the ages</a>.</p>
<p>The pictures included Nugent sporting a shit-eating grin while shaking hands at the Oval Office with Trump at his desk, who was grinning like a cheshire cat as he sat next to a man who once <a href="https://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/03/22/nra-board-member-ted-nugent-compares-obama-to-a/193199" type="external">compared former President Barack Obama to a Nazi</a>&#160;and called slain unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin a “ <a href="http://rare.us/uncategorized/nugent-zimmerman-verdict-vindicates-citizen-patrols-self-defense/?SSFEAT=1085RareHomeMostPopular-1363822740419&amp;SREF=CustomerSite&amp;SFBState=Unknown" type="external">dope smoking, racist gangsta wannabe</a>.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>A truly repugnant scene from Wednesday night was a photo of Ted Nugent, Sarah Palin, and Kid Rock standing underneath an official portrait of former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while making exaggerated poses and cheesy grins. In a post to her verified Facebook page, Shemane Nugent — wife of Ted — tagged the three using their official Facebook handles, but tagged the 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee with the words “Fuck Fake Bitches.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>In response to the photo, Pete Souza simply posted a photo from the Obama era, in which President Obama is seen with White House chief of staff Bill Daley, sitting underneath a portrait of President Ronald Reagan, a conservative icon. In the photo, the two appear to be discussing presidential business. Souza captioned the photo with the words, “Being respectful.”</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>While Souza didn’t publicly acknowledge the disrespectful photo Trump’s guests took next to the Clinton portrait, the timing of the photo is an obvious nod, given Souza’s penchant for using his Instagram platform to compare Trump’s behavior to Obama’s.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Jamie Green is a contributor for the Resistance Report covering the Trump administration, and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.</p> | 2,132 |
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<p>Arellana Cordero has been promoted by Southwest Capital Bank to executive vice president, chief financial officer (CFO). Cordero joined the bank two years ago as a senior vice president of finance. She previously worked as the general manager for Cocina Azul; as development director for Mothers Against Drunk Driving; as an account executive for Mudhouse Advertising; as an agency owner for Allstate Insurance Co.; and as operations/business manager for the Barela Group LLC. Cordero has a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree, both from the University of New Mexico; graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Stonier Graduate School of Banking; and earned a leadership certificate from the Wharton Executive Leadership Program.</p>
<p>Bulletin board:</p>
<p>New Mexico Workforce Connection is hosting a Mini Job Fair from 9 a.m.-noon today at 501 Mountain NE. Participating employers are: Albuquerque Police Department, CLS Transportation, Express Employment Pros, Goodwill Industries of New Mexico, Great Livin’ LLC, Kelly Services (for Ethicon), Mechanical Control Solutions (MCS), National Opinion Research Center (NORC), RivenRock Staffing, Santa Ana Star Casino, Staffing Solutions/Resources MFG, and We Care Agency. For additional information, call 505-843-1900 or visit www.jobs.state.nm.us.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Dynamic Growth Business Resource Center (DGBRC) and Sandoval Economic Alliance (SEA) are cosponsoring, How To Acquire a Strong Workforce and Find Talent by Jami Grindatto, president and CEO of Sandoval Economic Alliance (SEA), from 8-10 a.m. on Wednesday at Sandoval Economic Alliance in Rio Rancho, 1201 Rio Rancho Blvd., Suite C. Participants will learn how to acquire qualified talent during both short and long hiring periods; how to select talent that will fit your company’s needs; and the process by which new hires get adjusted to the social and performance aspects of their jobs quickly and smoothly. The seminar fee is $39 and includes a light breakfast and beverages. For additional information or to register, call 505-238-3004.</p>
<p>The Executive &amp; Professional Education Center at the UNM Anderson School of Management presents Entrepreneurship in Action with Andy Lim, founder and former CEO of Lavu, at 6 p.m. on Thursday at the UNM Kiva. Lim, an alumnus of the Anderson School of Management, will give a demonstration of “Addmi” a new app that has the potential to change the face of networking. Participants will be invited to download the app and test its functionality and then participate in a life Q&amp;A with Andy Lim. Admission is free: advance registration is required. For additional information, call 505-277-2525. To register, visit www.mgt.unm.edu/epec/events/entrepreneurship-in-action.asp.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Applause:</p>
<p>Cathy Colvin, CRS, an associate broker at Vista Encantada Realtors, has been named 2016 Realtor of the Year by the Realtors Association of New Mexico (RANM). The annual award is given to an outstanding leader who has committed time, talent, and expertise to the Realtor organization, their community, and to further the real estate profession. Colvin has served on numerous committees for the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors (GAAR) and also served as GAAR president in 2006; was named GAAR’s Salesperson of the Year in 2006; and was named GAAR Realtor of the Year in 2008.</p>
<p>Bill Elliott, CMB, AMP, of Envoy Mortgage, has received the New Mexico Mortgage Lenders Association’s Mortgage Lender of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award. Elliott received the award in recognition of his dedication and outstanding service.</p>
<p>Salvatore Campione, a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories, has received the 2016 Outstanding Young Professional Award from IEEE honor society Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN). Campione, a researcher of nanophotonics and metamaterials, with special expertise in periodic structures, leaky-wave antennas and electromagnetic theory, was recognized by the society for his contributions to the electromagnetic modeling of complex systems and structures from microwave to optical frequencies.</p>
<p>PNM has recognized four East Mountains businesses with PNM Business Energy Efficiency Stars. They are Triangle Grocery, large business with the highest energy savings; Sandia Park Self Storage, large business honorable mention with the highest energy savings; Brewer Oil Co,, small business honorable mention with high energy savings; and Bernalillo County Fire Stations, area government entities with the highest energy savings.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Triangle Grocery received the top award in the large business category for their energy savings project that included the replacement of 32 interior lighting fixtures that will save 54,373 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, and earned the grocery store a rebate of $3,484 from PNM’s Business Energy Efficiency Program.</p>
<p>Sandia Park Self Storage won honorable mention in the large business category for their energy-savings projects that will save nearly 14,964 kilowatt-hours of electricity yearly. They received a rebate of more than $1,000 from PNM’s Business Energy Efficiency Program.</p>
<p>Brewer Oil Co. won the top award in the small business category. They replaced 24 exterior lighting fixtures, which saved 23,482 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually and received a rebate of $4,696 from PNM’s Business Energy Efficiency Program.</p>
<p>Bernalillo County Fire Stations received the government institution award for their installation of energy-efficient lighting at Station 41 in Tijeras and Station 46 in Sandia Park. The project will save 25,813 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually and earned a rebate of nearly $2,000 from PNM’s Business Energy Efficiency Program.</p>
<p>Navajo Transitional Energy Co. (NTEC) and its mine operator BHP Billiton Mine Management Co., have been selected to receive the Federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement’s 2016 Western Regional Excellence in Surface Coal Mining Reclamation Award for work on the Chinde Reclamation Project. The Chinde project, located toward the northern half of Navajo Mine, was conceived to update and redesign a reclamation project that had been completed in the 1970s, but was showing signs of degradation and erosion.</p>
<p>Summit Electric Supply has received the Best of the Best Overall Distributor Award during the 2016 Best of the Best Marketing Awards given by The Electrical Distributor (tED) Magazine. Summit Electric Supply received the best digital/social media campaign award for the “Li’l Electricians Toy Catalog,” a mini website featuring imaginary electrical toys that was emailed as a thank you to customers, vendors and partners during the holidays. The “Born To Be Wired” service center open house won in the event category. The Careers section of summit.com coupled with supporting video, recruiting collateral, and trade-show materials won for integrated promotional campaign.</p>
<p>Wings for Life International has received the 2016 Top-Rated Nonprofit Award from Great Nonprofits, a leading provider of user reviews about nonprofit organizations. The award was based on the large number of positive reviews that Wings for Life International received including reviews written by volunteers, donors and clients.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Welcome:</p>
<p>Roberta Santillanes has joined Draker-Cody Inc. as a member of the human resource consultant team. Santillanes has seven years’ experience in human resources management. She also has seven years’ experience in public relations and marketing.</p>
<p>John Clark has joined The Hartman + Majewski Design Group as an intern architect. Clark has a master’s degree in architecture from UNM. He will collaborate on design and construction documents for the firm’s health-care, educational and institutional projects using advanced building information modeling tools.</p>
<p>Ric Romero has joined boomtime as the vice president of sales. Romero has extensive experience in sales. He previously worked as the director of sales for Sonic SEO; and as vice president of sales for Directory Plus.</p>
<p>Yaritza Santiago has joined Payday HCM as a recruiter in the staffing department. Santiago previously worked as a recruiting manager at Robert Half Finance &amp; Accounting.</p>
<p>Birga Alden has joined Love in the Name of Christ (Love INC) as executive director. Alden previously worked for KNKT and Star 88 KYLT as a community-relations specialist and also previously worked as the morning host at AM 730.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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<p /> | Briefcase | false | https://abqjournal.com/883201/briefcase-70.html | 2least
| Briefcase
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<p />
<p>Arellana Cordero has been promoted by Southwest Capital Bank to executive vice president, chief financial officer (CFO). Cordero joined the bank two years ago as a senior vice president of finance. She previously worked as the general manager for Cocina Azul; as development director for Mothers Against Drunk Driving; as an account executive for Mudhouse Advertising; as an agency owner for Allstate Insurance Co.; and as operations/business manager for the Barela Group LLC. Cordero has a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree, both from the University of New Mexico; graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Stonier Graduate School of Banking; and earned a leadership certificate from the Wharton Executive Leadership Program.</p>
<p>Bulletin board:</p>
<p>New Mexico Workforce Connection is hosting a Mini Job Fair from 9 a.m.-noon today at 501 Mountain NE. Participating employers are: Albuquerque Police Department, CLS Transportation, Express Employment Pros, Goodwill Industries of New Mexico, Great Livin’ LLC, Kelly Services (for Ethicon), Mechanical Control Solutions (MCS), National Opinion Research Center (NORC), RivenRock Staffing, Santa Ana Star Casino, Staffing Solutions/Resources MFG, and We Care Agency. For additional information, call 505-843-1900 or visit www.jobs.state.nm.us.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Dynamic Growth Business Resource Center (DGBRC) and Sandoval Economic Alliance (SEA) are cosponsoring, How To Acquire a Strong Workforce and Find Talent by Jami Grindatto, president and CEO of Sandoval Economic Alliance (SEA), from 8-10 a.m. on Wednesday at Sandoval Economic Alliance in Rio Rancho, 1201 Rio Rancho Blvd., Suite C. Participants will learn how to acquire qualified talent during both short and long hiring periods; how to select talent that will fit your company’s needs; and the process by which new hires get adjusted to the social and performance aspects of their jobs quickly and smoothly. The seminar fee is $39 and includes a light breakfast and beverages. For additional information or to register, call 505-238-3004.</p>
<p>The Executive &amp; Professional Education Center at the UNM Anderson School of Management presents Entrepreneurship in Action with Andy Lim, founder and former CEO of Lavu, at 6 p.m. on Thursday at the UNM Kiva. Lim, an alumnus of the Anderson School of Management, will give a demonstration of “Addmi” a new app that has the potential to change the face of networking. Participants will be invited to download the app and test its functionality and then participate in a life Q&amp;A with Andy Lim. Admission is free: advance registration is required. For additional information, call 505-277-2525. To register, visit www.mgt.unm.edu/epec/events/entrepreneurship-in-action.asp.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Applause:</p>
<p>Cathy Colvin, CRS, an associate broker at Vista Encantada Realtors, has been named 2016 Realtor of the Year by the Realtors Association of New Mexico (RANM). The annual award is given to an outstanding leader who has committed time, talent, and expertise to the Realtor organization, their community, and to further the real estate profession. Colvin has served on numerous committees for the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors (GAAR) and also served as GAAR president in 2006; was named GAAR’s Salesperson of the Year in 2006; and was named GAAR Realtor of the Year in 2008.</p>
<p>Bill Elliott, CMB, AMP, of Envoy Mortgage, has received the New Mexico Mortgage Lenders Association’s Mortgage Lender of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award. Elliott received the award in recognition of his dedication and outstanding service.</p>
<p>Salvatore Campione, a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories, has received the 2016 Outstanding Young Professional Award from IEEE honor society Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN). Campione, a researcher of nanophotonics and metamaterials, with special expertise in periodic structures, leaky-wave antennas and electromagnetic theory, was recognized by the society for his contributions to the electromagnetic modeling of complex systems and structures from microwave to optical frequencies.</p>
<p>PNM has recognized four East Mountains businesses with PNM Business Energy Efficiency Stars. They are Triangle Grocery, large business with the highest energy savings; Sandia Park Self Storage, large business honorable mention with the highest energy savings; Brewer Oil Co,, small business honorable mention with high energy savings; and Bernalillo County Fire Stations, area government entities with the highest energy savings.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Triangle Grocery received the top award in the large business category for their energy savings project that included the replacement of 32 interior lighting fixtures that will save 54,373 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, and earned the grocery store a rebate of $3,484 from PNM’s Business Energy Efficiency Program.</p>
<p>Sandia Park Self Storage won honorable mention in the large business category for their energy-savings projects that will save nearly 14,964 kilowatt-hours of electricity yearly. They received a rebate of more than $1,000 from PNM’s Business Energy Efficiency Program.</p>
<p>Brewer Oil Co. won the top award in the small business category. They replaced 24 exterior lighting fixtures, which saved 23,482 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually and received a rebate of $4,696 from PNM’s Business Energy Efficiency Program.</p>
<p>Bernalillo County Fire Stations received the government institution award for their installation of energy-efficient lighting at Station 41 in Tijeras and Station 46 in Sandia Park. The project will save 25,813 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually and earned a rebate of nearly $2,000 from PNM’s Business Energy Efficiency Program.</p>
<p>Navajo Transitional Energy Co. (NTEC) and its mine operator BHP Billiton Mine Management Co., have been selected to receive the Federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement’s 2016 Western Regional Excellence in Surface Coal Mining Reclamation Award for work on the Chinde Reclamation Project. The Chinde project, located toward the northern half of Navajo Mine, was conceived to update and redesign a reclamation project that had been completed in the 1970s, but was showing signs of degradation and erosion.</p>
<p>Summit Electric Supply has received the Best of the Best Overall Distributor Award during the 2016 Best of the Best Marketing Awards given by The Electrical Distributor (tED) Magazine. Summit Electric Supply received the best digital/social media campaign award for the “Li’l Electricians Toy Catalog,” a mini website featuring imaginary electrical toys that was emailed as a thank you to customers, vendors and partners during the holidays. The “Born To Be Wired” service center open house won in the event category. The Careers section of summit.com coupled with supporting video, recruiting collateral, and trade-show materials won for integrated promotional campaign.</p>
<p>Wings for Life International has received the 2016 Top-Rated Nonprofit Award from Great Nonprofits, a leading provider of user reviews about nonprofit organizations. The award was based on the large number of positive reviews that Wings for Life International received including reviews written by volunteers, donors and clients.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Welcome:</p>
<p>Roberta Santillanes has joined Draker-Cody Inc. as a member of the human resource consultant team. Santillanes has seven years’ experience in human resources management. She also has seven years’ experience in public relations and marketing.</p>
<p>John Clark has joined The Hartman + Majewski Design Group as an intern architect. Clark has a master’s degree in architecture from UNM. He will collaborate on design and construction documents for the firm’s health-care, educational and institutional projects using advanced building information modeling tools.</p>
<p>Ric Romero has joined boomtime as the vice president of sales. Romero has extensive experience in sales. He previously worked as the director of sales for Sonic SEO; and as vice president of sales for Directory Plus.</p>
<p>Yaritza Santiago has joined Payday HCM as a recruiter in the staffing department. Santiago previously worked as a recruiting manager at Robert Half Finance &amp; Accounting.</p>
<p>Birga Alden has joined Love in the Name of Christ (Love INC) as executive director. Alden previously worked for KNKT and Star 88 KYLT as a community-relations specialist and also previously worked as the morning host at AM 730.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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<p /> | 2,133 |
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<p />
<p>A jewelry store owner used an AK-47 clone to defend his store, employees, and customers from four armed attackers during a dramatic gunfight.&#160; The gunfight happened at high noon on three October, 2016.&#160; The attackers came in shooting. But surprise and speed were not enough to win the fight against the store owner and employees. <a href="http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/courier/news/shoot-out-during-conroe-jewelry-store-robbery-leaves-one-assailant/article_010763df-558b-5c13-b8fd-6e63bfb7fb76.html" type="external">From yourhoustonnews.com</a></p>
<p />
<p>In the aftermath of the bullet spray, one robber lay dead in the doorway among shattered glass; while Turner, his employees and customers were left shaken but unharmed.</p>
<p />
<p>This time, customers are glad the owner was prepared.</p>
<p>“I’m just thankful we’re all ok, and he’s ok because he really stood up for everybody,” said Havens. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQMJIltH24A" type="external">Link to video on 2014 robbery attempt</a></p>
<p />
<p>In addition to the AK-47 clone, at least two other employees were armed and firing back at the attackers.</p>
<p>The attackers were four black men in black clothing.&#160; There were multiple surveillance cameras in the store.&#160; The video has not been released at this point.</p>
<p>One of the advantages of defense of self and others is the production of evidence at the scene.&#160; Blood traces are useful for DNA analysis.&#160; A body has considerable evidence attached.</p>
<p>With one of the attackers dead, it is likely that the others will be apprehended shortly. It is not known if any of the other attackers were wounded.</p>
<p>Editor’s Note:&#160;In less free states where gun control radicals have arbitrarily limited the rounds a magazine can hold and have all but outlawed the type of rifle that saved Jeff Turner Jr and his employees, this story would have turned out much worse. &#160;This story is a prime example of why you would need more than 10 rounds to deal with a threat. &#160;Unlike the movies, not everyone can shoot a one shot one kill ratio. &#160;When a group of armed jewel thieves come rampaging into your store and you need to defend yourself, employees, customers and property, having the government limit the amount of bullets you can have at one time is down right criminal, let alone unconstitutional.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.</p> | AK-47 Repels Assault From 4 Armed Jeweler Store Robbers | true | http://bulletsfirst.net/2016/10/04/ak-47-repels-assault-from-4-armed-jeweler-store-robbers/ | 0right
| AK-47 Repels Assault From 4 Armed Jeweler Store Robbers
<p />
<p>A jewelry store owner used an AK-47 clone to defend his store, employees, and customers from four armed attackers during a dramatic gunfight.&#160; The gunfight happened at high noon on three October, 2016.&#160; The attackers came in shooting. But surprise and speed were not enough to win the fight against the store owner and employees. <a href="http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/courier/news/shoot-out-during-conroe-jewelry-store-robbery-leaves-one-assailant/article_010763df-558b-5c13-b8fd-6e63bfb7fb76.html" type="external">From yourhoustonnews.com</a></p>
<p />
<p>In the aftermath of the bullet spray, one robber lay dead in the doorway among shattered glass; while Turner, his employees and customers were left shaken but unharmed.</p>
<p />
<p>This time, customers are glad the owner was prepared.</p>
<p>“I’m just thankful we’re all ok, and he’s ok because he really stood up for everybody,” said Havens. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQMJIltH24A" type="external">Link to video on 2014 robbery attempt</a></p>
<p />
<p>In addition to the AK-47 clone, at least two other employees were armed and firing back at the attackers.</p>
<p>The attackers were four black men in black clothing.&#160; There were multiple surveillance cameras in the store.&#160; The video has not been released at this point.</p>
<p>One of the advantages of defense of self and others is the production of evidence at the scene.&#160; Blood traces are useful for DNA analysis.&#160; A body has considerable evidence attached.</p>
<p>With one of the attackers dead, it is likely that the others will be apprehended shortly. It is not known if any of the other attackers were wounded.</p>
<p>Editor’s Note:&#160;In less free states where gun control radicals have arbitrarily limited the rounds a magazine can hold and have all but outlawed the type of rifle that saved Jeff Turner Jr and his employees, this story would have turned out much worse. &#160;This story is a prime example of why you would need more than 10 rounds to deal with a threat. &#160;Unlike the movies, not everyone can shoot a one shot one kill ratio. &#160;When a group of armed jewel thieves come rampaging into your store and you need to defend yourself, employees, customers and property, having the government limit the amount of bullets you can have at one time is down right criminal, let alone unconstitutional.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.</p> | 2,134 |
|
<p>By Martyn Herman</p>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) – It had been a long time coming but Grigor Dimitrov’s belated first appearance at the ATP Finals did not disappoint as he outlasted Austrian Dominic Thiem 6-3 5-7 7-5 in a gripping afternoon duel at the O2 Arena on Monday.</p>
<p>The 26-year-old, finally beginning to consistently deliver on his huge potential, edged the so-called “battle of the backhands” after a compelling two hours 21 minutes.</p>
<p>Dimitrov, the first Bulgarian to qualify for the tournament in its 48-year-old history, overcame some late jitters to prevail in the opening Pete Sampras Group match.</p>
<p>The world number six served for the match at 5-4 in the decider but was broken to love before two consecutive double faults by Thiem gave him another chance to close it out.</p>
<p>Again Dimitrov wobbled, squandering two match points at 40-15 with a double-fault and a tight forehand error, but he finally bagged the win when Thiem looped a backhand long.</p>
<p>“The first time I got broken (at 5-4) I thought ‘okay let’s get back up and try again’,” Dimitrov, who enjoyed some noisy support from a contingent of Bulgarian fans, said on court.</p>
<p>“I’m living my dream right now and I wanna keep on going.”</p>
<p>World number one Rafael Nadal opens his quest for a first ATP Finals title later against Belgium’s David Goffin.</p>
<p>Nadal’s appearance has been in doubt after a knee injury forced the 31-year-old Spaniard to withdraw midway through the Paris Masters tournament.</p>
<p>Dimitrov was the better player in the first set as Thiem struggled for rhythm on serve. He broke in the sixth game and was rock-solid, winning 16 of 18 first-serve points.</p>
<p>World number four Thiem, playing for the second successive year, raised his game in the second set and broke to love in the 12th game to level the match.</p>
<p>Australian Open semi-finalist Dimitrov produced a magical drop-volley from impossibly close to the net to break Thiem’s serve at 3-3 in the decider and held his own to lead 5-3.</p>
<p>Finishing the job proved to be the hardest part though and it was a relieved Dimitrov who finally prevailed.</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> | Dimitrov marks debut with narrow victory over Thiem | false | https://newsline.com/dimitrov-marks-debut-with-narrow-victory-over-thiem/ | 2017-11-13 | 1right-center
| Dimitrov marks debut with narrow victory over Thiem
<p>By Martyn Herman</p>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) – It had been a long time coming but Grigor Dimitrov’s belated first appearance at the ATP Finals did not disappoint as he outlasted Austrian Dominic Thiem 6-3 5-7 7-5 in a gripping afternoon duel at the O2 Arena on Monday.</p>
<p>The 26-year-old, finally beginning to consistently deliver on his huge potential, edged the so-called “battle of the backhands” after a compelling two hours 21 minutes.</p>
<p>Dimitrov, the first Bulgarian to qualify for the tournament in its 48-year-old history, overcame some late jitters to prevail in the opening Pete Sampras Group match.</p>
<p>The world number six served for the match at 5-4 in the decider but was broken to love before two consecutive double faults by Thiem gave him another chance to close it out.</p>
<p>Again Dimitrov wobbled, squandering two match points at 40-15 with a double-fault and a tight forehand error, but he finally bagged the win when Thiem looped a backhand long.</p>
<p>“The first time I got broken (at 5-4) I thought ‘okay let’s get back up and try again’,” Dimitrov, who enjoyed some noisy support from a contingent of Bulgarian fans, said on court.</p>
<p>“I’m living my dream right now and I wanna keep on going.”</p>
<p>World number one Rafael Nadal opens his quest for a first ATP Finals title later against Belgium’s David Goffin.</p>
<p>Nadal’s appearance has been in doubt after a knee injury forced the 31-year-old Spaniard to withdraw midway through the Paris Masters tournament.</p>
<p>Dimitrov was the better player in the first set as Thiem struggled for rhythm on serve. He broke in the sixth game and was rock-solid, winning 16 of 18 first-serve points.</p>
<p>World number four Thiem, playing for the second successive year, raised his game in the second set and broke to love in the 12th game to level the match.</p>
<p>Australian Open semi-finalist Dimitrov produced a magical drop-volley from impossibly close to the net to break Thiem’s serve at 3-3 in the decider and held his own to lead 5-3.</p>
<p>Finishing the job proved to be the hardest part though and it was a relieved Dimitrov who finally prevailed.</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> | 2,135 |
<p>It took almost a week for the first copies of Charlie Hebdo’s “Tout Est Pardonnée” issue to reach the 850,000 French citizens of La Réunion after its release. The first “post-attack” issue, with the Prophet Muhammad holding a sign saying “All is forgiven,” finally arrived in the hold of a Corsair commercial passenger flight.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, more than 5,000 miles from where the January 2015 terror attacks had taken place, the aftereffects were already ricocheting around the island.</p>
<p>La Réunion is France’s most populous overseas department — the bureaucratic equivalent of a state — and a legacy, like the ubiquity of litchi fruit in Parisian supermarkets, of France’s once substantial colonial presence in the Indian Ocean. It’s a diverse tropical paradise with beaches and a volcano, France’s equivalent of Hawaii.</p>
<p>Political scientist Françoise Vergès has criticized “a certain French colonial nostalgia” about the island. Her half-Vietnamese father, a prominent political figure on the island, faced race-baiting campaigns during the 1950s and 1960s, and experienced firsthand the contradiction of the colonial project.</p>
<p>“It supports the fantasy that somewhere colonization has succeeded,” <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/monsters-and-revolutionaries" type="external">she wrote</a> in 1999, “blending people from diverse cultures under the paternalistic control of French republicanism.”</p>
<p>I arrived on La Réunion just after the attack on the satirical magazine. I was there for a two-month reporting project on completely different topics, but my 15-hour layover in Paris began the morning after the hostage crisis in a French kosher supermarket ended with the deaths of four more victims and their attacker. Saturday morning on Réunion, I walked through the Jewish core of the Marais, to be startled by the sight of six French security officers with machine guns on a narrow, cobbled block, guarding Jews arriving at synagogues for Shabbat services.</p>
<p>Representatives of La Réunion’s community of a few hundred Jews spoke at a ceremony held on the island on Sunday, to coincide with the march in Paris attended by a gaggle of world leaders. There were editorials in the local papers on the importance of free speech, a nod to increased security measures; reporters descended interestedly on a Muslim-owned supermarket struck — perhaps accidentally — by a bullet fired well outside of business hours.</p>
<p>But on the whole, much less anxiety pervaded the island that is predominantly Catholic, but also Muslim and Hindu with a handful of practicing Buddhists, mostly descendants of ethnically Chinese immigrants. A number of people practice some combination of these faiths and/or incorporate traditional African belief systems.</p>
<p>The icon of Réunion’s blended religious traditions is the little red shrine to Saint-Expedit, a religious figure canonized only in Réunion. They appear along the roadside, the bright red color associated with Hinduism. Followers leave offerings for Saint Expédit asking him for help — or for a curse on their enemies.</p>
<p />
<p>A shrine to Saint Expédit.</p>
<p>Emma Jacobs</p>
<p>Discussions on La Réunion of the violent events in mainland France seemed to bring the two places’ cultural differences into sharper relief.</p>
<p>Shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the French government had mandated a lesson in every French classroom, including in its overseas departments, on secular values. In theory, Ketty, a public school teacher in La Réunion told me, the order even extended to her preschool-aged classroom.</p>
<p>She had not conducted one, but even for older students, she considered the lesson redundant. “In the cafeteria,” she presented an example, “at the beginning of each year, we go through and take a list, who can’t eat pork, beef, goat?”</p>
<p>Pork is taboo for Muslims, beef for Hindus and goats according to certain traditions from Madagascar. Taking down these religious eating restrictions is as routine, she suggested, as going to class with students from different religions, as she did. People are used both to living in a diverse environment and making accommodations to each other’s needs and religious traditions.</p>
<p>The cultural clashes taking place in Metropolitan France, “This isn’t an issue for us.”</p>
<p>La Réunion is named for an event that took place on a revolutionary battlefield, but the moniker has become a part of the island’s narrative about its own functional diversity.</p>
<p>That diversity dates back to its earliest days as a French plantation colony, a grim history. The first permanent French settlers in 1663 were already outnumbered by the slaves they’d brought with them from Madagascar.</p>
<p>La Réunion had no “native” inhabitants. Passing sailors had written culinary epics about the joys of an island where fat birds and turtles had no fear of humans. In 1619,&#160; <a href="http://www.persee.fr/doc/outre_0300-9513_1962_num_49_175_1356_t1_0281_0000_2" type="external">Dutchman Villem Ysbrantsz Bontekoe wrote</a>that when one bird cried out in alarm, others of its species would fly toward&#160;it, “so that,” he would add, with a restrained allusion to the ensuing bloodbath, “this one bird would furnish all that was necessary for our food.”</p>
<p>The French established a plantation colony on the island, which would produce coffee, sugar cane and distilled geraniums — a perfume fixative — for export. Slaves were brought from Madagascar, east Africa and India.</p>
<p>France’s Revolutionary cry of liberté, egalité and fraternité made the continued existence of slavery in the French colonies sit far less comfortably and, after some false starts, it was finally ended in 1848. Growing numbers of indentured servants and migrant workers from India joined the agricultural workforce.</p>
<p>On an island so far from the French mainland, this range of origins led to a more diverse genetic landscape than materialized in other French possessions.</p>
<p>Jean-Sébastien Hery delivers school lunches to the most remote schools on the island by helicopter every other week. 800 people live in a scattering of villages in a collapsed crater of the ancient volcano that created the island. The caldera, Mafate, can only be reached by foot or by helicopter.</p>
<p>The very first residents had escaped slavery on the plantations and the names of trails and towns attest to a history in which they were sometimes pursued by bands of soldiers or vigilantes. “Scout trail” arrives at the Îlet à Malheur, named for a massacre of some 40 people — fugitives from the law who had formed a community there — in 1829.</p>
<p>While the plastic sacks of baguettes and canned vegetables were being tied to the skids of his aircraft, Hery told me he was a former French military pilot turned commercial aviationist. He arrived on the tropical island eight years ago and, he joked, tore up his passport so he could never catch a flight out.</p>
<p>“Life is so marvelous here and the people are really marvelous. Look at all this mix of colors,” he said, indicating the skin on his own forearm and that of the men around him.</p>
<p>“It’s extraordinary.”</p>
<p>In today’s metropolitan France, whose racial diversity also stems largely from its colonial past, there’s a deep distrust of communitarianism, divisions that form along ethnic or other identities. Communitarianism is generally seen as incompatible with the national principles of liberalism (liberté, egalité, fraternité are joined by an unofficial fourth term, laïcité — or secularism, with historical roots in the rejection of the once-close relationship between the French church and state ).</p>
<p>This discomfort is often expressed in a sort of determined color-blindness, of the Stephen Colbert “I don’t see color” variety. The French government, for example, is banned from collecting racial statistics.</p>
<p>Réunionese do not see these principles as irreconcilable and they are certainly not color-blind.</p>
<p>The island has a codified list of ethnic identities that come up frequently in conversation.</p>
<p>After Hery flies off, the two city employees who have loaded up the helicopter casually identified themselves as cafre and malbar respectively. Cafre is the term for people of African descent. Malbar refers to practicing Hindus of Indian origin.</p>
<p>Zarabes are Indians who practice Islam. Grand blancs are the descendants of wealthy white merchants and plantation owners. Petit blancs or yabs are descendants of poor white settlers.</p>
<p>Hery, the pilot, is a zoreil, or a more recent arrival from Metropolitan France. Zoreils are generally white and often viewed by long-term residents with a combination of bemusement and an attitude similar to that with which American urbanites regard gentrifiers. If he stays long enough, he might be able to call himself a zoreol — or a zoreil who has lived on the island long enough to “go native.”</p>
<p>But if you talk with someone with family roots in La Réunion, it generally comes out that there is some cross-over in their background, with ancestors tracing from many points of origin and many points in time.</p>
<p>“I am a mix, a true Réunionnais,” as Daniel Revel put it.</p>
<p>Revel works on the same estate his great-grandfather did after immigrating to the island from India. Louis Latchoumay was employed as a gardener at the Chateauvieux plantation. His son, Revel’s grandfather, graduated from waiter at the family table to head groundskeeper.</p>
<p>Revel grew up following Ti-Louis, or “Little Louis” around the grounds of the estate — since donated to the state to become an astoundingly beautiful botanical garden. His grandfather taught him about the plants and birds, and tricks like using a section of bamboo as a straw to suck up the clean water below the turbid surface of a stream.</p>
<p />
<p>A photo of Daniel Revel’s grandfather in retirement.</p>
<p>Emma Jacobs</p>
<p>The fields of this plantation were never farmed by slaves, but the family was related to famous historical villains like Mme. Desbassyns, rumored to haunt the depths of the island’s still-active volcano in perpetual torment for her sins against the people she owned.</p>
<p>The Réunionese, Revel believes, departing from the path of other French colonies like Guadeloupe and Martinique, have put an “X” on the period of slavery in their history, at least emotionally. They have marked a division, relegating it to the past.</p>
<p>Activists in metropolitan France argue today that if you can’t collect racial statistics, if you can’t see color, you can’t measure racial inequities. Réunionese are a diverse bunch but economic stratification on the island also still roughly follows racial lines. Laurent Médéa made a comprehensive study of the island in 2003, which he published as a book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Reunion-An-Island-Search-Identity/dp/1868884961" type="external">Réunion: An Island in search of an Identity</a> in 2010. He found that income and professional outcomes still corresponded roughly to racial background (measured by self-identification with the categories identified above). The descendants of whites had fared better than those predominantly of Indian extraction, who largely did better than the descendants of Africans.</p>
<p>If cracks are ever revealed in the harmonious social fabric, it’s in stories about money and land.</p>
<p>Ailen Tamon had moved back to the home of her mother, who was in ill health. It’s a traditional case en paille, or thatched-roof bungalow high in the hills. The kitchen’s front wall is open to the lush garden and balmy weather. The other walls are lined with flattened food tins. Her grandfather’s brother lived in this house. Her grandfather lived next door. Both men were sharecroppers on this land, tending sugarcane for the grands blancs, the descendants of the family that had established its plantation here.</p>
<p>Education and jobs in education, Tamon said, were a social elevator. Her own parents required her to succeed in school as a way out of poverty. Tamon became a teacher.</p>
<p>If it seems like everyone you’ve met so far on this island works for the government, this is no accident. La Réunion became a French department — the equivalent of a U.S. state in 1946 — beginning a period of government build-up and investment. Today, a substantial amount of economic activity takes place off-the-books, but since the collapse of agricultural employment in the face of mechanization, the island’s standard of living has relied heavily on state jobs and welfare payments.</p>
<p>The school in the tiny community of Îlet à Malheur in Mafate had ten students and ten employees.</p>
<p>But the federal government’s support does not seem to have come with as rigid an imposition of metropolitan-style secularism in public life. The mayor of Saint-Denis can put up a sign outside city hall wishing citizens a “Happy Eid.” That’s unimaginable in in Paris.</p>
<p />
<p>A streetscape in the departmental capital, Saint-Denis.</p>
<p>Emma Jacobs</p>
<p>The crisis of liberalism as it’s playing out in European France revolves around anxieties about how much religious self-expression to allow in the public sphere. As a point of fact, these concerns seem to generally hew to the practices of French Muslims. In Paris, great anxiety has been generated over the question of whether a woman wearing a veil over her face is too “ostentatious” a sign of individual particularism, of self-segregation from the polity, or imposing her views of female propriety in some way on those around her.</p>
<p>While the veil is less contentious on La Réunion, there’s also the reality that few Muslims there come from a tradition that calls for one.</p>
<p>Any comparisons between Réunion and the Metropole must be made with great caution. The demographics simply differ. There are a handful of North Africans here (and interestingly a number of descendants of pieds-noir, French settlers, who left Algeria but found mainland France far too cold). However, the vast majority of Muslims on the island trace their roots to India. This is exponentially different from mainland France, where Islam has been tied up with French fears of pan-Arab nationalism since the 1950s and the bloody separation with its North African colonies.</p>
<p>What happened to make La Réunion what it is? “Slavery happened,” says James Christie, and then the islanders found a way to live with each other moving forward.</p>
<p>Though visitors arriving here, he notes, are always looking for holes in La Réunion’s apparent harmony.</p>
<p>As we talked, he was weaving his ancient grey Twingo up a series of 180 degree curves climbing between tall grasses at a speed that only someone who has spent over a decade here would dare. Christie is from the UK. He moved to Réunion to teach English for a year, which became two.</p>
<p>He’d tried once to return to a steady office job in grey London. He lasted three weeks before he bought a one-way ticket back. With the exception of a stint in South America, he has lived on the island ever since.</p>
<p>“I think Réunion could be a model for the rest of the world,” he says, bluntly. Certainly, it presents a model of religious cohabitation he thinks ought to be a model for mainland France, if metropolitans would make an effort to learn more about their remote outpost.</p>
<p>Another of its residents, Houssen Amode, doesn’t like to use the word “model” himself.</p>
<p>“I think it’s pretentious,” he says.</p>
<p>“But there is an enriching experience [on La Réunion] that could be useful to the Metropole.”</p>
<p>Amode is the island’s representative on the French Council of the Muslim Faith, which Nicolas Sarkozy created as interior minister in 2003 in a rare nod to the idea of communitarianism. Amode has his modest office next door to the Grande Mosque of Saint-Denis, La Réunion’s departmental capital. Its minaret stands out above the low-rise, historic center of the city.&#160;</p>
<p>Réunionese, Amode posits, have become adept at making accommodations to each other’s needs and traditions. The Grande Mosque, he says, respects its neighbors by lowering the call to prayer late at night (“In the time of the prophet, there was no Sony”). While he does not believe the island is immune to radicalization, he thinks it’s a fundamentally more peaceful place.</p>
<p>He says he tries to present La Réunion’s “enriching experience” with tact when he sees his council colleagues from Metropolitan France. He’s the first to acknowledge the island’s diversity comes with a very different backstory.&#160;</p>
<p>But when the public dialogue often devolves into whether there is something fundamentally at odds between French values and Islam, or French society and communitarianism, it’s certainly interesting to look to this island in the tropics which seems to have room for both.</p>
<p>While on La Réunion, I visited a journalist named Jean-Paul Mélade at the Saint-Denis offices of Radio France. Security at the offices had been tightened, as ordered by the government for all the public broadcaster’s offices in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack. There was no need, Mélade said dismissively. This was not metropolitan France.</p>
<p>But the offices were wallpapered with simple “Je Suis Charlie” posters printed out on sheets of 8 ½ by 11. Did they feel such solidarity as journalists?” I asked. “No,” he said firmly. “It’s because we are French.”</p>
<p>But it is a place of France and apart — whether by accident of history or by choice.</p>
<p>After World War II, La Réunion’s political leaders pushed for full integration as a department, which became law in 1946. It remained as other parts of the French empire broke away.</p>
<p>France’s overseas departments still encompass a tremendous variety of experience. Right on the other side of Madagascar, only a few hundred miles away, the island of&#160;Mayotte became a department in 2011 following a popular vote. Overwhelmingly Muslim, around this same time, Mayotte had street protests against Charlie Hebdo’s depiction of the prophet.</p>
<p>And while Réunionese have been traveling to the Metropole in growing numbers for decades to pursue higher education and job opportunities, many report feeling unwelcome, targets of racial prejudice they hadn’t experienced before.</p>
<p>A day or two before I left the island of La Réunion, I finally got to an item on my to-do list since not long after I arrived. I went to find the shop from the report in the newspaper, the zarabe-owned supermarket in the city of Le Port that had a bullet shot through its window in the days after Charlie Hebdo.</p>
<p>In the paper, Roumana Alibay had been quoted on behalf of the enterprise, saying, “People are making a story out of nothing. It’s not worth it to get us mixed up in all the world’s troubles.”</p>
<p>I found her behind the counter of Anti-Crise when I visited, wearing a grey headscarf and light green, long-sleeved shirt. The shop belonged to her uncle but she worked here sometimes when he was away.</p>
<p>When I brought up her comment to the newspaper, she all but rolled her eyes at the eccentricities of reporters. “It was illogical to have even asked the question,” whether the incident was related to France’s ethnic tensions, she told me.</p>
<p>“I’ve been to metropolitan France and in Metropolitan France, everything they brought up, that is there,” she said.&#160;“Here, we don’t have this type of problem."</p>
<p>I haven’t reached any grand revelation about all of this in a year — whether La Réunion has or has not figured out a secret to successful coexistence the rest of us have not, but I’ve found myself mulling over these events a lot.</p>
<p>Coming from an American perspective, the “perfect integration” story seems a little too good to be true. Réunionese’s insistence on their peaceful coexistence can ring hollow. Is it possible that they’ve somehow found the path to perfect social harmony? Then again, how can an outsider judge what’s going on in so many people’s heads in the span of two months? Whereas, regardless of how you might envision a complete social restructuring, back home the anger fueling the “black lives matter” protest movement can seem healthy — something was broken and needs to be fixed and a process is underway — slow, messy or flawed as it might be, to repair our society.</p>
<p>As Alibay said, La Réunion and metropolitan France are different. Their histories having been so contingent, perhaps few lessons can be exported. There is something striking, however, about how Reunion’s openness about religious and ethnic difference has kept the peace far better than the mainland’s attempt to erase it.For the last couple of weeks leading up to the one year anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, I’ve been back in Paris.</p>
<p>I had my first twinge of real concern on Monday after an announcement on the metro about a service disruption due to a suspicious package near a station I’d passed through recently.</p>
<p>In that moment, the idea of opting out of the “world’s troubles,” as Alibay called them, whether by miracle or imperfect compromise, had its appeal.</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/@ecjacobs/watching-charlie-hebdo-s-aftermath-from-la-r%C3%A9union-7b5e865ebdac#.itexrsx1x" type="external">This story</a>originally appeared on <a href="https://medium.com/" type="external">Medium</a>.&#160;Emma Jacobs reported from Réunion as an NPR <a href="http://www.thejohnalexanderproject.org/abovethefray.html" type="external">Above the Fray</a> fellow, sponsored by the <a href="http://www.thejohnalexanderproject.org/about.html" type="external">John Alexander Project</a>, dedicated to supporting young journalists and finding untold stories.</p> | Charlie Hebdo’s aftermath looks a little different on the very French island of La Réunion | false | https://pri.org/stories/2016-01-07/charlie-hebdo-s-aftermath-looks-little-different-very-french-island-la-r-union | 2016-01-07 | 3left-center
| Charlie Hebdo’s aftermath looks a little different on the very French island of La Réunion
<p>It took almost a week for the first copies of Charlie Hebdo’s “Tout Est Pardonnée” issue to reach the 850,000 French citizens of La Réunion after its release. The first “post-attack” issue, with the Prophet Muhammad holding a sign saying “All is forgiven,” finally arrived in the hold of a Corsair commercial passenger flight.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, more than 5,000 miles from where the January 2015 terror attacks had taken place, the aftereffects were already ricocheting around the island.</p>
<p>La Réunion is France’s most populous overseas department — the bureaucratic equivalent of a state — and a legacy, like the ubiquity of litchi fruit in Parisian supermarkets, of France’s once substantial colonial presence in the Indian Ocean. It’s a diverse tropical paradise with beaches and a volcano, France’s equivalent of Hawaii.</p>
<p>Political scientist Françoise Vergès has criticized “a certain French colonial nostalgia” about the island. Her half-Vietnamese father, a prominent political figure on the island, faced race-baiting campaigns during the 1950s and 1960s, and experienced firsthand the contradiction of the colonial project.</p>
<p>“It supports the fantasy that somewhere colonization has succeeded,” <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/monsters-and-revolutionaries" type="external">she wrote</a> in 1999, “blending people from diverse cultures under the paternalistic control of French republicanism.”</p>
<p>I arrived on La Réunion just after the attack on the satirical magazine. I was there for a two-month reporting project on completely different topics, but my 15-hour layover in Paris began the morning after the hostage crisis in a French kosher supermarket ended with the deaths of four more victims and their attacker. Saturday morning on Réunion, I walked through the Jewish core of the Marais, to be startled by the sight of six French security officers with machine guns on a narrow, cobbled block, guarding Jews arriving at synagogues for Shabbat services.</p>
<p>Representatives of La Réunion’s community of a few hundred Jews spoke at a ceremony held on the island on Sunday, to coincide with the march in Paris attended by a gaggle of world leaders. There were editorials in the local papers on the importance of free speech, a nod to increased security measures; reporters descended interestedly on a Muslim-owned supermarket struck — perhaps accidentally — by a bullet fired well outside of business hours.</p>
<p>But on the whole, much less anxiety pervaded the island that is predominantly Catholic, but also Muslim and Hindu with a handful of practicing Buddhists, mostly descendants of ethnically Chinese immigrants. A number of people practice some combination of these faiths and/or incorporate traditional African belief systems.</p>
<p>The icon of Réunion’s blended religious traditions is the little red shrine to Saint-Expedit, a religious figure canonized only in Réunion. They appear along the roadside, the bright red color associated with Hinduism. Followers leave offerings for Saint Expédit asking him for help — or for a curse on their enemies.</p>
<p />
<p>A shrine to Saint Expédit.</p>
<p>Emma Jacobs</p>
<p>Discussions on La Réunion of the violent events in mainland France seemed to bring the two places’ cultural differences into sharper relief.</p>
<p>Shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the French government had mandated a lesson in every French classroom, including in its overseas departments, on secular values. In theory, Ketty, a public school teacher in La Réunion told me, the order even extended to her preschool-aged classroom.</p>
<p>She had not conducted one, but even for older students, she considered the lesson redundant. “In the cafeteria,” she presented an example, “at the beginning of each year, we go through and take a list, who can’t eat pork, beef, goat?”</p>
<p>Pork is taboo for Muslims, beef for Hindus and goats according to certain traditions from Madagascar. Taking down these religious eating restrictions is as routine, she suggested, as going to class with students from different religions, as she did. People are used both to living in a diverse environment and making accommodations to each other’s needs and religious traditions.</p>
<p>The cultural clashes taking place in Metropolitan France, “This isn’t an issue for us.”</p>
<p>La Réunion is named for an event that took place on a revolutionary battlefield, but the moniker has become a part of the island’s narrative about its own functional diversity.</p>
<p>That diversity dates back to its earliest days as a French plantation colony, a grim history. The first permanent French settlers in 1663 were already outnumbered by the slaves they’d brought with them from Madagascar.</p>
<p>La Réunion had no “native” inhabitants. Passing sailors had written culinary epics about the joys of an island where fat birds and turtles had no fear of humans. In 1619,&#160; <a href="http://www.persee.fr/doc/outre_0300-9513_1962_num_49_175_1356_t1_0281_0000_2" type="external">Dutchman Villem Ysbrantsz Bontekoe wrote</a>that when one bird cried out in alarm, others of its species would fly toward&#160;it, “so that,” he would add, with a restrained allusion to the ensuing bloodbath, “this one bird would furnish all that was necessary for our food.”</p>
<p>The French established a plantation colony on the island, which would produce coffee, sugar cane and distilled geraniums — a perfume fixative — for export. Slaves were brought from Madagascar, east Africa and India.</p>
<p>France’s Revolutionary cry of liberté, egalité and fraternité made the continued existence of slavery in the French colonies sit far less comfortably and, after some false starts, it was finally ended in 1848. Growing numbers of indentured servants and migrant workers from India joined the agricultural workforce.</p>
<p>On an island so far from the French mainland, this range of origins led to a more diverse genetic landscape than materialized in other French possessions.</p>
<p>Jean-Sébastien Hery delivers school lunches to the most remote schools on the island by helicopter every other week. 800 people live in a scattering of villages in a collapsed crater of the ancient volcano that created the island. The caldera, Mafate, can only be reached by foot or by helicopter.</p>
<p>The very first residents had escaped slavery on the plantations and the names of trails and towns attest to a history in which they were sometimes pursued by bands of soldiers or vigilantes. “Scout trail” arrives at the Îlet à Malheur, named for a massacre of some 40 people — fugitives from the law who had formed a community there — in 1829.</p>
<p>While the plastic sacks of baguettes and canned vegetables were being tied to the skids of his aircraft, Hery told me he was a former French military pilot turned commercial aviationist. He arrived on the tropical island eight years ago and, he joked, tore up his passport so he could never catch a flight out.</p>
<p>“Life is so marvelous here and the people are really marvelous. Look at all this mix of colors,” he said, indicating the skin on his own forearm and that of the men around him.</p>
<p>“It’s extraordinary.”</p>
<p>In today’s metropolitan France, whose racial diversity also stems largely from its colonial past, there’s a deep distrust of communitarianism, divisions that form along ethnic or other identities. Communitarianism is generally seen as incompatible with the national principles of liberalism (liberté, egalité, fraternité are joined by an unofficial fourth term, laïcité — or secularism, with historical roots in the rejection of the once-close relationship between the French church and state ).</p>
<p>This discomfort is often expressed in a sort of determined color-blindness, of the Stephen Colbert “I don’t see color” variety. The French government, for example, is banned from collecting racial statistics.</p>
<p>Réunionese do not see these principles as irreconcilable and they are certainly not color-blind.</p>
<p>The island has a codified list of ethnic identities that come up frequently in conversation.</p>
<p>After Hery flies off, the two city employees who have loaded up the helicopter casually identified themselves as cafre and malbar respectively. Cafre is the term for people of African descent. Malbar refers to practicing Hindus of Indian origin.</p>
<p>Zarabes are Indians who practice Islam. Grand blancs are the descendants of wealthy white merchants and plantation owners. Petit blancs or yabs are descendants of poor white settlers.</p>
<p>Hery, the pilot, is a zoreil, or a more recent arrival from Metropolitan France. Zoreils are generally white and often viewed by long-term residents with a combination of bemusement and an attitude similar to that with which American urbanites regard gentrifiers. If he stays long enough, he might be able to call himself a zoreol — or a zoreil who has lived on the island long enough to “go native.”</p>
<p>But if you talk with someone with family roots in La Réunion, it generally comes out that there is some cross-over in their background, with ancestors tracing from many points of origin and many points in time.</p>
<p>“I am a mix, a true Réunionnais,” as Daniel Revel put it.</p>
<p>Revel works on the same estate his great-grandfather did after immigrating to the island from India. Louis Latchoumay was employed as a gardener at the Chateauvieux plantation. His son, Revel’s grandfather, graduated from waiter at the family table to head groundskeeper.</p>
<p>Revel grew up following Ti-Louis, or “Little Louis” around the grounds of the estate — since donated to the state to become an astoundingly beautiful botanical garden. His grandfather taught him about the plants and birds, and tricks like using a section of bamboo as a straw to suck up the clean water below the turbid surface of a stream.</p>
<p />
<p>A photo of Daniel Revel’s grandfather in retirement.</p>
<p>Emma Jacobs</p>
<p>The fields of this plantation were never farmed by slaves, but the family was related to famous historical villains like Mme. Desbassyns, rumored to haunt the depths of the island’s still-active volcano in perpetual torment for her sins against the people she owned.</p>
<p>The Réunionese, Revel believes, departing from the path of other French colonies like Guadeloupe and Martinique, have put an “X” on the period of slavery in their history, at least emotionally. They have marked a division, relegating it to the past.</p>
<p>Activists in metropolitan France argue today that if you can’t collect racial statistics, if you can’t see color, you can’t measure racial inequities. Réunionese are a diverse bunch but economic stratification on the island also still roughly follows racial lines. Laurent Médéa made a comprehensive study of the island in 2003, which he published as a book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Reunion-An-Island-Search-Identity/dp/1868884961" type="external">Réunion: An Island in search of an Identity</a> in 2010. He found that income and professional outcomes still corresponded roughly to racial background (measured by self-identification with the categories identified above). The descendants of whites had fared better than those predominantly of Indian extraction, who largely did better than the descendants of Africans.</p>
<p>If cracks are ever revealed in the harmonious social fabric, it’s in stories about money and land.</p>
<p>Ailen Tamon had moved back to the home of her mother, who was in ill health. It’s a traditional case en paille, or thatched-roof bungalow high in the hills. The kitchen’s front wall is open to the lush garden and balmy weather. The other walls are lined with flattened food tins. Her grandfather’s brother lived in this house. Her grandfather lived next door. Both men were sharecroppers on this land, tending sugarcane for the grands blancs, the descendants of the family that had established its plantation here.</p>
<p>Education and jobs in education, Tamon said, were a social elevator. Her own parents required her to succeed in school as a way out of poverty. Tamon became a teacher.</p>
<p>If it seems like everyone you’ve met so far on this island works for the government, this is no accident. La Réunion became a French department — the equivalent of a U.S. state in 1946 — beginning a period of government build-up and investment. Today, a substantial amount of economic activity takes place off-the-books, but since the collapse of agricultural employment in the face of mechanization, the island’s standard of living has relied heavily on state jobs and welfare payments.</p>
<p>The school in the tiny community of Îlet à Malheur in Mafate had ten students and ten employees.</p>
<p>But the federal government’s support does not seem to have come with as rigid an imposition of metropolitan-style secularism in public life. The mayor of Saint-Denis can put up a sign outside city hall wishing citizens a “Happy Eid.” That’s unimaginable in in Paris.</p>
<p />
<p>A streetscape in the departmental capital, Saint-Denis.</p>
<p>Emma Jacobs</p>
<p>The crisis of liberalism as it’s playing out in European France revolves around anxieties about how much religious self-expression to allow in the public sphere. As a point of fact, these concerns seem to generally hew to the practices of French Muslims. In Paris, great anxiety has been generated over the question of whether a woman wearing a veil over her face is too “ostentatious” a sign of individual particularism, of self-segregation from the polity, or imposing her views of female propriety in some way on those around her.</p>
<p>While the veil is less contentious on La Réunion, there’s also the reality that few Muslims there come from a tradition that calls for one.</p>
<p>Any comparisons between Réunion and the Metropole must be made with great caution. The demographics simply differ. There are a handful of North Africans here (and interestingly a number of descendants of pieds-noir, French settlers, who left Algeria but found mainland France far too cold). However, the vast majority of Muslims on the island trace their roots to India. This is exponentially different from mainland France, where Islam has been tied up with French fears of pan-Arab nationalism since the 1950s and the bloody separation with its North African colonies.</p>
<p>What happened to make La Réunion what it is? “Slavery happened,” says James Christie, and then the islanders found a way to live with each other moving forward.</p>
<p>Though visitors arriving here, he notes, are always looking for holes in La Réunion’s apparent harmony.</p>
<p>As we talked, he was weaving his ancient grey Twingo up a series of 180 degree curves climbing between tall grasses at a speed that only someone who has spent over a decade here would dare. Christie is from the UK. He moved to Réunion to teach English for a year, which became two.</p>
<p>He’d tried once to return to a steady office job in grey London. He lasted three weeks before he bought a one-way ticket back. With the exception of a stint in South America, he has lived on the island ever since.</p>
<p>“I think Réunion could be a model for the rest of the world,” he says, bluntly. Certainly, it presents a model of religious cohabitation he thinks ought to be a model for mainland France, if metropolitans would make an effort to learn more about their remote outpost.</p>
<p>Another of its residents, Houssen Amode, doesn’t like to use the word “model” himself.</p>
<p>“I think it’s pretentious,” he says.</p>
<p>“But there is an enriching experience [on La Réunion] that could be useful to the Metropole.”</p>
<p>Amode is the island’s representative on the French Council of the Muslim Faith, which Nicolas Sarkozy created as interior minister in 2003 in a rare nod to the idea of communitarianism. Amode has his modest office next door to the Grande Mosque of Saint-Denis, La Réunion’s departmental capital. Its minaret stands out above the low-rise, historic center of the city.&#160;</p>
<p>Réunionese, Amode posits, have become adept at making accommodations to each other’s needs and traditions. The Grande Mosque, he says, respects its neighbors by lowering the call to prayer late at night (“In the time of the prophet, there was no Sony”). While he does not believe the island is immune to radicalization, he thinks it’s a fundamentally more peaceful place.</p>
<p>He says he tries to present La Réunion’s “enriching experience” with tact when he sees his council colleagues from Metropolitan France. He’s the first to acknowledge the island’s diversity comes with a very different backstory.&#160;</p>
<p>But when the public dialogue often devolves into whether there is something fundamentally at odds between French values and Islam, or French society and communitarianism, it’s certainly interesting to look to this island in the tropics which seems to have room for both.</p>
<p>While on La Réunion, I visited a journalist named Jean-Paul Mélade at the Saint-Denis offices of Radio France. Security at the offices had been tightened, as ordered by the government for all the public broadcaster’s offices in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack. There was no need, Mélade said dismissively. This was not metropolitan France.</p>
<p>But the offices were wallpapered with simple “Je Suis Charlie” posters printed out on sheets of 8 ½ by 11. Did they feel such solidarity as journalists?” I asked. “No,” he said firmly. “It’s because we are French.”</p>
<p>But it is a place of France and apart — whether by accident of history or by choice.</p>
<p>After World War II, La Réunion’s political leaders pushed for full integration as a department, which became law in 1946. It remained as other parts of the French empire broke away.</p>
<p>France’s overseas departments still encompass a tremendous variety of experience. Right on the other side of Madagascar, only a few hundred miles away, the island of&#160;Mayotte became a department in 2011 following a popular vote. Overwhelmingly Muslim, around this same time, Mayotte had street protests against Charlie Hebdo’s depiction of the prophet.</p>
<p>And while Réunionese have been traveling to the Metropole in growing numbers for decades to pursue higher education and job opportunities, many report feeling unwelcome, targets of racial prejudice they hadn’t experienced before.</p>
<p>A day or two before I left the island of La Réunion, I finally got to an item on my to-do list since not long after I arrived. I went to find the shop from the report in the newspaper, the zarabe-owned supermarket in the city of Le Port that had a bullet shot through its window in the days after Charlie Hebdo.</p>
<p>In the paper, Roumana Alibay had been quoted on behalf of the enterprise, saying, “People are making a story out of nothing. It’s not worth it to get us mixed up in all the world’s troubles.”</p>
<p>I found her behind the counter of Anti-Crise when I visited, wearing a grey headscarf and light green, long-sleeved shirt. The shop belonged to her uncle but she worked here sometimes when he was away.</p>
<p>When I brought up her comment to the newspaper, she all but rolled her eyes at the eccentricities of reporters. “It was illogical to have even asked the question,” whether the incident was related to France’s ethnic tensions, she told me.</p>
<p>“I’ve been to metropolitan France and in Metropolitan France, everything they brought up, that is there,” she said.&#160;“Here, we don’t have this type of problem."</p>
<p>I haven’t reached any grand revelation about all of this in a year — whether La Réunion has or has not figured out a secret to successful coexistence the rest of us have not, but I’ve found myself mulling over these events a lot.</p>
<p>Coming from an American perspective, the “perfect integration” story seems a little too good to be true. Réunionese’s insistence on their peaceful coexistence can ring hollow. Is it possible that they’ve somehow found the path to perfect social harmony? Then again, how can an outsider judge what’s going on in so many people’s heads in the span of two months? Whereas, regardless of how you might envision a complete social restructuring, back home the anger fueling the “black lives matter” protest movement can seem healthy — something was broken and needs to be fixed and a process is underway — slow, messy or flawed as it might be, to repair our society.</p>
<p>As Alibay said, La Réunion and metropolitan France are different. Their histories having been so contingent, perhaps few lessons can be exported. There is something striking, however, about how Reunion’s openness about religious and ethnic difference has kept the peace far better than the mainland’s attempt to erase it.For the last couple of weeks leading up to the one year anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, I’ve been back in Paris.</p>
<p>I had my first twinge of real concern on Monday after an announcement on the metro about a service disruption due to a suspicious package near a station I’d passed through recently.</p>
<p>In that moment, the idea of opting out of the “world’s troubles,” as Alibay called them, whether by miracle or imperfect compromise, had its appeal.</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/@ecjacobs/watching-charlie-hebdo-s-aftermath-from-la-r%C3%A9union-7b5e865ebdac#.itexrsx1x" type="external">This story</a>originally appeared on <a href="https://medium.com/" type="external">Medium</a>.&#160;Emma Jacobs reported from Réunion as an NPR <a href="http://www.thejohnalexanderproject.org/abovethefray.html" type="external">Above the Fray</a> fellow, sponsored by the <a href="http://www.thejohnalexanderproject.org/about.html" type="external">John Alexander Project</a>, dedicated to supporting young journalists and finding untold stories.</p> | 2,136 |
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">David Rutz</a> March 6, 2016 11:45 am</p>
<p>Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) took a shot at Donald Trump's electability argument Sunday on Face The Nation, suggesting Trump might be the only person "on the face of the planet" that Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton could defeat in a general election.</p>
<p>With the GOP race increasingly looking like a two-man race between Cruz and Trump after they won a pair of states each on Saturday and distanced themselves from the field, Cruz sharpened his tone against the frontrunner.</p>
<p>Trump has consistently said he's the candidate Hillary Clinton would least want to face, but Cruz said the media's relentless focus on Trump's campaign was because they want him to be the nominee and know Clinton would "wallop" him.</p>
<p>"The media knows Donald can't win the general, that Hillary would wallop him," Cruz said. "Donald may be the only person on the face of the planet that Hillary Clinton can beat, and all of the attacks on Donald that the media's not talking about now, come September, October, November, if he were the nominee, every day on the nightly news would be taking Donald apart, and the stakes are too high for us to risk that."</p>
<p>Cruz won in Maine and Kansas on Saturday, while Trump won Louisiana and Kentucky. They are the only Republican candidates to win multiple states.</p>
<p>While Clinton and Trump lead their respective parties in the delegate count, <a href="http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/donald-trump-favorable-rating" type="external">they also</a> have the lowest <a href="http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/hillary-clinton-favorable-rating" type="external">favorability</a> ratings of the remaining candidates in their parties.</p> | Cruz: Trump Might Be Only Person ‘On the Face of the Planet’ Hillary Clinton Could Beat | true | http://freebeacon.com/politics/cruz-trump-only-person-face-planet-clinton-could-beat/ | 2016-03-06 | 0right
| Cruz: Trump Might Be Only Person ‘On the Face of the Planet’ Hillary Clinton Could Beat
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">David Rutz</a> March 6, 2016 11:45 am</p>
<p>Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) took a shot at Donald Trump's electability argument Sunday on Face The Nation, suggesting Trump might be the only person "on the face of the planet" that Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton could defeat in a general election.</p>
<p>With the GOP race increasingly looking like a two-man race between Cruz and Trump after they won a pair of states each on Saturday and distanced themselves from the field, Cruz sharpened his tone against the frontrunner.</p>
<p>Trump has consistently said he's the candidate Hillary Clinton would least want to face, but Cruz said the media's relentless focus on Trump's campaign was because they want him to be the nominee and know Clinton would "wallop" him.</p>
<p>"The media knows Donald can't win the general, that Hillary would wallop him," Cruz said. "Donald may be the only person on the face of the planet that Hillary Clinton can beat, and all of the attacks on Donald that the media's not talking about now, come September, October, November, if he were the nominee, every day on the nightly news would be taking Donald apart, and the stakes are too high for us to risk that."</p>
<p>Cruz won in Maine and Kansas on Saturday, while Trump won Louisiana and Kentucky. They are the only Republican candidates to win multiple states.</p>
<p>While Clinton and Trump lead their respective parties in the delegate count, <a href="http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/donald-trump-favorable-rating" type="external">they also</a> have the lowest <a href="http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/hillary-clinton-favorable-rating" type="external">favorability</a> ratings of the remaining candidates in their parties.</p> | 2,137 |
<p />
<p>This cartoon requires Macromedia’s Flash Player. If you don’t see the cartoon above, <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="external">download the player here</a>.</p>
<p>Mark Fiore is an editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a <a href="http://www.markfiore.com" type="external">web site</a> featuring his work.</p>
<p /> | Rummy’s Greatest Hits! | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2004/12/rummys-greatest-hits/ | 2004-12-15 | 4left
| Rummy’s Greatest Hits!
<p />
<p>This cartoon requires Macromedia’s Flash Player. If you don’t see the cartoon above, <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="external">download the player here</a>.</p>
<p>Mark Fiore is an editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a <a href="http://www.markfiore.com" type="external">web site</a> featuring his work.</p>
<p /> | 2,138 |
<p>After the President sent out a vicious tweet attacking MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski and claiming she had a “face lift,” deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended President Donald Trump, saying he “fights fire with fire.”</p>
<p>“Look, I don’t think that&#160;the president’s ever been&#160;someone who gets attacked&#160;and doesn’t push back.&#160;There have been an outrageous&#160;number of personal attacks,&#160;not just to him but to&#160;frankly everyone around him. People on that show have personally attacked me many times, this is a president who fights fire with fire,” Sanders&#160;said on Fox News. “And&#160;certainly will not be&#160;allowed to be bullied by&#160;liberal media or liberal&#160;elites within the media or Hollywood or&#160;anywhere else.”</p>
<p>When asked whether this type of personal attack was necessary, Sanders said what’s “necessary is to push back against unnecessary attacks on the President both personally” and claimed&#160;there have been “outrageous attacks” “day in and day out” on “Morning Joe” against her and Trump.</p>
<p>“I have seen far worse things&#160;come out of that show.&#160;Again, directed not just at&#160;the President, but everyone&#160;around him, personal&#160;attacks, mean, hateful&#160;attacks.&#160;Again this President is not&#160;going to sit back and not&#160;push back and fight fire&#160;with fire and that’s&#160;exactly what he did today,” she said.</p>
<p>Trump apparently tweeted about the show’s co-hosts Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough after hearing they criticize him on the show.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Sanders On Vicious Trump Tweet: President ‘Fights Fire With Fire’ | true | http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sanders-president-fights-fire-with-fire | 4left
| Sanders On Vicious Trump Tweet: President ‘Fights Fire With Fire’
<p>After the President sent out a vicious tweet attacking MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski and claiming she had a “face lift,” deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended President Donald Trump, saying he “fights fire with fire.”</p>
<p>“Look, I don’t think that&#160;the president’s ever been&#160;someone who gets attacked&#160;and doesn’t push back.&#160;There have been an outrageous&#160;number of personal attacks,&#160;not just to him but to&#160;frankly everyone around him. People on that show have personally attacked me many times, this is a president who fights fire with fire,” Sanders&#160;said on Fox News. “And&#160;certainly will not be&#160;allowed to be bullied by&#160;liberal media or liberal&#160;elites within the media or Hollywood or&#160;anywhere else.”</p>
<p>When asked whether this type of personal attack was necessary, Sanders said what’s “necessary is to push back against unnecessary attacks on the President both personally” and claimed&#160;there have been “outrageous attacks” “day in and day out” on “Morning Joe” against her and Trump.</p>
<p>“I have seen far worse things&#160;come out of that show.&#160;Again, directed not just at&#160;the President, but everyone&#160;around him, personal&#160;attacks, mean, hateful&#160;attacks.&#160;Again this President is not&#160;going to sit back and not&#160;push back and fight fire&#160;with fire and that’s&#160;exactly what he did today,” she said.</p>
<p>Trump apparently tweeted about the show’s co-hosts Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough after hearing they criticize him on the show.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 2,139 |
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<p>A long-swelling crescendo of public outrage over school closings is coming to a head, and state and local lawmakers are pressing for changes that range from go-slow to stop.</p>
<p>In Springfield, a proposal is under consideration that would require Chicago Public Schools to give six months notice before closing a school. It would also establish a process for the public to give input and, if enough oppose it, put the question of whether to close a particular school to voters.</p>
<p>At the same time, a coalition of African-American and Latino state legislators, under pressure from angry constituents, threatened to withhold $100 million in school construction money from the district if the school closings continue. They later relented.</p>
<p>And one Chicago alderman wants a moratorium on further public school closings until a study is completed to determine how displaced students are faring in their new schools.</p>
<p>Schools CEO Arne Duncan defends closing low-performing schools as part of the district’s overall school improvement strategy. “I don’t want to lose another generation to the streets,” he appealed in front of television cameras at a January press conference. “These students in these neighborhoods need something dramatically better. And they need it now.”</p>
<p>Yet critics charge that children displaced by closings are landing at schools that aren’t much better, and may endanger their safety.</p>
<p>At first, CPS announced freshmen who next year would have gone to Collins High School, slated for closure this June, would instead be sent to either Manley or Crane, where test scores are the same or not much better. At a town hall meeting in early February, Collins’ founding Principal Grady Jordan drew this analogy for an indignant crowd gathered to oppose the closing. “Your children are on a sinking cruise ship when a call comes that a rescue boat is on the way,” he said. “However, that boat is also leaking. What they’re talking about doing makes just about as much sense.”</p>
<p>Since the closings began in 2002, more than 8,000 students have been displaced from 23 neighborhood schools, and despite signs of academic progress, most are enrolled in schools that are not much better than the ones they left. A Catalyst Chicago analysis of public school enrollment and student performance data found:</p>
<p>*Only 11 percent of all displaced elementary children are enrolled this year in charters or new contract or district-run schools opened since 2002.</p>
<p>*Just 10 percent of displaced elementary school students are now attending schools where at least half of children enrolled pass a standardized reading exam. Only 1 percent, or 47 children, are going to schools in what the district considers to be its top echelon—schools where pass rates are 70 percent or higher.</p>
<p>*This year, 67 percent of elementary school students displaced by closings were enrolled in schools on academic probation, though considerably fewer are in the worst of the bunch. Only 7 percent are now in schools where 20 percent or fewer hit targets on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills; previously 53 percent were in those schools.</p>
<p>*Students displaced from elementary schools that closed in 2004 posted higher gains in reading in their new schools the following year, yet their overall scores remain low.</p>
<p>An analysis by the Consortium on Chicago School Research found that a sample of high school freshmen from the Austin community improved their attendance by an average of six days and failed slightly fewer courses.</p>
<p>Also, some of the elementary and high schools that received an influx of displaced students were struggling to get a handle on student safety and discipline. At least one elementary school hired an extra crossing guard to protect incoming displaced students who cross busy streets on their longer walk to school.</p>
<p>Switching schools once is not necessarily a big deal, says student mobility expert David Kerbow of the University of Chicago. But repeated moves from school to school—such as those forced on some children by multiple closings in the Mid-South area—and moves without supports can wreck havoc on a child’s academic performance.</p>
<p>CPS launched its school closing strategy in 2002, when it shuttered three elementary schools—Dodge, Williams and Terrell—and announced that two of them would reopen a year later.</p>
<p>They would be run by outside nonprofit groups and serve as prototypes for the Renaissance 2010 new schools initiative that would be unveiled two years later.</p>
<p>Students displaced by the Dodge and Williams closings were invited to return when those schools reopened, Dodge under the management of the non-profit Academy for Urban School Leadership, and Williams with four small schools. Children who did return posted higher test score gains than they did previously, according to CPS.</p>
<p>Since then, the district shut 16 more elementary schools, and began phasing out high schools by allowing existing students to remain but sending freshmen elsewhere. The first, DuSable, began in 2003, and was followed a year later by Calumet and Austin, and in 2005, by Englewood.</p>
<p>High school closings have forced displaced 9th-graders to enroll in high schools farther away from home, often in unfamiliar neighborhoods. When high school students are forced to trek across the city, possibly into rival gang territory, it can lead to poor attendance and dropping out, contends William Leavy, director of the Greater West Town Community Development Project.</p>
<p>At the end of this school year, Collins will no longer admit freshmen and three more elementary schools will close: Frazier in North Lawndale, Morse in Humboldt Park, and Farren in Grand Boulevard. A fourth elementary school, Sherman in New City, will get new staff but keep the same students.</p>
<p>Where are they now?</p>
<p>Displaced students and their parents describe a potpourri of experiences at their new schools.</p>
<p>Brittnay Bates, a 10th-grader who lives near Calumet, got sent instead to Hyde Park. She doesn’t mind the 30-minute commute and thinks her new school has a better academic reputation. But her mother, Brenda Bates, believes she would be more likely to stay after school for activities and tutoring if her school was closer to home. “She doesn’t participate,” she says.</p>
<p>Lucretia Davidson’s 3rd-grade twins landed in McCorkle after Hartigan closed in 2004. She doesn’t like the half-mile walk, but says the school is a big improvement despite being on academic probation. She rattles off a few pluses. McCorkle has a parents night, a science fair and Saturday tutoring. Teachers stay for after school tutoring; Hartigan had outside tutors who often didn’t show up. “There’s a vast difference,” she says.</p>
<p>Jeremiah Clay, a 7th-grader, returned to Williams after its yearlong closure and picked up immediately on the difference in faculty, who had intensive screening before they were hired.</p>
<p>“Before Williams closed down, the teachers didn’t care about you, what you got on your test or what went on in the school,” he says. Now, “the teachers really care. They’ll help you.”</p>
<p>Diane Hassell, former local school council chair at Grant, cried when the school board shut her alma mater last year, but was later thrilled to transfer her 8th-grade daughter to Bell Elementary in North Center, a high performing elementary school. “It turned [out] it’s a good opportunity for Shekia.”</p>
<p>Shekia was one of a tiny fraction of displaced students who were fortunate enough to land in a top-performing school. For the first time last spring, CPS offered kids from the three elementary schools slated for closure the opportunity to transfer to better-performing schools under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. About 1,000 kids from Bunche, Grant and Howland got dibs on this year’s 585 spots.</p>
<p>However, only 25 percent of the eligible students applied for the NCLB transfers, says David Pickens, deputy to the chief executive officer. Each closing school held an open house to announce the option. But many parents objected to sending young children across town, even on a school bus and to a better-performing school, he says. “‘It’s too far a distance for my child to go for me to feel safe,'” he recalls hearing. “Safety overrides everything.”</p>
<p>To find out whether children displaced by elementary school closings were doing better or worse academically, Catalyst analyzed reading test score data for students who were displaced from eight schools that closed in 2004. The results show some improvement: These children were closer to the district average in reading test score gains than they had been previously, only 6 percent below average instead of 23 percent.</p>
<p>For high schools, Catalyst asked the Consortium on Chicago School Research to conduct a case study of freshmen who were displaced when Austin High was closed. Students who went to one of the neighborhood schools that Austin freshmen were assigned to this year posted better attendance than their counterparts did a year earlier, down to an average of 26 days absent from 32 days.</p>
<p>Those freshmen also failed fewer courses, down to 3 from an average of 3.3, and their dropout rate declined from 10 percent to 9 percent. (However, the improved dropout rate may be due to a new law that raised the legal drop-out age to 17.)</p>
<p>Still, these freshmen on average earned only five course credits, too few to guarantee graduation in four years, says Macarena Correa of the Consortium.”Across the board they’re doing poorly,” she observes. “It doesn’t matter where they go.”</p>
<p>Violent incidents increase</p>
<p>Community residents also see safety risks for their children—longer walks and busy street crossings for elementary kids, and longer commutes on public transportation for high school students, sometimes into areas with rival gangs.</p>
<p>Indeed, a number of high schools with displaced freshmen have reported increasing violence. Gang fights at Harlan in Roseland are up after receiving 135 students from Calumet, the disciplinarian reports. Last year, Hyde Park received displaced students from Calumet, and violence doubled from the previous year. This year, with an influx of freshmen from Englewood, fighting is down, but still higher than before displaced students arrived. ( <a href="" type="internal">See related story</a>)</p>
<p>The Austin phaseout generated the most controversy, likely because two of the receiving schools—Wells and Clemente—are predominantly Latino, and residents from both the sending and receiving communities warned that racial differences would intensify gang conflicts. Both West Town high schools reported an increase in violence within the past two years. Clemente’s discipline office reported more than 20 group attacks on individual students, and an increase in fist fighting. Many teachers and students believe the violence was triggered by opposing gangs, although administrators were unable to verify that suspicion.</p>
<p>Still, Wells and Clemente reported fewer incidents of serious violence than did the old Austin High. Clemente’s figures rose from 35 incidents last year to 48 in the first half of this year alone. The year before Austin closed to freshmen, it reported 157 violent incidents, and total enrollment then was smaller than Clemente’s is today.</p>
<p>Catalyst interviewed 20 students from the Austin community who attend either Clemente or Wells, and all but two preferred to leave the neighborhood for schools farther away. Dexavier Vaughns, a 10th-grader, says his whole family attended Austin High, yet he feels safer at Clemente.</p>
<p>Little planning, few resources</p>
<p>Elementary schools reported fewer safety issues. Children from closed schools were often assigned to others nearby, where they often knew other kids. Those transitions tended to go more smoothly, school officials say. But in some sparsely populated areas, children were forced to walk farther into less familiar neighborhoods. At Gladstone on the Near West Side, discipline problems were serious enough last year for CPS to assign a part-time police officer, says Principal Gary Moriello. But disruptions died down this year as the displaced kids from Jefferson settled into their new school, he adds.</p>
<p>Pope in North Lawndale got almost 40 students from Howland when it closed, boosting its enrollment to 221, but also forcing children to cross a six-lane thoroughfare, says Principal Jacqueline Baker. When one child from the Howland area broke his leg, it took a month for the district to assign him a bus, she adds. “The kid had a broken leg and he had to walk.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, school reform advocates complain that CPS has shuffled displaced kids from school to school with little planning and no extra resources. This year the board agreed not to close any elementary school that had been designated as a receiving school for displaced kids within the past two years.</p>
<p>Some schools receiving displaced children waited months for their school records to transfer. Many had been misplaced in a central office warehouse, according to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, which uncovered that fact during investigations for a lawsuit.</p>
<p>Receiving schools didn’t get any extra support to bring the sudden influx of new underperforming students—anywhere from 20 to more than 200—up to speed. At Johnson Elementary, teachers were stretched thin when 85 extra students increased class size from 23 to 29, says Principal Sallie Pinkston.</p>
<p>And Laura Ward Elementary in Humboldt Park received 160 students, many of whom were functioning three to four years below grade level, reports Principal Relanda Hobbs. “It was very difficult for my teachers.”</p>
<p>Hobbs says she would have liked to ease the transition with a family night for her new students before the 2004 school year started. “When you sit down and eat with people, you build a rapport, and it doesn’t become an adversarial relationship.” But the names and records of her new students didn’t arrive until late summer—too late for her to host such an event.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, new guidelines for the district’s school closings policy were aimed at addressing some of those concerns.</p>
<p>Under pressure from politicians and community groups in North Lawndale, CPS agreed in March to open places at 14 other high schools for displaced Collins students who didn’t want to attend Manley or Crane.</p>
<p>“That’s positive, very positive,” says Julius Anderson, a retired principal and a leading organizer against the Collins closing.</p>
<p>Pickens says the board also intends to provide at least some receiving schools with extra resources such as reading or math coaches, security personnel, teacher training and supplies left over from the closed schools. But the district has not yet determined how much it can spend, he adds.</p>
<p>Laurene Heybach of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless says CPS ought to devote ample funds, given the millions they’ve raised for Renaissance schools that displaced kids may never attend. “They say, ‘We’re closing these low-performing schools.’ If that’s so, aren’t the kids who suffered there most deserving of help?”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Springfield correspondent Matt Adrian and intern Emily Horbar contributed to this story.</p>
<p>Contact Elizabeth Duffrin at (312) 673-3879 or [email protected].</p> | Slow progress amid strife | false | http://chicagoreporter.com/slow-progress-amid-strife/ | 2006-04-18 | 3left-center
| Slow progress amid strife
<p>A long-swelling crescendo of public outrage over school closings is coming to a head, and state and local lawmakers are pressing for changes that range from go-slow to stop.</p>
<p>In Springfield, a proposal is under consideration that would require Chicago Public Schools to give six months notice before closing a school. It would also establish a process for the public to give input and, if enough oppose it, put the question of whether to close a particular school to voters.</p>
<p>At the same time, a coalition of African-American and Latino state legislators, under pressure from angry constituents, threatened to withhold $100 million in school construction money from the district if the school closings continue. They later relented.</p>
<p>And one Chicago alderman wants a moratorium on further public school closings until a study is completed to determine how displaced students are faring in their new schools.</p>
<p>Schools CEO Arne Duncan defends closing low-performing schools as part of the district’s overall school improvement strategy. “I don’t want to lose another generation to the streets,” he appealed in front of television cameras at a January press conference. “These students in these neighborhoods need something dramatically better. And they need it now.”</p>
<p>Yet critics charge that children displaced by closings are landing at schools that aren’t much better, and may endanger their safety.</p>
<p>At first, CPS announced freshmen who next year would have gone to Collins High School, slated for closure this June, would instead be sent to either Manley or Crane, where test scores are the same or not much better. At a town hall meeting in early February, Collins’ founding Principal Grady Jordan drew this analogy for an indignant crowd gathered to oppose the closing. “Your children are on a sinking cruise ship when a call comes that a rescue boat is on the way,” he said. “However, that boat is also leaking. What they’re talking about doing makes just about as much sense.”</p>
<p>Since the closings began in 2002, more than 8,000 students have been displaced from 23 neighborhood schools, and despite signs of academic progress, most are enrolled in schools that are not much better than the ones they left. A Catalyst Chicago analysis of public school enrollment and student performance data found:</p>
<p>*Only 11 percent of all displaced elementary children are enrolled this year in charters or new contract or district-run schools opened since 2002.</p>
<p>*Just 10 percent of displaced elementary school students are now attending schools where at least half of children enrolled pass a standardized reading exam. Only 1 percent, or 47 children, are going to schools in what the district considers to be its top echelon—schools where pass rates are 70 percent or higher.</p>
<p>*This year, 67 percent of elementary school students displaced by closings were enrolled in schools on academic probation, though considerably fewer are in the worst of the bunch. Only 7 percent are now in schools where 20 percent or fewer hit targets on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills; previously 53 percent were in those schools.</p>
<p>*Students displaced from elementary schools that closed in 2004 posted higher gains in reading in their new schools the following year, yet their overall scores remain low.</p>
<p>An analysis by the Consortium on Chicago School Research found that a sample of high school freshmen from the Austin community improved their attendance by an average of six days and failed slightly fewer courses.</p>
<p>Also, some of the elementary and high schools that received an influx of displaced students were struggling to get a handle on student safety and discipline. At least one elementary school hired an extra crossing guard to protect incoming displaced students who cross busy streets on their longer walk to school.</p>
<p>Switching schools once is not necessarily a big deal, says student mobility expert David Kerbow of the University of Chicago. But repeated moves from school to school—such as those forced on some children by multiple closings in the Mid-South area—and moves without supports can wreck havoc on a child’s academic performance.</p>
<p>CPS launched its school closing strategy in 2002, when it shuttered three elementary schools—Dodge, Williams and Terrell—and announced that two of them would reopen a year later.</p>
<p>They would be run by outside nonprofit groups and serve as prototypes for the Renaissance 2010 new schools initiative that would be unveiled two years later.</p>
<p>Students displaced by the Dodge and Williams closings were invited to return when those schools reopened, Dodge under the management of the non-profit Academy for Urban School Leadership, and Williams with four small schools. Children who did return posted higher test score gains than they did previously, according to CPS.</p>
<p>Since then, the district shut 16 more elementary schools, and began phasing out high schools by allowing existing students to remain but sending freshmen elsewhere. The first, DuSable, began in 2003, and was followed a year later by Calumet and Austin, and in 2005, by Englewood.</p>
<p>High school closings have forced displaced 9th-graders to enroll in high schools farther away from home, often in unfamiliar neighborhoods. When high school students are forced to trek across the city, possibly into rival gang territory, it can lead to poor attendance and dropping out, contends William Leavy, director of the Greater West Town Community Development Project.</p>
<p>At the end of this school year, Collins will no longer admit freshmen and three more elementary schools will close: Frazier in North Lawndale, Morse in Humboldt Park, and Farren in Grand Boulevard. A fourth elementary school, Sherman in New City, will get new staff but keep the same students.</p>
<p>Where are they now?</p>
<p>Displaced students and their parents describe a potpourri of experiences at their new schools.</p>
<p>Brittnay Bates, a 10th-grader who lives near Calumet, got sent instead to Hyde Park. She doesn’t mind the 30-minute commute and thinks her new school has a better academic reputation. But her mother, Brenda Bates, believes she would be more likely to stay after school for activities and tutoring if her school was closer to home. “She doesn’t participate,” she says.</p>
<p>Lucretia Davidson’s 3rd-grade twins landed in McCorkle after Hartigan closed in 2004. She doesn’t like the half-mile walk, but says the school is a big improvement despite being on academic probation. She rattles off a few pluses. McCorkle has a parents night, a science fair and Saturday tutoring. Teachers stay for after school tutoring; Hartigan had outside tutors who often didn’t show up. “There’s a vast difference,” she says.</p>
<p>Jeremiah Clay, a 7th-grader, returned to Williams after its yearlong closure and picked up immediately on the difference in faculty, who had intensive screening before they were hired.</p>
<p>“Before Williams closed down, the teachers didn’t care about you, what you got on your test or what went on in the school,” he says. Now, “the teachers really care. They’ll help you.”</p>
<p>Diane Hassell, former local school council chair at Grant, cried when the school board shut her alma mater last year, but was later thrilled to transfer her 8th-grade daughter to Bell Elementary in North Center, a high performing elementary school. “It turned [out] it’s a good opportunity for Shekia.”</p>
<p>Shekia was one of a tiny fraction of displaced students who were fortunate enough to land in a top-performing school. For the first time last spring, CPS offered kids from the three elementary schools slated for closure the opportunity to transfer to better-performing schools under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. About 1,000 kids from Bunche, Grant and Howland got dibs on this year’s 585 spots.</p>
<p>However, only 25 percent of the eligible students applied for the NCLB transfers, says David Pickens, deputy to the chief executive officer. Each closing school held an open house to announce the option. But many parents objected to sending young children across town, even on a school bus and to a better-performing school, he says. “‘It’s too far a distance for my child to go for me to feel safe,'” he recalls hearing. “Safety overrides everything.”</p>
<p>To find out whether children displaced by elementary school closings were doing better or worse academically, Catalyst analyzed reading test score data for students who were displaced from eight schools that closed in 2004. The results show some improvement: These children were closer to the district average in reading test score gains than they had been previously, only 6 percent below average instead of 23 percent.</p>
<p>For high schools, Catalyst asked the Consortium on Chicago School Research to conduct a case study of freshmen who were displaced when Austin High was closed. Students who went to one of the neighborhood schools that Austin freshmen were assigned to this year posted better attendance than their counterparts did a year earlier, down to an average of 26 days absent from 32 days.</p>
<p>Those freshmen also failed fewer courses, down to 3 from an average of 3.3, and their dropout rate declined from 10 percent to 9 percent. (However, the improved dropout rate may be due to a new law that raised the legal drop-out age to 17.)</p>
<p>Still, these freshmen on average earned only five course credits, too few to guarantee graduation in four years, says Macarena Correa of the Consortium.”Across the board they’re doing poorly,” she observes. “It doesn’t matter where they go.”</p>
<p>Violent incidents increase</p>
<p>Community residents also see safety risks for their children—longer walks and busy street crossings for elementary kids, and longer commutes on public transportation for high school students, sometimes into areas with rival gangs.</p>
<p>Indeed, a number of high schools with displaced freshmen have reported increasing violence. Gang fights at Harlan in Roseland are up after receiving 135 students from Calumet, the disciplinarian reports. Last year, Hyde Park received displaced students from Calumet, and violence doubled from the previous year. This year, with an influx of freshmen from Englewood, fighting is down, but still higher than before displaced students arrived. ( <a href="" type="internal">See related story</a>)</p>
<p>The Austin phaseout generated the most controversy, likely because two of the receiving schools—Wells and Clemente—are predominantly Latino, and residents from both the sending and receiving communities warned that racial differences would intensify gang conflicts. Both West Town high schools reported an increase in violence within the past two years. Clemente’s discipline office reported more than 20 group attacks on individual students, and an increase in fist fighting. Many teachers and students believe the violence was triggered by opposing gangs, although administrators were unable to verify that suspicion.</p>
<p>Still, Wells and Clemente reported fewer incidents of serious violence than did the old Austin High. Clemente’s figures rose from 35 incidents last year to 48 in the first half of this year alone. The year before Austin closed to freshmen, it reported 157 violent incidents, and total enrollment then was smaller than Clemente’s is today.</p>
<p>Catalyst interviewed 20 students from the Austin community who attend either Clemente or Wells, and all but two preferred to leave the neighborhood for schools farther away. Dexavier Vaughns, a 10th-grader, says his whole family attended Austin High, yet he feels safer at Clemente.</p>
<p>Little planning, few resources</p>
<p>Elementary schools reported fewer safety issues. Children from closed schools were often assigned to others nearby, where they often knew other kids. Those transitions tended to go more smoothly, school officials say. But in some sparsely populated areas, children were forced to walk farther into less familiar neighborhoods. At Gladstone on the Near West Side, discipline problems were serious enough last year for CPS to assign a part-time police officer, says Principal Gary Moriello. But disruptions died down this year as the displaced kids from Jefferson settled into their new school, he adds.</p>
<p>Pope in North Lawndale got almost 40 students from Howland when it closed, boosting its enrollment to 221, but also forcing children to cross a six-lane thoroughfare, says Principal Jacqueline Baker. When one child from the Howland area broke his leg, it took a month for the district to assign him a bus, she adds. “The kid had a broken leg and he had to walk.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, school reform advocates complain that CPS has shuffled displaced kids from school to school with little planning and no extra resources. This year the board agreed not to close any elementary school that had been designated as a receiving school for displaced kids within the past two years.</p>
<p>Some schools receiving displaced children waited months for their school records to transfer. Many had been misplaced in a central office warehouse, according to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, which uncovered that fact during investigations for a lawsuit.</p>
<p>Receiving schools didn’t get any extra support to bring the sudden influx of new underperforming students—anywhere from 20 to more than 200—up to speed. At Johnson Elementary, teachers were stretched thin when 85 extra students increased class size from 23 to 29, says Principal Sallie Pinkston.</p>
<p>And Laura Ward Elementary in Humboldt Park received 160 students, many of whom were functioning three to four years below grade level, reports Principal Relanda Hobbs. “It was very difficult for my teachers.”</p>
<p>Hobbs says she would have liked to ease the transition with a family night for her new students before the 2004 school year started. “When you sit down and eat with people, you build a rapport, and it doesn’t become an adversarial relationship.” But the names and records of her new students didn’t arrive until late summer—too late for her to host such an event.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, new guidelines for the district’s school closings policy were aimed at addressing some of those concerns.</p>
<p>Under pressure from politicians and community groups in North Lawndale, CPS agreed in March to open places at 14 other high schools for displaced Collins students who didn’t want to attend Manley or Crane.</p>
<p>“That’s positive, very positive,” says Julius Anderson, a retired principal and a leading organizer against the Collins closing.</p>
<p>Pickens says the board also intends to provide at least some receiving schools with extra resources such as reading or math coaches, security personnel, teacher training and supplies left over from the closed schools. But the district has not yet determined how much it can spend, he adds.</p>
<p>Laurene Heybach of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless says CPS ought to devote ample funds, given the millions they’ve raised for Renaissance schools that displaced kids may never attend. “They say, ‘We’re closing these low-performing schools.’ If that’s so, aren’t the kids who suffered there most deserving of help?”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Springfield correspondent Matt Adrian and intern Emily Horbar contributed to this story.</p>
<p>Contact Elizabeth Duffrin at (312) 673-3879 or [email protected].</p> | 2,140 |
<p />
<p>New research on Greenland glaciers suggests that <a href="/blue_marble_blog/archives/2007/07/4935_glaciers_ice_ca.html" type="external">sea level rise</a> will be twice as high the <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/" type="external">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a> (IPCC) estimate of 18 to 58 cm (0.6 to 1.9 ft) by 2100. The study, published in the Journal of Glaciology <a href="http://www.igsoc.org/journal/54/184/j07j061.pdf" type="external">(pdf)</a>, combines important data long missing from the ice sheet models. Researchers from the University at Buffalo, Ohio State University, the University of Kansas, and NASA, combined field mapping, remote sensing, satellite imaging, and digital enhancement techniques to glean “hidden” data from historic aerial photographs, some 60 years old.</p>
<p>The resulting two-dimensional pictures are of limited value. But the researchers digitized them, removed the boundaries between them, and turned several pictures into a single ‘mosaic’ producing one data set viewable in three-dimensions. “By reprocessing old data contained in these old photographs and records, we have been able to construct a long-term record of the behavior of the [Jakobshavn Isbrae] glacier,” says lead author, Beata Csatho. “This was the first time that the data from the ’40s could be reused in a coherent way.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Other glacier views and data <a href="http://www.buffalo.edu/news/9138" type="external">here</a> and <a href="http://rsl.geology.buffalo.edu/" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p>Julia Whitty is Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent and 2008 winner of the <a href="http://www.research.amnh.org/burroughs/medal_award_list.html" type="external">John Burroughs Medal Award</a>. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, <a href="http://julia.whitty.googlepages.com/home" type="external">here.</a></p>
<p /> | Sea Level Rise Twice As High as Current Projections | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2008/02/sea-level-rise-twice-high-current-projections/ | 2008-02-13 | 4left
| Sea Level Rise Twice As High as Current Projections
<p />
<p>New research on Greenland glaciers suggests that <a href="/blue_marble_blog/archives/2007/07/4935_glaciers_ice_ca.html" type="external">sea level rise</a> will be twice as high the <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/" type="external">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a> (IPCC) estimate of 18 to 58 cm (0.6 to 1.9 ft) by 2100. The study, published in the Journal of Glaciology <a href="http://www.igsoc.org/journal/54/184/j07j061.pdf" type="external">(pdf)</a>, combines important data long missing from the ice sheet models. Researchers from the University at Buffalo, Ohio State University, the University of Kansas, and NASA, combined field mapping, remote sensing, satellite imaging, and digital enhancement techniques to glean “hidden” data from historic aerial photographs, some 60 years old.</p>
<p>The resulting two-dimensional pictures are of limited value. But the researchers digitized them, removed the boundaries between them, and turned several pictures into a single ‘mosaic’ producing one data set viewable in three-dimensions. “By reprocessing old data contained in these old photographs and records, we have been able to construct a long-term record of the behavior of the [Jakobshavn Isbrae] glacier,” says lead author, Beata Csatho. “This was the first time that the data from the ’40s could be reused in a coherent way.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Other glacier views and data <a href="http://www.buffalo.edu/news/9138" type="external">here</a> and <a href="http://rsl.geology.buffalo.edu/" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p>Julia Whitty is Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent and 2008 winner of the <a href="http://www.research.amnh.org/burroughs/medal_award_list.html" type="external">John Burroughs Medal Award</a>. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, <a href="http://julia.whitty.googlepages.com/home" type="external">here.</a></p>
<p /> | 2,141 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>KABUL, Afghanistan — The first thing you notice when you look at photos of Mansoor, an Afghan translator for the US Marine Corps in the southern provinces of Afghanistan, is that he looks very young. His small, lean frame, his open demeanor, and his boyish features make him look more like a kid brother on a field trip with military officers than like a young man who risks his life every day to help them.</p>
<p>It has been five years since Mansoor first started working for the US military, and now, like nearly everyone in Afghanistan, he is closely monitoring the withdrawal of US troops from his country and worrying about his fate and that of his family.</p>
<p>I interviewed Mansoor last month in Afghanistan, and I had a chance to look at his records and the enthusiastic commendations and certificates he’s earned for his service. He has assembled these documents as part of an application for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) to come to the United States. The US government sets aside 7,500 of these visas to help American-employed Afghans move out of the country that has become a constant danger to them.&#160;</p>
<p>Five years ago when I started working on my documentary film <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/iraq/110814/the-list-lives-left-hanging" type="external">THE LIST</a>, I learned about tens of thousands of Iraqis whose lives were in jeopardy because they worked for the allied forces.</p>
<p>These translators, guides, and clerical workers were being directly targeted by radical militias in their country. And even though the US government set aside 25,000 SIVs to aid them, few were being issued. That is still the case.&#160;</p>
<p>Today, the same thing is happening to Afghans who have helped American forces and aid organizations. Every month, interpreters and their families are attacked because of their work. In May, five family members of a translator who worked with Canadian forces <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/05/21/afghan_interpreters_family_killed_by_taliban_near_kandahar.html" type="external">were slaughtered in retribution</a> for his choice of employer. Three of the victims were children.&#160;</p>
<p>While I was in Afghanistan, I was able to arrange a phone interview with a representative from the Taliban. This journalistic coup soon turned into a soul-chilling reminder of how malevolent and brutally organized the group is. The representative hastened to say that yes, Afghans who work for the United States of any foreign entity are targets. “They are the eyes [and ears] for the enemy,” he responded, when asked about the rise in violence against Afghan interpreters.</p>
<p>Despite the SIV program, the US has done little to come to the aid of even highly regarded workers like Mansoor. Mansoor has in his file personal recommendations from a US General and a Colonel, and yet his application has languished for two years.&#160;</p>
<p>The reasons are manifold: it seems some involved in the visa process fear pushing the paperwork for the next terrorist, despite the thorough vetting required for every application. It has also become apparent that many government agencies, like the public in general, are tired of hearing about Afghanistan, tired of worrying about its people, and cold to their cause.</p>
<p>"The Afghan program has been damaged since its inception by a number of factors, which include resistance by the US Embassy in Kabul, the lack of any coordinated advocacy campaign on behalf of US-affiliated Afghans here in the US, public apathy, and bureaucratic torpor," said Kirk W. Johnson, founder of The List Project, an organization that has helped more than 2,000 Iraqis obtain visas to the United States. "Of course we could and should be more fair in carrying out the promise we made in granting visas to those who worked for us."&#160;</p>
<p>Also hurting Afghan translators' chances of getting visas are some American diplomats and power players, who know full well the value of Afghan employees to our military and are not willing to help someone like Mansoor — who has served faithfully for five years —because he cannot be easily replaced. In a cable to Secretary of State Clinton, former ambassador Karl Eikenberry wrote about the difficulty of replacing Afghan workers for the military.&#160;</p>
<p>“Local staff are not easily replenished in a society at 28 percent literacy,” he wrote. “If we are not careful, the SIV program will have a significant deleterious impact on staffing and morale.”&#160;</p>
<p>After that communique in 2010, a virtual freeze was put on the program.&#160;</p>
<p>In March, a bipartisan group of 19 US representatives called on President Obama to extend and reform the visa programs for both Iraqi and Afghan allies.&#160;</p>
<p>“The US has a responsibility to follow through on our promise to protect those Iraqis and Afghans who have risked their lives to aid our troops,” the legislators said in an open letter to the President. “The extension and reform of these programs is a matter of national security.”</p>
<p>More than two months after the letter was written, there has been no response from the White House.&#160;</p> | Meeting Mansoor: Afghan translators struggle to come to the US | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-06-12/meeting-mansoor-afghan-translators-struggle-come-us | 2013-06-12 | 3left-center
| Meeting Mansoor: Afghan translators struggle to come to the US
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>KABUL, Afghanistan — The first thing you notice when you look at photos of Mansoor, an Afghan translator for the US Marine Corps in the southern provinces of Afghanistan, is that he looks very young. His small, lean frame, his open demeanor, and his boyish features make him look more like a kid brother on a field trip with military officers than like a young man who risks his life every day to help them.</p>
<p>It has been five years since Mansoor first started working for the US military, and now, like nearly everyone in Afghanistan, he is closely monitoring the withdrawal of US troops from his country and worrying about his fate and that of his family.</p>
<p>I interviewed Mansoor last month in Afghanistan, and I had a chance to look at his records and the enthusiastic commendations and certificates he’s earned for his service. He has assembled these documents as part of an application for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) to come to the United States. The US government sets aside 7,500 of these visas to help American-employed Afghans move out of the country that has become a constant danger to them.&#160;</p>
<p>Five years ago when I started working on my documentary film <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/iraq/110814/the-list-lives-left-hanging" type="external">THE LIST</a>, I learned about tens of thousands of Iraqis whose lives were in jeopardy because they worked for the allied forces.</p>
<p>These translators, guides, and clerical workers were being directly targeted by radical militias in their country. And even though the US government set aside 25,000 SIVs to aid them, few were being issued. That is still the case.&#160;</p>
<p>Today, the same thing is happening to Afghans who have helped American forces and aid organizations. Every month, interpreters and their families are attacked because of their work. In May, five family members of a translator who worked with Canadian forces <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/05/21/afghan_interpreters_family_killed_by_taliban_near_kandahar.html" type="external">were slaughtered in retribution</a> for his choice of employer. Three of the victims were children.&#160;</p>
<p>While I was in Afghanistan, I was able to arrange a phone interview with a representative from the Taliban. This journalistic coup soon turned into a soul-chilling reminder of how malevolent and brutally organized the group is. The representative hastened to say that yes, Afghans who work for the United States of any foreign entity are targets. “They are the eyes [and ears] for the enemy,” he responded, when asked about the rise in violence against Afghan interpreters.</p>
<p>Despite the SIV program, the US has done little to come to the aid of even highly regarded workers like Mansoor. Mansoor has in his file personal recommendations from a US General and a Colonel, and yet his application has languished for two years.&#160;</p>
<p>The reasons are manifold: it seems some involved in the visa process fear pushing the paperwork for the next terrorist, despite the thorough vetting required for every application. It has also become apparent that many government agencies, like the public in general, are tired of hearing about Afghanistan, tired of worrying about its people, and cold to their cause.</p>
<p>"The Afghan program has been damaged since its inception by a number of factors, which include resistance by the US Embassy in Kabul, the lack of any coordinated advocacy campaign on behalf of US-affiliated Afghans here in the US, public apathy, and bureaucratic torpor," said Kirk W. Johnson, founder of The List Project, an organization that has helped more than 2,000 Iraqis obtain visas to the United States. "Of course we could and should be more fair in carrying out the promise we made in granting visas to those who worked for us."&#160;</p>
<p>Also hurting Afghan translators' chances of getting visas are some American diplomats and power players, who know full well the value of Afghan employees to our military and are not willing to help someone like Mansoor — who has served faithfully for five years —because he cannot be easily replaced. In a cable to Secretary of State Clinton, former ambassador Karl Eikenberry wrote about the difficulty of replacing Afghan workers for the military.&#160;</p>
<p>“Local staff are not easily replenished in a society at 28 percent literacy,” he wrote. “If we are not careful, the SIV program will have a significant deleterious impact on staffing and morale.”&#160;</p>
<p>After that communique in 2010, a virtual freeze was put on the program.&#160;</p>
<p>In March, a bipartisan group of 19 US representatives called on President Obama to extend and reform the visa programs for both Iraqi and Afghan allies.&#160;</p>
<p>“The US has a responsibility to follow through on our promise to protect those Iraqis and Afghans who have risked their lives to aid our troops,” the legislators said in an open letter to the President. “The extension and reform of these programs is a matter of national security.”</p>
<p>More than two months after the letter was written, there has been no response from the White House.&#160;</p> | 2,142 |
<p />
<p>Many people look forward to retirement and the change of pace that comes with it. But retirement is a big step financially, so it's important to go into it prepared. If you're planning to retire in 2017, here are a few tax moves to make before 2016 comes to a close.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.</p>
<p>Many workers reach their peak earning years right before retirement. If you're one of them, it means you're probably paying more taxes now than you did earlier on in your career. It also means there's a good chance you'll pay more taxes this year than you will next year once you retire. But you can ease the burden for the current tax year by maxing out your 401(k) or IRA. Anyone 50 or older can currently contribute up to $6,500 to an IRA and $24,000 to a 401(k), and that's money that will go in tax-free. Not only will you get an up-front tax break, but you'll have more savings to work with once you're retired.</p>
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<p>Once you're retired and living on a fixed income, you may not have the wiggle room to be as charitable as you'd like. That's why now's the time to donate to your favorite organizations. Not only will you be doing a good thing, but you'll get to deduct your donations and lower your tax burden as a result. All you need to do is retain a record of your donations and make sure to contribute to a registered charity.</p>
<p>If you're retiring at an older age, you may be required to take minimum distributions from your IRA as early as next year. Traditional IRAs mandate that you start taking withdrawals by April 1 the year after you turn 70 1/2. So if you turned 70 earlier this year and will be 70 1/2 before the end of the year, you'll need to take your first required minimum distribution by April 1, 2017. And you'll want to put that deadline on your calendar now, because failing to do so could result in a 50% penalty on whatever amount you don't withdraw. Furthermore, because traditional IRA distributions are subject to taxes, now's the time to figure out <a href="http://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/10/15/heres-how-to-calculate-your-required-minimum-distr.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">how much you'll need to withdraw Opens a New Window.</a> and what your tax liability might look like next year. The sooner you do this research, the better prepared you'll be in 2017.</p>
<p>Retirement is a major milestone that can impact your finances in more ways than one. A few smart tax moves this year could make the transition a whole lot smoother in 2017.</p>
<p>The $15,834 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $15,834 more... each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after. <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-social-security?source=irreditxt0000002&amp;ftm_cam=ryr-ss-intro-report&amp;ftm_pit=3186&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies. Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>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> | Retiring in 2017? Here Are 5 Tax Moves to Make Now | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/29/retiring-in-2017-here-are-5-tax-moves-to-make-now.html | 2016-11-29 | 0right
| Retiring in 2017? Here Are 5 Tax Moves to Make Now
<p />
<p>Many people look forward to retirement and the change of pace that comes with it. But retirement is a big step financially, so it's important to go into it prepared. If you're planning to retire in 2017, here are a few tax moves to make before 2016 comes to a close.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.</p>
<p>Many workers reach their peak earning years right before retirement. If you're one of them, it means you're probably paying more taxes now than you did earlier on in your career. It also means there's a good chance you'll pay more taxes this year than you will next year once you retire. But you can ease the burden for the current tax year by maxing out your 401(k) or IRA. Anyone 50 or older can currently contribute up to $6,500 to an IRA and $24,000 to a 401(k), and that's money that will go in tax-free. Not only will you get an up-front tax break, but you'll have more savings to work with once you're retired.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Most of us spend a fair amount of money each year on medical expenses. The good news is that if you itemize your tax return, you can deduct not just your actual expenses but peripheral costs like traveling to appointments and parking fees. Now there is a catch: To claim medical expenses on your taxes, your total out-of-pocket costs must exceed 10% of your adjusted gross income (AGI). But if you're currently 65 or older, you get a bit of a break for 2016, as your expenses only need to exceed 7.5% of your AGI to take a medical deduction. Come 2017, even those 65 and older will be subject to that 10% threshold, so now's a good opportunity to take advantage.</p>
<p>Owing a huge amount on your 2016 tax return isn't a great way to kick off retirement, so if you have investments that are currently down, selling them can reduce your taxable income for the year. Any investments you sell at a loss this year can automatically be used to offset gains. So if you made $5,000 earlier this year from a great buy but can sell another investment at a $5,000 loss, you'll cancel out that gain and avoid paying taxes on it. Better yet, if your losses for the year surpass your gains, you can use up to $3,000 of the remainder to reduce your ordinary income. And, if you're left with more than a $3,000 loss, you can carry the rest to the following tax year.</p>
<p>Once you're retired and living on a fixed income, you may not have the wiggle room to be as charitable as you'd like. That's why now's the time to donate to your favorite organizations. Not only will you be doing a good thing, but you'll get to deduct your donations and lower your tax burden as a result. All you need to do is retain a record of your donations and make sure to contribute to a registered charity.</p>
<p>If you're retiring at an older age, you may be required to take minimum distributions from your IRA as early as next year. Traditional IRAs mandate that you start taking withdrawals by April 1 the year after you turn 70 1/2. So if you turned 70 earlier this year and will be 70 1/2 before the end of the year, you'll need to take your first required minimum distribution by April 1, 2017. And you'll want to put that deadline on your calendar now, because failing to do so could result in a 50% penalty on whatever amount you don't withdraw. Furthermore, because traditional IRA distributions are subject to taxes, now's the time to figure out <a href="http://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/10/15/heres-how-to-calculate-your-required-minimum-distr.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">how much you'll need to withdraw Opens a New Window.</a> and what your tax liability might look like next year. The sooner you do this research, the better prepared you'll be in 2017.</p>
<p>Retirement is a major milestone that can impact your finances in more ways than one. A few smart tax moves this year could make the transition a whole lot smoother in 2017.</p>
<p>The $15,834 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $15,834 more... each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after. <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-social-security?source=irreditxt0000002&amp;ftm_cam=ryr-ss-intro-report&amp;ftm_pit=3186&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies. Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>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> | 2,143 |
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Illinois Lottery's "LuckyDay Lotto Midday" game were:</p>
<p>02-07-12-38-41</p>
<p>(two, seven, twelve, thirty-eight, forty-one)</p>
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Illinois Lottery's "LuckyDay Lotto Midday" game were:</p>
<p>02-07-12-38-41</p>
<p>(two, seven, twelve, thirty-eight, forty-one)</p> | Winning numbers drawn in 'LuckyDay Lotto Midday' game | false | https://apnews.com/amp/66982e981aff46f9a2784a8526f48d79 | 2018-01-05 | 2least
| Winning numbers drawn in 'LuckyDay Lotto Midday' game
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Illinois Lottery's "LuckyDay Lotto Midday" game were:</p>
<p>02-07-12-38-41</p>
<p>(two, seven, twelve, thirty-eight, forty-one)</p>
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Illinois Lottery's "LuckyDay Lotto Midday" game were:</p>
<p>02-07-12-38-41</p>
<p>(two, seven, twelve, thirty-eight, forty-one)</p> | 2,144 |
<p>(Screenshot via Twitter.)</p>
<p>Laverne Cox gave her support to Hillary Clinton in a new ad that focuses on the importance of LGBT rights.</p>
<p>“What we see unfortunately in the Republican Party, what we see on a policy level, is a party that has consistently tried to disenfranchise people of color, disenfranchise working people, LGBT people, take away women’s control over their bodies, and that is just something I can’t support,” the actress says in the video. “There are so many things that are working to divide us and pull us apart, but we always have to fight.”</p>
<p>“LGBT rights are human rights. Gay rights are human rights. Trans rights are human rights. And I know that is something Hillary Clinton has been saying for years,” Cox continues.</p>
<p>Watch the ad below.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Hillary Clinton</a> <a href="" type="internal">Laverne Cox</a> <a href="" type="internal">North Carolina HB2</a></p> | Laverne Cox endorses Hillary Clinton in new ad | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2016/10/13/laverne-cox-endorses-hillary-clinton-new-ad/ | 3left-center
| Laverne Cox endorses Hillary Clinton in new ad
<p>(Screenshot via Twitter.)</p>
<p>Laverne Cox gave her support to Hillary Clinton in a new ad that focuses on the importance of LGBT rights.</p>
<p>“What we see unfortunately in the Republican Party, what we see on a policy level, is a party that has consistently tried to disenfranchise people of color, disenfranchise working people, LGBT people, take away women’s control over their bodies, and that is just something I can’t support,” the actress says in the video. “There are so many things that are working to divide us and pull us apart, but we always have to fight.”</p>
<p>“LGBT rights are human rights. Gay rights are human rights. Trans rights are human rights. And I know that is something Hillary Clinton has been saying for years,” Cox continues.</p>
<p>Watch the ad below.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Hillary Clinton</a> <a href="" type="internal">Laverne Cox</a> <a href="" type="internal">North Carolina HB2</a></p> | 2,145 |
|
<p>ALLEN PARK, Mich. — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jarrad-Davis/" type="external">Jarrad Davis</a>‘ welcome-to-the-NFL moment came in Friday’s preseason loss to the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/New_England_Patriots/" type="external">New England Patriots</a>, and for that the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Detroit-Lions/" type="external">Detroit Lions</a> rookie linebacker is thankful.</p>
<p>Davis got beat badly in pass coverage twice on the game’s opening drive, once by <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Julian-Edelman/" type="external">Julian Edelman</a> for an 18-yard gain on the play in which Edelman tore his ACL, and then on a short touchdown catch by <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris-Hogan/" type="external">Chris Hogan</a> a few plays later.</p>
<p>On both plays, Davis said he misplayed his technique in the middle of the field and “let my teammates down.”</p>
<p>“It’s definitely a situation I haven’t been in in a long time, so as a young guy, as a first-year guy, had to really learn like, ‘OK, you got to bounce back, you got to put this in the backburner and you got to go get the next play. You got to make something happen,'” Davis said. “And it was a challenge at first. I’m not going to lie to you, it was really challenging. Tough. But it just showed me, this is what we have to do, this is how we have to work, this is how we have to prepare.”</p>
<p>Davis has drawn nothing but praise from coaches and teammates this preseason as he’s taken on the difficult challenge of playing middle linebacker in the Lions’ defense.</p>
<p>The rookie first-round pick, No. 21 overall, has called plays with a veteran’s aplomb and shined as a run defender. But as Friday’s first half against <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tom_Brady/" type="external">Tom Brady</a> proved, Davis still has a long way to go against the pass.</p>
<p>“I don’t think anybody’s ever said that he’s going to be absolutely perfect,” Lions head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jim_Caldwell/" type="external">Jim Caldwell</a> said. “You’re going to learn along the way. And that’s the thing that guys have to be able to learn to deal with is guys that have skills, speed, quickness, size, coming at you non-stop takes a little adjusting. But I think obviously, I think we have some young guys that I think learned a few lessons and we’ll get better for it.”</p>
<p>Davis, who is expected to play in every sub-package on defense this fall, said that’s the approach that he’s adopted with the start of the regular season less than two weeks away.</p>
<p>“That game and the preparation of this week leading up to the game is probably the best thing to ever happen to me,” Davis said. “People might ask why, but the biggest reason is because you can’t ask for anything better than that, especially in a preseason game and especially be able to know where you are, know what the issues are, know what things you need to work on and know where teams are going to attack you.”</p>
<p>Notes: Defensive tackle Jordan Hill suffered a season-ending biceps injury in Friday’s loss to the New England Patriots and landed on season-ending injured reserve Sunday. The Lions signed DT Derrick Lott to take Hill’s place. … Linebacker Tahir Whitehead left Friday’s game with a knee injury, but Lions head coach Jim Caldwell said Whitehead avoided serious injury. Whitehead missed time with a sprained knee last year and underwent surgery this offseason. … Running back <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Theo-Riddick/" type="external">Theo Riddick</a> made his preseason debut against the Patriots, playing eight snaps in what’s expected to be his only action of the preseason. Riddick, who is recovering from surgery on both wrists, had one carry for no gain and one incomplete pass thrown his way. He tied for the NFL lead in receptions in his last healthy season of 2015.</p>
<p>Punter Kasey Redfern has made the most of his cameo as Lions punter while Sam Martin remains on the non- <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a> injury list with a summer foot injury. Redfern is netting better than 42 yards a punt this preseason and has landed seven of his nine punts inside the 20 without a touchback. Redfern will handle punting duties for the Lions if Martin can’t make it back by the Sept. 10 opener. If Martin returns, Jim Caldwell said Redfern has done enough to earn a spot elsewhere.</p>
<p>“Kasey’s done a very, very good job I think overall,” Caldwell said. “He’s hung in there, he’s done a nice job in terms of holding. He’s done a nice job punting the ball. He’s still working on getting better at everything, but I think he’s fitting in and meshing in. Done a nice job.”</p> | Detroit Lions LB Jarrad Davis thankful for preseason learning experience | false | https://newsline.com/detroit-lions-lb-jarrad-davis-thankful-for-preseason-learning-experience/ | 2017-08-28 | 1right-center
| Detroit Lions LB Jarrad Davis thankful for preseason learning experience
<p>ALLEN PARK, Mich. — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jarrad-Davis/" type="external">Jarrad Davis</a>‘ welcome-to-the-NFL moment came in Friday’s preseason loss to the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/New_England_Patriots/" type="external">New England Patriots</a>, and for that the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Detroit-Lions/" type="external">Detroit Lions</a> rookie linebacker is thankful.</p>
<p>Davis got beat badly in pass coverage twice on the game’s opening drive, once by <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Julian-Edelman/" type="external">Julian Edelman</a> for an 18-yard gain on the play in which Edelman tore his ACL, and then on a short touchdown catch by <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris-Hogan/" type="external">Chris Hogan</a> a few plays later.</p>
<p>On both plays, Davis said he misplayed his technique in the middle of the field and “let my teammates down.”</p>
<p>“It’s definitely a situation I haven’t been in in a long time, so as a young guy, as a first-year guy, had to really learn like, ‘OK, you got to bounce back, you got to put this in the backburner and you got to go get the next play. You got to make something happen,'” Davis said. “And it was a challenge at first. I’m not going to lie to you, it was really challenging. Tough. But it just showed me, this is what we have to do, this is how we have to work, this is how we have to prepare.”</p>
<p>Davis has drawn nothing but praise from coaches and teammates this preseason as he’s taken on the difficult challenge of playing middle linebacker in the Lions’ defense.</p>
<p>The rookie first-round pick, No. 21 overall, has called plays with a veteran’s aplomb and shined as a run defender. But as Friday’s first half against <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tom_Brady/" type="external">Tom Brady</a> proved, Davis still has a long way to go against the pass.</p>
<p>“I don’t think anybody’s ever said that he’s going to be absolutely perfect,” Lions head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jim_Caldwell/" type="external">Jim Caldwell</a> said. “You’re going to learn along the way. And that’s the thing that guys have to be able to learn to deal with is guys that have skills, speed, quickness, size, coming at you non-stop takes a little adjusting. But I think obviously, I think we have some young guys that I think learned a few lessons and we’ll get better for it.”</p>
<p>Davis, who is expected to play in every sub-package on defense this fall, said that’s the approach that he’s adopted with the start of the regular season less than two weeks away.</p>
<p>“That game and the preparation of this week leading up to the game is probably the best thing to ever happen to me,” Davis said. “People might ask why, but the biggest reason is because you can’t ask for anything better than that, especially in a preseason game and especially be able to know where you are, know what the issues are, know what things you need to work on and know where teams are going to attack you.”</p>
<p>Notes: Defensive tackle Jordan Hill suffered a season-ending biceps injury in Friday’s loss to the New England Patriots and landed on season-ending injured reserve Sunday. The Lions signed DT Derrick Lott to take Hill’s place. … Linebacker Tahir Whitehead left Friday’s game with a knee injury, but Lions head coach Jim Caldwell said Whitehead avoided serious injury. Whitehead missed time with a sprained knee last year and underwent surgery this offseason. … Running back <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Theo-Riddick/" type="external">Theo Riddick</a> made his preseason debut against the Patriots, playing eight snaps in what’s expected to be his only action of the preseason. Riddick, who is recovering from surgery on both wrists, had one carry for no gain and one incomplete pass thrown his way. He tied for the NFL lead in receptions in his last healthy season of 2015.</p>
<p>Punter Kasey Redfern has made the most of his cameo as Lions punter while Sam Martin remains on the non- <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a> injury list with a summer foot injury. Redfern is netting better than 42 yards a punt this preseason and has landed seven of his nine punts inside the 20 without a touchback. Redfern will handle punting duties for the Lions if Martin can’t make it back by the Sept. 10 opener. If Martin returns, Jim Caldwell said Redfern has done enough to earn a spot elsewhere.</p>
<p>“Kasey’s done a very, very good job I think overall,” Caldwell said. “He’s hung in there, he’s done a nice job in terms of holding. He’s done a nice job punting the ball. He’s still working on getting better at everything, but I think he’s fitting in and meshing in. Done a nice job.”</p> | 2,146 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>– “Patriots Day” tells the story of the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers.</p>
<p>– Ben Affleck directs and stars in the Prohibition-era crime drama “Live by Night.”</p>
<p>– Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning star in “20th Century Women.”</p>
<p>– A middle-aged woman reflects on her past in director Pedro Almodovar’s “Julieta.”</p>
<p>– “Monster Trucks” is a sci-fi action comedy about a creature that lives inside a truck.</p>
<p>– A malevolent figure haunts three friends in the horror film “The Bye Bye Man.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Opening next week | false | https://abqjournal.com/922203/opening-next-week-2.html | 2least
| Opening next week
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>– “Patriots Day” tells the story of the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers.</p>
<p>– Ben Affleck directs and stars in the Prohibition-era crime drama “Live by Night.”</p>
<p>– Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning star in “20th Century Women.”</p>
<p>– A middle-aged woman reflects on her past in director Pedro Almodovar’s “Julieta.”</p>
<p>– “Monster Trucks” is a sci-fi action comedy about a creature that lives inside a truck.</p>
<p>– A malevolent figure haunts three friends in the horror film “The Bye Bye Man.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 2,147 |
|
<p>Conservative commentator Ann Coulter <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/260581147493412865" type="external">responded</a> to the October 22 presidential debate by referring to President Obama as "the retard." Her comments come one month after she <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/ann-coulter-democrats-dropping-the-blacks-and-moving-on-to-the-hispanics/" type="external">appeared as a panelist</a> on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos.&#160;</p>
<p>In an October 11 interview with ABCNews.com's The Note, Coulter <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/seven-questions-this-week-ann-coulter/" type="external">said she did not regret</a>&#160;any of the <a href="/tags/ann-coulter" type="external">array of controversial and offensive comments</a> she has made on TV or radio. That post referred to Coulter as an "occasional 'This Week' roundtable guest"; she has appeared on the program four times since April 1.</p>
<p>Coulter's tweet:</p>
<p />
<p>Coulter also appears regularly on Fox News and Fox Business.</p> | One Month After Appearing On ABC, Ann Coulter Calls Obama "The Retard" | true | http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/10/22/one-month-after-appearing-on-abc-ann-coulter-ca/190856 | 2012-10-23 | 4left
| One Month After Appearing On ABC, Ann Coulter Calls Obama "The Retard"
<p>Conservative commentator Ann Coulter <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/260581147493412865" type="external">responded</a> to the October 22 presidential debate by referring to President Obama as "the retard." Her comments come one month after she <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/ann-coulter-democrats-dropping-the-blacks-and-moving-on-to-the-hispanics/" type="external">appeared as a panelist</a> on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos.&#160;</p>
<p>In an October 11 interview with ABCNews.com's The Note, Coulter <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/seven-questions-this-week-ann-coulter/" type="external">said she did not regret</a>&#160;any of the <a href="/tags/ann-coulter" type="external">array of controversial and offensive comments</a> she has made on TV or radio. That post referred to Coulter as an "occasional 'This Week' roundtable guest"; she has appeared on the program four times since April 1.</p>
<p>Coulter's tweet:</p>
<p />
<p>Coulter also appears regularly on Fox News and Fox Business.</p> | 2,148 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>President Donald Trump’s condemnation of hate groups — two days after his initially equivocal response to a deadly attack at a rally in Virginia — disappointed and even angered some of the white nationalists, white supremacists and neo-Nazis who supported and felt emboldened by his presidential campaign.</p>
<p>Trump initially blamed “many sides” after violent clashes in Charlottesville, where a participant in a white nationalist rally rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters on Saturday, killing a demonstrator and injuring dozens of others.</p>
<p>Under immense bipartisan pressure to issue a stronger statement, Trump on Monday explicitly denounced the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacists and neo-Nazis as “repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans” and said “justice will be delivered” to those responsible.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Reading from a prepared text, Trump said, “Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America.”</p>
<p>White nationalist Richard Spencer told reporters at a news conference Monday that he thought Trump should have criticized state and local authorities for their handling of security at the Charlottesville rally.</p>
<p>“The statement sounds like we might want to all bring out an acoustic guitar and sing “Kum ba yah.” It’s just vapid nonsense,” said Spencer, who popularized the term “alt-right” to describe the fringe movement mixing white supremacy, white nationalism, anti-Semitism and anti-immigration populism.</p>
<p>Occidental Dissent, a white nationalist website, posted a statement saying whites had been “deserted by their president.”</p>
<p>“He has sided with a group of people who attack us on sight and attempt to kill us and for that the Alt-Right can no longer support him. What Donald Trump has done today is an unforgivable betrayal of his supporters,” the message said.</p>
<p>Trump was criticized during the presidential campaign for failing to immediately reject the endorsement of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. On Monday, Duke posted a video mildly criticizing Trump’s remarks.</p>
<p>“President Trump, please, for God’s sakes, don’t feel like you’ve got to say these things. It’s not going to do you any good,” he said.</p>
<p>Duke, who participated in the rally, reserved his bile for the “fake news media” covering the events in Charlottesville as he addressed Trump.</p>
<p>“I understand that you’re under a great amount of pressure,” he said. “The problem is you’re under siege. You know these people. They want your scalp. They want to crucify you.”</p>
<p>The publisher of The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, praised Trump’s initial reaction to the Charlottesville violence.</p>
<p>“Nothing specific against us,” Andrew Anglin wrote. “No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.”</p>
<p>Anglin dismissed Trump’s second statement as “childish nonsense.”</p>
<p>“I’m not especially bothered by it,” he said in an email to The Associated Press. “If he actually believed that nonsense, or was planning on implementing it as policy, he would have said it before being bullied into it by the international thought police.”</p> | Trump’s denouncement disappoints, angers white nationalists | false | https://abqjournal.com/1048396/trumps-denouncement-disappoints-angers-white-nationalists.html | 2017-08-15 | 2least
| Trump’s denouncement disappoints, angers white nationalists
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<p>President Donald Trump’s condemnation of hate groups — two days after his initially equivocal response to a deadly attack at a rally in Virginia — disappointed and even angered some of the white nationalists, white supremacists and neo-Nazis who supported and felt emboldened by his presidential campaign.</p>
<p>Trump initially blamed “many sides” after violent clashes in Charlottesville, where a participant in a white nationalist rally rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters on Saturday, killing a demonstrator and injuring dozens of others.</p>
<p>Under immense bipartisan pressure to issue a stronger statement, Trump on Monday explicitly denounced the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacists and neo-Nazis as “repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans” and said “justice will be delivered” to those responsible.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Reading from a prepared text, Trump said, “Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America.”</p>
<p>White nationalist Richard Spencer told reporters at a news conference Monday that he thought Trump should have criticized state and local authorities for their handling of security at the Charlottesville rally.</p>
<p>“The statement sounds like we might want to all bring out an acoustic guitar and sing “Kum ba yah.” It’s just vapid nonsense,” said Spencer, who popularized the term “alt-right” to describe the fringe movement mixing white supremacy, white nationalism, anti-Semitism and anti-immigration populism.</p>
<p>Occidental Dissent, a white nationalist website, posted a statement saying whites had been “deserted by their president.”</p>
<p>“He has sided with a group of people who attack us on sight and attempt to kill us and for that the Alt-Right can no longer support him. What Donald Trump has done today is an unforgivable betrayal of his supporters,” the message said.</p>
<p>Trump was criticized during the presidential campaign for failing to immediately reject the endorsement of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. On Monday, Duke posted a video mildly criticizing Trump’s remarks.</p>
<p>“President Trump, please, for God’s sakes, don’t feel like you’ve got to say these things. It’s not going to do you any good,” he said.</p>
<p>Duke, who participated in the rally, reserved his bile for the “fake news media” covering the events in Charlottesville as he addressed Trump.</p>
<p>“I understand that you’re under a great amount of pressure,” he said. “The problem is you’re under siege. You know these people. They want your scalp. They want to crucify you.”</p>
<p>The publisher of The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, praised Trump’s initial reaction to the Charlottesville violence.</p>
<p>“Nothing specific against us,” Andrew Anglin wrote. “No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.”</p>
<p>Anglin dismissed Trump’s second statement as “childish nonsense.”</p>
<p>“I’m not especially bothered by it,” he said in an email to The Associated Press. “If he actually believed that nonsense, or was planning on implementing it as policy, he would have said it before being bullied into it by the international thought police.”</p> | 2,149 |
<p>CONCORD, N.H. (AP) _ These Vermont lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>Gimme 5</p>
<p>06-15-16-26-38</p>
<p>(six, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-six, thirty-eight)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $306 million</p>
<p>Megabucks Plus</p>
<p>14-15-23-29-35, Megaball: 5</p>
<p>(fourteen, fifteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-five; Megaball: five)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $4.4 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Day</p>
<p>9-8-7</p>
<p>(nine, eight, seven)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>7-3-3</p>
<p>(seven, three, three)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Day</p>
<p>4-8-4-0</p>
<p>(four, eight, four, zero)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Evening</p>
<p>2-2-4-6</p>
<p>(two, two, four, six)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>03-09-16-56-60, Powerball: 3, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(three, nine, sixteen, fifty-six, sixty; Powerball: three; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $337 million</p>
<p>CONCORD, N.H. (AP) _ These Vermont lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>Gimme 5</p>
<p>06-15-16-26-38</p>
<p>(six, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-six, thirty-eight)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $306 million</p>
<p>Megabucks Plus</p>
<p>14-15-23-29-35, Megaball: 5</p>
<p>(fourteen, fifteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-five; Megaball: five)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $4.4 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Day</p>
<p>9-8-7</p>
<p>(nine, eight, seven)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>7-3-3</p>
<p>(seven, three, three)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Day</p>
<p>4-8-4-0</p>
<p>(four, eight, four, zero)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Evening</p>
<p>2-2-4-6</p>
<p>(two, two, four, six)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>03-09-16-56-60, Powerball: 3, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(three, nine, sixteen, fifty-six, sixty; Powerball: three; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $337 million</p> | VT Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/1594868d83844bc3b3c31d7a77340bba | 2017-12-28 | 2least
| VT Lottery
<p>CONCORD, N.H. (AP) _ These Vermont lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>Gimme 5</p>
<p>06-15-16-26-38</p>
<p>(six, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-six, thirty-eight)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $306 million</p>
<p>Megabucks Plus</p>
<p>14-15-23-29-35, Megaball: 5</p>
<p>(fourteen, fifteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-five; Megaball: five)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $4.4 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Day</p>
<p>9-8-7</p>
<p>(nine, eight, seven)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>7-3-3</p>
<p>(seven, three, three)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Day</p>
<p>4-8-4-0</p>
<p>(four, eight, four, zero)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Evening</p>
<p>2-2-4-6</p>
<p>(two, two, four, six)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>03-09-16-56-60, Powerball: 3, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(three, nine, sixteen, fifty-six, sixty; Powerball: three; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $337 million</p>
<p>CONCORD, N.H. (AP) _ These Vermont lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>Gimme 5</p>
<p>06-15-16-26-38</p>
<p>(six, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-six, thirty-eight)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $306 million</p>
<p>Megabucks Plus</p>
<p>14-15-23-29-35, Megaball: 5</p>
<p>(fourteen, fifteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-five; Megaball: five)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $4.4 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Day</p>
<p>9-8-7</p>
<p>(nine, eight, seven)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>7-3-3</p>
<p>(seven, three, three)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Day</p>
<p>4-8-4-0</p>
<p>(four, eight, four, zero)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Evening</p>
<p>2-2-4-6</p>
<p>(two, two, four, six)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>03-09-16-56-60, Powerball: 3, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(three, nine, sixteen, fifty-six, sixty; Powerball: three; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $337 million</p> | 2,150 |
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<p><a href="" type="internal" />TAOS — Taos Ski Valley plans to open its season on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 27.</p>
<p>The ski area in northern New Mexico says it expects to initially operate on a limited schedule, with lifts open Thursday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.</p>
<p>Seven-day-a-week operations are scheduled to start on Dec. 11.</p>
<p>New this season will be a chairlift to provide skiers with access to Kachina Peak at about 12,450 feet. Also opening is new hike-to terrain that will provide 35 acres of tree skiing that can be reached from the West Basin Ridge.</p>
<p>The ski area, which is about 19 miles from the community of Taos, also is renovating its base area and will have a new location where skiers are dropped off from parking lot shuttles.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Taos Ski Valley plans to open its season Nov. 27 | false | https://abqjournal.com/477014/taos-ski-valley-plans-to-open-its-season-nov-27.html | 2least
| Taos Ski Valley plans to open its season Nov. 27
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<p><a href="" type="internal" />TAOS — Taos Ski Valley plans to open its season on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 27.</p>
<p>The ski area in northern New Mexico says it expects to initially operate on a limited schedule, with lifts open Thursday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.</p>
<p>Seven-day-a-week operations are scheduled to start on Dec. 11.</p>
<p>New this season will be a chairlift to provide skiers with access to Kachina Peak at about 12,450 feet. Also opening is new hike-to terrain that will provide 35 acres of tree skiing that can be reached from the West Basin Ridge.</p>
<p>The ski area, which is about 19 miles from the community of Taos, also is renovating its base area and will have a new location where skiers are dropped off from parking lot shuttles.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 2,151 |
|
<p>A Houston police officer is among the Hurricane Harvey dead, according to law enforcement officials handling emergency management.</p>
<p>The officer, a 30-year veteran of the Houston Police force was in his patrol car driving to work during the storm. After trying several routes to his precinct, he took an unfamiliar road and his squad car was overtaken by floodwaters. Trapped by the high water, he was unable to escape and drowned in his vehicle.</p>
<p>"He was trying different routes, and took a wrong turn," one high-ranking law enforcement official <a href="http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Houston-Police-officer-drowns-in-Harvey-12145510.php?cmpid=twitter-desktop" type="external">told the Houston Chronicle</a>.</p>
<p>Search and rescue teams are currently trying to reach the officer and his squad car so that they can recover his body. Houston police haven't released the officer's name because they haven't yet been able to contact his family.</p>
<p>The Houston officer is the 15th death from Hurricane Harvey so far.</p>
<p>The storm has broken the all-time Texas rainfall record, according to the National Weather Service, dropping an incredible 40 inches of rain on Houston and surrounding communities, and several more inches of rain are expected to fall in the area on Tuesday. Harvey is now moving into the Gulf of Mexico where its expected to turn and make landfall a second time, somewhere along the Texas-Louisiana border. It could drop as much as 20 inches of rain when it returns to land on Thursday.</p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of Houston-area residents are still without power, and around 30,000 people have been forced to seek emergency shelter.</p> | Houston Police Officer Drowns in Harvey Flood Waters | true | https://dailywire.com/news/20380/houston-police-officer-drowns-harvey-flood-waters-emily-zanotti | 2017-08-29 | 0right
| Houston Police Officer Drowns in Harvey Flood Waters
<p>A Houston police officer is among the Hurricane Harvey dead, according to law enforcement officials handling emergency management.</p>
<p>The officer, a 30-year veteran of the Houston Police force was in his patrol car driving to work during the storm. After trying several routes to his precinct, he took an unfamiliar road and his squad car was overtaken by floodwaters. Trapped by the high water, he was unable to escape and drowned in his vehicle.</p>
<p>"He was trying different routes, and took a wrong turn," one high-ranking law enforcement official <a href="http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Houston-Police-officer-drowns-in-Harvey-12145510.php?cmpid=twitter-desktop" type="external">told the Houston Chronicle</a>.</p>
<p>Search and rescue teams are currently trying to reach the officer and his squad car so that they can recover his body. Houston police haven't released the officer's name because they haven't yet been able to contact his family.</p>
<p>The Houston officer is the 15th death from Hurricane Harvey so far.</p>
<p>The storm has broken the all-time Texas rainfall record, according to the National Weather Service, dropping an incredible 40 inches of rain on Houston and surrounding communities, and several more inches of rain are expected to fall in the area on Tuesday. Harvey is now moving into the Gulf of Mexico where its expected to turn and make landfall a second time, somewhere along the Texas-Louisiana border. It could drop as much as 20 inches of rain when it returns to land on Thursday.</p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of Houston-area residents are still without power, and around 30,000 people have been forced to seek emergency shelter.</p> | 2,152 |
<p>Tiffany &amp; Co. reported Friday fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that fell to $163.2 million, or $1.28 a share, from $196.2 million, or $1.51 a share, in the same period a year ago. Excluding non-recurring items, including a $28.3 million charge for impairment of a loan made to a diamond mining company, adjusted earnings per share came to $1.46, above the FactSet consensus of $1.40. Sales fell to $1.21 billion from $1.29 billion, matching the FactSet consensus. Worldwide same-store sales fell 9%, missing the FactSet consensus of a 4.4% decline, with all regions missing expectations, with particular weakness in Europe. Looking ahead, the high-end jewelry retailer said fiscal first-quarter EPS may drop 15% to 20% from a year ago, while the FactSet consensus of 76 cents implies a 6.2% decline. The stock, which was indicated up more than 2% in premarket trade, has dropped 8.1% year to date through Thursday, while the S&amp;P 500 has slipped 0.2%.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2016 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Tiffany Beats Q4 Profit Expectations, But Warns Of Q1 Miss | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/03/18/tiffany-beats-q4-profit-expectations-but-warns-q1-miss.html | 2016-03-18 | 0right
| Tiffany Beats Q4 Profit Expectations, But Warns Of Q1 Miss
<p>Tiffany &amp; Co. reported Friday fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that fell to $163.2 million, or $1.28 a share, from $196.2 million, or $1.51 a share, in the same period a year ago. Excluding non-recurring items, including a $28.3 million charge for impairment of a loan made to a diamond mining company, adjusted earnings per share came to $1.46, above the FactSet consensus of $1.40. Sales fell to $1.21 billion from $1.29 billion, matching the FactSet consensus. Worldwide same-store sales fell 9%, missing the FactSet consensus of a 4.4% decline, with all regions missing expectations, with particular weakness in Europe. Looking ahead, the high-end jewelry retailer said fiscal first-quarter EPS may drop 15% to 20% from a year ago, while the FactSet consensus of 76 cents implies a 6.2% decline. The stock, which was indicated up more than 2% in premarket trade, has dropped 8.1% year to date through Thursday, while the S&amp;P 500 has slipped 0.2%.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2016 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | 2,153 |
<p>Food riots are erupting around the world. Protests have occurred in Egypt, Cameroon, the Philippines, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Senegal. Sarata Guisse, a Senegalese demonstrator, told Reuters: “We are holding this demonstration because we are hungry. We need to eat, we need to work, we are hungry. That’s all. We are hungry.” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has convened a task force to confront the problem, which threatens, he said, “the specter of widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale.” The World Food Program has called the food crisis the worst in 45 years, dubbing it a “silent tsunami” that will plunge 100 million more people into hunger.</p>
<p>Behind the hunger, behind the riots, are so-called free-trade agreements, and the brutal emergency-loan agreements imposed on poor countries by financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund. Food riots in Haiti have killed six, injured hundreds and led to the ousting of Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis. The Rev. Jesse Jackson just returned from Haiti and writes that “hunger is on the march here. Garbage is carefully sifted for whatever food might be left. Young babies wail in frustration, seeking milk from a mother too anemic to produce it.” Jackson is calling for debt relief so that Haiti can direct the $70 million per year it spends on interest to the World Bank and other loans into schools, infrastructure and agriculture.</p>
<p>The rise in food prices is generally attributed to a perfect storm caused by increased food demand from India and China, diminished food supplies caused by drought and other climate-change-related problems, increased fuel costs to grow and transport the food, and the increased demand for biofuels, which has diverted food supplies like corn into ethanol production.</p>
<p>This week, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, called for the suspension of biofuels production: “Burning food today so as to serve the mobility of the rich countries is a crime against humanity.” He’s asked the U.N. to impose a five-year ban on food-based biofuels production. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, a group of 8,000 scientists globally, is also speaking out against biofuels. The scientists are pushing for a plant called switchgrass to be used as the source for biofuels, reserving corn and other food plants to be used solely as food.</p>
<p />
<p>In a news conference this week, President Bush defended food-based ethanol production: “The truth of the matter is it’s in our national interests that our farmers grow energy, as opposed to us purchasing energy from parts of the world that are unstable or may not like us.” One part of the world that does like Bush and his policies are the multinational food corporations. International nonprofit group GRAIN has just published a report called “Making a killing from hunger.” In it, GRAIN points out that major multinational corporations are realizing vast, increasing profits amid the rising misery of world hunger. Profits are up for agribusiness giants Cargill (86 percent) and Bunge (77 percent), and Archer Daniels Midland (which dubs itself “the supermarket to the world”) enjoyed a 67 percent increase in profits.</p>
<p>GRAIN writes: “Is this a price blip? No. A food shortage? Not that either. We are in a structural meltdown, the direct result of three decades of neoliberal globalization. … We have allowed food to be transformed from something that nourishes people and provides them with secure livelihoods into a commodity for speculation and bargaining.” The report states: “The amount of speculative money in commodities futures … was less than $5 billion in 2000. Last year, it ballooned to roughly $175 billion.”</p>
<p>There was a global food crisis in 1946. Then, as now, the U.N. convened a working group to deal with it. At its meeting, the head of the U.N. Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, former New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, said, “Ticker tape ain’t spaghetti.” In other words, the stock market doesn’t feed the hungry. His words remain true today. We in the U.S. aren’t immune to the crisis. Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and Costco have placed limits on bulk rice purchases. Record numbers of people are on food stamps, and food pantries are seeing an increase in needy people.</p>
<p>Current technology exists to feed the planet in an organic, locally based, sustainable manner. The large corporate food and energy interests, and the U.S. government, need to recognize this and change direction, or the food riots in distant lands will soon be coming to their doors.</p>
<p>Dennis Moynihan contributed research for this column.</p>
<p>Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 650 stations in North America.</p>
<p>© 2008 Amy Goodman</p>
<p>Distributed by King Features Syndicate</p> | Ticker Tape Ain't Spaghetti | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/ticker-tape-aint-spaghetti/ | 2008-05-01 | 4left
| Ticker Tape Ain't Spaghetti
<p>Food riots are erupting around the world. Protests have occurred in Egypt, Cameroon, the Philippines, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Senegal. Sarata Guisse, a Senegalese demonstrator, told Reuters: “We are holding this demonstration because we are hungry. We need to eat, we need to work, we are hungry. That’s all. We are hungry.” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has convened a task force to confront the problem, which threatens, he said, “the specter of widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale.” The World Food Program has called the food crisis the worst in 45 years, dubbing it a “silent tsunami” that will plunge 100 million more people into hunger.</p>
<p>Behind the hunger, behind the riots, are so-called free-trade agreements, and the brutal emergency-loan agreements imposed on poor countries by financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund. Food riots in Haiti have killed six, injured hundreds and led to the ousting of Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis. The Rev. Jesse Jackson just returned from Haiti and writes that “hunger is on the march here. Garbage is carefully sifted for whatever food might be left. Young babies wail in frustration, seeking milk from a mother too anemic to produce it.” Jackson is calling for debt relief so that Haiti can direct the $70 million per year it spends on interest to the World Bank and other loans into schools, infrastructure and agriculture.</p>
<p>The rise in food prices is generally attributed to a perfect storm caused by increased food demand from India and China, diminished food supplies caused by drought and other climate-change-related problems, increased fuel costs to grow and transport the food, and the increased demand for biofuels, which has diverted food supplies like corn into ethanol production.</p>
<p>This week, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, called for the suspension of biofuels production: “Burning food today so as to serve the mobility of the rich countries is a crime against humanity.” He’s asked the U.N. to impose a five-year ban on food-based biofuels production. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, a group of 8,000 scientists globally, is also speaking out against biofuels. The scientists are pushing for a plant called switchgrass to be used as the source for biofuels, reserving corn and other food plants to be used solely as food.</p>
<p />
<p>In a news conference this week, President Bush defended food-based ethanol production: “The truth of the matter is it’s in our national interests that our farmers grow energy, as opposed to us purchasing energy from parts of the world that are unstable or may not like us.” One part of the world that does like Bush and his policies are the multinational food corporations. International nonprofit group GRAIN has just published a report called “Making a killing from hunger.” In it, GRAIN points out that major multinational corporations are realizing vast, increasing profits amid the rising misery of world hunger. Profits are up for agribusiness giants Cargill (86 percent) and Bunge (77 percent), and Archer Daniels Midland (which dubs itself “the supermarket to the world”) enjoyed a 67 percent increase in profits.</p>
<p>GRAIN writes: “Is this a price blip? No. A food shortage? Not that either. We are in a structural meltdown, the direct result of three decades of neoliberal globalization. … We have allowed food to be transformed from something that nourishes people and provides them with secure livelihoods into a commodity for speculation and bargaining.” The report states: “The amount of speculative money in commodities futures … was less than $5 billion in 2000. Last year, it ballooned to roughly $175 billion.”</p>
<p>There was a global food crisis in 1946. Then, as now, the U.N. convened a working group to deal with it. At its meeting, the head of the U.N. Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, former New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, said, “Ticker tape ain’t spaghetti.” In other words, the stock market doesn’t feed the hungry. His words remain true today. We in the U.S. aren’t immune to the crisis. Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and Costco have placed limits on bulk rice purchases. Record numbers of people are on food stamps, and food pantries are seeing an increase in needy people.</p>
<p>Current technology exists to feed the planet in an organic, locally based, sustainable manner. The large corporate food and energy interests, and the U.S. government, need to recognize this and change direction, or the food riots in distant lands will soon be coming to their doors.</p>
<p>Dennis Moynihan contributed research for this column.</p>
<p>Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 650 stations in North America.</p>
<p>© 2008 Amy Goodman</p>
<p>Distributed by King Features Syndicate</p> | 2,154 |
<p>TRENTON, N.J. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Tuesday evening's drawing of the New Jersey Lottery's "Pick 3" game were:</p>
<p>2-1-7, Fireball: 5</p>
<p>(two, one, seven; Fireball: five)</p>
<p>TRENTON, N.J. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Tuesday evening's drawing of the New Jersey Lottery's "Pick 3" game were:</p>
<p>2-1-7, Fireball: 5</p>
<p>(two, one, seven; Fireball: five)</p> | Winning numbers drawn in 'Pick 3' game | false | https://apnews.com/amp/5dd0bf714f7048c49db7a5f848df9928 | 2018-01-10 | 2least
| Winning numbers drawn in 'Pick 3' game
<p>TRENTON, N.J. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Tuesday evening's drawing of the New Jersey Lottery's "Pick 3" game were:</p>
<p>2-1-7, Fireball: 5</p>
<p>(two, one, seven; Fireball: five)</p>
<p>TRENTON, N.J. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Tuesday evening's drawing of the New Jersey Lottery's "Pick 3" game were:</p>
<p>2-1-7, Fireball: 5</p>
<p>(two, one, seven; Fireball: five)</p> | 2,155 |
<p>Aging baby boomers are turning 65 years old at a pace of 10,000 per day, and that's causing an increase in the diagnosis of common causes of vision loss, including age-related macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema. Patients with these conditions are increasingly being prescribed Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' (NASDAQ: REGN) Eylea, and as a result, Eylea's selling at a $6 billion annualized clip globally.</p>
<p>In this clip from the Motley Fool's <a href="https://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=50f90722-8654-11e7-abde-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Industry Focus: Healthcare Opens a New Window.</a> podcast, analyst Kristine Harjes is joined by Todd Campbell to discuss Eylea's success and how Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' plans to maintain market leadership in these indications in the future.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Regeneron PharmaceuticalsWhen 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=755a1b11-171d-4dae-a47e-2c99dbfa50ad&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=50f90722-8654-11e7-abde-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals 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=755a1b11-171d-4dae-a47e-2c99dbfa50ad&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=50f90722-8654-11e7-abde-0050569d4be0&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 August 1, 2017</p>
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<p>This video was recorded on Aug. 16, 2017.</p>
<p>Kristine Harjes: Regeneron just reported its earnings on August 3 -- we're talking about the second quarter here. In that quarter, it sold nearly a billion, just in the quarter alone. This is at nearly a $4 billion run rate just with U.S. sales. It's important to note that Regeneron receives just a share of profit from ex-U.S. sales because it's partnered with Bayer on this drug.</p>
<p>Todd Campbell: Right. Bayer and Regeneron are working together on commercializing the drug globally. This is a monster drug in a huge indication. I think you mentioned briefly that it's approved to treat wet stage age-related macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema. These are two increasingly common causes of vision loss within older patients. If you think about this for a second, what's the argument for the growth that you're referencing? You've got 76 million baby boomers, and they're turning 65 at a pace of 10,000 people per day. The incidence of these two indications within this patient population, as they're getting older and living longer, is increasing. What's really intriguing about Eylea and its success, this is a drug that did $1.5 billion in global sales last quarter alone. So, it has a $6 billion global run rate. That growth has come not because of price increases, but because it's being more increasingly used -- more patients are being diagnosed with these conditions, and then some market-share wins. There's other players. We'll talk about the competition, because I think that's important, too. I think this is an important drug. It's likely to remain an important drug for the company, especially given the fact that they have patent protection on the drug that stretches out into the 2020s.</p>
<p>Harjes: Right. When you look at the indications that it is approved for, you can see the demographic trends hidden in the name of the diseases. You have wet age-related macular degeneration, wet AMD, it's age related. As you mentioned, that's a huge growing population. Its other approved indication is diabetic macular edema. This is a diabetic condition, and the population of diabetics is also something that is growing. It's also approved for diabetic retinopathy in patients with diabetic macular edema. You can see exactly why this drug will continue to grow. You mentioned that it does have some competition. It's competing with a drug called Lucentis. There could potentially be some biosimilars to Lucentis, which are copycat versions of it that could be a little bit cheaper once the Lucentis patent expires in 2020. There's also an interesting competition going on between Lucentis and Eylea and Roche's drug called Avastin, which is a cancer drug that's being used off-label in this indication because it's so much cheaper.</p>
<p>Campbell: Yeah, it's way cheaper, and as a result, its market share is, I want to say it's 30%-40% in wet AMD.</p>
<p>Harjes: It's interesting. For me, it's one of the most high-profile times that we see an off-label drug being used across an indication with any sort of huge reach.</p>
<p>Campbell: And you take this one step further. You see Avastin being used so commonly, and that's eating up a big share of the market. Then you look at and say, wow, Eylea's sales are already $6 billion annualized, even though you have Avastin controlling so much of it. And then you throw Lucentis in the mix, and that's another $3 to $4 billion-a-year drug. This is a huge market -- it's getting bigger. I think the big question for Regeneron and for investors is going to be, can Regeneron maintain its market share over time as we get 10 years out against some of these other competing therapies? Maybe they're coming through the pipeline by companies like Allergan, which is working on wet AMD treatment, as well. I think the answer is ultimately going to be yes, Kristine. Bayer and Regeneron are teamed up on another combination drug where they're taking a brand-new drug and mixing it with Eylea. That's in mid-stage studies. If those late-stage studies end up panning out, theoretically you could transition over time off of Eylea to this other drug. I'm looking further out here, and anything can and will happen in clinical-stage trials, but I think it's important for investors to know that Regeneron is looking ahead. They recognize how important this indication is to their future financially, and they're taking some steps to try ensure themselves up long term.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFAnchor/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=50f90722-8654-11e7-abde-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Kristine Harjes Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/EBCapitalMarkets/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=50f90722-8654-11e7-abde-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Todd Campbell Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. 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;uuid=50f90722-8654-11e7-abde-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Why Eylea Is Still Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' Most Important Drug | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/22/why-eylea-is-still-regeneron-pharmaceuticals-most-important-drug.html | 2017-08-22 | 0right
| Why Eylea Is Still Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' Most Important Drug
<p>Aging baby boomers are turning 65 years old at a pace of 10,000 per day, and that's causing an increase in the diagnosis of common causes of vision loss, including age-related macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema. Patients with these conditions are increasingly being prescribed Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' (NASDAQ: REGN) Eylea, and as a result, Eylea's selling at a $6 billion annualized clip globally.</p>
<p>In this clip from the Motley Fool's <a href="https://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=50f90722-8654-11e7-abde-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Industry Focus: Healthcare Opens a New Window.</a> podcast, analyst Kristine Harjes is joined by Todd Campbell to discuss Eylea's success and how Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' plans to maintain market leadership in these indications in the future.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Regeneron PharmaceuticalsWhen 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=755a1b11-171d-4dae-a47e-2c99dbfa50ad&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=50f90722-8654-11e7-abde-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals 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=755a1b11-171d-4dae-a47e-2c99dbfa50ad&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=50f90722-8654-11e7-abde-0050569d4be0&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 August 1, 2017</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>This video was recorded on Aug. 16, 2017.</p>
<p>Kristine Harjes: Regeneron just reported its earnings on August 3 -- we're talking about the second quarter here. In that quarter, it sold nearly a billion, just in the quarter alone. This is at nearly a $4 billion run rate just with U.S. sales. It's important to note that Regeneron receives just a share of profit from ex-U.S. sales because it's partnered with Bayer on this drug.</p>
<p>Todd Campbell: Right. Bayer and Regeneron are working together on commercializing the drug globally. This is a monster drug in a huge indication. I think you mentioned briefly that it's approved to treat wet stage age-related macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema. These are two increasingly common causes of vision loss within older patients. If you think about this for a second, what's the argument for the growth that you're referencing? You've got 76 million baby boomers, and they're turning 65 at a pace of 10,000 people per day. The incidence of these two indications within this patient population, as they're getting older and living longer, is increasing. What's really intriguing about Eylea and its success, this is a drug that did $1.5 billion in global sales last quarter alone. So, it has a $6 billion global run rate. That growth has come not because of price increases, but because it's being more increasingly used -- more patients are being diagnosed with these conditions, and then some market-share wins. There's other players. We'll talk about the competition, because I think that's important, too. I think this is an important drug. It's likely to remain an important drug for the company, especially given the fact that they have patent protection on the drug that stretches out into the 2020s.</p>
<p>Harjes: Right. When you look at the indications that it is approved for, you can see the demographic trends hidden in the name of the diseases. You have wet age-related macular degeneration, wet AMD, it's age related. As you mentioned, that's a huge growing population. Its other approved indication is diabetic macular edema. This is a diabetic condition, and the population of diabetics is also something that is growing. It's also approved for diabetic retinopathy in patients with diabetic macular edema. You can see exactly why this drug will continue to grow. You mentioned that it does have some competition. It's competing with a drug called Lucentis. There could potentially be some biosimilars to Lucentis, which are copycat versions of it that could be a little bit cheaper once the Lucentis patent expires in 2020. There's also an interesting competition going on between Lucentis and Eylea and Roche's drug called Avastin, which is a cancer drug that's being used off-label in this indication because it's so much cheaper.</p>
<p>Campbell: Yeah, it's way cheaper, and as a result, its market share is, I want to say it's 30%-40% in wet AMD.</p>
<p>Harjes: It's interesting. For me, it's one of the most high-profile times that we see an off-label drug being used across an indication with any sort of huge reach.</p>
<p>Campbell: And you take this one step further. You see Avastin being used so commonly, and that's eating up a big share of the market. Then you look at and say, wow, Eylea's sales are already $6 billion annualized, even though you have Avastin controlling so much of it. And then you throw Lucentis in the mix, and that's another $3 to $4 billion-a-year drug. This is a huge market -- it's getting bigger. I think the big question for Regeneron and for investors is going to be, can Regeneron maintain its market share over time as we get 10 years out against some of these other competing therapies? Maybe they're coming through the pipeline by companies like Allergan, which is working on wet AMD treatment, as well. I think the answer is ultimately going to be yes, Kristine. Bayer and Regeneron are teamed up on another combination drug where they're taking a brand-new drug and mixing it with Eylea. That's in mid-stage studies. If those late-stage studies end up panning out, theoretically you could transition over time off of Eylea to this other drug. I'm looking further out here, and anything can and will happen in clinical-stage trials, but I think it's important for investors to know that Regeneron is looking ahead. They recognize how important this indication is to their future financially, and they're taking some steps to try ensure themselves up long term.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFAnchor/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=50f90722-8654-11e7-abde-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Kristine Harjes Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/EBCapitalMarkets/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=50f90722-8654-11e7-abde-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Todd Campbell Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. 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;uuid=50f90722-8654-11e7-abde-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 2,156 |
<p>There's something about deadlines that appeals to me. It hearkens back to my newsie past, I suppose.</p>
<p>The end of the month signals one, and so I'm stepping up my game so I can hit another weight-loss milestone by the first day of August, my birthday month.</p>
<p>We cows are constantly warned against doing stuff like that - say we're going to lose "x" amount of pounds by "y" deadline. But as a professional nonconformist, the fact there's even a maxim for this just makes it all the more appealing.</p>
<p>It's not that I think all rules are meant to be broken; it's that many should be, if only to shake things up.</p>
<p>So today's the 19th, meaning 13 more days until July 32nd, also known as August 1. It's wicked-hot here in N.C., my grass is crispy and the finches are feasting on roast gardenia. I'm frazzled because of my busy schedule, and that's been affecting my sleep.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p />
<p>Can't think of a better time to blow up my routine.</p>
<p>I'm going to add a daily walk to my gym routine, soon as I find a good bug repellant that doesn't stink to high heaven, and cut carbs even further - but not the real sugar for my coffee and tea. (Oh, be quiet: Splenda sucks in hot beverages and you know it. I don't do honey or agave, and don't wanna.)</p>
<p>I'm also going to really focus on my (rumored) abs and wimpy triceps. From now until August 1, I'll be doing a couple-hundred sit-ups and push-ups each day. Here's hoping that by doing so over the next 13 days, I'll have created a routine, if not a habit.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p />
<p>August marks the halfway point of this weight-loss quest. I won't be in the best physical shape by my August 30 birthday, but I'm in a great mental and spiritual space. &#160;In my case, heart follows head.</p>
<p>Speaking of head cases . . . Thanks to Harold T. Fisher, host of WHUR-FM's "The Daily Drum." He had me on his show again Friday evening, and it was a blast. I enjoyed talking with the callers, and off-air Fisher can be screamingly funny.</p>
<p>OK, time to fill my water bottle and head for the gym. I'm still running, a minute at a time, in between walks on the treadmill. Not much progress there, yet. It's still a difficult slog, but clearly good for my heart and lungs since I end each run by clutching my chest and gasping for breath. **LOL**</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p />
<p>Onward and upward.</p>
<p>We need to dream big dreams, propose grandiose means if we are to recapture the excitement, the vibrancy, and pride we once had.&#160; &#160;~&#160;&#160; Coleman Young</p>
<p>NEW: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Less-Leslie/121152241242952?v=wall&amp;ref=ts" type="external">"Like" the new Less Leslie page on Facebook!</a></p>
<p>Leslie J. Ansley is an award-winning journalist and entrepreneur who blogs daily for TheRoot. She lives in Raleigh, NC.</p> | Zzzzzz . . . 13 Days Left to Shake Things Up | true | https://theroot.com/zzzzzz-13-days-left-to-shake-things-up-1790883530 | 2010-07-19 | 4left
| Zzzzzz . . . 13 Days Left to Shake Things Up
<p>There's something about deadlines that appeals to me. It hearkens back to my newsie past, I suppose.</p>
<p>The end of the month signals one, and so I'm stepping up my game so I can hit another weight-loss milestone by the first day of August, my birthday month.</p>
<p>We cows are constantly warned against doing stuff like that - say we're going to lose "x" amount of pounds by "y" deadline. But as a professional nonconformist, the fact there's even a maxim for this just makes it all the more appealing.</p>
<p>It's not that I think all rules are meant to be broken; it's that many should be, if only to shake things up.</p>
<p>So today's the 19th, meaning 13 more days until July 32nd, also known as August 1. It's wicked-hot here in N.C., my grass is crispy and the finches are feasting on roast gardenia. I'm frazzled because of my busy schedule, and that's been affecting my sleep.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p />
<p>Can't think of a better time to blow up my routine.</p>
<p>I'm going to add a daily walk to my gym routine, soon as I find a good bug repellant that doesn't stink to high heaven, and cut carbs even further - but not the real sugar for my coffee and tea. (Oh, be quiet: Splenda sucks in hot beverages and you know it. I don't do honey or agave, and don't wanna.)</p>
<p>I'm also going to really focus on my (rumored) abs and wimpy triceps. From now until August 1, I'll be doing a couple-hundred sit-ups and push-ups each day. Here's hoping that by doing so over the next 13 days, I'll have created a routine, if not a habit.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p />
<p>August marks the halfway point of this weight-loss quest. I won't be in the best physical shape by my August 30 birthday, but I'm in a great mental and spiritual space. &#160;In my case, heart follows head.</p>
<p>Speaking of head cases . . . Thanks to Harold T. Fisher, host of WHUR-FM's "The Daily Drum." He had me on his show again Friday evening, and it was a blast. I enjoyed talking with the callers, and off-air Fisher can be screamingly funny.</p>
<p>OK, time to fill my water bottle and head for the gym. I'm still running, a minute at a time, in between walks on the treadmill. Not much progress there, yet. It's still a difficult slog, but clearly good for my heart and lungs since I end each run by clutching my chest and gasping for breath. **LOL**</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p />
<p>Onward and upward.</p>
<p>We need to dream big dreams, propose grandiose means if we are to recapture the excitement, the vibrancy, and pride we once had.&#160; &#160;~&#160;&#160; Coleman Young</p>
<p>NEW: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Less-Leslie/121152241242952?v=wall&amp;ref=ts" type="external">"Like" the new Less Leslie page on Facebook!</a></p>
<p>Leslie J. Ansley is an award-winning journalist and entrepreneur who blogs daily for TheRoot. She lives in Raleigh, NC.</p> | 2,157 |
<p>For the week of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the return of the Polar Vortex, here’s our round-up of the most interesting and talked about pieces about race and class.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/remembering-martin-luther-king-jrs-solution-to-poverty/283193/" type="external">Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.’s solution to poverty</a>In honor of MLK’s birthday, Jordan Weissmann of the Atlantic reminds us that the great orator was more than a civil rights leader – he was a crusader for the poor, black and white alike.</p>
<p><a href="http://deadspin.com/richard-sherman-and-the-plight-of-the-conquering-negro-1505060117" type="external">Richard Sherman and the plight of the conquering negro</a>Deadspin’s Greg Howard calls out the critics of Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman after his post-game rant. Howard argues that black public figures are held to an unfair standard: A person can be black, talented, or arrogant, but he can’t be more than two of these traits at once.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/23/a-surprising-map-of-where-its-hardest-to-escape-poverty-in-america/" type="external">A surprising map of where it’s hardest to escape poverty in America</a> Ezra Klein of the Washington Post highlights a new study from Harvard’s Equality of Opportunity Project, which compiled the best and worst areas for upward mobility across the nation. Don’t worry, Chicago isn’t in the bottom 10 metro areas but it’s not in the top 10 either.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/01/24/the_rights_fantasy_is_shattered_why_obamacare_has_already_succeeded/" type="external">The right’s fantasy is shattered: Why Obamacare has already succeeded</a>On a more optimistic note, Salon’s Brian Beutler defends the Affordable Care Act by citing the latest Gallup data, which indicates a modest but substantial drop between December 2013 and January 2014 in the percentage of uninsured American adults.</p> | The Reporter remix: Solution to poverty, the conquering negro, Obamacare | false | http://chicagoreporter.com/reporter-remix-solution-poverty-conquering-negro-obamacare/ | 2014-01-27 | 3left-center
| The Reporter remix: Solution to poverty, the conquering negro, Obamacare
<p>For the week of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the return of the Polar Vortex, here’s our round-up of the most interesting and talked about pieces about race and class.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/remembering-martin-luther-king-jrs-solution-to-poverty/283193/" type="external">Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.’s solution to poverty</a>In honor of MLK’s birthday, Jordan Weissmann of the Atlantic reminds us that the great orator was more than a civil rights leader – he was a crusader for the poor, black and white alike.</p>
<p><a href="http://deadspin.com/richard-sherman-and-the-plight-of-the-conquering-negro-1505060117" type="external">Richard Sherman and the plight of the conquering negro</a>Deadspin’s Greg Howard calls out the critics of Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman after his post-game rant. Howard argues that black public figures are held to an unfair standard: A person can be black, talented, or arrogant, but he can’t be more than two of these traits at once.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/23/a-surprising-map-of-where-its-hardest-to-escape-poverty-in-america/" type="external">A surprising map of where it’s hardest to escape poverty in America</a> Ezra Klein of the Washington Post highlights a new study from Harvard’s Equality of Opportunity Project, which compiled the best and worst areas for upward mobility across the nation. Don’t worry, Chicago isn’t in the bottom 10 metro areas but it’s not in the top 10 either.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/01/24/the_rights_fantasy_is_shattered_why_obamacare_has_already_succeeded/" type="external">The right’s fantasy is shattered: Why Obamacare has already succeeded</a>On a more optimistic note, Salon’s Brian Beutler defends the Affordable Care Act by citing the latest Gallup data, which indicates a modest but substantial drop between December 2013 and January 2014 in the percentage of uninsured American adults.</p> | 2,158 |
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<p>SANTA FE, N.M. - Creative Santa Fe has been awarded a $150,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to help fund community engagement and design fees for its planned Arts + Creativity Center.</p>
<p>The center, intended to provide an affordable place for artists both to live and work, has been targeted for an area along Siler Road and is a project that is being overseen by the City of Santa Fe, New Mexico Inter-Faith Housing and Creative Santa Fe.</p>
<p>The award of the NEA grant was announced Wednesday by New Mexico Arts, a division of the state Department of Cultural Affairs. It said 275 applications were submitted for the Our Town program grants, with 69 being chosen for a total of almost $5 million in funding.</p>
<p>According to the news release, NEA CHairman Jane Chu said,&#160; "Creative Santa Fe demonstrates the best in creative community development and whose work will have a valuable impact on its community. Through Our Town funding, arts organizations continue to spark vitality that support neighborhoods and public spaces, enhancing a sense of place for residents and visitors alike."</p>
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<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Arts + Creativity Center in Santa Fe gets boost from NEA grant | false | https://abqjournal.com/613050/arts-creativity-center-in-santa-fe-gets-boost-from-nea-grant.html | 2least
| Arts + Creativity Center in Santa Fe gets boost from NEA grant
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<p>SANTA FE, N.M. - Creative Santa Fe has been awarded a $150,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to help fund community engagement and design fees for its planned Arts + Creativity Center.</p>
<p>The center, intended to provide an affordable place for artists both to live and work, has been targeted for an area along Siler Road and is a project that is being overseen by the City of Santa Fe, New Mexico Inter-Faith Housing and Creative Santa Fe.</p>
<p>The award of the NEA grant was announced Wednesday by New Mexico Arts, a division of the state Department of Cultural Affairs. It said 275 applications were submitted for the Our Town program grants, with 69 being chosen for a total of almost $5 million in funding.</p>
<p>According to the news release, NEA CHairman Jane Chu said,&#160; "Creative Santa Fe demonstrates the best in creative community development and whose work will have a valuable impact on its community. Through Our Town funding, arts organizations continue to spark vitality that support neighborhoods and public spaces, enhancing a sense of place for residents and visitors alike."</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 2,159 |
|
<p>Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said on Thursday that a comment he made about Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., voting down the Obamacare repeal was “misconstrued.”</p>
<p>“I think my comments were completely misconstrued. I was trying, first of all, to defend John’s position,” Johnson said on <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/10/ron-johnson-my-comments-on-mccains-brain-tumor-were-misconstrued.html?recirc=taboolainternal" type="external">CNBC’s</a> “Squawk Box.”</p>
<p>“A lot of us were pretty upset about the process, and I was also just being sympathetic with his condition…I’ve got nothing but a great deal of respect for John McCain,” Johnson said in the CNBC interview.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, Johnson made a comment on a Chicago radio station that McCain’s brain cancer diagnosis could have had an effect on his voting down the repeal.</p>
<p>“I’m not going to speak for John McCain — he has a brain tumor right now — that vote occurred at 1:30 in the morning, some of that might have factored in,” <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/brain-cancer-ron-johnson-vote-repeal-and-replace/2017/08/09/id/806800/" type="external">Johnson</a> said on “Chicago’s Morning Answer.”&#160;</p>
<p>“It is bizarre and deeply unfortunate that Senator Johnson would question the judgment of a colleague and a friend,” said Julie Tarallo, McCain spokeswoman, after Johnson’s radio comment.</p>
<p>Also on Thursday, Johnson credited McCain during an appearance on CNN’s “New Day.”</p>
<p>. <a href="https://twitter.com/SenRonJohnson" type="external">@SenRonJohnson</a> explains his comments about Senator McCain: “I have the deepest respect for” him <a href="https://t.co/eYil1StFj8" type="external">https://t.co/eYil1StFj8</a></p>
<p>— New Day (@NewDay) <a href="https://twitter.com/NewDay/status/895607719545245696" type="external">August 10, 2017</a></p>
<p>“I just have the greatest respect for John McCain… he’s not impaired in any way, shape, or form,” Johnson said in the “New Day” interview.</p> | Sen. Ron Johnson: McCain Comment 'Misconstrued' | false | https://newsline.com/sen-ron-johnson-mccain-comment-misconstrued/ | 2017-08-10 | 1right-center
| Sen. Ron Johnson: McCain Comment 'Misconstrued'
<p>Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said on Thursday that a comment he made about Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., voting down the Obamacare repeal was “misconstrued.”</p>
<p>“I think my comments were completely misconstrued. I was trying, first of all, to defend John’s position,” Johnson said on <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/10/ron-johnson-my-comments-on-mccains-brain-tumor-were-misconstrued.html?recirc=taboolainternal" type="external">CNBC’s</a> “Squawk Box.”</p>
<p>“A lot of us were pretty upset about the process, and I was also just being sympathetic with his condition…I’ve got nothing but a great deal of respect for John McCain,” Johnson said in the CNBC interview.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, Johnson made a comment on a Chicago radio station that McCain’s brain cancer diagnosis could have had an effect on his voting down the repeal.</p>
<p>“I’m not going to speak for John McCain — he has a brain tumor right now — that vote occurred at 1:30 in the morning, some of that might have factored in,” <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/brain-cancer-ron-johnson-vote-repeal-and-replace/2017/08/09/id/806800/" type="external">Johnson</a> said on “Chicago’s Morning Answer.”&#160;</p>
<p>“It is bizarre and deeply unfortunate that Senator Johnson would question the judgment of a colleague and a friend,” said Julie Tarallo, McCain spokeswoman, after Johnson’s radio comment.</p>
<p>Also on Thursday, Johnson credited McCain during an appearance on CNN’s “New Day.”</p>
<p>. <a href="https://twitter.com/SenRonJohnson" type="external">@SenRonJohnson</a> explains his comments about Senator McCain: “I have the deepest respect for” him <a href="https://t.co/eYil1StFj8" type="external">https://t.co/eYil1StFj8</a></p>
<p>— New Day (@NewDay) <a href="https://twitter.com/NewDay/status/895607719545245696" type="external">August 10, 2017</a></p>
<p>“I just have the greatest respect for John McCain… he’s not impaired in any way, shape, or form,” Johnson said in the “New Day” interview.</p> | 2,160 |
<p>TOKYO (AP) — North Korea announced it detonated a thermonuclear device Sunday in its sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date. The North called the test a “perfect success” while its neighbors condemned the blast immediately.</p>
<p>Though the precise strength of the blast has yet to be determined, the artificial earthquake it caused was several times stronger than tremors generated by its previous tests. It reportedly shook buildings in China and in Russia.</p>
<p>The test was carried out at 12:29 p.m. local time at the Punggye-ri site where North Korea has conducted nearly all of its past nuclear tests. Officials in Seoul put the magnitude at 5.7, while the U.S. Geological Survey said it was a magnitude 6.3.</p>
<p>North Korea’s state-run television broadcast a special bulletin Sunday afternoon to announce the test. It said leader Kim Jong Un attended a meeting of the ruling party’s presidium and signed the go-ahead order. Earlier in the day, the party’s newspaper ran a front-page story showing photos of Kim examining what it said was a nuclear warhead being fitted onto the nose of an intercontinental ballistic missile.</p>
<p>North Korea in July test-launched two ICBMs that are believed to be capable of reaching the mainland United States. That would be a major step forward for Pyongyang, which says its missile development is part of a defensive effort to build a viable nuclear deterrent that can target U.S. cities.</p>
<p>The U.S. State Department had no immediate reaction.</p>
<p>China’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the Chinese government has “expressed firm opposition and strong condemnation.” It urged North Korea to “stop taking erroneous actions that deteriorate the situation.”</p>
<p>South Korea held a National Security Council meeting chaired by President Moon Jae-in. National Security Director Chung Eui-yong said Moon will seek every available measure, including new U.N. sanctions or the deployment of more U.S. military assets, to further isolate Pyongyang.</p>
<p>Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called a test “absolutely unacceptable.”</p>
<p>The nuclear test is the North’s first since U.S. President Donald Trump assumed office in January. Trump has been talking tough with the North over its stepped-up missile tests, including a comment that Pyongyang would see fire, fury and power unlike any the world had ever witnessed if it continued even verbal threats.</p>
<p>The North claimed the device it tested was a thermonuclear weapon — commonly called an H-bomb. That could be hard to independently confirm. It said the underground test site did not leak radioactive materials, which would make such a determination even harder.</p>
<p>North Korea conducted two nuclear tests last year, the last nearly a year ago, on the Sept. 9 anniversary of the nation’s founding. It has been launching missiles at a record pace this year. It conducted its most provocative test yet last month, in response to ongoing U.S.-South Korea military exercises, when it fired a potentially nuclear-capable midrange missile over northern Japan.</p>
<p>It said that launch was the “curtain-raiser” for more activity to come.</p>
<p>The photos released earlier Sunday showed Kim talking with his lieutenants as he observed a silver, peanut-shaped device that the state-run media said was a thermonuclear weapon designed to be mounted on the North’s “Hwasong-14” ICBM.</p>
<p>The North claims the device was made domestically and has explosive power that can range from tens to hundreds of kilotons. Outside experts suggested the yield of the device tested Sunday might be in that ballpark, though closer to the lower range. For context, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the United States had a 15-kiloton yield.</p>
<p>North Korea’s nuclear and missile program has made huge strides since Kim rose to power following his father’s death in late 2011.</p>
<p>Its recent activity has been especially bold.</p>
<p>The North followed its two tests of Hwasong-14 ICBMs by announcing a plan to launch a salvo of intermediate range missiles toward the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam. Kim Jong Un has reportedly signed off on the plan, but is watching the moves by the U.S. before deciding when or whether to carry it out.</p>
<p>North Korea flew a Hwasong-12 over northern Japan last week, the first such overflight by a missile capable of carrying nukes, in a launch Kim described as a “meaningful prelude” to containing Guam. Guam is a major sore point for Pyongyang because it is a U.S. military hub and home to a squadron of B-1B bombers, which the North fears could be used to attack their country.</p>
<p>The U.S. on Thursday had sent the bombers and F-35 stealth fighters to the skies of South Korea in a show of force — and North Korea strongly protested.</p>
<p>Nuclear tests are crucial to perfect sophisticated technologies and to demonstrate to the world that claims of nuclear prowess are not merely a bluff.</p>
<p>The White House said Trump spoke with Abe regarding “ongoing efforts to maximize pressure on North Korea.” But the statement did not say whether the conversation came before or after the North’s latest test.</p>
<p>The options they have to pressure Pyongyang would appear to be limited. Further economic and trade sanctions, increased diplomatic pressure and boosting military maneuvers or shows of force would likely all be on the table.</p>
<p>A long line of U.S. presidents has failed to check North Korea’s persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for aid fell apart in early 2009.</p>
<p>Just before the test, according to state media, Kim and the other senior leaders at the party presidium meeting discussed “detailed ways and measures for containing the U.S. and other hostile forces’ vicious moves for sanctions.”</p>
<p>Kim, according to the statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, claimed all components of the device were domestically produced, which he said means the North can make “as many as it wants.”</p>
<p>The two Koreas have shared the world’s most heavily fortified border since their war in the early 1950s ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.</p>
<p>About 28,500 American troops are deployed in South Korea as deterrence against North Korea.</p> | NKorea: 6th Nuke Test Was H-Bomb, 'Perfect Success' | false | https://newsline.com/nkorea-6th-nuke-test-was-h-bomb-perfect-success/ | 2017-09-03 | 1right-center
| NKorea: 6th Nuke Test Was H-Bomb, 'Perfect Success'
<p>TOKYO (AP) — North Korea announced it detonated a thermonuclear device Sunday in its sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date. The North called the test a “perfect success” while its neighbors condemned the blast immediately.</p>
<p>Though the precise strength of the blast has yet to be determined, the artificial earthquake it caused was several times stronger than tremors generated by its previous tests. It reportedly shook buildings in China and in Russia.</p>
<p>The test was carried out at 12:29 p.m. local time at the Punggye-ri site where North Korea has conducted nearly all of its past nuclear tests. Officials in Seoul put the magnitude at 5.7, while the U.S. Geological Survey said it was a magnitude 6.3.</p>
<p>North Korea’s state-run television broadcast a special bulletin Sunday afternoon to announce the test. It said leader Kim Jong Un attended a meeting of the ruling party’s presidium and signed the go-ahead order. Earlier in the day, the party’s newspaper ran a front-page story showing photos of Kim examining what it said was a nuclear warhead being fitted onto the nose of an intercontinental ballistic missile.</p>
<p>North Korea in July test-launched two ICBMs that are believed to be capable of reaching the mainland United States. That would be a major step forward for Pyongyang, which says its missile development is part of a defensive effort to build a viable nuclear deterrent that can target U.S. cities.</p>
<p>The U.S. State Department had no immediate reaction.</p>
<p>China’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the Chinese government has “expressed firm opposition and strong condemnation.” It urged North Korea to “stop taking erroneous actions that deteriorate the situation.”</p>
<p>South Korea held a National Security Council meeting chaired by President Moon Jae-in. National Security Director Chung Eui-yong said Moon will seek every available measure, including new U.N. sanctions or the deployment of more U.S. military assets, to further isolate Pyongyang.</p>
<p>Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called a test “absolutely unacceptable.”</p>
<p>The nuclear test is the North’s first since U.S. President Donald Trump assumed office in January. Trump has been talking tough with the North over its stepped-up missile tests, including a comment that Pyongyang would see fire, fury and power unlike any the world had ever witnessed if it continued even verbal threats.</p>
<p>The North claimed the device it tested was a thermonuclear weapon — commonly called an H-bomb. That could be hard to independently confirm. It said the underground test site did not leak radioactive materials, which would make such a determination even harder.</p>
<p>North Korea conducted two nuclear tests last year, the last nearly a year ago, on the Sept. 9 anniversary of the nation’s founding. It has been launching missiles at a record pace this year. It conducted its most provocative test yet last month, in response to ongoing U.S.-South Korea military exercises, when it fired a potentially nuclear-capable midrange missile over northern Japan.</p>
<p>It said that launch was the “curtain-raiser” for more activity to come.</p>
<p>The photos released earlier Sunday showed Kim talking with his lieutenants as he observed a silver, peanut-shaped device that the state-run media said was a thermonuclear weapon designed to be mounted on the North’s “Hwasong-14” ICBM.</p>
<p>The North claims the device was made domestically and has explosive power that can range from tens to hundreds of kilotons. Outside experts suggested the yield of the device tested Sunday might be in that ballpark, though closer to the lower range. For context, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the United States had a 15-kiloton yield.</p>
<p>North Korea’s nuclear and missile program has made huge strides since Kim rose to power following his father’s death in late 2011.</p>
<p>Its recent activity has been especially bold.</p>
<p>The North followed its two tests of Hwasong-14 ICBMs by announcing a plan to launch a salvo of intermediate range missiles toward the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam. Kim Jong Un has reportedly signed off on the plan, but is watching the moves by the U.S. before deciding when or whether to carry it out.</p>
<p>North Korea flew a Hwasong-12 over northern Japan last week, the first such overflight by a missile capable of carrying nukes, in a launch Kim described as a “meaningful prelude” to containing Guam. Guam is a major sore point for Pyongyang because it is a U.S. military hub and home to a squadron of B-1B bombers, which the North fears could be used to attack their country.</p>
<p>The U.S. on Thursday had sent the bombers and F-35 stealth fighters to the skies of South Korea in a show of force — and North Korea strongly protested.</p>
<p>Nuclear tests are crucial to perfect sophisticated technologies and to demonstrate to the world that claims of nuclear prowess are not merely a bluff.</p>
<p>The White House said Trump spoke with Abe regarding “ongoing efforts to maximize pressure on North Korea.” But the statement did not say whether the conversation came before or after the North’s latest test.</p>
<p>The options they have to pressure Pyongyang would appear to be limited. Further economic and trade sanctions, increased diplomatic pressure and boosting military maneuvers or shows of force would likely all be on the table.</p>
<p>A long line of U.S. presidents has failed to check North Korea’s persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for aid fell apart in early 2009.</p>
<p>Just before the test, according to state media, Kim and the other senior leaders at the party presidium meeting discussed “detailed ways and measures for containing the U.S. and other hostile forces’ vicious moves for sanctions.”</p>
<p>Kim, according to the statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, claimed all components of the device were domestically produced, which he said means the North can make “as many as it wants.”</p>
<p>The two Koreas have shared the world’s most heavily fortified border since their war in the early 1950s ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.</p>
<p>About 28,500 American troops are deployed in South Korea as deterrence against North Korea.</p> | 2,161 |
<p />
<p />
<p>(INTELLIHUB) — Exclusive footage captured&#160;by Ruptly TV and uploaded to YouTube on Oct. 2 shows a detailed view of both the west, north, and east face of the Mandalay Bay, all of which have broken or missing windows.</p>
<p>According to the official story, the alleged shooter, Stephen Paddock, 64, fired out of a&#160;window located on&#160;the north wall of his suite, room 32-135, and out of a window on the east wall in the adjacent joined-room onto the crowd at the Route 91 music festival, killing 58 people. And yes, both of these windows were reported by the media to be broken. However, there may be more to the story than meets the eye.</p>
<p>In addition to the 2 broken windows on the north and east walls of the 32nd floor, 3 windows appear to be missing on the west wall.</p>
<p />
<p>This report was&#160; <a href="https://www.intellihub.com/video-shows-three-windows-missing-on-the-west-side-of-mandalay-bay/" type="external">originally published</a>&#160;by&#160;Shepard Ambellas at&#160; <a href="https://www.intellihub.com/" type="external">Intellihub</a></p>
<p>h/t&#160; <a href="http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/las-vegas-cover-up-continues-video-shows-three-extra-missing-windows-on-west-side-of-the-mandalay-bay-hotel-around-the-29th-and-30th-floors_10082017" type="external">SHTFplan.com</a></p>
<p />
<p /> | Las Vegas Cover-Up Continues: Video Shows Three Extra Missing Windows On West Side Of The Mandalay Bay Hotel Around The 29th and 30th Floors | true | http://dcclothesline.com/2017/10/09/las-vegas-cover-up-continues-video-shows-three-extra-missing-windows-on-west-side-of-the-mandalay-bay-hotel-around-the-29th-and-30th-floors/ | 0right
| Las Vegas Cover-Up Continues: Video Shows Three Extra Missing Windows On West Side Of The Mandalay Bay Hotel Around The 29th and 30th Floors
<p />
<p />
<p>(INTELLIHUB) — Exclusive footage captured&#160;by Ruptly TV and uploaded to YouTube on Oct. 2 shows a detailed view of both the west, north, and east face of the Mandalay Bay, all of which have broken or missing windows.</p>
<p>According to the official story, the alleged shooter, Stephen Paddock, 64, fired out of a&#160;window located on&#160;the north wall of his suite, room 32-135, and out of a window on the east wall in the adjacent joined-room onto the crowd at the Route 91 music festival, killing 58 people. And yes, both of these windows were reported by the media to be broken. However, there may be more to the story than meets the eye.</p>
<p>In addition to the 2 broken windows on the north and east walls of the 32nd floor, 3 windows appear to be missing on the west wall.</p>
<p />
<p>This report was&#160; <a href="https://www.intellihub.com/video-shows-three-windows-missing-on-the-west-side-of-mandalay-bay/" type="external">originally published</a>&#160;by&#160;Shepard Ambellas at&#160; <a href="https://www.intellihub.com/" type="external">Intellihub</a></p>
<p>h/t&#160; <a href="http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/las-vegas-cover-up-continues-video-shows-three-extra-missing-windows-on-west-side-of-the-mandalay-bay-hotel-around-the-29th-and-30th-floors_10082017" type="external">SHTFplan.com</a></p>
<p />
<p /> | 2,162 |
|
<p>Calls have increased for Republican nominee Donald Trump to be denied national security briefings offered to presidential nominees of major political parties after <a href="" type="internal">he said</a> he hopes Russia is “able to find” Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s discarded private emails.</p>
<p>Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said he hopes the candidate is given "fake intelligence briefings … because you can’t trust him.”</p>
<p>And Democratic Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island has sent a letter to President Barack Obama saying Trump “is unfit to receive sensitive intelligence” and asks that he “withhold” Trump’s expected intelligence briefing.</p>
<p>A petition by the liberal group CREDO <a href="http://act.credoaction.com/sign/trump_briefings/" type="external">has amassed more than 80,000 signatories</a> in less than 24 hours urging that Trump receive no security briefings.</p>
<p>In short, yes.</p>
<p>The national security briefings are “a courtesy” and a “tradition,” according to David Priess, the author of “The President’s Book of Secrets,” about the president’s intelligence sessions.</p>
<p>The briefings, usually numbering one or two at a mutually agreeable secure location any time between the nominating conventions and Election Day, are given at the discretion of the president and not mandatory or required by law.</p>
<p>They began in 1952 under President Harry Truman, who offered the service to Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower. Truman, who felt completely unprepared when he entered office in the middle of a war, believed no future president should be ignorant of intelligence matters.</p>
<p>Only George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984 did not receive the briefing. McGovern and the briefers had scheduling conflicts that couldn’t be resolved and Mondale turned it down because he didn’t think he was going to need it because he didn’t think he was going to win, Preiss said.</p>
<p>For the first 52 years, the CIA gave the briefings, but since the 2004 election, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has, which include a printed briefing book for the candidate.</p>
<p>James Clapper, the current Director of National Intelligence, said he would conduct the briefings himself.</p>
<p>White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said Thursday that the president is going to stick with “tradition that’s been in place for more than 60 years.”</p>
<p>Clapper said at the Aspen Institute in Colorado Thursday that "now is the appropriate time since both candidates have been officially anointed that both campaigns, camps, will be reached out to and offered briefings."</p>
<p>Earnest also said that sensitive information must be protected. “The administration is confident they can both provide relevant and sufficient briefings to the two major party presidential candidates, while also protecting sensitive national security information,” Earnest said.</p>
<p>There is no indication or evidence that briefers would ever or have ever provided “fake” information. Priess said “it’s possible” that a candidate would receive “a more generic” briefing, but the point of the modern-day information session is to ensure that a candidate doesn’t say anything that would damage foreign policy on the campaign trail – or box him or her in should the candidate win.</p>
<p>Briefings do not include information about espionage, covert actions or nuclear information.</p>
<p>"Candidates are advised of the classified nature of the material, and operational and policy matters are not addressed," an intelligence official familiar with the matter told NBC News.</p>
<p>Gov. Michael Dukakis said the two briefers who came to his home during his 1988 presidential run were then CIA Director William Webster and Robert Gates, then Deputy Director of the CIA. Dukakis described that Reagan administration briefing as not very illustrative.</p>
<p>It is not likely that the candidates would receive different information in their briefing.</p>
<p>"Briefings for the candidates will be provided on an even-handed, non-partisan basis," the intelligence official said.</p>
<p>Earnest also said he expects there will be no difference.</p>
<p>“Director Clapper also publicly indicated that his expectation is to provide the same information to both nominees. That certainly seems appropriate,” Earnest said.</p>
<p>In addition to the presidential candidates, the vice presidential nominees are also briefed.</p>
<p>For instance, during the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry was intrigued and engaged but his running mate, John Edwards, was not that into it. “</p>
<p>“CIA briefers … heard Edwards tell his staff as he approached the briefing room at the hotel, ‘I know I have to do this, but I will get it over with quick and we can go for pizza.,’” according to John Helgerson’s book, “Getting to Know the President,” a history of intelligence briefings of presidential candidates.</p>
<p>Candidates are also able to bring in top staff.</p>
<p>The candidate and his or her national security staff in the room do not have to have security clearances.</p>
<p>If a candidate divulges classified information, there could be legal repercussions but the political repercussions would probably be far worse, according to Preiss.</p> | Could Candidate Donald Trump Be Denied National Security Briefings? | false | http://nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/could-candidate-donald-trump-be-denied-national-security-briefings-n619156 | 2016-07-29 | 3left-center
| Could Candidate Donald Trump Be Denied National Security Briefings?
<p>Calls have increased for Republican nominee Donald Trump to be denied national security briefings offered to presidential nominees of major political parties after <a href="" type="internal">he said</a> he hopes Russia is “able to find” Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s discarded private emails.</p>
<p>Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said he hopes the candidate is given "fake intelligence briefings … because you can’t trust him.”</p>
<p>And Democratic Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island has sent a letter to President Barack Obama saying Trump “is unfit to receive sensitive intelligence” and asks that he “withhold” Trump’s expected intelligence briefing.</p>
<p>A petition by the liberal group CREDO <a href="http://act.credoaction.com/sign/trump_briefings/" type="external">has amassed more than 80,000 signatories</a> in less than 24 hours urging that Trump receive no security briefings.</p>
<p>In short, yes.</p>
<p>The national security briefings are “a courtesy” and a “tradition,” according to David Priess, the author of “The President’s Book of Secrets,” about the president’s intelligence sessions.</p>
<p>The briefings, usually numbering one or two at a mutually agreeable secure location any time between the nominating conventions and Election Day, are given at the discretion of the president and not mandatory or required by law.</p>
<p>They began in 1952 under President Harry Truman, who offered the service to Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower. Truman, who felt completely unprepared when he entered office in the middle of a war, believed no future president should be ignorant of intelligence matters.</p>
<p>Only George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984 did not receive the briefing. McGovern and the briefers had scheduling conflicts that couldn’t be resolved and Mondale turned it down because he didn’t think he was going to need it because he didn’t think he was going to win, Preiss said.</p>
<p>For the first 52 years, the CIA gave the briefings, but since the 2004 election, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has, which include a printed briefing book for the candidate.</p>
<p>James Clapper, the current Director of National Intelligence, said he would conduct the briefings himself.</p>
<p>White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said Thursday that the president is going to stick with “tradition that’s been in place for more than 60 years.”</p>
<p>Clapper said at the Aspen Institute in Colorado Thursday that "now is the appropriate time since both candidates have been officially anointed that both campaigns, camps, will be reached out to and offered briefings."</p>
<p>Earnest also said that sensitive information must be protected. “The administration is confident they can both provide relevant and sufficient briefings to the two major party presidential candidates, while also protecting sensitive national security information,” Earnest said.</p>
<p>There is no indication or evidence that briefers would ever or have ever provided “fake” information. Priess said “it’s possible” that a candidate would receive “a more generic” briefing, but the point of the modern-day information session is to ensure that a candidate doesn’t say anything that would damage foreign policy on the campaign trail – or box him or her in should the candidate win.</p>
<p>Briefings do not include information about espionage, covert actions or nuclear information.</p>
<p>"Candidates are advised of the classified nature of the material, and operational and policy matters are not addressed," an intelligence official familiar with the matter told NBC News.</p>
<p>Gov. Michael Dukakis said the two briefers who came to his home during his 1988 presidential run were then CIA Director William Webster and Robert Gates, then Deputy Director of the CIA. Dukakis described that Reagan administration briefing as not very illustrative.</p>
<p>It is not likely that the candidates would receive different information in their briefing.</p>
<p>"Briefings for the candidates will be provided on an even-handed, non-partisan basis," the intelligence official said.</p>
<p>Earnest also said he expects there will be no difference.</p>
<p>“Director Clapper also publicly indicated that his expectation is to provide the same information to both nominees. That certainly seems appropriate,” Earnest said.</p>
<p>In addition to the presidential candidates, the vice presidential nominees are also briefed.</p>
<p>For instance, during the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry was intrigued and engaged but his running mate, John Edwards, was not that into it. “</p>
<p>“CIA briefers … heard Edwards tell his staff as he approached the briefing room at the hotel, ‘I know I have to do this, but I will get it over with quick and we can go for pizza.,’” according to John Helgerson’s book, “Getting to Know the President,” a history of intelligence briefings of presidential candidates.</p>
<p>Candidates are also able to bring in top staff.</p>
<p>The candidate and his or her national security staff in the room do not have to have security clearances.</p>
<p>If a candidate divulges classified information, there could be legal repercussions but the political repercussions would probably be far worse, according to Preiss.</p> | 2,163 |
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<p />
<p>Part theme park and part shrine to Dixie’s Lost Cause, this granite outcrop east of Atlanta — sculpted like a Mount Rushmore of the Confederacy — is once again an ideological battlefield as a new fight rages over rebel symbolism across the South.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the Aug. 12 white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a Democratic candidate for Georgia governor said the carving should be removed. But removal would probably mean destroying a work of public art that took decades to complete and is the centerpiece of one of Georgia’s biggest tourist destinations.</p>
<p>The images carved into the mountain, “like Confederate monuments across this state, stand as constant reminders of racism, intolerance and division,” Stacey Abrams wrote in an email to supporters following the violence in Charlottesville. Abrams is vying to become the nation’s first black female governor.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Gazing up at the carving Thursday with out-of-town guests, Leila Finn and Sandra Neuse, white women from nearby Avondale Estates, said they visit Stone Mountain for the hiking trails and other park amenities. They see the carving as a curiosity.</p>
<p>“I think it would be more productive to use it as a talking point for education than to just get rid of it,” Finn said, quickly adding, “I wouldn’t mind if they took down some of the flags.”</p>
<p>John Purpera, who’s white, stopped Thursday at Stone Mountain with his wife and son while driving from their home in Port St. Lucie, Florida, to St. Louis to see Monday’s solar eclipse. Originally from Louisiana, he opposes the removal of Confederate statues.</p>
<p>“The people that want it removed should be shot,” he said. “It’s part of history, and you shouldn’t just delete parts of history you don’t like.”</p>
<p>Even if Abrams wins the nomination and beats the odds next year to become governor of this red state, it’s unlikely she would be able to get the carving removed. State law says it “shall never be altered, removed, concealed or obscured in any fashion and shall be preserved and protected for all time as a tribute to the bravery and heroism of the citizens of this state who suffered and died in their cause.”</p>
<p>That language was part of a compromise in a 2001 law that changed the state flag from one that included the Confederate battle flag.</p>
<p>It would be extremely difficult to muster enough support in the Georgia General Assembly to change the law, University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock said.</p>
<p>“That’s going to be a lot harder than pulling down a statue,” he quipped.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Those who want Confederate symbols removed often say they belong in a museum where there’s explanation and context, not prominently displayed on public lands. The Stone Mountain Memorial Association, which manages Stone Mountain Park, argues the park serves precisely that purpose.</p>
<p>Lining the massive lawn stretching out from the mountain’s base — where families gather with picnics to watch a laser show projected onto the mountain — is a series of individual brick terraces, one for each Confederate state. A plaque notes the dates of the state’s secession and of its readmission to the Union.</p>
<p>The white-columned Memorial Hall at the top of the lawn houses full-scale reproductions of parts of the carving so visitors can get a better sense of its size — 90 feet (27 meters) by 190 feet (58 meters). Another section explores local history, with exhibits on the Civil War that do not delve deeply into the war’s causes or touch on later controversies.</p>
<p>In 2015, when the massacre of nine black worshippers at a Charleston, South Carolina, church by a white supremacist gunman led to calls to remove Confederate memorials, the Stone Mountain association considered adding a memorial to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. But the plan was dropped after it ran into resistance from both those who identify with King and those who honor the Confederacy.</p>
<p>Stone Mountain’s history is deeply entwined with the Ku Klux Klan.</p>
<p>The first sketches for the carving were drawn up in 1915 at the request of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. That same year, the Klan experienced a rebirth with a Thanksgiving night cross burning atop Stone Mountain. That year also saw the release of the film “The Birth of a Nation,” which glorified the Reconstruction-era KKK.</p>
<p>For decades thereafter, Stone Mountain was the site of an annual KKK cross burning.</p>
<p>Because of funding problems and other issues, the carving was not completed until 1972.</p>
<p>Georgia Historical Society historian Stan Deaton said it’s significant that the monument was begun as the KKK was reborn and completed following the civil rights movement and desegregation. He said many Southern politicians still chafed at changes imposed by what they considered an intrusive federal government.</p>
<p>“As a segregated society is coming to an end, we’re going to forever enshrine these three Confederate heroes on the front of this mountain as a kind of perpetual middle finger, if you will, to the federal government,” Deaton said.</p>
<p>The Sacred Knights of the Ku Klux Klan applied last May for a permit to hold a “lighting ceremony” on top of the mountain on Oct. 21 to commemorate the 1915 burning.</p>
<p>In a letter last week denying the permit, the Stone Mountain Memorial Association cited a disruptive 2016 clash between a white nationalist group and opponents at the park. The association “condemns the beliefs and actions of the Ku Klux Klan” and believes denying the permit “is in the best interest of all parties and is the appropriate course of action,” it said in a statement.</p>
<p>As Donald Smith and Anna Hardeman, who live just south of Atlanta in College Park and are both black, contemplated hiking the trail that goes up the back of the mountain to the summit Thursday, they said they would like to see the carving removed.</p>
<p>“It’s a reminder of a time you don’t want to be reminded of,” Hardeman said.</p>
<p>But Smith said he wondered if removing Confederate monuments might just sow more division. Noting that as soon as he entered the park, he had to turn onto Robert E. Lee Boulevard, he mused on a childhood adage.</p>
<p>“It’s like my parents said about sticks and stones,” he said. “These names will never hurt you. It’s when the people actually pick up the sticks and stones that it can hurt you.”</p> | Stone Mountain another (huge) test for Confederate symbols | false | https://abqjournal.com/1051224/stone-mountain-another-huge-test-for-confederate-symbols.html | 2017-08-21 | 2least
| Stone Mountain another (huge) test for Confederate symbols
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Part theme park and part shrine to Dixie’s Lost Cause, this granite outcrop east of Atlanta — sculpted like a Mount Rushmore of the Confederacy — is once again an ideological battlefield as a new fight rages over rebel symbolism across the South.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the Aug. 12 white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a Democratic candidate for Georgia governor said the carving should be removed. But removal would probably mean destroying a work of public art that took decades to complete and is the centerpiece of one of Georgia’s biggest tourist destinations.</p>
<p>The images carved into the mountain, “like Confederate monuments across this state, stand as constant reminders of racism, intolerance and division,” Stacey Abrams wrote in an email to supporters following the violence in Charlottesville. Abrams is vying to become the nation’s first black female governor.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Gazing up at the carving Thursday with out-of-town guests, Leila Finn and Sandra Neuse, white women from nearby Avondale Estates, said they visit Stone Mountain for the hiking trails and other park amenities. They see the carving as a curiosity.</p>
<p>“I think it would be more productive to use it as a talking point for education than to just get rid of it,” Finn said, quickly adding, “I wouldn’t mind if they took down some of the flags.”</p>
<p>John Purpera, who’s white, stopped Thursday at Stone Mountain with his wife and son while driving from their home in Port St. Lucie, Florida, to St. Louis to see Monday’s solar eclipse. Originally from Louisiana, he opposes the removal of Confederate statues.</p>
<p>“The people that want it removed should be shot,” he said. “It’s part of history, and you shouldn’t just delete parts of history you don’t like.”</p>
<p>Even if Abrams wins the nomination and beats the odds next year to become governor of this red state, it’s unlikely she would be able to get the carving removed. State law says it “shall never be altered, removed, concealed or obscured in any fashion and shall be preserved and protected for all time as a tribute to the bravery and heroism of the citizens of this state who suffered and died in their cause.”</p>
<p>That language was part of a compromise in a 2001 law that changed the state flag from one that included the Confederate battle flag.</p>
<p>It would be extremely difficult to muster enough support in the Georgia General Assembly to change the law, University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock said.</p>
<p>“That’s going to be a lot harder than pulling down a statue,” he quipped.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Those who want Confederate symbols removed often say they belong in a museum where there’s explanation and context, not prominently displayed on public lands. The Stone Mountain Memorial Association, which manages Stone Mountain Park, argues the park serves precisely that purpose.</p>
<p>Lining the massive lawn stretching out from the mountain’s base — where families gather with picnics to watch a laser show projected onto the mountain — is a series of individual brick terraces, one for each Confederate state. A plaque notes the dates of the state’s secession and of its readmission to the Union.</p>
<p>The white-columned Memorial Hall at the top of the lawn houses full-scale reproductions of parts of the carving so visitors can get a better sense of its size — 90 feet (27 meters) by 190 feet (58 meters). Another section explores local history, with exhibits on the Civil War that do not delve deeply into the war’s causes or touch on later controversies.</p>
<p>In 2015, when the massacre of nine black worshippers at a Charleston, South Carolina, church by a white supremacist gunman led to calls to remove Confederate memorials, the Stone Mountain association considered adding a memorial to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. But the plan was dropped after it ran into resistance from both those who identify with King and those who honor the Confederacy.</p>
<p>Stone Mountain’s history is deeply entwined with the Ku Klux Klan.</p>
<p>The first sketches for the carving were drawn up in 1915 at the request of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. That same year, the Klan experienced a rebirth with a Thanksgiving night cross burning atop Stone Mountain. That year also saw the release of the film “The Birth of a Nation,” which glorified the Reconstruction-era KKK.</p>
<p>For decades thereafter, Stone Mountain was the site of an annual KKK cross burning.</p>
<p>Because of funding problems and other issues, the carving was not completed until 1972.</p>
<p>Georgia Historical Society historian Stan Deaton said it’s significant that the monument was begun as the KKK was reborn and completed following the civil rights movement and desegregation. He said many Southern politicians still chafed at changes imposed by what they considered an intrusive federal government.</p>
<p>“As a segregated society is coming to an end, we’re going to forever enshrine these three Confederate heroes on the front of this mountain as a kind of perpetual middle finger, if you will, to the federal government,” Deaton said.</p>
<p>The Sacred Knights of the Ku Klux Klan applied last May for a permit to hold a “lighting ceremony” on top of the mountain on Oct. 21 to commemorate the 1915 burning.</p>
<p>In a letter last week denying the permit, the Stone Mountain Memorial Association cited a disruptive 2016 clash between a white nationalist group and opponents at the park. The association “condemns the beliefs and actions of the Ku Klux Klan” and believes denying the permit “is in the best interest of all parties and is the appropriate course of action,” it said in a statement.</p>
<p>As Donald Smith and Anna Hardeman, who live just south of Atlanta in College Park and are both black, contemplated hiking the trail that goes up the back of the mountain to the summit Thursday, they said they would like to see the carving removed.</p>
<p>“It’s a reminder of a time you don’t want to be reminded of,” Hardeman said.</p>
<p>But Smith said he wondered if removing Confederate monuments might just sow more division. Noting that as soon as he entered the park, he had to turn onto Robert E. Lee Boulevard, he mused on a childhood adage.</p>
<p>“It’s like my parents said about sticks and stones,” he said. “These names will never hurt you. It’s when the people actually pick up the sticks and stones that it can hurt you.”</p> | 2,164 |
<p />
<p>Struggling gaming giant Nintendo (NASDAQOTH: NTDOY) recently released its next-gen gaming platform, known as the Nintendo Switch. The device has seen lukewarm reviews in the tech press, with IGN saying that the Switch is a "jack of many trades, but a master of none" and PC Advisor praising its design and versatility but criticizing its "Joy-Con performance problems, limited software, and expensive accessories."</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>At this point, it's probably too early to tell how the device will do in the marketplace (though, frankly, my hopes aren't high). However, should the product ultimately perform well, here are three suppliers -- revealed in iFixit's recent teardown of a Nintendo Switch -- that could potentially benefit.</p>
<p>Image source: Nintendo.</p>
<p>The biggest potential winner from the Switch is graphics specialist NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA). NVIDIA has done extremely well for itself in the lucrative market for stand-alone graphics processors targeted at gaming personal computers, but it has been largely absent from the game console market for quite some time.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Inside of the Nintendo Switch is an applications processor developed by NVIDIA. Not too much is known about the chip itself (though it is said to be a derivative of the company's Tegra X1 processor), but for every Nintendo Switch that gets sold, NVIDIA will generate some revenue and, presumably, a reasonable amount of gross profit.</p>
<p>Though a more extensive teardown will be required to verify the following, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Companymay also be a winner here as it is likely the contract chip manufacturer for the NVIDIA chip design (since the Tegra X1 is manufactured by TSMC). A teardown of the chip itself by the likes of Chipworks will be required to confirm this, though.</p>
<p>The iFixit teardown shows that the Nintendo Switch includes DRAM -- that is, the main system memory -- built by South Korean memory giant Samsung (NASDAQOTH: SSNLF).</p>
<p>Now, the Switch apparently comes with two 2-gigabyte memory chips for a total of 4 gigabytes of modern LPDDR4 memory. LPDDR4 is the memory type currently in use in premium smartphones, and high-end smartphones these days have between 2 and 6 gigabytes, so the memory content inside of the Nintendo Switch is essentially equivalent to that of a reasonably high-end smartphone.</p>
<p>This is by no means a game-changing win for Samsung, which generated 34.29 trillion Korean won (equivalent to about $30 billion in U.S. dollars) in memory revenue (this includes both DRAM and NAND flash), but every bit helps.</p>
<p>The iFixit teardown shows that the Wi-Fi chip is a chip known as the BCM4356. The chip's part number indicates that it's a Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) chip design, but iFixit lists it as a Broadcom/Cypress Semiconductor(NASDAQ: CY) part.</p>
<p>As it turns out, the BCM4356 was part of Broadcom's Internet of Things (IoT) lineup. Broadcom sold its IoT business to Cypress Semiconductor in the middle of last year, so it's not Broadcom that gets the win here -- it's Cypress Semiconductor.</p>
<p>By way of reference, though the chip was called the BCM4356 by Broadcom, it has been rebranded as the CYW4356 by Cypress.</p>
<p>When the transaction to sell Broadcom's IoT business to Cypress was announced, the companies said that this business unit "generated $189 million in revenue during the last twelve months."</p>
<p>If Cypress is selling these chips to Nintendo for perhaps $5-$10 a piece, then significant Nintendo Switch unit shipments could translate into real revenue growth for this business.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than NvidiaWhen 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=adaac82a-2b74-4ac1-81bd-8478071f03e2&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=adaac82a-2b74-4ac1-81bd-8478071f03e2&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 February 6, 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 recommends Broadcom and Cypress Semiconductor. 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 Winners From the Nintendo Switch Teardown | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/08/3-winners-from-nintendo-switch-teardown.html | 2017-03-17 | 0right
| 3 Winners From the Nintendo Switch Teardown
<p />
<p>Struggling gaming giant Nintendo (NASDAQOTH: NTDOY) recently released its next-gen gaming platform, known as the Nintendo Switch. The device has seen lukewarm reviews in the tech press, with IGN saying that the Switch is a "jack of many trades, but a master of none" and PC Advisor praising its design and versatility but criticizing its "Joy-Con performance problems, limited software, and expensive accessories."</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>At this point, it's probably too early to tell how the device will do in the marketplace (though, frankly, my hopes aren't high). However, should the product ultimately perform well, here are three suppliers -- revealed in iFixit's recent teardown of a Nintendo Switch -- that could potentially benefit.</p>
<p>Image source: Nintendo.</p>
<p>The biggest potential winner from the Switch is graphics specialist NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA). NVIDIA has done extremely well for itself in the lucrative market for stand-alone graphics processors targeted at gaming personal computers, but it has been largely absent from the game console market for quite some time.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Inside of the Nintendo Switch is an applications processor developed by NVIDIA. Not too much is known about the chip itself (though it is said to be a derivative of the company's Tegra X1 processor), but for every Nintendo Switch that gets sold, NVIDIA will generate some revenue and, presumably, a reasonable amount of gross profit.</p>
<p>Though a more extensive teardown will be required to verify the following, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Companymay also be a winner here as it is likely the contract chip manufacturer for the NVIDIA chip design (since the Tegra X1 is manufactured by TSMC). A teardown of the chip itself by the likes of Chipworks will be required to confirm this, though.</p>
<p>The iFixit teardown shows that the Nintendo Switch includes DRAM -- that is, the main system memory -- built by South Korean memory giant Samsung (NASDAQOTH: SSNLF).</p>
<p>Now, the Switch apparently comes with two 2-gigabyte memory chips for a total of 4 gigabytes of modern LPDDR4 memory. LPDDR4 is the memory type currently in use in premium smartphones, and high-end smartphones these days have between 2 and 6 gigabytes, so the memory content inside of the Nintendo Switch is essentially equivalent to that of a reasonably high-end smartphone.</p>
<p>This is by no means a game-changing win for Samsung, which generated 34.29 trillion Korean won (equivalent to about $30 billion in U.S. dollars) in memory revenue (this includes both DRAM and NAND flash), but every bit helps.</p>
<p>The iFixit teardown shows that the Wi-Fi chip is a chip known as the BCM4356. The chip's part number indicates that it's a Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) chip design, but iFixit lists it as a Broadcom/Cypress Semiconductor(NASDAQ: CY) part.</p>
<p>As it turns out, the BCM4356 was part of Broadcom's Internet of Things (IoT) lineup. Broadcom sold its IoT business to Cypress Semiconductor in the middle of last year, so it's not Broadcom that gets the win here -- it's Cypress Semiconductor.</p>
<p>By way of reference, though the chip was called the BCM4356 by Broadcom, it has been rebranded as the CYW4356 by Cypress.</p>
<p>When the transaction to sell Broadcom's IoT business to Cypress was announced, the companies said that this business unit "generated $189 million in revenue during the last twelve months."</p>
<p>If Cypress is selling these chips to Nintendo for perhaps $5-$10 a piece, then significant Nintendo Switch unit shipments could translate into real revenue growth for this business.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than NvidiaWhen 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=adaac82a-2b74-4ac1-81bd-8478071f03e2&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=adaac82a-2b74-4ac1-81bd-8478071f03e2&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 February 6, 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 recommends Broadcom and Cypress Semiconductor. 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> | 2,165 |
<p />
<p>In the largest sexual discrimination lawsuit ever, the Supreme Court sided with retail king Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) on Monday, overturning a ruling that granted class-action status to female employees that had sought billions of dollars.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The unanimous decision, which was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, concerned the ability of 1.5 million female Wal-Mart employees to team up to sue the worlds largest retailer for gender discrimination.</p>
<p>The employees had alleged Wal-Mart, which is the largest U.S. private employer, has a corporate culture that favors the advancement of male workers over their female counterparts.</p>
<p>While Wal-Mart pressed its belief that class action claims are unwieldy and unfair, lawyers for the women argued class action suits were the only mechanism to fix systematic bias that result in big salary disparities.</p>
<p>The plaintiffs had been seeking injunctive and declarative relief as well as an award of backpay.</p>
<p>Shares of the Bentonville, Ark.-based company hit session highs on the decision, recently trading up 0.62% to $53.15.</p>
<p>"Walmart has had strong policies against discrimination for many years," Gisel Ruiz, an executive vice president at Wal-Mart, said in a statement. "The Court today unanimously rejected class certification and, as the majority made clear, the plaintiffs' claims were worlds away from showing a companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy."</p>
<p>Oral arguments on the case, which were held in March, signaled Wal-Mart may prevail as even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a defender of womens rights, expressed skepticism.</p>
<p>The lawsuit began more than 10 years ago when Betty Dukes, a Wal-Mart worker, said her bosses at a Pittsburg, Calif., store passed her over for promotions.</p>
<p>The case folded into a class action lawsuit and two lower courts ruled the case could go to trial. The Supreme Courts decision Monday overrules those lower decisions.</p>
<p>"By reversing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, the majority effectively ends this class action lawsuit," Ruiz said.</p>
<p>However, the lawyers behind the class action lawsuit said they believe the ruling still allows women whose complaints go back to December 26, 1998 to file charges with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or bring their claims in court.</p>
<p>Nothing the Supreme Court has ruled affects the power of the evidence of sex discrimination at Wal-Mart, the plaintiffs said in a statement. That evidence is as strong today as it was when it was collected.</p>
<p>Speaking for the majority, Scalia said that the certification of the class was not consistent with a federal rule and backpay claims were improperly certified.</p>
<p>Scalia wrote that the respondents statistical proof of discrimination fails and their anecdotal evidence is too weak to raise any inference that all the individual, discretionary personnel decisions are discriminatory.</p>
<p>The majority also believed the members of the class had little in common other than their sex and this lawsuit. Because the respondents provide no convincing proof of a company-wide discriminatory pay or promotion policy, they failed to establish the existence of any common questions required in these class action lawsuits, Scalia wrote.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Wal-Mart Wins Ruling in Sex-Bias Case | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/06/20/supreme-court-sides-with-wal-mart-in-sex-bias-case.html | 2016-01-28 | 0right
| Wal-Mart Wins Ruling in Sex-Bias Case
<p />
<p>In the largest sexual discrimination lawsuit ever, the Supreme Court sided with retail king Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) on Monday, overturning a ruling that granted class-action status to female employees that had sought billions of dollars.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The unanimous decision, which was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, concerned the ability of 1.5 million female Wal-Mart employees to team up to sue the worlds largest retailer for gender discrimination.</p>
<p>The employees had alleged Wal-Mart, which is the largest U.S. private employer, has a corporate culture that favors the advancement of male workers over their female counterparts.</p>
<p>While Wal-Mart pressed its belief that class action claims are unwieldy and unfair, lawyers for the women argued class action suits were the only mechanism to fix systematic bias that result in big salary disparities.</p>
<p>The plaintiffs had been seeking injunctive and declarative relief as well as an award of backpay.</p>
<p>Shares of the Bentonville, Ark.-based company hit session highs on the decision, recently trading up 0.62% to $53.15.</p>
<p>"Walmart has had strong policies against discrimination for many years," Gisel Ruiz, an executive vice president at Wal-Mart, said in a statement. "The Court today unanimously rejected class certification and, as the majority made clear, the plaintiffs' claims were worlds away from showing a companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy."</p>
<p>Oral arguments on the case, which were held in March, signaled Wal-Mart may prevail as even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a defender of womens rights, expressed skepticism.</p>
<p>The lawsuit began more than 10 years ago when Betty Dukes, a Wal-Mart worker, said her bosses at a Pittsburg, Calif., store passed her over for promotions.</p>
<p>The case folded into a class action lawsuit and two lower courts ruled the case could go to trial. The Supreme Courts decision Monday overrules those lower decisions.</p>
<p>"By reversing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, the majority effectively ends this class action lawsuit," Ruiz said.</p>
<p>However, the lawyers behind the class action lawsuit said they believe the ruling still allows women whose complaints go back to December 26, 1998 to file charges with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or bring their claims in court.</p>
<p>Nothing the Supreme Court has ruled affects the power of the evidence of sex discrimination at Wal-Mart, the plaintiffs said in a statement. That evidence is as strong today as it was when it was collected.</p>
<p>Speaking for the majority, Scalia said that the certification of the class was not consistent with a federal rule and backpay claims were improperly certified.</p>
<p>Scalia wrote that the respondents statistical proof of discrimination fails and their anecdotal evidence is too weak to raise any inference that all the individual, discretionary personnel decisions are discriminatory.</p>
<p>The majority also believed the members of the class had little in common other than their sex and this lawsuit. Because the respondents provide no convincing proof of a company-wide discriminatory pay or promotion policy, they failed to establish the existence of any common questions required in these class action lawsuits, Scalia wrote.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | 2,166 |
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<p>TAORMINA, Sicily — President Donald Trump has criticized Germany’s trade surplus with the United States, drawing attention to a contentious issue at a summit of world leaders where trade is already a sticking point.</p>
<p>As the leaders of seven wealthy democracies gathered for difficult talks on trade and climate change, Germany’s Der Spiegel reported that Trump had told EU leaders the day before that the Germans were “bad, very bad” when it came to trade.</p>
<p>White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said the president’s comments focused on the surplus and not the country: “He said they’re very bad on trade, but he doesn’t have a problem with Germany.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Cohn noted that “his dad is from Germany” and that he had said: “‘I don’t have a problem with Germany. I have a problem with German trade.”</p>
<p>The president of the European Union’s executive commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said Trump was “not aggressive” in his comments about the surplus and called the report “exaggerated.”</p>
<p>It’s not the first time Trump has taken aim at Germany’s trade success. In January, he said that German car manufacturers like BMW could face U.S. tariffs of up to 35 percent if they set up plants in Mexico instead of in the U.S. and try to export the cars to the U.S.</p>
<p>Trump has said he wants trade to be balanced, fair and free so it benefits U.S. workers and companies. He has focused on relationships in which the U.S. buys more than it sells in partners’ markets– as is the case with Germany and China.</p>
<p>Trump also has pushed back against earlier G-7 agreements to “fight all forms of protectionism.” G-7 finance ministers meeting in Bari, Italy, earlier this month agreed only to say they are “working to strengthen the contribution of trade to our economies.”</p>
<p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she spoke to Trump about the matter.</p>
<p>Merkel said Friday at the summit that it’s well known that Germany sells more to the U.S. than it buys from America, “which on the one hand has to do with the quality of our goods,” but noted that there is also a lot of German direct investment in the U.S.</p>
<p>“In my opinion, one has to see these things together,” Merkel said.</p>
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<p>She also noted that Germany should not be singled out. German news agency dpa reported that she said: “We have a currency union. We are practically a common market. To pick out one country is, I think, not so appropriate.”</p>
<p>Trump is not the only leader to criticize Germany’s trade surplus. Then-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy said last year that it wasn’t good for the eurozone economy.</p>
<p>Germany’s trade surplus with the United States is part of its large overall surplus with the rest of the world. Last year, Germany ran a current account surplus — the broadest measure of trade and investment flows — of 8.7 percent of annual economic output.</p>
<p>The country benefits from producing competitive goods such as luxury autos and industrial machinery that are in demand in the rest of the world. A weaker euro has helped the export performance.</p>
<p>Germany, however, can’t do much about the euro: its exchange rate has been driven down by troubles like the debt woes in Greece, and the policies of the European Central Bank.</p>
<p>Further complicating the picture, some large German companies also invest, hire and produce in the United States.</p>
<p>BMW, for instance, makes sport-utility vehicles in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and last year exported 70 percent of them — or 288,000 vehicles –to the rest of the world.</p>
<p>Daimler AG makes Mercedes-Benz cars in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, while Volkswagen has a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.</p> | Trump criticizes German trade surplus, again | false | https://abqjournal.com/1009222/trump-ruffles-feathers-by-calling-germans-bad-on-trade.html | 2017-05-26 | 2least
| Trump criticizes German trade surplus, again
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<p>TAORMINA, Sicily — President Donald Trump has criticized Germany’s trade surplus with the United States, drawing attention to a contentious issue at a summit of world leaders where trade is already a sticking point.</p>
<p>As the leaders of seven wealthy democracies gathered for difficult talks on trade and climate change, Germany’s Der Spiegel reported that Trump had told EU leaders the day before that the Germans were “bad, very bad” when it came to trade.</p>
<p>White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said the president’s comments focused on the surplus and not the country: “He said they’re very bad on trade, but he doesn’t have a problem with Germany.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Cohn noted that “his dad is from Germany” and that he had said: “‘I don’t have a problem with Germany. I have a problem with German trade.”</p>
<p>The president of the European Union’s executive commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said Trump was “not aggressive” in his comments about the surplus and called the report “exaggerated.”</p>
<p>It’s not the first time Trump has taken aim at Germany’s trade success. In January, he said that German car manufacturers like BMW could face U.S. tariffs of up to 35 percent if they set up plants in Mexico instead of in the U.S. and try to export the cars to the U.S.</p>
<p>Trump has said he wants trade to be balanced, fair and free so it benefits U.S. workers and companies. He has focused on relationships in which the U.S. buys more than it sells in partners’ markets– as is the case with Germany and China.</p>
<p>Trump also has pushed back against earlier G-7 agreements to “fight all forms of protectionism.” G-7 finance ministers meeting in Bari, Italy, earlier this month agreed only to say they are “working to strengthen the contribution of trade to our economies.”</p>
<p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she spoke to Trump about the matter.</p>
<p>Merkel said Friday at the summit that it’s well known that Germany sells more to the U.S. than it buys from America, “which on the one hand has to do with the quality of our goods,” but noted that there is also a lot of German direct investment in the U.S.</p>
<p>“In my opinion, one has to see these things together,” Merkel said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>She also noted that Germany should not be singled out. German news agency dpa reported that she said: “We have a currency union. We are practically a common market. To pick out one country is, I think, not so appropriate.”</p>
<p>Trump is not the only leader to criticize Germany’s trade surplus. Then-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy said last year that it wasn’t good for the eurozone economy.</p>
<p>Germany’s trade surplus with the United States is part of its large overall surplus with the rest of the world. Last year, Germany ran a current account surplus — the broadest measure of trade and investment flows — of 8.7 percent of annual economic output.</p>
<p>The country benefits from producing competitive goods such as luxury autos and industrial machinery that are in demand in the rest of the world. A weaker euro has helped the export performance.</p>
<p>Germany, however, can’t do much about the euro: its exchange rate has been driven down by troubles like the debt woes in Greece, and the policies of the European Central Bank.</p>
<p>Further complicating the picture, some large German companies also invest, hire and produce in the United States.</p>
<p>BMW, for instance, makes sport-utility vehicles in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and last year exported 70 percent of them — or 288,000 vehicles –to the rest of the world.</p>
<p>Daimler AG makes Mercedes-Benz cars in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, while Volkswagen has a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.</p> | 2,167 |
<p>A congressional investigation has concluded that the Obama administration "retaliated" against a leading scientist and ordered officials to deliberately "hide" key information from Congress in order to promote the president's climate agenda.</p>
<p>"Instead of providing the type of scientific information needed by Congress to legislate effectively, senior departmental officials sought to hide information, lobbied against legislation, and retaliated against a scientist for being forthcoming," Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) said in a statement obtained by the <a href="http://freebeacon.com/politics/congress-obama-admin-fired-top-scientist-advance-climate-change-plans/" type="external">Free Beacon</a>. "In this staff report based on lengthy record before the committee, much has been revealed about how senior level agency officials under the Obama administration retaliated against a scientist who did not follow the party line."</p>
<p>Congress initiated the investigation following reports that the Obama administration fired Dr. Noelle Metting a month after she testified before Congress about the 2014 Low Dose Radiation Act (H.R. 5544), which was created "to enhance the scientific understanding of and reduce uncertainties associated with the effects of exposure to low dose radiation in order to inform improved risk management methods." The damning <a href="http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2016-12-19-Final-Staff-Report-LDRR.pdf" type="external">report</a>, issued Tuesday, describes a series of actions by the Obama administration taken in order to promote the president's Climate Action Plan that resulted in the obstruction of important information and the firing of Dr. Metting for being too honest with Congress and failing to stick to the administration's talking points.</p>
<p>Below is an excerpt from the report summary that concisely lays out the "chilling" actions of DOE Management:</p>
<p>In October 2015, staff of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (“Committee staff”) learned that DOE Management (“Management” or “senior officials”) removed Dr. Metting from federal service for allegedly providing too much information in response to questions posed by Committee staff during the October 2014 briefing. Eventually, Committee staff learned that Management’s actions to remove Dr. Metting were, in part, retaliation against Dr. Metting because she refused to conform to the predetermined remarks and talking points designed by Management to undermine the advancement of H.R. 5544. After learning this disturbing information, the Committee launched a full investigation. As part of its investigation, the Committee received document productions from the DOE, conducted transcribed interviews, and a held a public hearing.</p>
<p>Emails produced to the Committee by the DOE show a sequence of events leading to a premeditated scheme by senior DOE employees “to squash the prospects of Senate support” for H.R. 5544 and the LDRRP.8 Moreover, the Committee has learned that one of DOE’s stated purposes for Dr. Metting’s removal from federal service was her failure to confine the discussion at the briefing to pre-approved talking points. 9 The Committee has also established that DOE management, including Dr. Weatherwax, Dr. Anderson, and Dr. Carruthers failed to exercise even a minimal standard of care to avoid chilling other agency scientists as a result of the retaliation against Dr. Metting for her refusal to censor information from Congress. The Committee concludes that the DOE placed its own priorities to further the President’s Climate Action Plan before its Constitutional obligations to be candid with Congress. The DOE’s actions constitute a reckless and calculated attack on the legislative process itself, which undermines the power of Congress to legislate. The Committee further concludes that DOE’s disregard for separation of powers is not limited to a small group of employees, but rather is an institutional problem that must be corrected by overhauling its management practices with respect to its relationship with the Congress.</p>
<p>In a statement, Rep Smith called for an "overhaul" of the DOE's management practices to ensure that Congress is able to have access to the information it needs to make informed decisions.</p>
<p>"Moving forward, the department needs to overhaul its management practices to ensure that Congress is provided the information it requires to legislate and that federal employees and scientists who provide that information do so without fear of retribution," <a href="http://freebeacon.com/politics/congress-obama-admin-fired-top-scientist-advance-climate-change-plans/" type="external">said</a> Smith.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">More on the scandals of the Obama administration</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2016-12-19-Final-Staff-Report-LDRR.pdf" type="external">Congressional report on the DOE</a>.</p> | Congressional Report: Obama Admin Fired Top Scientist, Hid Info to Push Climate Agenda | true | https://dailywire.com/news/11779/congressional-report-obama-admin-fired-top-james-barrett | 2016-12-21 | 0right
| Congressional Report: Obama Admin Fired Top Scientist, Hid Info to Push Climate Agenda
<p>A congressional investigation has concluded that the Obama administration "retaliated" against a leading scientist and ordered officials to deliberately "hide" key information from Congress in order to promote the president's climate agenda.</p>
<p>"Instead of providing the type of scientific information needed by Congress to legislate effectively, senior departmental officials sought to hide information, lobbied against legislation, and retaliated against a scientist for being forthcoming," Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) said in a statement obtained by the <a href="http://freebeacon.com/politics/congress-obama-admin-fired-top-scientist-advance-climate-change-plans/" type="external">Free Beacon</a>. "In this staff report based on lengthy record before the committee, much has been revealed about how senior level agency officials under the Obama administration retaliated against a scientist who did not follow the party line."</p>
<p>Congress initiated the investigation following reports that the Obama administration fired Dr. Noelle Metting a month after she testified before Congress about the 2014 Low Dose Radiation Act (H.R. 5544), which was created "to enhance the scientific understanding of and reduce uncertainties associated with the effects of exposure to low dose radiation in order to inform improved risk management methods." The damning <a href="http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2016-12-19-Final-Staff-Report-LDRR.pdf" type="external">report</a>, issued Tuesday, describes a series of actions by the Obama administration taken in order to promote the president's Climate Action Plan that resulted in the obstruction of important information and the firing of Dr. Metting for being too honest with Congress and failing to stick to the administration's talking points.</p>
<p>Below is an excerpt from the report summary that concisely lays out the "chilling" actions of DOE Management:</p>
<p>In October 2015, staff of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (“Committee staff”) learned that DOE Management (“Management” or “senior officials”) removed Dr. Metting from federal service for allegedly providing too much information in response to questions posed by Committee staff during the October 2014 briefing. Eventually, Committee staff learned that Management’s actions to remove Dr. Metting were, in part, retaliation against Dr. Metting because she refused to conform to the predetermined remarks and talking points designed by Management to undermine the advancement of H.R. 5544. After learning this disturbing information, the Committee launched a full investigation. As part of its investigation, the Committee received document productions from the DOE, conducted transcribed interviews, and a held a public hearing.</p>
<p>Emails produced to the Committee by the DOE show a sequence of events leading to a premeditated scheme by senior DOE employees “to squash the prospects of Senate support” for H.R. 5544 and the LDRRP.8 Moreover, the Committee has learned that one of DOE’s stated purposes for Dr. Metting’s removal from federal service was her failure to confine the discussion at the briefing to pre-approved talking points. 9 The Committee has also established that DOE management, including Dr. Weatherwax, Dr. Anderson, and Dr. Carruthers failed to exercise even a minimal standard of care to avoid chilling other agency scientists as a result of the retaliation against Dr. Metting for her refusal to censor information from Congress. The Committee concludes that the DOE placed its own priorities to further the President’s Climate Action Plan before its Constitutional obligations to be candid with Congress. The DOE’s actions constitute a reckless and calculated attack on the legislative process itself, which undermines the power of Congress to legislate. The Committee further concludes that DOE’s disregard for separation of powers is not limited to a small group of employees, but rather is an institutional problem that must be corrected by overhauling its management practices with respect to its relationship with the Congress.</p>
<p>In a statement, Rep Smith called for an "overhaul" of the DOE's management practices to ensure that Congress is able to have access to the information it needs to make informed decisions.</p>
<p>"Moving forward, the department needs to overhaul its management practices to ensure that Congress is provided the information it requires to legislate and that federal employees and scientists who provide that information do so without fear of retribution," <a href="http://freebeacon.com/politics/congress-obama-admin-fired-top-scientist-advance-climate-change-plans/" type="external">said</a> Smith.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">More on the scandals of the Obama administration</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2016-12-19-Final-Staff-Report-LDRR.pdf" type="external">Congressional report on the DOE</a>.</p> | 2,168 |
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Laramie, Wyo., man was arrested early Monday morning for allegedly killing Paul A. Hamilton, 44, formerly of Ruidoso, the <a href="http://www.laramieboomerang.com/articles/2013/05/21/news/doc519af41eee05a652270063.txt" type="external">Laramie Boomerang</a> newspaper reported.</p>
<p>Timothy Ray Harnden, 66, was booked into the Albany County Detention Center on a charge of second-degree murder, the Boomerang said.</p>
<p>Police were called to a Laramie residence around 11:30 p.m. Sunday, the paper reported.</p>
<p>“Preliminary information is Laramie Police officers responded to a residence and learned that an altercation took place between Harnden and the victim,” according to a police news release. “During the altercation, Hamilton suffered a stab wound and was later pronounced dead at Ivinson Memorial Hospital.”</p>
<p>It was Laramie’s first homicide since a vehicular homicide case in 2010 and a fatal shooting in 2009, the Boomerang said.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.ruidosonews.com/ruidoso-police/ci_23299152/former-ruidoso-man-killed-wyoming" type="external">Ruidoso News</a>, Hamilton moved to Ruidoso from Lubbock, Texas, in 1981 and graduated from Ruidoso High School in 1986. He attended New Mexico State University in Las Cruces before moving to Laramie, where he had lived for the past 17 years.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Former Ruidoso resident killed in Wyo. | false | https://abqjournal.com/202319/former-ruidoso-resident-killed-in-wyo.html | 2least
| Former Ruidoso resident killed in Wyo.
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Laramie, Wyo., man was arrested early Monday morning for allegedly killing Paul A. Hamilton, 44, formerly of Ruidoso, the <a href="http://www.laramieboomerang.com/articles/2013/05/21/news/doc519af41eee05a652270063.txt" type="external">Laramie Boomerang</a> newspaper reported.</p>
<p>Timothy Ray Harnden, 66, was booked into the Albany County Detention Center on a charge of second-degree murder, the Boomerang said.</p>
<p>Police were called to a Laramie residence around 11:30 p.m. Sunday, the paper reported.</p>
<p>“Preliminary information is Laramie Police officers responded to a residence and learned that an altercation took place between Harnden and the victim,” according to a police news release. “During the altercation, Hamilton suffered a stab wound and was later pronounced dead at Ivinson Memorial Hospital.”</p>
<p>It was Laramie’s first homicide since a vehicular homicide case in 2010 and a fatal shooting in 2009, the Boomerang said.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.ruidosonews.com/ruidoso-police/ci_23299152/former-ruidoso-man-killed-wyoming" type="external">Ruidoso News</a>, Hamilton moved to Ruidoso from Lubbock, Texas, in 1981 and graduated from Ruidoso High School in 1986. He attended New Mexico State University in Las Cruces before moving to Laramie, where he had lived for the past 17 years.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 2,169 |
|
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — This year showed how sheltered the U.S. economy is from geopolitical and health crises around the world. The global economy sputtered, but the U.S. powered ahead. Employers are finally hiring enough to lower unemployment. A plunge in gas prices and a rising stock market has Americans feeling richer and spending a bit more.</p>
<p>Those are some of the top business stories of 2014, as chosen by business editors at The Associated Press. Others include massive product disasters: A string of auto recalls after faulty ignition switches from General Motors Corp. and air bags in many car models caused injuries and deaths. Hackers stole personal information from millions of people in a wave of breaches at stores, banks, a movie studio and other organizations.</p>
<p>We’re also becoming increasingly dependent on our phones and tablets, using them to communicate, play and pay.</p>
<p>Janet Yellen became the first woman to head the Federal Reserve and U.S. workers won higher pay as cities and states across the country raise the minimum hourly wage.</p>
<p>Corporate deal-making was also in the spotlight. Companies acquired each other at a level not seen since 2007, the year the Great Recession began, while a burst of businesses went public.</p>
<p>The top 10 business stories of 2014:</p>
<p>1. U.S. GROWS AS WORLD SLOWS: After a freezing winter put a chill on buying and selling, the U.S. economy has posted its best six months since 2003. But the rest of the world hasn’t been as lucky. Japan has fallen back into recession. The 18 countries that make up the eurozone are barely growing and fear a dangerous drop in prices. Major developing nations aren’t faring much better. China’s growth has dropped to a five-year low of 7.3 percent. Western sanctions and dropping oil prices have decimated Russia’s currency. Brazil just edged out of recession. What’s helped the U.S. is its relative insulation. American consumers, not exports, are the main drivers of the world’s largest economy.</p>
<p>2. JOBS ARE BACK: Millions of Americans still struggle with low pay and fewer hours of work than they want, and millions have given up looking for a job entirely. But five years after the recession ended, the U.S. job market is looking healthy. The unemployment rate is below 6 percent. Employers added nearly 3 million jobs, the most since 1999, as shoppers and businesses spend more. As a result, the Federal Reserve ended its recession-era stimulus program in October and is edging closer to lifting interest rates. The Fed has kept rates near zero since 2008 to spur lending and investment.</p>
<p>3. SECURITY BREACHES: The theft of 40 million credit and debit cards and 70 million personal records from Target last fall turned out to be just the beginning. Home Depot Inc. hackers nabbed 56 million cards and 53 million email addresses. There were breaches at Kmart, Dairy Queen, and Albertsons. JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co. said hackers stole information covering 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. Sony employees’ private information and emails were posted online. The consequences? Sony Pictures Entertainment canceled the release of “The Interview,” a comedy about assassinating the North Korean leader, after hackers threatened to attack movie theaters. Target Corp. replaced top executives. Shops, card companies and banks sped up card security improvements.</p>
<p>4. OIL PLUNGE: Global crude prices have fallen to around $57 per barrel from this year’s high of $115 because of more production, especially in the U.S., while slowing economies in Europe and Asia crimp demand. A rapid decline in the second half of the year pushed gasoline to below $2.50 a gallon in the U.S., the lowest price in nearly five years. Americans are pocketing $14.6 billion more a month than when gas was at its 2014 high of $3.70. Cheaper crude is also pumping up auto sales and saving airlines money on jet fuel. But drilling could slow in North Dakota’s new boomtowns and other regions, hurting businesses that have cropped up. And governments in energy producers Russia, Venezuela and Iran are being squeezed, increasing the likelihood of political upheaval.</p>
<p>5. AUTO RECALLS: In the U.S. alone, automakers recalled more than 60 million cars and trucks. That far surpasses the previous record of 30.8 million in 2004. The bulk of those come from two problems that have led to nearly 50 deaths and dozens of injuries. Japanese air bag supplier Takata, whose air bags can inflate too fast and spew shrapnel, has fought regulators’ demands to expand recalls. And GM was fined the maximum $35 million by U.S. safety regulators for dragging its feet — for a decade — over replacing faulty switches that can shut down car engines. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating both companies.</p>
<p>6. MOBILE MOMENTUM: PC sales are slumping, but mobile phone subscriptions are expected to reach 7 billion this year — the same as the world’s population. Phone makers are launching cheaper smartphones aimed at developing countries, which could get billions more people online. Already, more than a billion people check Facebook on their phones and tablets. The social media giant spent $22 billion on a phone messaging app, WhatsApp. Uber, a hail-a-cab app, is valued at $40 billion. Apple Inc., the iPhone and iPad maker, launched a payment system that sidesteps cash and plastic.</p>
<p>7. STOCK MARKETS SOAR: Another year, another record. The end of the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying stimulus program stressed investors this fall, but U.S. stocks kept rising, extending the bull market run to nearly six years. More companies acquired each other and big companies bought up more than $400 billion of their own stock, helping to put the Standard &amp; Poor’s 500 index on pace for a 12 percent gain in 2014. And despite the end of the Fed’s bond purchases, which was expected to weigh on markets, bond prices rallied and rates dropped.</p>
<p>8. MINIMUM WAGE GROWTH: Inequality has been rising, and median household incomes have fallen since the recession began in late 2007. But the federal minimum hourly wage has remained at $7.25 since 2009. Labor organizers, fast-food workers and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employees have campaigned for higher pay across the country. Congress hasn’t acted, but cities and states — and President Barack Obama — have. Obama raised pay by executive order for government contractors, to $10.10 an hour. By Jan. 1, 29 states and Washington, D.C. will have a higher minimum wage than $7.25. Seattle approved an increase to $15 an hour, the highest rate in the country.</p>
<p>9. JANET YELLEN: The Federal Reserve had been led exclusively by men for a century. Then Janet Yellen, a 68-year-old former economics professor and the No. 2 at the Fed, became the first woman to lead the central bank. Plainspoken, with a trace of her native Brooklyn in her speech, Yellen criticizes inequality, focuses on jobs growth and has tried to demystify the moves of the notoriously opaque Fed. She has also tied the failure of most economists to predict the damages wrought by the financial crisis to a lack of diversity in the field. She says that increasing diversity is a priority at the central bank.</p>
<p>10. LET’S MAKE A DEAL: Higher stocks and confidence lifted global mergers and acquisitions volume to highest level since 2007. With a few days to go, global deal volume has risen 20 percent to $3.41 trillion, including debt. Climbing markets make it easier to do stock deals, and borrowing is cheap. Meanwhile, initial public offerings had their biggest year since 2000. Health care companies made up 37 percent of all IPOs in the U.S., nearly double the level in 2013. And the biggest IPO ever, that of China’s e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., raised $25 billion in September.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Autos Writers Tom Krisher and Dee-Ann Durbin, Economics Writer Chris Rugaber, Energy Writer Jon Fahey and Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report.</p>
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — This year showed how sheltered the U.S. economy is from geopolitical and health crises around the world. The global economy sputtered, but the U.S. powered ahead. Employers are finally hiring enough to lower unemployment. A plunge in gas prices and a rising stock market has Americans feeling richer and spending a bit more.</p>
<p>Those are some of the top business stories of 2014, as chosen by business editors at The Associated Press. Others include massive product disasters: A string of auto recalls after faulty ignition switches from General Motors Corp. and air bags in many car models caused injuries and deaths. Hackers stole personal information from millions of people in a wave of breaches at stores, banks, a movie studio and other organizations.</p>
<p>We’re also becoming increasingly dependent on our phones and tablets, using them to communicate, play and pay.</p>
<p>Janet Yellen became the first woman to head the Federal Reserve and U.S. workers won higher pay as cities and states across the country raise the minimum hourly wage.</p>
<p>Corporate deal-making was also in the spotlight. Companies acquired each other at a level not seen since 2007, the year the Great Recession began, while a burst of businesses went public.</p>
<p>The top 10 business stories of 2014:</p>
<p>1. U.S. GROWS AS WORLD SLOWS: After a freezing winter put a chill on buying and selling, the U.S. economy has posted its best six months since 2003. But the rest of the world hasn’t been as lucky. Japan has fallen back into recession. The 18 countries that make up the eurozone are barely growing and fear a dangerous drop in prices. Major developing nations aren’t faring much better. China’s growth has dropped to a five-year low of 7.3 percent. Western sanctions and dropping oil prices have decimated Russia’s currency. Brazil just edged out of recession. What’s helped the U.S. is its relative insulation. American consumers, not exports, are the main drivers of the world’s largest economy.</p>
<p>2. JOBS ARE BACK: Millions of Americans still struggle with low pay and fewer hours of work than they want, and millions have given up looking for a job entirely. But five years after the recession ended, the U.S. job market is looking healthy. The unemployment rate is below 6 percent. Employers added nearly 3 million jobs, the most since 1999, as shoppers and businesses spend more. As a result, the Federal Reserve ended its recession-era stimulus program in October and is edging closer to lifting interest rates. The Fed has kept rates near zero since 2008 to spur lending and investment.</p>
<p>3. SECURITY BREACHES: The theft of 40 million credit and debit cards and 70 million personal records from Target last fall turned out to be just the beginning. Home Depot Inc. hackers nabbed 56 million cards and 53 million email addresses. There were breaches at Kmart, Dairy Queen, and Albertsons. JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co. said hackers stole information covering 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. Sony employees’ private information and emails were posted online. The consequences? Sony Pictures Entertainment canceled the release of “The Interview,” a comedy about assassinating the North Korean leader, after hackers threatened to attack movie theaters. Target Corp. replaced top executives. Shops, card companies and banks sped up card security improvements.</p>
<p>4. OIL PLUNGE: Global crude prices have fallen to around $57 per barrel from this year’s high of $115 because of more production, especially in the U.S., while slowing economies in Europe and Asia crimp demand. A rapid decline in the second half of the year pushed gasoline to below $2.50 a gallon in the U.S., the lowest price in nearly five years. Americans are pocketing $14.6 billion more a month than when gas was at its 2014 high of $3.70. Cheaper crude is also pumping up auto sales and saving airlines money on jet fuel. But drilling could slow in North Dakota’s new boomtowns and other regions, hurting businesses that have cropped up. And governments in energy producers Russia, Venezuela and Iran are being squeezed, increasing the likelihood of political upheaval.</p>
<p>5. AUTO RECALLS: In the U.S. alone, automakers recalled more than 60 million cars and trucks. That far surpasses the previous record of 30.8 million in 2004. The bulk of those come from two problems that have led to nearly 50 deaths and dozens of injuries. Japanese air bag supplier Takata, whose air bags can inflate too fast and spew shrapnel, has fought regulators’ demands to expand recalls. And GM was fined the maximum $35 million by U.S. safety regulators for dragging its feet — for a decade — over replacing faulty switches that can shut down car engines. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating both companies.</p>
<p>6. MOBILE MOMENTUM: PC sales are slumping, but mobile phone subscriptions are expected to reach 7 billion this year — the same as the world’s population. Phone makers are launching cheaper smartphones aimed at developing countries, which could get billions more people online. Already, more than a billion people check Facebook on their phones and tablets. The social media giant spent $22 billion on a phone messaging app, WhatsApp. Uber, a hail-a-cab app, is valued at $40 billion. Apple Inc., the iPhone and iPad maker, launched a payment system that sidesteps cash and plastic.</p>
<p>7. STOCK MARKETS SOAR: Another year, another record. The end of the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying stimulus program stressed investors this fall, but U.S. stocks kept rising, extending the bull market run to nearly six years. More companies acquired each other and big companies bought up more than $400 billion of their own stock, helping to put the Standard &amp; Poor’s 500 index on pace for a 12 percent gain in 2014. And despite the end of the Fed’s bond purchases, which was expected to weigh on markets, bond prices rallied and rates dropped.</p>
<p>8. MINIMUM WAGE GROWTH: Inequality has been rising, and median household incomes have fallen since the recession began in late 2007. But the federal minimum hourly wage has remained at $7.25 since 2009. Labor organizers, fast-food workers and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employees have campaigned for higher pay across the country. Congress hasn’t acted, but cities and states — and President Barack Obama — have. Obama raised pay by executive order for government contractors, to $10.10 an hour. By Jan. 1, 29 states and Washington, D.C. will have a higher minimum wage than $7.25. Seattle approved an increase to $15 an hour, the highest rate in the country.</p>
<p>9. JANET YELLEN: The Federal Reserve had been led exclusively by men for a century. Then Janet Yellen, a 68-year-old former economics professor and the No. 2 at the Fed, became the first woman to lead the central bank. Plainspoken, with a trace of her native Brooklyn in her speech, Yellen criticizes inequality, focuses on jobs growth and has tried to demystify the moves of the notoriously opaque Fed. She has also tied the failure of most economists to predict the damages wrought by the financial crisis to a lack of diversity in the field. She says that increasing diversity is a priority at the central bank.</p>
<p>10. LET’S MAKE A DEAL: Higher stocks and confidence lifted global mergers and acquisitions volume to highest level since 2007. With a few days to go, global deal volume has risen 20 percent to $3.41 trillion, including debt. Climbing markets make it easier to do stock deals, and borrowing is cheap. Meanwhile, initial public offerings had their biggest year since 2000. Health care companies made up 37 percent of all IPOs in the U.S., nearly double the level in 2013. And the biggest IPO ever, that of China’s e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., raised $25 billion in September.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Autos Writers Tom Krisher and Dee-Ann Durbin, Economics Writer Chris Rugaber, Energy Writer Jon Fahey and Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report.</p> | Top business stories of 2014: US grows, world slows | false | https://apnews.com/dc6275caae204be58e5a67793219bf98 | 2014-12-22 | 2least
| Top business stories of 2014: US grows, world slows
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — This year showed how sheltered the U.S. economy is from geopolitical and health crises around the world. The global economy sputtered, but the U.S. powered ahead. Employers are finally hiring enough to lower unemployment. A plunge in gas prices and a rising stock market has Americans feeling richer and spending a bit more.</p>
<p>Those are some of the top business stories of 2014, as chosen by business editors at The Associated Press. Others include massive product disasters: A string of auto recalls after faulty ignition switches from General Motors Corp. and air bags in many car models caused injuries and deaths. Hackers stole personal information from millions of people in a wave of breaches at stores, banks, a movie studio and other organizations.</p>
<p>We’re also becoming increasingly dependent on our phones and tablets, using them to communicate, play and pay.</p>
<p>Janet Yellen became the first woman to head the Federal Reserve and U.S. workers won higher pay as cities and states across the country raise the minimum hourly wage.</p>
<p>Corporate deal-making was also in the spotlight. Companies acquired each other at a level not seen since 2007, the year the Great Recession began, while a burst of businesses went public.</p>
<p>The top 10 business stories of 2014:</p>
<p>1. U.S. GROWS AS WORLD SLOWS: After a freezing winter put a chill on buying and selling, the U.S. economy has posted its best six months since 2003. But the rest of the world hasn’t been as lucky. Japan has fallen back into recession. The 18 countries that make up the eurozone are barely growing and fear a dangerous drop in prices. Major developing nations aren’t faring much better. China’s growth has dropped to a five-year low of 7.3 percent. Western sanctions and dropping oil prices have decimated Russia’s currency. Brazil just edged out of recession. What’s helped the U.S. is its relative insulation. American consumers, not exports, are the main drivers of the world’s largest economy.</p>
<p>2. JOBS ARE BACK: Millions of Americans still struggle with low pay and fewer hours of work than they want, and millions have given up looking for a job entirely. But five years after the recession ended, the U.S. job market is looking healthy. The unemployment rate is below 6 percent. Employers added nearly 3 million jobs, the most since 1999, as shoppers and businesses spend more. As a result, the Federal Reserve ended its recession-era stimulus program in October and is edging closer to lifting interest rates. The Fed has kept rates near zero since 2008 to spur lending and investment.</p>
<p>3. SECURITY BREACHES: The theft of 40 million credit and debit cards and 70 million personal records from Target last fall turned out to be just the beginning. Home Depot Inc. hackers nabbed 56 million cards and 53 million email addresses. There were breaches at Kmart, Dairy Queen, and Albertsons. JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co. said hackers stole information covering 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. Sony employees’ private information and emails were posted online. The consequences? Sony Pictures Entertainment canceled the release of “The Interview,” a comedy about assassinating the North Korean leader, after hackers threatened to attack movie theaters. Target Corp. replaced top executives. Shops, card companies and banks sped up card security improvements.</p>
<p>4. OIL PLUNGE: Global crude prices have fallen to around $57 per barrel from this year’s high of $115 because of more production, especially in the U.S., while slowing economies in Europe and Asia crimp demand. A rapid decline in the second half of the year pushed gasoline to below $2.50 a gallon in the U.S., the lowest price in nearly five years. Americans are pocketing $14.6 billion more a month than when gas was at its 2014 high of $3.70. Cheaper crude is also pumping up auto sales and saving airlines money on jet fuel. But drilling could slow in North Dakota’s new boomtowns and other regions, hurting businesses that have cropped up. And governments in energy producers Russia, Venezuela and Iran are being squeezed, increasing the likelihood of political upheaval.</p>
<p>5. AUTO RECALLS: In the U.S. alone, automakers recalled more than 60 million cars and trucks. That far surpasses the previous record of 30.8 million in 2004. The bulk of those come from two problems that have led to nearly 50 deaths and dozens of injuries. Japanese air bag supplier Takata, whose air bags can inflate too fast and spew shrapnel, has fought regulators’ demands to expand recalls. And GM was fined the maximum $35 million by U.S. safety regulators for dragging its feet — for a decade — over replacing faulty switches that can shut down car engines. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating both companies.</p>
<p>6. MOBILE MOMENTUM: PC sales are slumping, but mobile phone subscriptions are expected to reach 7 billion this year — the same as the world’s population. Phone makers are launching cheaper smartphones aimed at developing countries, which could get billions more people online. Already, more than a billion people check Facebook on their phones and tablets. The social media giant spent $22 billion on a phone messaging app, WhatsApp. Uber, a hail-a-cab app, is valued at $40 billion. Apple Inc., the iPhone and iPad maker, launched a payment system that sidesteps cash and plastic.</p>
<p>7. STOCK MARKETS SOAR: Another year, another record. The end of the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying stimulus program stressed investors this fall, but U.S. stocks kept rising, extending the bull market run to nearly six years. More companies acquired each other and big companies bought up more than $400 billion of their own stock, helping to put the Standard &amp; Poor’s 500 index on pace for a 12 percent gain in 2014. And despite the end of the Fed’s bond purchases, which was expected to weigh on markets, bond prices rallied and rates dropped.</p>
<p>8. MINIMUM WAGE GROWTH: Inequality has been rising, and median household incomes have fallen since the recession began in late 2007. But the federal minimum hourly wage has remained at $7.25 since 2009. Labor organizers, fast-food workers and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employees have campaigned for higher pay across the country. Congress hasn’t acted, but cities and states — and President Barack Obama — have. Obama raised pay by executive order for government contractors, to $10.10 an hour. By Jan. 1, 29 states and Washington, D.C. will have a higher minimum wage than $7.25. Seattle approved an increase to $15 an hour, the highest rate in the country.</p>
<p>9. JANET YELLEN: The Federal Reserve had been led exclusively by men for a century. Then Janet Yellen, a 68-year-old former economics professor and the No. 2 at the Fed, became the first woman to lead the central bank. Plainspoken, with a trace of her native Brooklyn in her speech, Yellen criticizes inequality, focuses on jobs growth and has tried to demystify the moves of the notoriously opaque Fed. She has also tied the failure of most economists to predict the damages wrought by the financial crisis to a lack of diversity in the field. She says that increasing diversity is a priority at the central bank.</p>
<p>10. LET’S MAKE A DEAL: Higher stocks and confidence lifted global mergers and acquisitions volume to highest level since 2007. With a few days to go, global deal volume has risen 20 percent to $3.41 trillion, including debt. Climbing markets make it easier to do stock deals, and borrowing is cheap. Meanwhile, initial public offerings had their biggest year since 2000. Health care companies made up 37 percent of all IPOs in the U.S., nearly double the level in 2013. And the biggest IPO ever, that of China’s e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., raised $25 billion in September.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Autos Writers Tom Krisher and Dee-Ann Durbin, Economics Writer Chris Rugaber, Energy Writer Jon Fahey and Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report.</p>
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — This year showed how sheltered the U.S. economy is from geopolitical and health crises around the world. The global economy sputtered, but the U.S. powered ahead. Employers are finally hiring enough to lower unemployment. A plunge in gas prices and a rising stock market has Americans feeling richer and spending a bit more.</p>
<p>Those are some of the top business stories of 2014, as chosen by business editors at The Associated Press. Others include massive product disasters: A string of auto recalls after faulty ignition switches from General Motors Corp. and air bags in many car models caused injuries and deaths. Hackers stole personal information from millions of people in a wave of breaches at stores, banks, a movie studio and other organizations.</p>
<p>We’re also becoming increasingly dependent on our phones and tablets, using them to communicate, play and pay.</p>
<p>Janet Yellen became the first woman to head the Federal Reserve and U.S. workers won higher pay as cities and states across the country raise the minimum hourly wage.</p>
<p>Corporate deal-making was also in the spotlight. Companies acquired each other at a level not seen since 2007, the year the Great Recession began, while a burst of businesses went public.</p>
<p>The top 10 business stories of 2014:</p>
<p>1. U.S. GROWS AS WORLD SLOWS: After a freezing winter put a chill on buying and selling, the U.S. economy has posted its best six months since 2003. But the rest of the world hasn’t been as lucky. Japan has fallen back into recession. The 18 countries that make up the eurozone are barely growing and fear a dangerous drop in prices. Major developing nations aren’t faring much better. China’s growth has dropped to a five-year low of 7.3 percent. Western sanctions and dropping oil prices have decimated Russia’s currency. Brazil just edged out of recession. What’s helped the U.S. is its relative insulation. American consumers, not exports, are the main drivers of the world’s largest economy.</p>
<p>2. JOBS ARE BACK: Millions of Americans still struggle with low pay and fewer hours of work than they want, and millions have given up looking for a job entirely. But five years after the recession ended, the U.S. job market is looking healthy. The unemployment rate is below 6 percent. Employers added nearly 3 million jobs, the most since 1999, as shoppers and businesses spend more. As a result, the Federal Reserve ended its recession-era stimulus program in October and is edging closer to lifting interest rates. The Fed has kept rates near zero since 2008 to spur lending and investment.</p>
<p>3. SECURITY BREACHES: The theft of 40 million credit and debit cards and 70 million personal records from Target last fall turned out to be just the beginning. Home Depot Inc. hackers nabbed 56 million cards and 53 million email addresses. There were breaches at Kmart, Dairy Queen, and Albertsons. JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co. said hackers stole information covering 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. Sony employees’ private information and emails were posted online. The consequences? Sony Pictures Entertainment canceled the release of “The Interview,” a comedy about assassinating the North Korean leader, after hackers threatened to attack movie theaters. Target Corp. replaced top executives. Shops, card companies and banks sped up card security improvements.</p>
<p>4. OIL PLUNGE: Global crude prices have fallen to around $57 per barrel from this year’s high of $115 because of more production, especially in the U.S., while slowing economies in Europe and Asia crimp demand. A rapid decline in the second half of the year pushed gasoline to below $2.50 a gallon in the U.S., the lowest price in nearly five years. Americans are pocketing $14.6 billion more a month than when gas was at its 2014 high of $3.70. Cheaper crude is also pumping up auto sales and saving airlines money on jet fuel. But drilling could slow in North Dakota’s new boomtowns and other regions, hurting businesses that have cropped up. And governments in energy producers Russia, Venezuela and Iran are being squeezed, increasing the likelihood of political upheaval.</p>
<p>5. AUTO RECALLS: In the U.S. alone, automakers recalled more than 60 million cars and trucks. That far surpasses the previous record of 30.8 million in 2004. The bulk of those come from two problems that have led to nearly 50 deaths and dozens of injuries. Japanese air bag supplier Takata, whose air bags can inflate too fast and spew shrapnel, has fought regulators’ demands to expand recalls. And GM was fined the maximum $35 million by U.S. safety regulators for dragging its feet — for a decade — over replacing faulty switches that can shut down car engines. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating both companies.</p>
<p>6. MOBILE MOMENTUM: PC sales are slumping, but mobile phone subscriptions are expected to reach 7 billion this year — the same as the world’s population. Phone makers are launching cheaper smartphones aimed at developing countries, which could get billions more people online. Already, more than a billion people check Facebook on their phones and tablets. The social media giant spent $22 billion on a phone messaging app, WhatsApp. Uber, a hail-a-cab app, is valued at $40 billion. Apple Inc., the iPhone and iPad maker, launched a payment system that sidesteps cash and plastic.</p>
<p>7. STOCK MARKETS SOAR: Another year, another record. The end of the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying stimulus program stressed investors this fall, but U.S. stocks kept rising, extending the bull market run to nearly six years. More companies acquired each other and big companies bought up more than $400 billion of their own stock, helping to put the Standard &amp; Poor’s 500 index on pace for a 12 percent gain in 2014. And despite the end of the Fed’s bond purchases, which was expected to weigh on markets, bond prices rallied and rates dropped.</p>
<p>8. MINIMUM WAGE GROWTH: Inequality has been rising, and median household incomes have fallen since the recession began in late 2007. But the federal minimum hourly wage has remained at $7.25 since 2009. Labor organizers, fast-food workers and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employees have campaigned for higher pay across the country. Congress hasn’t acted, but cities and states — and President Barack Obama — have. Obama raised pay by executive order for government contractors, to $10.10 an hour. By Jan. 1, 29 states and Washington, D.C. will have a higher minimum wage than $7.25. Seattle approved an increase to $15 an hour, the highest rate in the country.</p>
<p>9. JANET YELLEN: The Federal Reserve had been led exclusively by men for a century. Then Janet Yellen, a 68-year-old former economics professor and the No. 2 at the Fed, became the first woman to lead the central bank. Plainspoken, with a trace of her native Brooklyn in her speech, Yellen criticizes inequality, focuses on jobs growth and has tried to demystify the moves of the notoriously opaque Fed. She has also tied the failure of most economists to predict the damages wrought by the financial crisis to a lack of diversity in the field. She says that increasing diversity is a priority at the central bank.</p>
<p>10. LET’S MAKE A DEAL: Higher stocks and confidence lifted global mergers and acquisitions volume to highest level since 2007. With a few days to go, global deal volume has risen 20 percent to $3.41 trillion, including debt. Climbing markets make it easier to do stock deals, and borrowing is cheap. Meanwhile, initial public offerings had their biggest year since 2000. Health care companies made up 37 percent of all IPOs in the U.S., nearly double the level in 2013. And the biggest IPO ever, that of China’s e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., raised $25 billion in September.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Autos Writers Tom Krisher and Dee-Ann Durbin, Economics Writer Chris Rugaber, Energy Writer Jon Fahey and Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report.</p> | 2,170 |
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<p>A woman looks at a menu with words ” everyday half-price ” in front of a KFC fast food restaurant in Beijing, China Thursday, July 31, 2014. Global fast food chains are rushing to expand in China but even experienced operators face costly pitfalls in a fast-changing food supply industry plagued by repeated safety scandals. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)</p>
<p>BEIJING — Already China’s biggest restaurant operator with 4,600 outlets, KFC is pursuing Chinese consumers so avidly it opens two more every day.</p>
<p>That dramatic growth comes with a big catch: KFC’s quality control is struggling to keep up.</p>
<p>The Louisville, Kentucky-based chain is reeling after a Chinese supplier was accused of selling expired beef and chicken to it, McDonald’s and possibly other restaurant chains. Just 18 months earlier, KFC’s sales plunged in China after a supplier violated rules on drug use in chickens.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Global fast food chains are rushing to expand in China but even experienced operators face costly pitfalls in a fast-changing food supply industry plagued by repeated safety scandals.</p>
<p>Breakneck growth has strained the ability of companies to monitor thousands of farmers and meat processors, many of them small and remote, with incentives to cut corners, according to people who follow the industry. They say regulation and government enforcement are lagging.</p>
<p>“We are going to see more issues like this,” said analyst Ben Cavender of the China Market Research Group.</p>
<p>“On the supplier side, people are not well-trained, or there is not good oversight,” he said. “On the restaurant side, they have people checking the products but they probably don’t have enough people who are spending enough time at the supplier sites.”</p>
<p>In the latest scandal, authorities are investigating whether Shanghai Husi Food Co., owned by OSI Group of Aurora, Illinois, repackaged and sold old beef and chicken to KFC and McDonald’s. Police detained five Husi employees but authorities have yet to confirm whether the report by a Shanghai TV station that they sold expired meat was accurate.</p>
<p>KFC owner Yum Brands Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. said they immediately stopped using products from Husi, but the scare is already taking a financial toll.</p>
<p>Yum, which also owns Pizza Hut, said sales are down and if the effect persists it might be severe enough to cut into the company’s global profit.</p>
<p>McDonald’s Corp., headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, said about 500 of its 2,000 restaurants in China were affected. Its sales could suffer for several quarters, according to a restaurant industry analyst. Some of its stores had only fish sandwiches and fries for sale this week.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>At one McDonald’s in Beijing on Thursday, students used the tables to study. One ate a takeout meal from 7-11.</p>
<p>Other brands also were affected. Burger King Corp., Starbucks Corp., pizza chain Papa John’s International Inc. and a Dicos, a chain of sandwich shops, withdrew products with ingredients from suppliers that dealt with Husi.</p>
<p>At a news conference in Shanghai, OSI chairman Sheldon Lavin apologized to Chinese consumers and said individual employees were to blame though the company is ultimately responsible.</p>
<p>A food safety official was quoted last week by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying unspecified illegal behavior at Husi was an “arrangement organized by the company.” Xinhua said the manager of Husi’s quality department told investigators use of such meat went on for years with “tacit approval” from senior managers.</p>
<p>“It seems that it was not an accident but a hidden practice, which is really bad,” said Sebastien Breteau, CEO of AsiaInspection, a company that conducts quality control inspections for the food, clothing and other industries in China.</p>
<p>“It means that in management, they had not put in place what they had to,” said Breteau. “It was not properly audited.”</p>
<p>The scandal hit at a time when global fast food brands face rising pressure from Chinese competitors such as Yonghe King, which serves noodles and steamed buns at more than 300 outlets.</p>
<p>KFC pioneered Western fast food in China, opening its first two outlets in 1987. Brightly lighted chain restaurants became an appealing alternative to drab state-owned restaurants or ramshackle street stalls. But today, consumers with higher incomes and more choices are starting to see traditional Chinese dishes as healthier.</p>
<p>“As everybody says, fast food is junk food, unhealthy,” said a customer at a KFC in Beijing who would give only his surname, Liu, and said he was there only because he was in the neighborhood on a work errand. “I will eat at fast food restaurants even less in the future.”</p>
<p>China’s food industry has suffered repeated safety scandals despite government promises to tighten enforcement.</p>
<p>In the most devastating, Beijing reorganized its dairy industry after milk tainted with melamine killed six babies and sickened thousands in 2007-08. Suppliers added the chemical to watered-down milk to fool quality tests. Critics said Beijing opened the way to such violations by encouraging dairies to use milk from vast networks of anonymous suppliers who worked without oversight.</p>
<p>Beijing’s ability to enforce safety is strained by the demands of overseeing a fragmented industry with more than 500,000 food processors, according to Breteau. By contrast, he said, the United States has fewer than 50,000.</p>
<p>China also lacks regulations for companies that move food from processors to restaurants and doesn’t have regulations that require producers to destroy expired food, said Breteau. He said that allows expired food to be sold as animal feed but can also permit it to move back into the supply chain for human consumption.</p>
<p>The president of OSI, David G. McDonald, said the company will end Husi’s independent status by folding it into the parent corporation’s management and will create a quality control center in Shanghai.</p>
<p>Spokespeople for Yum Brands, which depends on China for more than half its global revenue, and McDonald’s declined to say what changes the companies might make in operations.</p>
<p>Following last year’s scandal, KFC tightened control over its suppliers and dropped 1,000 small poultry producers.</p>
<p>The current scandal is “shocking” given what happened last year with Yum, said Howard Penney, a restaurant industry analyst with Hedgeye Risk Management in Stamford, Connecticut.</p>
<p>As for McDonald’s, the sales impact stands to be substantial and could persist for several quarters, Penney said.</p>
<p>“They’ve got to get control of the situation with the McDonald’s marketing machine,” he said.</p>
<p>McDonald’s is known for rigorous oversight of suppliers but might have grown confident about OSI because of its long history as a supplier, said John Gordon, a restaurant industry analyst. McDonald’s has bought meat from OSI in the United States since the 1950s.</p>
<p>Yum Brands responded by saying it will cut all ties with OSI in China, the United States and Australia.</p>
<p>McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson said the company felt “a bit deceived.”</p>
<p>Still, McDonald’s is sticking with OSI, possibly because China’s emerging industry of food processors such as state-owned Cofco Corp., which supplies beef patties and chicken to restaurants, cannot match OSI’s scale, technology or experience.</p>
<p>“Likely they have no choice but to keep working with them,” said Breteau. “They may now move business away from them significantly. But short term, they can’t. It’s a massive volume.”</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>AP Retail Writer Candice Choi in New York and AP researchers Fu Ting in Shanghai and Zhao Liang in Beijing contributed.</p> | Fast food ambitions in China hurt by safety scares | false | https://abqjournal.com/438371/fast-food-ambitions-in-china-hurt-by-safety-scares.html | 2least
| Fast food ambitions in China hurt by safety scares
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>A woman looks at a menu with words ” everyday half-price ” in front of a KFC fast food restaurant in Beijing, China Thursday, July 31, 2014. Global fast food chains are rushing to expand in China but even experienced operators face costly pitfalls in a fast-changing food supply industry plagued by repeated safety scandals. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)</p>
<p>BEIJING — Already China’s biggest restaurant operator with 4,600 outlets, KFC is pursuing Chinese consumers so avidly it opens two more every day.</p>
<p>That dramatic growth comes with a big catch: KFC’s quality control is struggling to keep up.</p>
<p>The Louisville, Kentucky-based chain is reeling after a Chinese supplier was accused of selling expired beef and chicken to it, McDonald’s and possibly other restaurant chains. Just 18 months earlier, KFC’s sales plunged in China after a supplier violated rules on drug use in chickens.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Global fast food chains are rushing to expand in China but even experienced operators face costly pitfalls in a fast-changing food supply industry plagued by repeated safety scandals.</p>
<p>Breakneck growth has strained the ability of companies to monitor thousands of farmers and meat processors, many of them small and remote, with incentives to cut corners, according to people who follow the industry. They say regulation and government enforcement are lagging.</p>
<p>“We are going to see more issues like this,” said analyst Ben Cavender of the China Market Research Group.</p>
<p>“On the supplier side, people are not well-trained, or there is not good oversight,” he said. “On the restaurant side, they have people checking the products but they probably don’t have enough people who are spending enough time at the supplier sites.”</p>
<p>In the latest scandal, authorities are investigating whether Shanghai Husi Food Co., owned by OSI Group of Aurora, Illinois, repackaged and sold old beef and chicken to KFC and McDonald’s. Police detained five Husi employees but authorities have yet to confirm whether the report by a Shanghai TV station that they sold expired meat was accurate.</p>
<p>KFC owner Yum Brands Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. said they immediately stopped using products from Husi, but the scare is already taking a financial toll.</p>
<p>Yum, which also owns Pizza Hut, said sales are down and if the effect persists it might be severe enough to cut into the company’s global profit.</p>
<p>McDonald’s Corp., headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, said about 500 of its 2,000 restaurants in China were affected. Its sales could suffer for several quarters, according to a restaurant industry analyst. Some of its stores had only fish sandwiches and fries for sale this week.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>At one McDonald’s in Beijing on Thursday, students used the tables to study. One ate a takeout meal from 7-11.</p>
<p>Other brands also were affected. Burger King Corp., Starbucks Corp., pizza chain Papa John’s International Inc. and a Dicos, a chain of sandwich shops, withdrew products with ingredients from suppliers that dealt with Husi.</p>
<p>At a news conference in Shanghai, OSI chairman Sheldon Lavin apologized to Chinese consumers and said individual employees were to blame though the company is ultimately responsible.</p>
<p>A food safety official was quoted last week by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying unspecified illegal behavior at Husi was an “arrangement organized by the company.” Xinhua said the manager of Husi’s quality department told investigators use of such meat went on for years with “tacit approval” from senior managers.</p>
<p>“It seems that it was not an accident but a hidden practice, which is really bad,” said Sebastien Breteau, CEO of AsiaInspection, a company that conducts quality control inspections for the food, clothing and other industries in China.</p>
<p>“It means that in management, they had not put in place what they had to,” said Breteau. “It was not properly audited.”</p>
<p>The scandal hit at a time when global fast food brands face rising pressure from Chinese competitors such as Yonghe King, which serves noodles and steamed buns at more than 300 outlets.</p>
<p>KFC pioneered Western fast food in China, opening its first two outlets in 1987. Brightly lighted chain restaurants became an appealing alternative to drab state-owned restaurants or ramshackle street stalls. But today, consumers with higher incomes and more choices are starting to see traditional Chinese dishes as healthier.</p>
<p>“As everybody says, fast food is junk food, unhealthy,” said a customer at a KFC in Beijing who would give only his surname, Liu, and said he was there only because he was in the neighborhood on a work errand. “I will eat at fast food restaurants even less in the future.”</p>
<p>China’s food industry has suffered repeated safety scandals despite government promises to tighten enforcement.</p>
<p>In the most devastating, Beijing reorganized its dairy industry after milk tainted with melamine killed six babies and sickened thousands in 2007-08. Suppliers added the chemical to watered-down milk to fool quality tests. Critics said Beijing opened the way to such violations by encouraging dairies to use milk from vast networks of anonymous suppliers who worked without oversight.</p>
<p>Beijing’s ability to enforce safety is strained by the demands of overseeing a fragmented industry with more than 500,000 food processors, according to Breteau. By contrast, he said, the United States has fewer than 50,000.</p>
<p>China also lacks regulations for companies that move food from processors to restaurants and doesn’t have regulations that require producers to destroy expired food, said Breteau. He said that allows expired food to be sold as animal feed but can also permit it to move back into the supply chain for human consumption.</p>
<p>The president of OSI, David G. McDonald, said the company will end Husi’s independent status by folding it into the parent corporation’s management and will create a quality control center in Shanghai.</p>
<p>Spokespeople for Yum Brands, which depends on China for more than half its global revenue, and McDonald’s declined to say what changes the companies might make in operations.</p>
<p>Following last year’s scandal, KFC tightened control over its suppliers and dropped 1,000 small poultry producers.</p>
<p>The current scandal is “shocking” given what happened last year with Yum, said Howard Penney, a restaurant industry analyst with Hedgeye Risk Management in Stamford, Connecticut.</p>
<p>As for McDonald’s, the sales impact stands to be substantial and could persist for several quarters, Penney said.</p>
<p>“They’ve got to get control of the situation with the McDonald’s marketing machine,” he said.</p>
<p>McDonald’s is known for rigorous oversight of suppliers but might have grown confident about OSI because of its long history as a supplier, said John Gordon, a restaurant industry analyst. McDonald’s has bought meat from OSI in the United States since the 1950s.</p>
<p>Yum Brands responded by saying it will cut all ties with OSI in China, the United States and Australia.</p>
<p>McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson said the company felt “a bit deceived.”</p>
<p>Still, McDonald’s is sticking with OSI, possibly because China’s emerging industry of food processors such as state-owned Cofco Corp., which supplies beef patties and chicken to restaurants, cannot match OSI’s scale, technology or experience.</p>
<p>“Likely they have no choice but to keep working with them,” said Breteau. “They may now move business away from them significantly. But short term, they can’t. It’s a massive volume.”</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>AP Retail Writer Candice Choi in New York and AP researchers Fu Ting in Shanghai and Zhao Liang in Beijing contributed.</p> | 2,171 |
|
<p>New York Times That disclosure by Peter Jennings was seen by some medical experts as somewhat alarming, reports Bill Carter. He writes: "Patients with nonsmall-cell cancer almost always have surgery... If the cancer has not spread in the lungs, removing the tumor is often all that is necessary, and about half these patients are cured, meaning at least five years with no signs of disease." Carter notes that lung cancer is usually difficult to treat and the overall cure rate is just 16%. &gt; <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27732-2005Apr5.html" type="external">"This is a man who will have no time and no patience for pity" (WP)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/04/06/jennings_has_lung_cancer_plans_to_keep_anchor_post/" type="external">ABC: "We expect him to be the anchor for many years to come" (BG)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2005-04-05-jennings-abc_x.htm" type="external">ABC's Rooney: ABC and the entire network news biz needs him (USAT)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-et-jennings6apr06.story" type="external">ABCer: "He hasn't exactly encouraged the grooming of successors" (LAT)</a> &gt; <a href="http://news.bostonherald.com/national/view.bg?articleid=76773" type="external">Dunsmore: "He called me this morning and was remarkably chipper (BH)</a> &gt; <a href="" type="internal">Earlier: ABC anchor Jennings discloses that he has lung cancer (Memos)</a></p> | ABC's Jennings to begin chemo instead of first having surgery | false | https://poynter.org/news/abcs-jennings-begin-chemo-instead-first-having-surgery | 2005-04-06 | 2least
| ABC's Jennings to begin chemo instead of first having surgery
<p>New York Times That disclosure by Peter Jennings was seen by some medical experts as somewhat alarming, reports Bill Carter. He writes: "Patients with nonsmall-cell cancer almost always have surgery... If the cancer has not spread in the lungs, removing the tumor is often all that is necessary, and about half these patients are cured, meaning at least five years with no signs of disease." Carter notes that lung cancer is usually difficult to treat and the overall cure rate is just 16%. &gt; <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27732-2005Apr5.html" type="external">"This is a man who will have no time and no patience for pity" (WP)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/04/06/jennings_has_lung_cancer_plans_to_keep_anchor_post/" type="external">ABC: "We expect him to be the anchor for many years to come" (BG)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2005-04-05-jennings-abc_x.htm" type="external">ABC's Rooney: ABC and the entire network news biz needs him (USAT)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-et-jennings6apr06.story" type="external">ABCer: "He hasn't exactly encouraged the grooming of successors" (LAT)</a> &gt; <a href="http://news.bostonherald.com/national/view.bg?articleid=76773" type="external">Dunsmore: "He called me this morning and was remarkably chipper (BH)</a> &gt; <a href="" type="internal">Earlier: ABC anchor Jennings discloses that he has lung cancer (Memos)</a></p> | 2,172 |
<p>You don't read Welsh? If not, how will you know the Diweddaraf Newyddion o'r Cymru (Latest News from Wales)? It's hard to use y we (the Web) if you don't understand the language.The BBC understands, so its <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/info/commissioning/content/newmedia.shtml" type="external">new media department</a> in Wales has created <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/vocab/show.pl/cy-en/www.bbc.co.uk/cymru/vocab/" type="external">Vocab</a>, an open-source website tool that offers English-language pop-up translations of Welsh words. Try it yourself on the BBC's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/vocab/show.pl/cy-en/www.bbc.co.uk/cymru/" type="external">Welsh-language news page</a>.It may not let you fluently read Welsh (for that, you'll need the BBC's <a type="external" href="">Learn Welsh</a> pages), but at least you won't be uninformed while strolling through Cardiff. Journalist Robert Andrews' <a href="http://www.robertandrews.co.uk/archives/analysis/vocab_gives_learners_instant_translations.php" type="external">blog</a> provides more details about Vocab.</p> | BBC News Pop-up Translates Welsh | false | https://poynter.org/news/bbc-news-pop-translates-welsh | 2004-11-04 | 2least
| BBC News Pop-up Translates Welsh
<p>You don't read Welsh? If not, how will you know the Diweddaraf Newyddion o'r Cymru (Latest News from Wales)? It's hard to use y we (the Web) if you don't understand the language.The BBC understands, so its <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/info/commissioning/content/newmedia.shtml" type="external">new media department</a> in Wales has created <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/vocab/show.pl/cy-en/www.bbc.co.uk/cymru/vocab/" type="external">Vocab</a>, an open-source website tool that offers English-language pop-up translations of Welsh words. Try it yourself on the BBC's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/vocab/show.pl/cy-en/www.bbc.co.uk/cymru/" type="external">Welsh-language news page</a>.It may not let you fluently read Welsh (for that, you'll need the BBC's <a type="external" href="">Learn Welsh</a> pages), but at least you won't be uninformed while strolling through Cardiff. Journalist Robert Andrews' <a href="http://www.robertandrews.co.uk/archives/analysis/vocab_gives_learners_instant_translations.php" type="external">blog</a> provides more details about Vocab.</p> | 2,173 |
<p />
<p>Airline jetliner cancellations are below historical levels, new data issued by Europe's Airbus showed on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The rate of annual cancellations fell to 0.9 percent of the order backlog in 2015, from 3.8 percent in 2014 and 1.5 percent in 2013, Airbus Group Finance Director Harald Wilhelm said in slides released during an investor meeting.</p>
<p>The figures exclude conversions between different versions of A320-family jets.</p>
<p>Airbus Group Chief Executive Tom Enders told investors the company did not share concerns about a downturn in the commercial aerospace cycle, which have rattled stocks in the sector lately.</p>
<p>But he said even if aircraft markets turned softer, Airbus would be "resilient" because of its record order book.</p>
<p>Wilhelm told investors Airbus was "anything but complacent" about growing economic concerns and financial volatility but pointed to gross domestic product and airline traffic numbers which he said illustrated robust fundamentals.</p>
<p>Airlines meeting in Singapore last week were divided about economic trends, with some carriers reporting full cabins but Qatar Airways and others warning of a dip in premium traffic.</p>
<p>Wilhelm said Airbus was using the benefits of a stronger dollar to improve its bottom line rather than offer bigger discounts. Boeing officials have been quoted recently as saying the U.S. planemaker faces fiercer price competition from Airbus.</p>
<p>Enders reiterated interest in buying out partners in European missiles maker MBDA, which Airbus Group controls together with BAE Systems and Finmeccanica. (Reporting by Tim Hepher, Cyril Altmeyer; editing by Alexander Smith and David Clarke)</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Airbus Says Cancellations Below Average, Could Handle Downturn | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/02/24/airbus-says-cancellations-below-average-could-handle-downturn.html | 2016-02-24 | 0right
| Airbus Says Cancellations Below Average, Could Handle Downturn
<p />
<p>Airline jetliner cancellations are below historical levels, new data issued by Europe's Airbus showed on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The rate of annual cancellations fell to 0.9 percent of the order backlog in 2015, from 3.8 percent in 2014 and 1.5 percent in 2013, Airbus Group Finance Director Harald Wilhelm said in slides released during an investor meeting.</p>
<p>The figures exclude conversions between different versions of A320-family jets.</p>
<p>Airbus Group Chief Executive Tom Enders told investors the company did not share concerns about a downturn in the commercial aerospace cycle, which have rattled stocks in the sector lately.</p>
<p>But he said even if aircraft markets turned softer, Airbus would be "resilient" because of its record order book.</p>
<p>Wilhelm told investors Airbus was "anything but complacent" about growing economic concerns and financial volatility but pointed to gross domestic product and airline traffic numbers which he said illustrated robust fundamentals.</p>
<p>Airlines meeting in Singapore last week were divided about economic trends, with some carriers reporting full cabins but Qatar Airways and others warning of a dip in premium traffic.</p>
<p>Wilhelm said Airbus was using the benefits of a stronger dollar to improve its bottom line rather than offer bigger discounts. Boeing officials have been quoted recently as saying the U.S. planemaker faces fiercer price competition from Airbus.</p>
<p>Enders reiterated interest in buying out partners in European missiles maker MBDA, which Airbus Group controls together with BAE Systems and Finmeccanica. (Reporting by Tim Hepher, Cyril Altmeyer; editing by Alexander Smith and David Clarke)</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | 2,174 |
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<p>AUGUSTA, Maine — L.L. Bean heiress Linda Bean made excessive contributions to a political action committee she bankrolled to support Republican President-elect Donald Trump, the Federal Election Commission said.</p>
<p>Making America Great Again LLC was limited to individual contributions of $5,000, according to a Wednesday letter from federal regulators obtained by The Associated Press. Federal campaign finance reports show Bean contributed $60,000 while the group spent $66,862.</p>
<p>The FEC letter said the group could face punitive action or an audit if it doesn’t respond.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The group on Friday responded by taking steps recommended by the FEC to change its registration to a super PAC that can raise unlimited funds. The group, which also goes by the name Making Maine Great Again, spent the funds on signs, Facebook and radio advertisements and 30-second TV ads in support of Trump.</p>
<p>The PAC was registered as an independent expenditure group supporting one candidate, which can accept up to $5,000 in contributions from a person in a year.</p>
<p>The PAC’s chairman, David Jones, said he thought it already was registered as a super PAC and said he did not see the letter until a reporter asked him about it on Friday.</p>
<p>Trump won enough support in the 2nd Congressional District to split Maine’s electoral votes, taking one vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s three. The outdoors retailer’s headquarters is in Freeport, which is part of the 1st Congressional District.</p>
<p>Bean’s group told the FEC that it intends to raise unlimited funds as allowed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision in SpeechNOW v. FEC. That decision removed contribution limits on independent expenditures.</p>
<p>A spokesman for the FEC said it does not comment on such individual cases.</p>
<p>Bean, the granddaughter of L.L. Bean founder Leon Leonwood Bean, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Friday. She is a member of the retailer’s board and runs a lobster company called Linda Bean’s Lobster Dreams. She has run for Congress and is a big donor for Republican causes.</p>
<p>L.L. Bean, noted for its signature waterproof rubber-bottom boots, sought to distance itself from the controversy, noting that Linda Bean is one of many family members who share ownership and that Bean family members, employees and customers “represent the full spectrum of political and social views.”</p>
<p>“The L.L. Bean company does not endorse political candidates, nor do we take positions on political matters or make political contributions,” a spokeswoman said.</p> | LL Bean heiress in trouble over pro-Trump PAC | false | https://abqjournal.com/922355/l-l-bean-heiress-in-trouble-over-pro-trump-pac.html | 2017-01-06 | 2least
| LL Bean heiress in trouble over pro-Trump PAC
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>AUGUSTA, Maine — L.L. Bean heiress Linda Bean made excessive contributions to a political action committee she bankrolled to support Republican President-elect Donald Trump, the Federal Election Commission said.</p>
<p>Making America Great Again LLC was limited to individual contributions of $5,000, according to a Wednesday letter from federal regulators obtained by The Associated Press. Federal campaign finance reports show Bean contributed $60,000 while the group spent $66,862.</p>
<p>The FEC letter said the group could face punitive action or an audit if it doesn’t respond.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The group on Friday responded by taking steps recommended by the FEC to change its registration to a super PAC that can raise unlimited funds. The group, which also goes by the name Making Maine Great Again, spent the funds on signs, Facebook and radio advertisements and 30-second TV ads in support of Trump.</p>
<p>The PAC was registered as an independent expenditure group supporting one candidate, which can accept up to $5,000 in contributions from a person in a year.</p>
<p>The PAC’s chairman, David Jones, said he thought it already was registered as a super PAC and said he did not see the letter until a reporter asked him about it on Friday.</p>
<p>Trump won enough support in the 2nd Congressional District to split Maine’s electoral votes, taking one vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s three. The outdoors retailer’s headquarters is in Freeport, which is part of the 1st Congressional District.</p>
<p>Bean’s group told the FEC that it intends to raise unlimited funds as allowed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision in SpeechNOW v. FEC. That decision removed contribution limits on independent expenditures.</p>
<p>A spokesman for the FEC said it does not comment on such individual cases.</p>
<p>Bean, the granddaughter of L.L. Bean founder Leon Leonwood Bean, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Friday. She is a member of the retailer’s board and runs a lobster company called Linda Bean’s Lobster Dreams. She has run for Congress and is a big donor for Republican causes.</p>
<p>L.L. Bean, noted for its signature waterproof rubber-bottom boots, sought to distance itself from the controversy, noting that Linda Bean is one of many family members who share ownership and that Bean family members, employees and customers “represent the full spectrum of political and social views.”</p>
<p>“The L.L. Bean company does not endorse political candidates, nor do we take positions on political matters or make political contributions,” a spokeswoman said.</p> | 2,175 |
<p>Darron Cummings/AP</p>
<p />
<p>With all his properties and deals in the United States and around the world, Donald Trump is heading to the White House burdened with multiple conflicts of interest. But the biggest ones may not be about what Trump owns, but rather what he owes.</p>
<p>The United States has had wealthy presidents before. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller held a piece of possibly the greatest American fortune, and the Kennedy family wealth <a href="http://nypost.com/2015/06/01/jfk-was-way-richer-than-the-wealthiest-2016-candidate/" type="external">may have been more than $1 billion</a>. The question these leaders faced was whether they would use their powerful offices to bolster their own assets and enrich themselves.</p>
<p>That concern exists with Trump, but he presents a unique problem when it comes to conflicts of interest: He and his companies have borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars. These are loans that potentially afford his lenders leverage over Trump. This creates the possibility that Trump may find himself in the position of choosing between US interests and his lenders’ interests. There’s no better example of this than the $364 million Trump owes the struggling Deutsche Bank, which is staggering under fierce pressure from US financial regulators who want the bank to pay for its misdeeds during the run-up to the 2008 mortgage crisis. (Trump is in a real estate partnership that borrowed $950 million from a group of banks including a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank and the state-owned Bank of China.)</p>
<p>As it has hit trouble, Deutsche Bank’s stock has fallen in the past year to levels so dangerously low that the German government was <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-government-has-ruled-out-state-help-for-deutsche-bank-1476459873" type="external">reported</a> to be considering stepping in to prop up the bank. But on January 20, the newly inaugurated President Trump will have the ability to remove all that pressure on one of his most loyal creditors.</p>
<p>“I know of no case where a president has come in with hundreds of millions of dollars of indebtedness, to an entity that is under investigation for these types of alleged misconduct and in the midst of a negotiating a settlement that could put the president’s principal lender out of business,” says Norm Eisen, a former special counsel for ethics in the Obama administration. “The conflict is so blatant.”</p>
<p>Eisen and Richard Painter, who served as George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer, have called on Trump to divest fully his assets—not just withdraw from the operations of his businesses, as Trump has suggested he might do. If he sells off his business interests, these loans would follow the assets and no longer pose a direct conflict of interest.</p>
<p>Eisen says that even if Trump acts with the best of intentions but still retains his assets, there will be political appointees and career employees within the federal government who could feel pressure to please their boss and who may hesitate to threaten the president’s personal business interests by getting tough with a bank he owes so much.</p>
<p>The problem started with Deutsche Bank’s role in the 2008 financial crisis. Like many big banks, it issued and resold bad residential mortgages that helped lead to the global economic collapse. Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department has pursued various Wall Street banks for their roles in the crisis, but it has allowed these banks to negotiate settlements to pay civil fines and fees to resolve claims that they misled investors. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs paid $5.1 billion to settle a case, and in 2014 Bank of America paid $17 billion in a similar settlement. In September, the Justice Department <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-15/deutsche-bank-asked-to-pay-14-billion-in-u-s-probe-wsj-says" type="external">announced</a> it was seeking as much as $14 billion from Deutsche Bank, an amount that vastly exceeded the $2 billion to $3 billion that bank officials had assumed it might have to pay.</p>
<p>The prospect that Deutsche Bank would be forced to settle for anything close to $14 billion set off a minor panic, sending the company’s stock spiraling down and forcing German Prime Minister Angela Merkel to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-deutsche-bank-idUSKCN1213D5" type="external">make</a> a statement denying the German government had a plan to intervene. As various rumors about the bank’s ongoing negotiations with the Justice Department leaked out, its stock price swung back and forth, but it shot up after Trump’s election. Negotiations are continuing, and there is no sign of when a settlement could be reached. As president, Trump presumably won’t be directly involved in the talks between the Justice Department and the bank, but the chief executive of the federal government does generally set the tone regarding how aggressive or conciliatory the Justice Department is toward banks.</p>
<p>Part of the recent optimism on the part of investors may be due to speculation that a Trump administration will be friendlier to banks. But investors also know that Trump’s businesses are deeply entwined with Deutsche Bank. Trump has four large mortgages with Deutsche Bank, borrowing against three of his most prized possessions: the Doral golf resort in Florida, his Chicago tower, and his brand new Washington luxury hotel. For the Washington hotel, Trump has a $170 million line of credit from Deutsche Bank that was granted in 2015, just as his presidential campaign was kicking off. According to a bank spokeswoman, all four of the loans were obtained from Deutsche’s “private bank”—a division that caters exclusively to high-net-worth individuals and that can lend separately from the corporate side of the bank.</p>
<p>The corporate side of Deutsche Bank previously loaned to Trump, but the relationship fell apart around the time of the financial crisis. In 2005, Trump borrowed $640 million from Deutsche Bank and several other lenders for the construction of his Chicago hotel tower. When he failed to pay back the money on time in 2008, the banks, including Deutsche Bank, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/business/dealbook/donald-trump-relationship-bankers.html?_r=0" type="external">demanded</a>he pay the $40 million he had personally guaranteed. In response, Trump sued Deutsche Bank for $3 billion, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/business/05norris.html?version=meter+at+0&amp;module=meter-Links&amp;pgtype=article&amp;contentId=&amp;mediaId=&amp;referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&amp;priority=true&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=meter-links-click" type="external">saying the project’s financial troubles were the fault of the economic recession</a>, which he claimed the bank had helped cause. He <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/business/05norris.html" type="external">accused</a> Deutsche Bank of undermining the project and his reputation. The lawsuit was eventually settled.</p>
<p>Deutsche Bank’s long-term health is important to Trump’s business interests. In recent years, it has been one of the only banks still willing to lend to him (at least as of his presidential run). Most other Wall Street banks, some of which loaned Trump billions of dollars in the 1980s and 1990s, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/when-donald-trump-needs-a-loan-he-chooses-deutsche-bank-1458379806" type="external">essentially stopped lending to him</a> years ago.</p>
<p>It’s not clear if Trump has personally guaranteed any of the loans his businesses have with Deutsche Bank. He did personally guarantee the Deutsche Bank loan involved in the lawsuit over his Chicago project. The New York Times has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/politics/donald-trump-debt.html?_r=0" type="external">reported</a> that Trump may be personally liable for up to $26 million on a mortgage he has taken out from another lender on his 40 Wall Street tower in New York City. Trump’s attorney, Alan Garten, did not return a request for comment.</p>
<p>Eisen says another possible area of concern with the Deutsche Bank loan is the emoluments clause, the provision of the Constitution that prohibits top federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign governments. Several ethics experts have pointed out that a loan from a state-owned bank may qualify as a gift, and red flags have popped up over the Bank of China loan. Eisen says that if the German government were to take a stake in Deutsche Bank in an effort to shore up the distressed bank, it would raise a similar constitutional problem for Trump.</p>
<p>Trump’s massive Deutsche Bank loans are uncharted and dangerous territory. “It’s staggering,” Eisen says. “And the most staggering thing is that it’s only one of a host of similarly complicated conflicts. We’ve never seen anything like this.”</p>
<p /> | Trump Has a Huge Foreign Bank Problem | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/trump-deutsche-bank-conflict-loans/ | 2016-12-02 | 4left
| Trump Has a Huge Foreign Bank Problem
<p>Darron Cummings/AP</p>
<p />
<p>With all his properties and deals in the United States and around the world, Donald Trump is heading to the White House burdened with multiple conflicts of interest. But the biggest ones may not be about what Trump owns, but rather what he owes.</p>
<p>The United States has had wealthy presidents before. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller held a piece of possibly the greatest American fortune, and the Kennedy family wealth <a href="http://nypost.com/2015/06/01/jfk-was-way-richer-than-the-wealthiest-2016-candidate/" type="external">may have been more than $1 billion</a>. The question these leaders faced was whether they would use their powerful offices to bolster their own assets and enrich themselves.</p>
<p>That concern exists with Trump, but he presents a unique problem when it comes to conflicts of interest: He and his companies have borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars. These are loans that potentially afford his lenders leverage over Trump. This creates the possibility that Trump may find himself in the position of choosing between US interests and his lenders’ interests. There’s no better example of this than the $364 million Trump owes the struggling Deutsche Bank, which is staggering under fierce pressure from US financial regulators who want the bank to pay for its misdeeds during the run-up to the 2008 mortgage crisis. (Trump is in a real estate partnership that borrowed $950 million from a group of banks including a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank and the state-owned Bank of China.)</p>
<p>As it has hit trouble, Deutsche Bank’s stock has fallen in the past year to levels so dangerously low that the German government was <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-government-has-ruled-out-state-help-for-deutsche-bank-1476459873" type="external">reported</a> to be considering stepping in to prop up the bank. But on January 20, the newly inaugurated President Trump will have the ability to remove all that pressure on one of his most loyal creditors.</p>
<p>“I know of no case where a president has come in with hundreds of millions of dollars of indebtedness, to an entity that is under investigation for these types of alleged misconduct and in the midst of a negotiating a settlement that could put the president’s principal lender out of business,” says Norm Eisen, a former special counsel for ethics in the Obama administration. “The conflict is so blatant.”</p>
<p>Eisen and Richard Painter, who served as George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer, have called on Trump to divest fully his assets—not just withdraw from the operations of his businesses, as Trump has suggested he might do. If he sells off his business interests, these loans would follow the assets and no longer pose a direct conflict of interest.</p>
<p>Eisen says that even if Trump acts with the best of intentions but still retains his assets, there will be political appointees and career employees within the federal government who could feel pressure to please their boss and who may hesitate to threaten the president’s personal business interests by getting tough with a bank he owes so much.</p>
<p>The problem started with Deutsche Bank’s role in the 2008 financial crisis. Like many big banks, it issued and resold bad residential mortgages that helped lead to the global economic collapse. Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department has pursued various Wall Street banks for their roles in the crisis, but it has allowed these banks to negotiate settlements to pay civil fines and fees to resolve claims that they misled investors. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs paid $5.1 billion to settle a case, and in 2014 Bank of America paid $17 billion in a similar settlement. In September, the Justice Department <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-15/deutsche-bank-asked-to-pay-14-billion-in-u-s-probe-wsj-says" type="external">announced</a> it was seeking as much as $14 billion from Deutsche Bank, an amount that vastly exceeded the $2 billion to $3 billion that bank officials had assumed it might have to pay.</p>
<p>The prospect that Deutsche Bank would be forced to settle for anything close to $14 billion set off a minor panic, sending the company’s stock spiraling down and forcing German Prime Minister Angela Merkel to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-deutsche-bank-idUSKCN1213D5" type="external">make</a> a statement denying the German government had a plan to intervene. As various rumors about the bank’s ongoing negotiations with the Justice Department leaked out, its stock price swung back and forth, but it shot up after Trump’s election. Negotiations are continuing, and there is no sign of when a settlement could be reached. As president, Trump presumably won’t be directly involved in the talks between the Justice Department and the bank, but the chief executive of the federal government does generally set the tone regarding how aggressive or conciliatory the Justice Department is toward banks.</p>
<p>Part of the recent optimism on the part of investors may be due to speculation that a Trump administration will be friendlier to banks. But investors also know that Trump’s businesses are deeply entwined with Deutsche Bank. Trump has four large mortgages with Deutsche Bank, borrowing against three of his most prized possessions: the Doral golf resort in Florida, his Chicago tower, and his brand new Washington luxury hotel. For the Washington hotel, Trump has a $170 million line of credit from Deutsche Bank that was granted in 2015, just as his presidential campaign was kicking off. According to a bank spokeswoman, all four of the loans were obtained from Deutsche’s “private bank”—a division that caters exclusively to high-net-worth individuals and that can lend separately from the corporate side of the bank.</p>
<p>The corporate side of Deutsche Bank previously loaned to Trump, but the relationship fell apart around the time of the financial crisis. In 2005, Trump borrowed $640 million from Deutsche Bank and several other lenders for the construction of his Chicago hotel tower. When he failed to pay back the money on time in 2008, the banks, including Deutsche Bank, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/business/dealbook/donald-trump-relationship-bankers.html?_r=0" type="external">demanded</a>he pay the $40 million he had personally guaranteed. In response, Trump sued Deutsche Bank for $3 billion, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/business/05norris.html?version=meter+at+0&amp;module=meter-Links&amp;pgtype=article&amp;contentId=&amp;mediaId=&amp;referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&amp;priority=true&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=meter-links-click" type="external">saying the project’s financial troubles were the fault of the economic recession</a>, which he claimed the bank had helped cause. He <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/business/05norris.html" type="external">accused</a> Deutsche Bank of undermining the project and his reputation. The lawsuit was eventually settled.</p>
<p>Deutsche Bank’s long-term health is important to Trump’s business interests. In recent years, it has been one of the only banks still willing to lend to him (at least as of his presidential run). Most other Wall Street banks, some of which loaned Trump billions of dollars in the 1980s and 1990s, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/when-donald-trump-needs-a-loan-he-chooses-deutsche-bank-1458379806" type="external">essentially stopped lending to him</a> years ago.</p>
<p>It’s not clear if Trump has personally guaranteed any of the loans his businesses have with Deutsche Bank. He did personally guarantee the Deutsche Bank loan involved in the lawsuit over his Chicago project. The New York Times has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/politics/donald-trump-debt.html?_r=0" type="external">reported</a> that Trump may be personally liable for up to $26 million on a mortgage he has taken out from another lender on his 40 Wall Street tower in New York City. Trump’s attorney, Alan Garten, did not return a request for comment.</p>
<p>Eisen says another possible area of concern with the Deutsche Bank loan is the emoluments clause, the provision of the Constitution that prohibits top federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign governments. Several ethics experts have pointed out that a loan from a state-owned bank may qualify as a gift, and red flags have popped up over the Bank of China loan. Eisen says that if the German government were to take a stake in Deutsche Bank in an effort to shore up the distressed bank, it would raise a similar constitutional problem for Trump.</p>
<p>Trump’s massive Deutsche Bank loans are uncharted and dangerous territory. “It’s staggering,” Eisen says. “And the most staggering thing is that it’s only one of a host of similarly complicated conflicts. We’ve never seen anything like this.”</p>
<p /> | 2,176 |
<p>Jan 19 (Reuters) - Albireo Pharma Inc:</p>
<p>* ALBIREO TO RECEIVE MORE THAN $55 MILLION(1) IN NONDILUTIVE CASH PAYMENTS</p>
<p>* ALBIREO PHARMA INC - ELOBIXIBAT APPROVED IN JAPAN FOR TREATMENT OF CHRONIC CONSTIPATION</p>
<p>* ALBIREO PHARMA - JAPAN’S MINISTRY OF HEALTH, LABOR &amp; WELFARE APPROVED NEW DRUG APPLICATION FOR ELOBIXIBAT FOR TREATMENT OF CHRONIC CONSTIPATION IN JAPAN</p>
<p>* ALBIREO PHARMA INC - APPROVAL OF ELOBIXIBAT IN JAPAN TRIGGERS PAYMENTS TO ALBIREO SUBSIDIARY ELOBIX AB FROM EA PHARMA CO LTD</p>
<p>* ALBIREO PHARMA - CO ‍EXPECTS TO INITIATE A PLANNED PHASE 3 STUDY OF A4250 BY SPRING OF 2018​ Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | BRIEF-Albireo Pharma Says Elobixibat Approved In Japan For Treatment Of Chronic Constipation | false | https://reuters.com/article/brief-albireo-pharma-says-elobixibat-app/brief-albireo-pharma-says-elobixibat-approved-in-japan-for-treatment-of-chronic-constipation-idUSFWN1PE0SH | 2018-01-19 | 2least
| BRIEF-Albireo Pharma Says Elobixibat Approved In Japan For Treatment Of Chronic Constipation
<p>Jan 19 (Reuters) - Albireo Pharma Inc:</p>
<p>* ALBIREO TO RECEIVE MORE THAN $55 MILLION(1) IN NONDILUTIVE CASH PAYMENTS</p>
<p>* ALBIREO PHARMA INC - ELOBIXIBAT APPROVED IN JAPAN FOR TREATMENT OF CHRONIC CONSTIPATION</p>
<p>* ALBIREO PHARMA - JAPAN’S MINISTRY OF HEALTH, LABOR &amp; WELFARE APPROVED NEW DRUG APPLICATION FOR ELOBIXIBAT FOR TREATMENT OF CHRONIC CONSTIPATION IN JAPAN</p>
<p>* ALBIREO PHARMA INC - APPROVAL OF ELOBIXIBAT IN JAPAN TRIGGERS PAYMENTS TO ALBIREO SUBSIDIARY ELOBIX AB FROM EA PHARMA CO LTD</p>
<p>* ALBIREO PHARMA - CO ‍EXPECTS TO INITIATE A PLANNED PHASE 3 STUDY OF A4250 BY SPRING OF 2018​ Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | 2,177 |
<p>Nov. 30 (UPI) — The Department of Defense has awarded a contract to Sikorsky Aircraft for upgrades to the helicopters used by Marine Helicopter Squadron One — whose most famous passenger is the President of the United States.</p>
<p>The deal, announced Wednesday by the U.S. Navy, is worth more than $15 million under a firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery order contract, which modifies the previous terms of an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract for executive helicopter special progressive aircraft rework.</p>
<p>The executive helicopter program flies two types of rotorcraft — the VH-3D Sea King and VH-60N White Hawk.</p>
<p>The VH-3D Sea King, most known with for carrying American presidents, was introduced more than four decades ago. Operated by a crew of four, the Sea King is nearly 75 feet long and can fit 12 passengers in its 200-square-foot interior space.</p>
<p>When flying with the president aboard, the helicopter is known as <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Marine_One/" type="external">Marine One</a> and is accompanied by one or two other aircraft from the fleet to serve as decoys and protection. When carrying the vice president, it is referred to as Marine Two.</p>
<p>Marine Helicopter Squadron One’s fleet is also used to carry heads of states and Pentagon officials, among others.</p>
<p>Recently, at President <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Donald_Trump/" type="external">Donald Trump</a>‘s golf club in Mar-a-Lago, Fla., a helipad <a href="http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/local/mar-lago-helipad-ready-but-marine-one-not-used-for-trump-arrival/KAhATPvxpG4wJhEZv0qozM/" type="external">was constructed</a> on the back lawn of the estate so Marine One can land safely.</p>
<p>Officials say the modified contract will include security, project engineering, integrated logistics support, as well as other sustainment products.</p>
<p>Work on the contract will be performed in Connecticut and Virginia, and is expected to be complete in November 2018.</p>
<p>U.S. Navy fiscal 2018 operations and maintenance funds of more than $9.8 million has been obligated to Sikorsky at the time of award, and will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.</p> | Sikorsky awarded contract for 'Marine One' rework, sustainment | false | https://newsline.com/sikorsky-awarded-contract-for-marine-one-rework-sustainment/ | 2017-11-30 | 1right-center
| Sikorsky awarded contract for 'Marine One' rework, sustainment
<p>Nov. 30 (UPI) — The Department of Defense has awarded a contract to Sikorsky Aircraft for upgrades to the helicopters used by Marine Helicopter Squadron One — whose most famous passenger is the President of the United States.</p>
<p>The deal, announced Wednesday by the U.S. Navy, is worth more than $15 million under a firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery order contract, which modifies the previous terms of an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract for executive helicopter special progressive aircraft rework.</p>
<p>The executive helicopter program flies two types of rotorcraft — the VH-3D Sea King and VH-60N White Hawk.</p>
<p>The VH-3D Sea King, most known with for carrying American presidents, was introduced more than four decades ago. Operated by a crew of four, the Sea King is nearly 75 feet long and can fit 12 passengers in its 200-square-foot interior space.</p>
<p>When flying with the president aboard, the helicopter is known as <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Marine_One/" type="external">Marine One</a> and is accompanied by one or two other aircraft from the fleet to serve as decoys and protection. When carrying the vice president, it is referred to as Marine Two.</p>
<p>Marine Helicopter Squadron One’s fleet is also used to carry heads of states and Pentagon officials, among others.</p>
<p>Recently, at President <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Donald_Trump/" type="external">Donald Trump</a>‘s golf club in Mar-a-Lago, Fla., a helipad <a href="http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/local/mar-lago-helipad-ready-but-marine-one-not-used-for-trump-arrival/KAhATPvxpG4wJhEZv0qozM/" type="external">was constructed</a> on the back lawn of the estate so Marine One can land safely.</p>
<p>Officials say the modified contract will include security, project engineering, integrated logistics support, as well as other sustainment products.</p>
<p>Work on the contract will be performed in Connecticut and Virginia, and is expected to be complete in November 2018.</p>
<p>U.S. Navy fiscal 2018 operations and maintenance funds of more than $9.8 million has been obligated to Sikorsky at the time of award, and will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.</p> | 2,178 |
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<p>“Just a Gigolo,” which was written by Stephen Lowe early in 2012, is Roëves’ second one-man play. He first performed it in August at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. Next weekend he brings the story of the lover of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, Frieda Lawrence, to The Cell in Albuquerque and to the Santa Fe Playhouse in Santa Fe.</p>
<p>“I play Angelo Ravagli, who is a complex, cheeky and mischievous man,” Roëves said. “He’s a man of love. Literally. It’s said that Angelo is the real Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”</p>
<p>Ravagli was the gardener of D.H. Lawrence when the writer and his wife lived in Italy in the mid-1920s. He began a long affair with Lawrence’s wife and ended up marrying her in 1950. From 1950 to Frieda’s death in 1956, the couple lived together on D.H. Lawrence’s ranch in Taos.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Ravagli inherited nine of D.H. Lawrence’s paintings from his wife. Since he didn’t like the paintings and had no cash assets, he decided to try to sell the paintings to Saki Karavas, one of his drinking buddies who owned La Fonda Hotel in Taos, after his wife died. His goal was to raise enough money to purchase a ticket back to Italy.</p>
<p>“The play takes place in Saki’s office in La Fonda,” Roëves explained. “To prepare for the play, I visited the office as well as the Lawrence ranch. The visits helped me put everything into context.”</p>
<p>“Just a Gigolo” reveals how Ravagli was more than a gigolo. As he shows an imaginary Karavas each of the nine paintings that were created by D.H. Lawrence, he talks about his life and his feelings for Frieda Lawrence. Images of the paintings are projected on a screen on stage.</p>
<p>“Stephen wrote this play as a stream of consciousness,” said Roëves. “There’s no punctuation in the writing. It jumps and starts. Some of the lines are in Italian. When I first learned the play, I learned it by heart. Then I unlearned it and learned it again. I needed to make sure it was a part of me.”</p>
<p>Lowe, who is directing the New Mexico shows, has worked with Roëves on minor revisions to the original script. The play’s unexpected touching ending has remained the same.</p>
<p>“I fuse my film and stage techniques (of acting) in this one-man show so I can get a bigger reality,” said Roëves. “It’s going to be quite interesting to present ‘Just a Gigolo’ at The Cell, which is a very intimate theater. I’m kind of looking forward to that.”</p> | Former Romulan commands solo show | false | https://abqjournal.com/158015/former-romulan-commands-solo-show.html | 2013-01-06 | 2least
| Former Romulan commands solo show
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<p />
<p>“Just a Gigolo,” which was written by Stephen Lowe early in 2012, is Roëves’ second one-man play. He first performed it in August at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. Next weekend he brings the story of the lover of D.H. Lawrence’s wife, Frieda Lawrence, to The Cell in Albuquerque and to the Santa Fe Playhouse in Santa Fe.</p>
<p>“I play Angelo Ravagli, who is a complex, cheeky and mischievous man,” Roëves said. “He’s a man of love. Literally. It’s said that Angelo is the real Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”</p>
<p>Ravagli was the gardener of D.H. Lawrence when the writer and his wife lived in Italy in the mid-1920s. He began a long affair with Lawrence’s wife and ended up marrying her in 1950. From 1950 to Frieda’s death in 1956, the couple lived together on D.H. Lawrence’s ranch in Taos.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Ravagli inherited nine of D.H. Lawrence’s paintings from his wife. Since he didn’t like the paintings and had no cash assets, he decided to try to sell the paintings to Saki Karavas, one of his drinking buddies who owned La Fonda Hotel in Taos, after his wife died. His goal was to raise enough money to purchase a ticket back to Italy.</p>
<p>“The play takes place in Saki’s office in La Fonda,” Roëves explained. “To prepare for the play, I visited the office as well as the Lawrence ranch. The visits helped me put everything into context.”</p>
<p>“Just a Gigolo” reveals how Ravagli was more than a gigolo. As he shows an imaginary Karavas each of the nine paintings that were created by D.H. Lawrence, he talks about his life and his feelings for Frieda Lawrence. Images of the paintings are projected on a screen on stage.</p>
<p>“Stephen wrote this play as a stream of consciousness,” said Roëves. “There’s no punctuation in the writing. It jumps and starts. Some of the lines are in Italian. When I first learned the play, I learned it by heart. Then I unlearned it and learned it again. I needed to make sure it was a part of me.”</p>
<p>Lowe, who is directing the New Mexico shows, has worked with Roëves on minor revisions to the original script. The play’s unexpected touching ending has remained the same.</p>
<p>“I fuse my film and stage techniques (of acting) in this one-man show so I can get a bigger reality,” said Roëves. “It’s going to be quite interesting to present ‘Just a Gigolo’ at The Cell, which is a very intimate theater. I’m kind of looking forward to that.”</p> | 2,179 |
<p />
<p>When Maria Aguirrez woke up on the morning of June 5, 1977, she was, at first, too drenched with sweat to feel the blood. They had warned her at the clinic that there might be some bleeding, but this was more than a period. Her skirt, the worn sheet, the mat, were soaked through — more than after her oldest daughter’s birth, when the midwife had, at one point, simply prayed. Dimly, Maria must have realized that the baby was already awake and fussing. He was still fussing an hour later when Maria’s sister, summoned by the older children, came running in. Maria was no longer sweating.</p>
<p>The death of Maria Aguirrez (not her real name) does not even figure as a statistic in our story. It was recorded as the result of a fever. That the fever and the bleeding were the result of an intrauterine device (IUD) known to be unsafe was not recorded. Nor would the information have made any difference to the government and corporate officials behind the distribution of the device; they were already well aware of the history of medical problems associated with it.</p>
<p>The U.S. government and U.S. drug companies maintain a systematic and intentional double standard for the sale of contraceptives. Unsafe IUDs, dangerous high-estrogen birth control pills and, most recently, Depo-Provera — an injectable contraceptive not approved for American use — are bought up wholesale by the U.S. government for mass consumption in the Third World. This is the story of how and where and why these contraceptive dumps take place, of the corporations that profit from them and of the government official, Dr. R.T. Ravenholt, who headed the Office of Population of the U.S. Agency for International Development and engineered the dumps.</p>
<p>The contraceptive double standard surfaced as a public issue only in the summer of 1978, when a congressional committee held hearings on the Depo-Provera problem: Should the U.S. government subsidize the export to Third World nations of a contraceptive drug that had been ruled unsafe for American women? Pharmaceutical company spokespeople, officials of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) and representatives of private population control agencies stood up one after another to advance the “humanitarian” defense of the double standard. Because the risks of dying in childbirth are so much greater in the Third World than in the United States, they asserted the use of almost any contraceptive is justified. Scientists from selected Third World governments, many of them U.S.-sponsored dictatorships like Chile and Thailand, seconded the argument, adding that their “national sovereignty” would be violated if they were denied access to the contraceptive of their choice. Consumer representatives countered that there is no excuse for sending our least safe contraceptive abroad and questioned the accountability of the “sovereign” governments, which, it is now known, have received millions of dollars in bribes from U.S. drug companies like Upjohn Co. (maker of Depo-Provera) and G. D. Searle Co. (a manufacturer of birth control pills).</p>
<p>At the bottom the contraceptive issue is no different than the case of Tris-treated pajamas, carcinogenic pesticides or lethal antibiotics: products that had been found unsafe for domestic use are still being sold overseas. There is, however, a crucial difference in the case of contraceptives: dumping them is not only a common business practice; it is part of U.S. foreign policy.</p>
<p />
<p>The dangers of the Dalkon Shield IUD were well known before the dump began in 1972. Only a few months after the Dalkon Shield went on the market in 1971, reports of adverse reactions began pouring into the headquarters of the manufacturer, A. H. Robins Co. (See “A Case of Corporate Malpractice,” by Mark Dowie and Tracy Johnston, MJ, Nov. ’76.) There were cases of pelvic inflammatory disease (an infection of the uterus that can require weeks of bed rest and antibiotic treatment), septicemia (blood poisoning), pregnancies resulting in spontaneous abortions, ectopic (tubal) pregnancies and perforations of the uterus. In a number of cases, the damage was so severe as to require a hysterectomy. There were even medical reports of Dalkon Shields ripping their way through the walls of the uterus and being found floating free in the abdominal cavity far from the uterus. According to a recent and probably conservative U.S. medical estimate, the Dalkon Shield caused over 200,000 cases of serious uterine infections in this country alone. For every million dollars in profit the manufacturer has made on the Shield, U.S. women — those who could afford medical care at all — spent an estimated $20 million for medical care on problems arising from its use. By 1974, there were reports of deaths clearly attributable to the Dalkon Shield — not one or two, but 17.</p>
<p>The Dalkon Shield was turning out to be far more dangerous than any other IUD already on the market. Later research in Canada and Germany showed that microscopic defects helped account for the Shield’s ability to slice into the uterine wall. Worse still, the “wicking effect” of its string caused it to conduct bacteria up from the vagina, through the tiny cervical opening and into the uterus. Physicians found insertion was difficult; patients found it almost unbearable. As early as February 1971, a physician wrote to A. H. Robins in reference to the insertion of the Dalkon Shield: “I have found the procedure to be the most traumatic manipulation ever perpetrated on womanhood, and I have inserted thousands of other varieties.”</p>
<p>Sometime in 1972, with angry correspondence pouring in and the prospects for increasing U.S. sales looking bleak, A. H. Robins decided to expand its exports. With any other kind of hazardous product, the manufacturer might, at this point, have had to search out some sleazy broker to arrange a secret dump. Not so with a contraceptive device. The Office of Population within AID had a budget of $125 million to spend on the purchase and overseas distribution of contraceptives. Director R. T. Ravenholt was known to be a population control enthusiast who would ask few questions about a good deal on Dalkon Shields. It was only natural for Robins to turn to the government.</p>
<p>Robert W. Nickless, Robins’ director of international marketing, wrote to the population office of AID to interest them in placing “this fine product” with population control programs and family planning clinics throughout the Third World. Nickless sweetened the deal with a special discount, which dramatically illustrates the double standard drug companies apply to Third World consumers: the company offered AID the Shield in bulk packages, unsterilized, at 48 percent off.</p>
<p>Robins made this offer knowing that the sale of nonsterile IUDs was highly irregular in the United States. One of the greatest hazards associated with the use of any IUD is the possibility of introducing bacteria into the uterus, which is particularly poorly equipped to fight infection. In the United States, IUDs are sold to doctors in individual, sterilized packages, with a sterile, disposable inserter for each device.</p>
<p>Careful to preserve Robins’ image, Nickless emphasized that AID could not distribute the nonsterile Dalkon Shields in the U.S. The nonsterile form, he wrote in a January 1973 memo to AID, “is for the purpose of reducing price, and thereby attaining wider use [and] is intended for restricted sale to family planning/support organizations who will limit their distribution to those countries commonly referred to as ‘less developed.'” Practitioners in such countries were expected by Robins to sterilize the Shields by the old-fashioned method of soaking them in a disinfectant solution.</p>
<p>In the United States, according to private gynecologists we interviewed, the insertion of an IUD that had merely been soaked in a disinfectant before use would possibly be grounds for a malpractice suit. Robins insists that the “sterilization” procedure it recommended was effective, but it is highly likely that few people ever read the instructions. The company attached only one set of instructions for each pack of 1,000 Shields, and those were printed in only three languages — English, French and Spanish — although the devices were destined for 42 countries from Ethiopia to Malaysia. Worse still — only ten inserters were provided per 100 Shields, adding immeasurably to the possibility of infection.</p>
<p>To their credit, officials within AID did express concern with at least one of the more reckless features of Robins’ discount Dalkon dump. They questioned whether the Shields could be reliably inserted by the staffs of remote family planning clinics, who would not have had the benefit of an American medical education.</p>
<p>It should have been an embarrassing question for Robins. In the U.S., the company had repeatedly countered reports of adverse reactions by arguing that the person who had inserted the device, such as an occasional general practitioner, had been unqualified to do so. But Robins was undaunted and nimbly produced a new study which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that any paramedic could learn to insert a Dalkon Shield in half an hour.</p>
<p>Reassured by this logic, AID approved the deal. Hundreds of shoe-box-sized cartons, each filled with 1,000 unsterilized Dalkon Shields paid for by the U.S. treasury, left the shores of America for clinics in Paraguay, Israel, Tunisia and 39 other countries. The dump was on. Within months, the agencies that distributed Dalkon Shields for AID, such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation, had discovered more bad news about the device. Company sales monographs and ads in medical journals had boasted of a pregnancy rate with the Shield of no more than 1.1 percent. But the reports coming in from the field told another story: pregnancy rates of 4.5 percent in Israel, 3.8 percent in the United Kingdom, 6.7 percent in Costa Rica and 6.5 percent in Yugoslavia. One clinic in Latin America reported a pregnancy rate of 14.8 percent. From a population controller’s point of view, a contraceptive may, if expedient, be unsafe; but it should not, under any circumstances, be ineffective.</p>
<p>Disturbed by the negative reports, A. H. Robins sent Robert Nickless on a whistle-stop tour of Asia in March 1973 to counter the increasing volume of criticism and drum up new business. With him, Robins sent along an “independent expert” — Dr. John Lesinski, a colleague at Johns Hopkins University of the Shield’s inventor, Dr. Hugh Davis, and an early Dalkon Shield booster. At a typical stop, the local AID population control officer would assemble a group of physicians, and Lesinski, lending an aura of professional responsibility, would lecture, show slides, and occasionally perform demonstration insertions on a few local women.</p>
<p>While Nickless was peddling the Shield from Pakistan to Hong Kong, time was running out for it in the United States. In August of 1974, the FDA opened hearings on the Dalkon Shield. At that time, the FDA had little jurisdiction over medical devices like IUDs: they could investigate their safety, but they could not ban them from the market. Despite the FDA’s lack of authority, the hearings were held simply because, by 1974, the carnage had become too gruesome to ignore. One critical study after another told of women who had suffered infections, septic abortions or emergency hysterectomies.</p>
<p>A. H. Robins had been hardened by years of fighting regulatory agencies, however, and the company went down fighting. “Throughout the entire proceedings,” according to Dr. Richard Dickey, a member of the FDA’s Ob/Gyn committee, “the halls of the FDA were crawling with Robins men. It was disgusting. ” Finally evidence was presented at the hearings that could have undercut Robins’ defenses in future product liability suits, potentially costing millions of dollars. Only then did the company give up. Robins made no attempt to resume its domestic sales, suspended at the FDA’s urging.</p>
<p>When Robins gave in, AID was left holding the bag, or, rather, the bulk pack. International complaints about the effectiveness of the device had been bad enough. With the Shield now considered too dangerous for domestic use, AID had little choice but to issue an international recall. It was an embarrassing moment for the agency, but hardly a major setback. Even without Dalkon Shields, there would be plenty of “discount” contraceptives to dump in the Third World.</p>
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<p>That corporations dump to make a profit is no surprise. In the case of contraceptive dumping through the foreign aid program, though, there are other motives as well. What kind of person knowingly stamped the seal of American “goodwill” on this corporate jackpot? To find out, in July 1979, we interviewed Dr. R. T. (Ray) Ravenholt, the head of AID’s Office of Population from 1966 to mid-1979 and the man who most represents the government role in contraceptive dumping.</p>
<p>In person, he is a tall, affable Midwesterner with an engaging smile and a marked inability to sit still once he warms up to the subject at hand. No sooner had we gotten through the introductions than he bounded off to one corner of his spacious office and returned with his latest contraceptive enthusiasm: a plastic “gun-styled” laparoscopic device, which, when aimed through the vagina, shoots little plastic bands around the fallopian tubes, resulting in permanent sterilization. He demonstrated by placing one foot up on his chair and shooting bands at his shoelace. Only after he completed the simulated sterilization of his left foot were we able to bring the subject around to the Dalkon Shield.</p>
<p>“Robins didn’t know there was any problem with it in 1972,” he insisted. When we countered that A. H. Robins had been deluged with reports of adverse reactions by that time, Ravenholt smiled patiently and explained: “You don’t really know anything until you have a very, very large number of people who have used it. You might have one kind of impression from 10,000 people, another from 100,000. You might need a million — 10 million — before you really know.”</p>
<p>You might, in other words, need a few medium-size nations to experiment on.</p>
<p>Ravenholt did concede that AID “had been hearing about infections” associated with the Dalkon Shield prior to Robins’ withdrawal of the device. Then, leaning forward with enthusiasm, he confided his own theory about IUD-induced pelvic infections: “Women who frequently change sexual partners have these intercurrent low-grade infections,” he told us. “The IUD can’t cause an infection. The body tolerates anything that’s sterile.” Taken aback, we asked whether Dalkon Shield-related infections in the Third World might not have been caused by nonsterile devices, rather than by female promiscuity. “Well,” he said, in a classic non sequitur, it wasn’t just the Dalkon Shield that was supplied that way. The Lippes Loop [another variety of IUD] was supplied in a nonsterile form at first too.”</p>
<p>Ravenholt has one very good reason to continue to defend the Dalkon Shield: it is still in use throughout the Third World. When the recall order was issued in 1975, AID could hope to recover stocks of unused devices from the warehouses and storage rooms of major international agencies, like the International Planned Parenthood Federation. But it could not, despite any number of memos, recall the AID-supplied Shields from the approximately 440,000 women already using the device. Nor could it hope to recover the thousands of Shields lying in the drawers of countless private practitioners and tiny rural family planning clinics.</p>
<p>Almost five years after the manufacturer’s suspension of sales and AID’s recall, Dalkon Shields are still being inserted. Dr. A. Goldsmith, a researcher for the AID-funded International Fertility Research Program and a man who could hardly be accused of harboring a consumerist bias, told us in June 1979, “I know they are still inserting the device” in Pakistan, India and possibly in South Africa.</p>
<p>It is impossible to know how frequently this is still taking place, but our own sources have told us of at least two cases. In Nairobi, Kenya, on the wall of the Family Planning Association clinic, there is a poster advertising the Dalkon Shield. In early May 1979, a young woman patient at this clinic was offered, among other birth control options, a Dalkon Shield. In Ottawa, Canada, Pierre Blais, senior consultant to the Bureau of Medical Devices told us, the Shield was being inserted as late as 1977 — two years after it had been withdrawn from the U.S. market.</p>
<p>Finally, neither AID nor even the FDA would have any way of stopping A. H. Robins from privately dumping its own unsold stock of Dalkon Shields, if the company was of a mind to do so — and it was. In a recent interview, Robins attorney Franklin Tatum admitted to us that his client was still selling the devices through the first quarter of 1975 — even as they were being recalled through AID and allegedly destroyed.</p>
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<p>Ray Ravenholt winces slightly when he is asked about his critics, who are as numerous and diverse as any salaried civil servant could hope to acquire. “Right to lifers” head his list, along with “Catholics, Communists….” He could have added consumerists, like Ralph Nader’s Health Research Group, and feminists, like the National Women’s Health Network and the Feminist Women’s Health Centers.</p>
<p>To be fair though, he is a man with a cause, and that cause is ultimately no different from the one that motivates every other hard-working professional in the State Department. “Population explosions, unless stopped, would lead to revolutions,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in an April 1977 interview. Population control is required to maintain “the normal operation of U.S. commercial interests around the world…. Without our trying to help these countries with their economic and social development, the world would rebel against the strong U.S. commercial presence. The self-interest thing is the compelling element.”</p>
<p>More liberal population controllers argue that economic development, health services and an expanded role for women are needed to motivate people to reduce family size, but Ravenholt’s approach is single-mindedly contraceptive-oriented. To him, the point is to “get the contraceptives out there.”</p>
<p>In the early 1970s Ravenholt pioneered a whole new approach to “getting them out there” — the “inundation approach,” which was to provide, among other things, a convenient dump for the Palo Alto, California-based Syntex Corporation. Contraceptive inundation means disseminating contraceptives through any outlets, to any and all takers. Trained personnel can be bypassed; educational programs can be dispensed with. Oral contraceptives were especially well-suited to the inundation approach.</p>
<p>No woman can insert her own IUD, but — the theory was — if you can chew gum, you can swallow a pill. In Bangladesh, site of an intensive AID inundation program, pills are sold, usually at nominal prices and without any semblance of medical supervision, through local shops, alongside cigarettes, bananas and betel nuts.</p>
<p>From the beginning, AID’s inundation program in Bangladesh had the markings of a biological disaster. The average Bangladeshi woman weighs 92 pounds and suffers from chronic malnutrition. Even in a 135-pound American woman, the pill is known to deplete the body’s supply of vitamins A, B-6, D and folic acid (hence the special vitamins sold in the U.S. as supplements to the pill). Furthermore, no less than 90 percent of the Bangladeshi women who accepted the pill were breastfeeding. According to a study by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, babies nursed by pill-users grew at an average rate that was only two-thirds that of babies nursed by non-pill-users. Ending world hunger is the most common rationalization for the top-down approach to population control, but in Bangladesh, AID was creating its own kind of chemically induced famine.</p>
<p>All this preceded anything that could, strictly speaking, be called a dump. AID was, after all, distributing a pill that had been judged safe for American women. Not all birth control pills are the same, however, and in 1970 the FDA had advised physicians to prescribe only those with the lowest possible estrogen dose — at that time, 50 micrograms. Sales of high-estrogen pills began to sag. AID had at first been following the FDA’s advice, buying 50 microgram pills from G. D. Searle, Wyeth, and Parke, Davis. Then, in 1973, AID took its business to the Syntex Corporation and started buying up high-dose, 80 microgram pills. AID explained the switch as a response to “market conditions.” Simply put, the high-dose pills were cheaper. According to sources at the George Washington University Medical Center (which was under contract to AID to publish the bulletin Population Reports), Syntex offered AID a better deal — a discount on the domestically discredited, high-estrogen pills. Ravenholt bought up millions of dollars worth of Syntex’s stock of 80 microgram pills — for overseas use only, of course.</p>
<p>The dangers of estrogen overdosing don’t dismay AID’s inundation strategists. Dr. Malcolm Potts, director of the International Fertility Research Program and a key inundation planner, even sees a bright side to one pill side effect — swollen breasts. In a paper presented at the 1977 Tokyo International Symposium on Population, Potts and two colleagues suggested as a catchy slogan for rural pill promotion: “It makes your breasts more beautiful and is good for everyone — including the tailors who have to make bigger brassieres.”</p>
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<p>Depo-Provera, a drug unfamiliar to most Americans, because it is not available here, may determine the future of contraceptive dumping. Right now, AID is prohibited from shipping it across U.S. borders. But debates that will begin within the next few months will reopen the issue. If this dump is approved by Congress or the FDA, the informal contraceptive double standard will become official U.S. policy.</p>
<p>But AID is not just passively waiting for the go-ahead. Depo’s manufacturer (the Upjohn Company) and AID are, even now, getting around the law and dumping the drug through both overt and covert programs. According to Upjohn, five million women in 70 countries have used Depo-Provera for contraception.</p>
<p>There are reasons why AID is so anxious to increase the distribution of Depo-Provera. Most birth control methods, because they depend on consumer cooperation, are considered unreliable by population controllers. Pills, condoms or diaphragms can all be forgotten or rejected. Sterilization would be ideal, but is politically risky. Depo-Provera brings new hope to planners looking for the final solution to fertility, for several reasons.</p>
<p>First, it is long-lasting: one injection prevents conception for three to six months. Second, it requires no effort on the part of the patient. Finally, by being injectable, it is believed to have a special appeal in the Third World, where, according to the AID-funded journal Population Reports, “injections are associated with safe, effective, modern medicine.”</p>
<p>To the Third World consumer, a new product from the U.S. may seem to represent the latest in scientific research. But the overseas consumer of Depo doesn’t know that the “latest research” is what prevented the contraceptive from being approved for use in the United States, and that is why it is being dumped.</p>
<p>The list of known side effects, complications and potentially lethal hazards could fill several magazine-size pages with small print. Depo-Provera causes nodules in the breasts and cancer in the reproductive organs of test animals. It causes “irregular bleeding disturbances,” which have been described in one medical journal as “menstrual chaos.” It reduces the body’s resistance to infection. In some women it causes weight gain, headaches and dizziness. Its effects are not readily reversible: use may be followed by long-term or even permanent sterility. If injected into a pregnant woman (and almost every field study has reported the accidental injection of pregnant women), it can cause birth defects, especially congenital heart defects, and, in the case of female fetuses, masculinization and enlargement of the clitoris. Dr. J. Joseph Speidel, a colleague of Ray Ravenholt’s at AID, did concede that excess bleeding induced by Depo “will be a problem where sanitary napkins are in short supply.”</p>
<p>For 11 years, starting in 1967, Upjohn battled to get FDA approval for Depo-Provera. But in 1971, after studies done on beagle dogs showed that Depo was carcinogenic in high doses, the FDA was alarmed enough to call a halt to all clinical tests of the drug. On March 7, 1978, the FDA sent Upjohn a letter notifying the company of its final decision: Depo-Provera was “not approvable” for use in the U.S.</p>
<p>The population control community was outraged by the FDA’s decision. AID’s Ray Ravenholt called it “the tyranny of the beagle dog.”</p>
<p>Domestic criticism of Depo-Provera has not prevented a plentiful supply from reaching the Third World. The FDA’s refusal to approve Depo only meant that Upjohn could not ship the drug from its U.S. plants. It could, however, ship the drug from its Belgian subsidiary to whatever foreign commercial outlets it could find.</p>
<p>It has found plenty. In Belize, Central America, Depo is freely available at drugstores, despite what our correspondent reports as “many instances of amenorrhea [lack of menstrual periods] or profuse bleeding.” A letter from Guatemala City to the Washington-based National Women’s Health Network, related that in Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic “it is completely possible to buy it over the counter with no prescription.”</p>
<p>This, apparently, is not enough for some parties. AID would like to be able to buy up huge batches of Depo at bulk rates, and Upjohn would like nothing better. Both testified to that effect to the U.S. Congress. An AID-subsidized dump could mean a four-fold increase in Upjohn’s Depo sales.</p>
<p>There are several ways this could happen. First, AID could simply buy Depo from Upjohn’s Belgian subsidiary and ship from there, as it has threatened to do. Another possibility is that Congress could pass a new drug reform act allowing for the export of nonapproved drugs. (A bill that may liberalize drug exports has recently been approved by the Senate Health Committee.) Or, the FDA could reverse its position on Depo-Provera and approve it for use in the United States, though perhaps only for special subgroups (the mentally retarded and drug addicts have been proposed). This, believe it or not, is a real possibility.</p>
<p>But with all eyes on Congress and the FDA, the real action is going on under the table. Increased pressure from feminist groups and mounting suspicion in some Third World countries are forcing AID, like the CIA, to carry on its more “sensitive” activities through a thick padding of front groups.</p>
<p>In September 1978, an elite group called the Population Roundtable met at Planned Parenthood World Population Headquarters in New York. Present were representatives of the Population Council, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the UN Fund for Population Activities and — unbeknownst to the invited participants — two feminist health activists. The principle speaker was AID’s Ravenholt, and, according to the two feminists present, “He stated that AID’s most sensitive actions frequently cannot be spoken of publicly. He proudly reported that $12 million was secretly funneled to Mexico through Family Planning International Assistance, part of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and other organizations…that are AID-tainted conduits. He described this as a ‘remarkable creative action.'”</p>
<p>AID’s willingness to apply similar creativity to the Depo problem was expressed publicly in the May 1978 congressional hearings on population and development. Representative James Scheuer asked Dr. J. Joseph Speidel, then deputy director of AID’s Office of Population: “If a health minister or chief of state of a foreign country requested our AID officials to provide Depo-Provera, would there be sufficient protection for our AID organization to make Depo-Provera available?”</p>
<p>Speidel responded: “I think our first action would be to attempt to get the appropriate supplies to them through some other routing. For example, the U.N. Fund for Population Activities might be willing to provide the needed drugs.”</p>
<p>The U.N. Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) has received $204 million, or 35 percent of its income, from AID since the fund’s inception in 1969. In its first year of operation, a full 85 percent of UNFPA’s money came from AID. Other agencies that might be happy to provide “routing” for covert AID actions include:</p>
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<p>All of these agencies have the advantage of being officially “private” or “international” despite their heavy dependence on U.S. public funds. Both IPPF and UNFPA are distributing Depo-Provera.</p>
<p>AID itself, we have discovered, continues to supply Depo under the guise of research. According to an AID internal document dated April 1979, three “Operations Research Projects” developed, designed and financed by AID are now supplying Depo-Provera. One, in San Pablo Autopan, Mexico, involves a population of 8,000; the second, in Sri Lanka, involves 120,000 people; and the last, in Matlab Thana, Bangladesh, involves 250,000 people.</p>
<p>AID’s resort to undercover stratagems, frustrating as it may be to reformers, is a measure of the agency’s increasing public vulnerability. The Dalkon Shield dump in 1972-75 went by almost unnoticed; Depo-Provera in 1979 is the target of international activists. Newspapers throughout the Third World have carried exposés about U.S. drug companies and AID’s contraceptive double standard, although the U.S. press has virtually ignored the issue. Representatives of the “independent” population control agencies privately admit that their ties to AID have become an international embarrassment.</p>
<p>Under pressure, even AID has begun to change its tune. No one talks about contraceptive inundation anymore. Ray Ravenholt has been demoted to a still-powerful but ambiguous position as head of population training. And while AID is as committed as ever to the Depo dump, its public statements now link population control to “health and nutrition…and the role of the community, including that of women.”</p>
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<p>Most of the growing resistance to contraceptive dumping is coming, in fact, from women — both the targets of the dumps and the American women at the more privileged end of the double standard. For thousands of American feminist health activists, Depo-Provera, sterilization abuse, and AID’s entire population control program have become immediate issues. Carol Downer, a director of the Los Angeles Feminist Women’s Health Center says, “We can fight against some problem here, only to see it exported to women overseas. But we’re not going to sit by while a victory at home turns into a tragedy abroad. Feminists here have a responsibility to women all over the world.”</p>
<p>Third World women activists agree. At a 1978 conference on Women and Multinational Corporations held in Des Moines, Iowa, a young Filipino woman urged the American women present to “find out everything you can” about American corporations and their products and spread the word. “Living in a dictatorship, we are very limited in our access to information,” she said. “You are not.”</p>
<p>It’s just this kind of process — what Belita Cowan of the Washington Women’s Health Network calls “grass-roots-level information sharing” — that will, sooner or later, make contraceptive dumping impossible: a nurse in Guatemala writes to the Boston Women’s Health Collective and gets back a packet of information on Depo-Provera; a student from South Korea attends a feminist conference in the U.S. and takes back a stack of literature on U.S. drug companies’ overseas operations; a health worker in Honduras discovers Dalkon Shields in a clinic supply room and alerts the local women.</p>
<p>So far, it can’t compare with the international network AID runs or the “information sharing” a drug company’s public relations department can arrange. But the word is getting out.</p>
<p>Barbara Ehrenreich is coauthor of For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women; Mark Dowie is the publisher of Mother Jones; Stephen Minkin is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, England. Research assistance was provided by Carolyn Marshall and Victoria Dompka.</p>
<p /> | The Charge: Gynocide | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/1979/11/charge-gynocide/ | 2018-11-01 | 4left
| The Charge: Gynocide
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<p>When Maria Aguirrez woke up on the morning of June 5, 1977, she was, at first, too drenched with sweat to feel the blood. They had warned her at the clinic that there might be some bleeding, but this was more than a period. Her skirt, the worn sheet, the mat, were soaked through — more than after her oldest daughter’s birth, when the midwife had, at one point, simply prayed. Dimly, Maria must have realized that the baby was already awake and fussing. He was still fussing an hour later when Maria’s sister, summoned by the older children, came running in. Maria was no longer sweating.</p>
<p>The death of Maria Aguirrez (not her real name) does not even figure as a statistic in our story. It was recorded as the result of a fever. That the fever and the bleeding were the result of an intrauterine device (IUD) known to be unsafe was not recorded. Nor would the information have made any difference to the government and corporate officials behind the distribution of the device; they were already well aware of the history of medical problems associated with it.</p>
<p>The U.S. government and U.S. drug companies maintain a systematic and intentional double standard for the sale of contraceptives. Unsafe IUDs, dangerous high-estrogen birth control pills and, most recently, Depo-Provera — an injectable contraceptive not approved for American use — are bought up wholesale by the U.S. government for mass consumption in the Third World. This is the story of how and where and why these contraceptive dumps take place, of the corporations that profit from them and of the government official, Dr. R.T. Ravenholt, who headed the Office of Population of the U.S. Agency for International Development and engineered the dumps.</p>
<p>The contraceptive double standard surfaced as a public issue only in the summer of 1978, when a congressional committee held hearings on the Depo-Provera problem: Should the U.S. government subsidize the export to Third World nations of a contraceptive drug that had been ruled unsafe for American women? Pharmaceutical company spokespeople, officials of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) and representatives of private population control agencies stood up one after another to advance the “humanitarian” defense of the double standard. Because the risks of dying in childbirth are so much greater in the Third World than in the United States, they asserted the use of almost any contraceptive is justified. Scientists from selected Third World governments, many of them U.S.-sponsored dictatorships like Chile and Thailand, seconded the argument, adding that their “national sovereignty” would be violated if they were denied access to the contraceptive of their choice. Consumer representatives countered that there is no excuse for sending our least safe contraceptive abroad and questioned the accountability of the “sovereign” governments, which, it is now known, have received millions of dollars in bribes from U.S. drug companies like Upjohn Co. (maker of Depo-Provera) and G. D. Searle Co. (a manufacturer of birth control pills).</p>
<p>At the bottom the contraceptive issue is no different than the case of Tris-treated pajamas, carcinogenic pesticides or lethal antibiotics: products that had been found unsafe for domestic use are still being sold overseas. There is, however, a crucial difference in the case of contraceptives: dumping them is not only a common business practice; it is part of U.S. foreign policy.</p>
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<p>The dangers of the Dalkon Shield IUD were well known before the dump began in 1972. Only a few months after the Dalkon Shield went on the market in 1971, reports of adverse reactions began pouring into the headquarters of the manufacturer, A. H. Robins Co. (See “A Case of Corporate Malpractice,” by Mark Dowie and Tracy Johnston, MJ, Nov. ’76.) There were cases of pelvic inflammatory disease (an infection of the uterus that can require weeks of bed rest and antibiotic treatment), septicemia (blood poisoning), pregnancies resulting in spontaneous abortions, ectopic (tubal) pregnancies and perforations of the uterus. In a number of cases, the damage was so severe as to require a hysterectomy. There were even medical reports of Dalkon Shields ripping their way through the walls of the uterus and being found floating free in the abdominal cavity far from the uterus. According to a recent and probably conservative U.S. medical estimate, the Dalkon Shield caused over 200,000 cases of serious uterine infections in this country alone. For every million dollars in profit the manufacturer has made on the Shield, U.S. women — those who could afford medical care at all — spent an estimated $20 million for medical care on problems arising from its use. By 1974, there were reports of deaths clearly attributable to the Dalkon Shield — not one or two, but 17.</p>
<p>The Dalkon Shield was turning out to be far more dangerous than any other IUD already on the market. Later research in Canada and Germany showed that microscopic defects helped account for the Shield’s ability to slice into the uterine wall. Worse still, the “wicking effect” of its string caused it to conduct bacteria up from the vagina, through the tiny cervical opening and into the uterus. Physicians found insertion was difficult; patients found it almost unbearable. As early as February 1971, a physician wrote to A. H. Robins in reference to the insertion of the Dalkon Shield: “I have found the procedure to be the most traumatic manipulation ever perpetrated on womanhood, and I have inserted thousands of other varieties.”</p>
<p>Sometime in 1972, with angry correspondence pouring in and the prospects for increasing U.S. sales looking bleak, A. H. Robins decided to expand its exports. With any other kind of hazardous product, the manufacturer might, at this point, have had to search out some sleazy broker to arrange a secret dump. Not so with a contraceptive device. The Office of Population within AID had a budget of $125 million to spend on the purchase and overseas distribution of contraceptives. Director R. T. Ravenholt was known to be a population control enthusiast who would ask few questions about a good deal on Dalkon Shields. It was only natural for Robins to turn to the government.</p>
<p>Robert W. Nickless, Robins’ director of international marketing, wrote to the population office of AID to interest them in placing “this fine product” with population control programs and family planning clinics throughout the Third World. Nickless sweetened the deal with a special discount, which dramatically illustrates the double standard drug companies apply to Third World consumers: the company offered AID the Shield in bulk packages, unsterilized, at 48 percent off.</p>
<p>Robins made this offer knowing that the sale of nonsterile IUDs was highly irregular in the United States. One of the greatest hazards associated with the use of any IUD is the possibility of introducing bacteria into the uterus, which is particularly poorly equipped to fight infection. In the United States, IUDs are sold to doctors in individual, sterilized packages, with a sterile, disposable inserter for each device.</p>
<p>Careful to preserve Robins’ image, Nickless emphasized that AID could not distribute the nonsterile Dalkon Shields in the U.S. The nonsterile form, he wrote in a January 1973 memo to AID, “is for the purpose of reducing price, and thereby attaining wider use [and] is intended for restricted sale to family planning/support organizations who will limit their distribution to those countries commonly referred to as ‘less developed.'” Practitioners in such countries were expected by Robins to sterilize the Shields by the old-fashioned method of soaking them in a disinfectant solution.</p>
<p>In the United States, according to private gynecologists we interviewed, the insertion of an IUD that had merely been soaked in a disinfectant before use would possibly be grounds for a malpractice suit. Robins insists that the “sterilization” procedure it recommended was effective, but it is highly likely that few people ever read the instructions. The company attached only one set of instructions for each pack of 1,000 Shields, and those were printed in only three languages — English, French and Spanish — although the devices were destined for 42 countries from Ethiopia to Malaysia. Worse still — only ten inserters were provided per 100 Shields, adding immeasurably to the possibility of infection.</p>
<p>To their credit, officials within AID did express concern with at least one of the more reckless features of Robins’ discount Dalkon dump. They questioned whether the Shields could be reliably inserted by the staffs of remote family planning clinics, who would not have had the benefit of an American medical education.</p>
<p>It should have been an embarrassing question for Robins. In the U.S., the company had repeatedly countered reports of adverse reactions by arguing that the person who had inserted the device, such as an occasional general practitioner, had been unqualified to do so. But Robins was undaunted and nimbly produced a new study which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that any paramedic could learn to insert a Dalkon Shield in half an hour.</p>
<p>Reassured by this logic, AID approved the deal. Hundreds of shoe-box-sized cartons, each filled with 1,000 unsterilized Dalkon Shields paid for by the U.S. treasury, left the shores of America for clinics in Paraguay, Israel, Tunisia and 39 other countries. The dump was on. Within months, the agencies that distributed Dalkon Shields for AID, such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation, had discovered more bad news about the device. Company sales monographs and ads in medical journals had boasted of a pregnancy rate with the Shield of no more than 1.1 percent. But the reports coming in from the field told another story: pregnancy rates of 4.5 percent in Israel, 3.8 percent in the United Kingdom, 6.7 percent in Costa Rica and 6.5 percent in Yugoslavia. One clinic in Latin America reported a pregnancy rate of 14.8 percent. From a population controller’s point of view, a contraceptive may, if expedient, be unsafe; but it should not, under any circumstances, be ineffective.</p>
<p>Disturbed by the negative reports, A. H. Robins sent Robert Nickless on a whistle-stop tour of Asia in March 1973 to counter the increasing volume of criticism and drum up new business. With him, Robins sent along an “independent expert” — Dr. John Lesinski, a colleague at Johns Hopkins University of the Shield’s inventor, Dr. Hugh Davis, and an early Dalkon Shield booster. At a typical stop, the local AID population control officer would assemble a group of physicians, and Lesinski, lending an aura of professional responsibility, would lecture, show slides, and occasionally perform demonstration insertions on a few local women.</p>
<p>While Nickless was peddling the Shield from Pakistan to Hong Kong, time was running out for it in the United States. In August of 1974, the FDA opened hearings on the Dalkon Shield. At that time, the FDA had little jurisdiction over medical devices like IUDs: they could investigate their safety, but they could not ban them from the market. Despite the FDA’s lack of authority, the hearings were held simply because, by 1974, the carnage had become too gruesome to ignore. One critical study after another told of women who had suffered infections, septic abortions or emergency hysterectomies.</p>
<p>A. H. Robins had been hardened by years of fighting regulatory agencies, however, and the company went down fighting. “Throughout the entire proceedings,” according to Dr. Richard Dickey, a member of the FDA’s Ob/Gyn committee, “the halls of the FDA were crawling with Robins men. It was disgusting. ” Finally evidence was presented at the hearings that could have undercut Robins’ defenses in future product liability suits, potentially costing millions of dollars. Only then did the company give up. Robins made no attempt to resume its domestic sales, suspended at the FDA’s urging.</p>
<p>When Robins gave in, AID was left holding the bag, or, rather, the bulk pack. International complaints about the effectiveness of the device had been bad enough. With the Shield now considered too dangerous for domestic use, AID had little choice but to issue an international recall. It was an embarrassing moment for the agency, but hardly a major setback. Even without Dalkon Shields, there would be plenty of “discount” contraceptives to dump in the Third World.</p>
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<p>That corporations dump to make a profit is no surprise. In the case of contraceptive dumping through the foreign aid program, though, there are other motives as well. What kind of person knowingly stamped the seal of American “goodwill” on this corporate jackpot? To find out, in July 1979, we interviewed Dr. R. T. (Ray) Ravenholt, the head of AID’s Office of Population from 1966 to mid-1979 and the man who most represents the government role in contraceptive dumping.</p>
<p>In person, he is a tall, affable Midwesterner with an engaging smile and a marked inability to sit still once he warms up to the subject at hand. No sooner had we gotten through the introductions than he bounded off to one corner of his spacious office and returned with his latest contraceptive enthusiasm: a plastic “gun-styled” laparoscopic device, which, when aimed through the vagina, shoots little plastic bands around the fallopian tubes, resulting in permanent sterilization. He demonstrated by placing one foot up on his chair and shooting bands at his shoelace. Only after he completed the simulated sterilization of his left foot were we able to bring the subject around to the Dalkon Shield.</p>
<p>“Robins didn’t know there was any problem with it in 1972,” he insisted. When we countered that A. H. Robins had been deluged with reports of adverse reactions by that time, Ravenholt smiled patiently and explained: “You don’t really know anything until you have a very, very large number of people who have used it. You might have one kind of impression from 10,000 people, another from 100,000. You might need a million — 10 million — before you really know.”</p>
<p>You might, in other words, need a few medium-size nations to experiment on.</p>
<p>Ravenholt did concede that AID “had been hearing about infections” associated with the Dalkon Shield prior to Robins’ withdrawal of the device. Then, leaning forward with enthusiasm, he confided his own theory about IUD-induced pelvic infections: “Women who frequently change sexual partners have these intercurrent low-grade infections,” he told us. “The IUD can’t cause an infection. The body tolerates anything that’s sterile.” Taken aback, we asked whether Dalkon Shield-related infections in the Third World might not have been caused by nonsterile devices, rather than by female promiscuity. “Well,” he said, in a classic non sequitur, it wasn’t just the Dalkon Shield that was supplied that way. The Lippes Loop [another variety of IUD] was supplied in a nonsterile form at first too.”</p>
<p>Ravenholt has one very good reason to continue to defend the Dalkon Shield: it is still in use throughout the Third World. When the recall order was issued in 1975, AID could hope to recover stocks of unused devices from the warehouses and storage rooms of major international agencies, like the International Planned Parenthood Federation. But it could not, despite any number of memos, recall the AID-supplied Shields from the approximately 440,000 women already using the device. Nor could it hope to recover the thousands of Shields lying in the drawers of countless private practitioners and tiny rural family planning clinics.</p>
<p>Almost five years after the manufacturer’s suspension of sales and AID’s recall, Dalkon Shields are still being inserted. Dr. A. Goldsmith, a researcher for the AID-funded International Fertility Research Program and a man who could hardly be accused of harboring a consumerist bias, told us in June 1979, “I know they are still inserting the device” in Pakistan, India and possibly in South Africa.</p>
<p>It is impossible to know how frequently this is still taking place, but our own sources have told us of at least two cases. In Nairobi, Kenya, on the wall of the Family Planning Association clinic, there is a poster advertising the Dalkon Shield. In early May 1979, a young woman patient at this clinic was offered, among other birth control options, a Dalkon Shield. In Ottawa, Canada, Pierre Blais, senior consultant to the Bureau of Medical Devices told us, the Shield was being inserted as late as 1977 — two years after it had been withdrawn from the U.S. market.</p>
<p>Finally, neither AID nor even the FDA would have any way of stopping A. H. Robins from privately dumping its own unsold stock of Dalkon Shields, if the company was of a mind to do so — and it was. In a recent interview, Robins attorney Franklin Tatum admitted to us that his client was still selling the devices through the first quarter of 1975 — even as they were being recalled through AID and allegedly destroyed.</p>
<p />
<p>Ray Ravenholt winces slightly when he is asked about his critics, who are as numerous and diverse as any salaried civil servant could hope to acquire. “Right to lifers” head his list, along with “Catholics, Communists….” He could have added consumerists, like Ralph Nader’s Health Research Group, and feminists, like the National Women’s Health Network and the Feminist Women’s Health Centers.</p>
<p>To be fair though, he is a man with a cause, and that cause is ultimately no different from the one that motivates every other hard-working professional in the State Department. “Population explosions, unless stopped, would lead to revolutions,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in an April 1977 interview. Population control is required to maintain “the normal operation of U.S. commercial interests around the world…. Without our trying to help these countries with their economic and social development, the world would rebel against the strong U.S. commercial presence. The self-interest thing is the compelling element.”</p>
<p>More liberal population controllers argue that economic development, health services and an expanded role for women are needed to motivate people to reduce family size, but Ravenholt’s approach is single-mindedly contraceptive-oriented. To him, the point is to “get the contraceptives out there.”</p>
<p>In the early 1970s Ravenholt pioneered a whole new approach to “getting them out there” — the “inundation approach,” which was to provide, among other things, a convenient dump for the Palo Alto, California-based Syntex Corporation. Contraceptive inundation means disseminating contraceptives through any outlets, to any and all takers. Trained personnel can be bypassed; educational programs can be dispensed with. Oral contraceptives were especially well-suited to the inundation approach.</p>
<p>No woman can insert her own IUD, but — the theory was — if you can chew gum, you can swallow a pill. In Bangladesh, site of an intensive AID inundation program, pills are sold, usually at nominal prices and without any semblance of medical supervision, through local shops, alongside cigarettes, bananas and betel nuts.</p>
<p>From the beginning, AID’s inundation program in Bangladesh had the markings of a biological disaster. The average Bangladeshi woman weighs 92 pounds and suffers from chronic malnutrition. Even in a 135-pound American woman, the pill is known to deplete the body’s supply of vitamins A, B-6, D and folic acid (hence the special vitamins sold in the U.S. as supplements to the pill). Furthermore, no less than 90 percent of the Bangladeshi women who accepted the pill were breastfeeding. According to a study by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, babies nursed by pill-users grew at an average rate that was only two-thirds that of babies nursed by non-pill-users. Ending world hunger is the most common rationalization for the top-down approach to population control, but in Bangladesh, AID was creating its own kind of chemically induced famine.</p>
<p>All this preceded anything that could, strictly speaking, be called a dump. AID was, after all, distributing a pill that had been judged safe for American women. Not all birth control pills are the same, however, and in 1970 the FDA had advised physicians to prescribe only those with the lowest possible estrogen dose — at that time, 50 micrograms. Sales of high-estrogen pills began to sag. AID had at first been following the FDA’s advice, buying 50 microgram pills from G. D. Searle, Wyeth, and Parke, Davis. Then, in 1973, AID took its business to the Syntex Corporation and started buying up high-dose, 80 microgram pills. AID explained the switch as a response to “market conditions.” Simply put, the high-dose pills were cheaper. According to sources at the George Washington University Medical Center (which was under contract to AID to publish the bulletin Population Reports), Syntex offered AID a better deal — a discount on the domestically discredited, high-estrogen pills. Ravenholt bought up millions of dollars worth of Syntex’s stock of 80 microgram pills — for overseas use only, of course.</p>
<p>The dangers of estrogen overdosing don’t dismay AID’s inundation strategists. Dr. Malcolm Potts, director of the International Fertility Research Program and a key inundation planner, even sees a bright side to one pill side effect — swollen breasts. In a paper presented at the 1977 Tokyo International Symposium on Population, Potts and two colleagues suggested as a catchy slogan for rural pill promotion: “It makes your breasts more beautiful and is good for everyone — including the tailors who have to make bigger brassieres.”</p>
<p />
<p>Depo-Provera, a drug unfamiliar to most Americans, because it is not available here, may determine the future of contraceptive dumping. Right now, AID is prohibited from shipping it across U.S. borders. But debates that will begin within the next few months will reopen the issue. If this dump is approved by Congress or the FDA, the informal contraceptive double standard will become official U.S. policy.</p>
<p>But AID is not just passively waiting for the go-ahead. Depo’s manufacturer (the Upjohn Company) and AID are, even now, getting around the law and dumping the drug through both overt and covert programs. According to Upjohn, five million women in 70 countries have used Depo-Provera for contraception.</p>
<p>There are reasons why AID is so anxious to increase the distribution of Depo-Provera. Most birth control methods, because they depend on consumer cooperation, are considered unreliable by population controllers. Pills, condoms or diaphragms can all be forgotten or rejected. Sterilization would be ideal, but is politically risky. Depo-Provera brings new hope to planners looking for the final solution to fertility, for several reasons.</p>
<p>First, it is long-lasting: one injection prevents conception for three to six months. Second, it requires no effort on the part of the patient. Finally, by being injectable, it is believed to have a special appeal in the Third World, where, according to the AID-funded journal Population Reports, “injections are associated with safe, effective, modern medicine.”</p>
<p>To the Third World consumer, a new product from the U.S. may seem to represent the latest in scientific research. But the overseas consumer of Depo doesn’t know that the “latest research” is what prevented the contraceptive from being approved for use in the United States, and that is why it is being dumped.</p>
<p>The list of known side effects, complications and potentially lethal hazards could fill several magazine-size pages with small print. Depo-Provera causes nodules in the breasts and cancer in the reproductive organs of test animals. It causes “irregular bleeding disturbances,” which have been described in one medical journal as “menstrual chaos.” It reduces the body’s resistance to infection. In some women it causes weight gain, headaches and dizziness. Its effects are not readily reversible: use may be followed by long-term or even permanent sterility. If injected into a pregnant woman (and almost every field study has reported the accidental injection of pregnant women), it can cause birth defects, especially congenital heart defects, and, in the case of female fetuses, masculinization and enlargement of the clitoris. Dr. J. Joseph Speidel, a colleague of Ray Ravenholt’s at AID, did concede that excess bleeding induced by Depo “will be a problem where sanitary napkins are in short supply.”</p>
<p>For 11 years, starting in 1967, Upjohn battled to get FDA approval for Depo-Provera. But in 1971, after studies done on beagle dogs showed that Depo was carcinogenic in high doses, the FDA was alarmed enough to call a halt to all clinical tests of the drug. On March 7, 1978, the FDA sent Upjohn a letter notifying the company of its final decision: Depo-Provera was “not approvable” for use in the U.S.</p>
<p>The population control community was outraged by the FDA’s decision. AID’s Ray Ravenholt called it “the tyranny of the beagle dog.”</p>
<p>Domestic criticism of Depo-Provera has not prevented a plentiful supply from reaching the Third World. The FDA’s refusal to approve Depo only meant that Upjohn could not ship the drug from its U.S. plants. It could, however, ship the drug from its Belgian subsidiary to whatever foreign commercial outlets it could find.</p>
<p>It has found plenty. In Belize, Central America, Depo is freely available at drugstores, despite what our correspondent reports as “many instances of amenorrhea [lack of menstrual periods] or profuse bleeding.” A letter from Guatemala City to the Washington-based National Women’s Health Network, related that in Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic “it is completely possible to buy it over the counter with no prescription.”</p>
<p>This, apparently, is not enough for some parties. AID would like to be able to buy up huge batches of Depo at bulk rates, and Upjohn would like nothing better. Both testified to that effect to the U.S. Congress. An AID-subsidized dump could mean a four-fold increase in Upjohn’s Depo sales.</p>
<p>There are several ways this could happen. First, AID could simply buy Depo from Upjohn’s Belgian subsidiary and ship from there, as it has threatened to do. Another possibility is that Congress could pass a new drug reform act allowing for the export of nonapproved drugs. (A bill that may liberalize drug exports has recently been approved by the Senate Health Committee.) Or, the FDA could reverse its position on Depo-Provera and approve it for use in the United States, though perhaps only for special subgroups (the mentally retarded and drug addicts have been proposed). This, believe it or not, is a real possibility.</p>
<p>But with all eyes on Congress and the FDA, the real action is going on under the table. Increased pressure from feminist groups and mounting suspicion in some Third World countries are forcing AID, like the CIA, to carry on its more “sensitive” activities through a thick padding of front groups.</p>
<p>In September 1978, an elite group called the Population Roundtable met at Planned Parenthood World Population Headquarters in New York. Present were representatives of the Population Council, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the UN Fund for Population Activities and — unbeknownst to the invited participants — two feminist health activists. The principle speaker was AID’s Ravenholt, and, according to the two feminists present, “He stated that AID’s most sensitive actions frequently cannot be spoken of publicly. He proudly reported that $12 million was secretly funneled to Mexico through Family Planning International Assistance, part of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and other organizations…that are AID-tainted conduits. He described this as a ‘remarkable creative action.'”</p>
<p>AID’s willingness to apply similar creativity to the Depo problem was expressed publicly in the May 1978 congressional hearings on population and development. Representative James Scheuer asked Dr. J. Joseph Speidel, then deputy director of AID’s Office of Population: “If a health minister or chief of state of a foreign country requested our AID officials to provide Depo-Provera, would there be sufficient protection for our AID organization to make Depo-Provera available?”</p>
<p>Speidel responded: “I think our first action would be to attempt to get the appropriate supplies to them through some other routing. For example, the U.N. Fund for Population Activities might be willing to provide the needed drugs.”</p>
<p>The U.N. Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) has received $204 million, or 35 percent of its income, from AID since the fund’s inception in 1969. In its first year of operation, a full 85 percent of UNFPA’s money came from AID. Other agencies that might be happy to provide “routing” for covert AID actions include:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>All of these agencies have the advantage of being officially “private” or “international” despite their heavy dependence on U.S. public funds. Both IPPF and UNFPA are distributing Depo-Provera.</p>
<p>AID itself, we have discovered, continues to supply Depo under the guise of research. According to an AID internal document dated April 1979, three “Operations Research Projects” developed, designed and financed by AID are now supplying Depo-Provera. One, in San Pablo Autopan, Mexico, involves a population of 8,000; the second, in Sri Lanka, involves 120,000 people; and the last, in Matlab Thana, Bangladesh, involves 250,000 people.</p>
<p>AID’s resort to undercover stratagems, frustrating as it may be to reformers, is a measure of the agency’s increasing public vulnerability. The Dalkon Shield dump in 1972-75 went by almost unnoticed; Depo-Provera in 1979 is the target of international activists. Newspapers throughout the Third World have carried exposés about U.S. drug companies and AID’s contraceptive double standard, although the U.S. press has virtually ignored the issue. Representatives of the “independent” population control agencies privately admit that their ties to AID have become an international embarrassment.</p>
<p>Under pressure, even AID has begun to change its tune. No one talks about contraceptive inundation anymore. Ray Ravenholt has been demoted to a still-powerful but ambiguous position as head of population training. And while AID is as committed as ever to the Depo dump, its public statements now link population control to “health and nutrition…and the role of the community, including that of women.”</p>
<p />
<p>Most of the growing resistance to contraceptive dumping is coming, in fact, from women — both the targets of the dumps and the American women at the more privileged end of the double standard. For thousands of American feminist health activists, Depo-Provera, sterilization abuse, and AID’s entire population control program have become immediate issues. Carol Downer, a director of the Los Angeles Feminist Women’s Health Center says, “We can fight against some problem here, only to see it exported to women overseas. But we’re not going to sit by while a victory at home turns into a tragedy abroad. Feminists here have a responsibility to women all over the world.”</p>
<p>Third World women activists agree. At a 1978 conference on Women and Multinational Corporations held in Des Moines, Iowa, a young Filipino woman urged the American women present to “find out everything you can” about American corporations and their products and spread the word. “Living in a dictatorship, we are very limited in our access to information,” she said. “You are not.”</p>
<p>It’s just this kind of process — what Belita Cowan of the Washington Women’s Health Network calls “grass-roots-level information sharing” — that will, sooner or later, make contraceptive dumping impossible: a nurse in Guatemala writes to the Boston Women’s Health Collective and gets back a packet of information on Depo-Provera; a student from South Korea attends a feminist conference in the U.S. and takes back a stack of literature on U.S. drug companies’ overseas operations; a health worker in Honduras discovers Dalkon Shields in a clinic supply room and alerts the local women.</p>
<p>So far, it can’t compare with the international network AID runs or the “information sharing” a drug company’s public relations department can arrange. But the word is getting out.</p>
<p>Barbara Ehrenreich is coauthor of For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women; Mark Dowie is the publisher of Mother Jones; Stephen Minkin is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, England. Research assistance was provided by Carolyn Marshall and Victoria Dompka.</p>
<p /> | 2,180 |
<p>Despite protests from a leading shareholder, China’s Shuanghui International is reportedly not planning to boost its $4.7 billion takeover of meat producer Smithfield Foods (NYSE:SFD).</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Smithfield released a statement after Monday's closing bell reaffirming its recommendation for shareholders to approve the Shuanghui offer, which represents a 31% premium on the company's closing price the day before the bid emerged.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"The strategic combination with Shuanghui provides Smithfield shareholders with significant, immediate and certain cash value for their investment," the company said.</p>
<p>In a letter on Monday to Smithfield’s board of directors, the Starboard Fund argued the world’s largest meat producer <a href="" type="internal">could fetch as much as 62% more if it sells off its various business lines in pieces to strategic or financial buyers</a>.</p>
<p>Smithfield said it considered "several different separation scenarios," but its board of directors is "pleased with the process it followed leading to this transaction."</p>
<p>While Starboard feels Smithfield could be valued at $55 a share, China’s Shuanghui will not boost its $34-a-share bid for Smithfield, Dealreporter reported on Monday afternoon.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>“It is incumbent upon Starboard to fully explore whether strategic or financial buyers are interested in the company's operating divisions in order to confirm our belief that the sum of Smithfield's parts are indeed greater than its whole,”&#160;Starboard managing member Jeffrey Smith wrote in the extensive letter.</p>
<p>Starboard said it owns 5.7% of the Smithfield, Va.-based company's outstanding shares.</p>
<p>Even though the push by Starboard is relatively risk-free because the buyout is fully financed, if Smithfield shareholders rejected the deal and Shuanghui walked away, a source told Dealreporter that the company’s stock could tumble to about $26.</p>
<p>Sources also told the publication that carving Smithfield up into pieces carries significant execution risk due in part to tax implications.</p>
<p>While Smithfield’s stock rallied as high as $33.35 on Monday, it closed off its best levels at $33.08, or up 0.85% on the session.</p>
<p>If approved by shareholders and regulators, including <a href="" type="internal">the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States</a>, the takeover of Smithfield would be the <a href="" type="internal">largest ever of a U.S. target by a Chinese company</a>.</p> | Report: China's Shuanghui Unwilling to Lift Smithfield Takeover Price | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/06/17/report-china-shuanghui-unwilling-to-lift-smithfield-takeover-price.html | 2016-01-25 | 0right
| Report: China's Shuanghui Unwilling to Lift Smithfield Takeover Price
<p>Despite protests from a leading shareholder, China’s Shuanghui International is reportedly not planning to boost its $4.7 billion takeover of meat producer Smithfield Foods (NYSE:SFD).</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Smithfield released a statement after Monday's closing bell reaffirming its recommendation for shareholders to approve the Shuanghui offer, which represents a 31% premium on the company's closing price the day before the bid emerged.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"The strategic combination with Shuanghui provides Smithfield shareholders with significant, immediate and certain cash value for their investment," the company said.</p>
<p>In a letter on Monday to Smithfield’s board of directors, the Starboard Fund argued the world’s largest meat producer <a href="" type="internal">could fetch as much as 62% more if it sells off its various business lines in pieces to strategic or financial buyers</a>.</p>
<p>Smithfield said it considered "several different separation scenarios," but its board of directors is "pleased with the process it followed leading to this transaction."</p>
<p>While Starboard feels Smithfield could be valued at $55 a share, China’s Shuanghui will not boost its $34-a-share bid for Smithfield, Dealreporter reported on Monday afternoon.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>“It is incumbent upon Starboard to fully explore whether strategic or financial buyers are interested in the company's operating divisions in order to confirm our belief that the sum of Smithfield's parts are indeed greater than its whole,”&#160;Starboard managing member Jeffrey Smith wrote in the extensive letter.</p>
<p>Starboard said it owns 5.7% of the Smithfield, Va.-based company's outstanding shares.</p>
<p>Even though the push by Starboard is relatively risk-free because the buyout is fully financed, if Smithfield shareholders rejected the deal and Shuanghui walked away, a source told Dealreporter that the company’s stock could tumble to about $26.</p>
<p>Sources also told the publication that carving Smithfield up into pieces carries significant execution risk due in part to tax implications.</p>
<p>While Smithfield’s stock rallied as high as $33.35 on Monday, it closed off its best levels at $33.08, or up 0.85% on the session.</p>
<p>If approved by shareholders and regulators, including <a href="" type="internal">the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States</a>, the takeover of Smithfield would be the <a href="" type="internal">largest ever of a U.S. target by a Chinese company</a>.</p> | 2,181 |
<p>After a court hearing Friday morning, a Maryland state's attorney announced that the prosecution will drop rape and sex offense charges against the two illegal immigrant teens in the explosive Rockville High rape case. The teens, Henry Sanchez Milian, 18, and Jose Montano, 17, were accused by a 14-year-old girl classmate of brutally raping her in a school bathroom, throwing fuel on the fire of the national political debate over illegal immigration, particularly undocumented minors in the public school system.</p>
<p>Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy explained in a press conference following the court hearing Friday that a lack of corroborating evidence and "substantial inconsistencies" from witness accounts had led to the decision to drop the charges, though prosecutors say they will pursue new charges of child pornography.</p>
<p>After an extensive investigation, including phone and computer records, surveillance footage, witness accounts, and medical records, McCarthy explained, the prosecution determined "the original charges cannot be sustained and prosecution is untenable."</p>
<p>The defense maintains that the sex acts were consensual, saying that text messages between the girl and Montano as well as school surveillance footage corroborates that claim. However, as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/rape-charge-against-immigrant-teen-in-maryland-case-will-be-dropped-defense-lawyer-says/2017/05/05/a4806c02-312f-11e7-8674-437ddb6e813e_story.html?utm_term=.0146edb4748c" type="external">reports</a> reveal, while evidence suggests Montano and the girl planned to have a "sexual encounter" in the bathroom, whether or not she had consented to group sex with Sanchez Milian is unclear. Ultimately, the prosecution concluded that charges could not be pursued for rape or statutory rape.</p>
<p>The girl <a href="" type="internal">told authorities</a> on March 16 that she was brutally raped by Montano and Sanchez Milian that day in the boys' bathroom. "The victim was walking in a school hallway when she met two male students, identified as Montano and Sanchez," Montgomery County Police said in a <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/03/20/maryland-girl-allegedly-raped-in-high-school-bathroom-by-two-teens-at-least-one-here-illegally.html" type="external">statement</a>. "Montano asked the victim to walk with him and Sanchez. Montano asked the victim to engage in sexual intercourse. She refused. Montano asked the victim again and then forced her into a boy’s bathroom and then into a stall. Montano and Sanchez both raped the victim inside the bathroom stall."</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/rape-charge-against-immigrant-teen-in-maryland-case-will-be-dropped-defense-lawyer-says/2017/05/05/a4806c02-312f-11e7-8674-437ddb6e813e_story.html?utm_term=.0146edb4748c" type="external">The Washington</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/rape-charge-against-immigrant-teen-in-maryland-case-will-be-dropped-defense-lawyer-says/2017/05/05/a4806c02-312f-11e7-8674-437ddb6e813e_story.html?utm_term=.0146edb4748c" type="external">Post</a> notes that when questioned, both teens initially lied to authorities, heightening initial suspicions:</p>
<p>Montano “denied having any sexual contact with [the victim]. Montano stated they went into the bathroom to tell jokes,” detectives wrote after talking with him.</p>
<p>They also spoke with Sanchez Milian who “initially stated nothing happened,” the police affidavits state, “then changed his statement multiple times and admitted having sex with the victim with his friend Montano.”</p>
<p>Prosecutors agreed with the defense that text messages between the girl and Montano show that the two were planning to have sex, but they were looking into evidence that the suspects had plotted to gang rape her:</p>
<p>At a court hearing March 30 over setting bond, Assistant State’s Attorney Mary Herdman told a judge evidence was being discovered daily — some of it bolstering the accusations and some not. At that point of the investigation, though, she said text messages between the suspects showed they had at a minimum planned to commit a crime.</p>
<p>“This was clearly a conspiracy between this defendant and the co-defendant to get this victim into that bathroom and rape her and commit other sexual assaults against her,” Herdman said in court.</p>
<p>The attorney of the 18-year-old at one point acknowledged that it "does seem improbable" that group sex in a school bathroom would be "consensual"; however, the evidence did not support the case against the suspects. Statutory rape charges were also not an option for the prosecution. Though the alleged victim was only 14, according to state law the two boys had to be a full four years older, Sanchez Milian apparently falling just short of that age gap.</p>
<p>As for the potential child pornography charges, the attorneys of the two illegal immigrants blasted the charges as "selective prosecution" and a "gross misapplication" of child pornography laws. The charges involve nude images of the 14-year-old girl discovered by prosecutors on Sanchez Milian's cell phone, which the girl originally sent to Montano, who distributed them to the 18-year-old Sanchez Milian.​</p>
<p>When the politically charged story broke, the details of the two teen immigrants' history caused a national stir. Just months before the rape allegations, both had illegally entered the country through the southern border, had been detained, then released to live with relatives in the area. Since the school had no official records of the teens' educational background, the 17 and 18-year-old teens were enrolled into 9th grade. ​When authorities began looking into the case, they discovered that Sanchez Milian's father, Adolfo Sanchez-Reyes, 43, from Guatemala, was also illegally in the country. He was <a href="" type="internal">arrested</a> by ICE in late March.</p> | Prosecutors Drop Rockville High Rape Case | true | https://dailywire.com/news/16122/prosecutors-drop-rockville-high-rape-case-james-barrett | 2017-05-05 | 0right
| Prosecutors Drop Rockville High Rape Case
<p>After a court hearing Friday morning, a Maryland state's attorney announced that the prosecution will drop rape and sex offense charges against the two illegal immigrant teens in the explosive Rockville High rape case. The teens, Henry Sanchez Milian, 18, and Jose Montano, 17, were accused by a 14-year-old girl classmate of brutally raping her in a school bathroom, throwing fuel on the fire of the national political debate over illegal immigration, particularly undocumented minors in the public school system.</p>
<p>Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy explained in a press conference following the court hearing Friday that a lack of corroborating evidence and "substantial inconsistencies" from witness accounts had led to the decision to drop the charges, though prosecutors say they will pursue new charges of child pornography.</p>
<p>After an extensive investigation, including phone and computer records, surveillance footage, witness accounts, and medical records, McCarthy explained, the prosecution determined "the original charges cannot be sustained and prosecution is untenable."</p>
<p>The defense maintains that the sex acts were consensual, saying that text messages between the girl and Montano as well as school surveillance footage corroborates that claim. However, as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/rape-charge-against-immigrant-teen-in-maryland-case-will-be-dropped-defense-lawyer-says/2017/05/05/a4806c02-312f-11e7-8674-437ddb6e813e_story.html?utm_term=.0146edb4748c" type="external">reports</a> reveal, while evidence suggests Montano and the girl planned to have a "sexual encounter" in the bathroom, whether or not she had consented to group sex with Sanchez Milian is unclear. Ultimately, the prosecution concluded that charges could not be pursued for rape or statutory rape.</p>
<p>The girl <a href="" type="internal">told authorities</a> on March 16 that she was brutally raped by Montano and Sanchez Milian that day in the boys' bathroom. "The victim was walking in a school hallway when she met two male students, identified as Montano and Sanchez," Montgomery County Police said in a <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/03/20/maryland-girl-allegedly-raped-in-high-school-bathroom-by-two-teens-at-least-one-here-illegally.html" type="external">statement</a>. "Montano asked the victim to walk with him and Sanchez. Montano asked the victim to engage in sexual intercourse. She refused. Montano asked the victim again and then forced her into a boy’s bathroom and then into a stall. Montano and Sanchez both raped the victim inside the bathroom stall."</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/rape-charge-against-immigrant-teen-in-maryland-case-will-be-dropped-defense-lawyer-says/2017/05/05/a4806c02-312f-11e7-8674-437ddb6e813e_story.html?utm_term=.0146edb4748c" type="external">The Washington</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/rape-charge-against-immigrant-teen-in-maryland-case-will-be-dropped-defense-lawyer-says/2017/05/05/a4806c02-312f-11e7-8674-437ddb6e813e_story.html?utm_term=.0146edb4748c" type="external">Post</a> notes that when questioned, both teens initially lied to authorities, heightening initial suspicions:</p>
<p>Montano “denied having any sexual contact with [the victim]. Montano stated they went into the bathroom to tell jokes,” detectives wrote after talking with him.</p>
<p>They also spoke with Sanchez Milian who “initially stated nothing happened,” the police affidavits state, “then changed his statement multiple times and admitted having sex with the victim with his friend Montano.”</p>
<p>Prosecutors agreed with the defense that text messages between the girl and Montano show that the two were planning to have sex, but they were looking into evidence that the suspects had plotted to gang rape her:</p>
<p>At a court hearing March 30 over setting bond, Assistant State’s Attorney Mary Herdman told a judge evidence was being discovered daily — some of it bolstering the accusations and some not. At that point of the investigation, though, she said text messages between the suspects showed they had at a minimum planned to commit a crime.</p>
<p>“This was clearly a conspiracy between this defendant and the co-defendant to get this victim into that bathroom and rape her and commit other sexual assaults against her,” Herdman said in court.</p>
<p>The attorney of the 18-year-old at one point acknowledged that it "does seem improbable" that group sex in a school bathroom would be "consensual"; however, the evidence did not support the case against the suspects. Statutory rape charges were also not an option for the prosecution. Though the alleged victim was only 14, according to state law the two boys had to be a full four years older, Sanchez Milian apparently falling just short of that age gap.</p>
<p>As for the potential child pornography charges, the attorneys of the two illegal immigrants blasted the charges as "selective prosecution" and a "gross misapplication" of child pornography laws. The charges involve nude images of the 14-year-old girl discovered by prosecutors on Sanchez Milian's cell phone, which the girl originally sent to Montano, who distributed them to the 18-year-old Sanchez Milian.​</p>
<p>When the politically charged story broke, the details of the two teen immigrants' history caused a national stir. Just months before the rape allegations, both had illegally entered the country through the southern border, had been detained, then released to live with relatives in the area. Since the school had no official records of the teens' educational background, the 17 and 18-year-old teens were enrolled into 9th grade. ​When authorities began looking into the case, they discovered that Sanchez Milian's father, Adolfo Sanchez-Reyes, 43, from Guatemala, was also illegally in the country. He was <a href="" type="internal">arrested</a> by ICE in late March.</p> | 2,182 |
<p>President Donald Trump once again asserted that the Paris climate agreement would have cost the United States millions of lost jobs and put the country at a permanent economic disadvantage, claims that have been rebutted several times since the agreement became a major target of his presidential campaign.</p>
<p>“When I campaigned for president, I promised to renegotiate or leave any deal which fails to serve America’s interests. And I’m not going to allow other countries to take advantage of the United States any longer,” Trump <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvLQyIJJAqE" type="external">told</a> a crowd gathered at the U.S. Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Experts point out that in his arguments against the Paris agreement, Trump <a href="" type="internal">completely omits</a> the severe economic toll posed by failure to act on climate change, a cost far greater than that of action. Trump also ignored the economic benefits of clean energy — a sector that is <a href="" type="internal">growing much faster</a> than the economy as a whole.</p>
<p>Trump also stated the Paris agreement would have been a “catastrophe” for the United States in part because the goals set for each country were binding. “They all say it’s nonbinding. Like hell it’s nonbinding,” Trump said.</p>
<p>But once again, experts have <a href="" type="internal">rebutted</a> claims that the Paris agreement would have bound the United States to particular climate goals and to take particular domestic actions — the agreement is nonbinding and each nation sets its own targets.</p>
<p>“We’re going to lose tremendous global clout and influence” by withdrawing from the Paris agreement.</p>
<p>In fact, Trump contradicted himself on whether the Paris agreement is binding. Three weeks earlier, Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/01/statement-president-trump-paris-climate-accord" type="external">announced</a> the nation’s withdrawal from Paris and described the agreement as nonbinding. “As of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the nonbinding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country,” Trump said June 1.</p>
<p>Trump emphasized that his administration will not let “foreign bureaucrats plan our economy or tell Americans how to run their country.” He recalled his campaign promise to renegotiate or leave any international agreement that fails to service America’s interests. “And I’m not going to allow other countries to take advantage of the United States any longer. And for that reason, I totally cut off negotiations” on the Paris agreement,” he said.</p>
<p>This time, Trump’s claims were rebutted by a member of his own administration. Last week, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt <a href="" type="internal">told</a> the House Appropriations Committee that withdrawal from Paris “was not a sign of disengagement… The president made that clear.” Pruitt told the lawmakers that while he was in Italy earlier this month for the G7 environment meeting, he started bilateral discussions with his environmental ministry counterparts “with respect to our continued leadership” on carbon dioxide reduction.</p>
<p>Restoring the former glory of the coal industry dominated the president’s rhetoric during the presidential campaign and remains a prominent talking point for his administration. In his speech, Trump declared “we’ve ended the war on clean, beautiful coal and we’re putting our miners back to work.” He claimed “33,000 mining jobs have been added since my inauguration,” a clear reference to coal mining jobs.</p>
<p>Trump followed the lead of his EPA chief in overstating the growth of coal mining jobs since the start of 2017. In multiple television interviews earlier this month, Pruitt <a href="" type="internal">stated</a> the coal industry has grown by 50,000 job since Trump took office.</p>
<p>No data exists from government or industry sources to back up the claim that the industry has seen such a dramatic surge in coal mining jobs over this time period. The coal sector reportedly has added about 1,000 jobs since October 2016. Coal could not have added 50,000 jobs in the last eight months, since that is essentially the size of the entire coal industry, according to the <a href="https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics4_212100.htm" type="external">Bureau of Labor Statistics</a>, The Atlantic <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/pruitt-epa-coal-jobs-exaggerate/529311/" type="external">reported</a>.</p>
<p>An EPA spokeswoman later <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-epa-coal-jobs-idUSKBN18W2P4" type="external">explained</a> that Pruitt was referring to the mining sector, which includes more than coal jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics defines the mining sector as any business involved in the extraction of minerals like ores, coal, petroleum, and natural gas.</p>
<p>Solar or not, Trump’s wall is an environmental disaster that would be swamped by climate change.</p>
<p>Trump also made a case for <a href="" type="internal">putting solar panels</a> on the wall that he wants to build on the border between the United States and Mexico. “We’re thinking about building the wall as a solar wall so it creates energy and pays for itself,” he told the audience. “That’s one of the places that solar really does work, tremendous sun and heat… and I think we could make it look beautiful, too.”</p>
<p>The Financial Times looked at the economics of a solar-paneled wall on the U.S. side of the border earlier this year. The newspaper <a href="https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/02/10/2184028/what-if-trumps-wall-were-solar-powered/" type="external">concluded</a> it’s a “non-starter,” noting, for instance, that “less than 2 percent of the U.S. population lives within <a href="https://ftalphaville-cdn.ft.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/09150819/drhZs8t1.png" type="external">40 miles</a> of the Mexico border.” That means you’d need a multibillion-dollar power line, too.</p> | Trump can’t decide whether the Paris agreement is binding | true | https://thinkprogress.org/trump-addresses-paris-agreement-coal-jobs-2cc235248de | 2017-06-22 | 4left
| Trump can’t decide whether the Paris agreement is binding
<p>President Donald Trump once again asserted that the Paris climate agreement would have cost the United States millions of lost jobs and put the country at a permanent economic disadvantage, claims that have been rebutted several times since the agreement became a major target of his presidential campaign.</p>
<p>“When I campaigned for president, I promised to renegotiate or leave any deal which fails to serve America’s interests. And I’m not going to allow other countries to take advantage of the United States any longer,” Trump <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvLQyIJJAqE" type="external">told</a> a crowd gathered at the U.S. Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Experts point out that in his arguments against the Paris agreement, Trump <a href="" type="internal">completely omits</a> the severe economic toll posed by failure to act on climate change, a cost far greater than that of action. Trump also ignored the economic benefits of clean energy — a sector that is <a href="" type="internal">growing much faster</a> than the economy as a whole.</p>
<p>Trump also stated the Paris agreement would have been a “catastrophe” for the United States in part because the goals set for each country were binding. “They all say it’s nonbinding. Like hell it’s nonbinding,” Trump said.</p>
<p>But once again, experts have <a href="" type="internal">rebutted</a> claims that the Paris agreement would have bound the United States to particular climate goals and to take particular domestic actions — the agreement is nonbinding and each nation sets its own targets.</p>
<p>“We’re going to lose tremendous global clout and influence” by withdrawing from the Paris agreement.</p>
<p>In fact, Trump contradicted himself on whether the Paris agreement is binding. Three weeks earlier, Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/01/statement-president-trump-paris-climate-accord" type="external">announced</a> the nation’s withdrawal from Paris and described the agreement as nonbinding. “As of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the nonbinding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country,” Trump said June 1.</p>
<p>Trump emphasized that his administration will not let “foreign bureaucrats plan our economy or tell Americans how to run their country.” He recalled his campaign promise to renegotiate or leave any international agreement that fails to service America’s interests. “And I’m not going to allow other countries to take advantage of the United States any longer. And for that reason, I totally cut off negotiations” on the Paris agreement,” he said.</p>
<p>This time, Trump’s claims were rebutted by a member of his own administration. Last week, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt <a href="" type="internal">told</a> the House Appropriations Committee that withdrawal from Paris “was not a sign of disengagement… The president made that clear.” Pruitt told the lawmakers that while he was in Italy earlier this month for the G7 environment meeting, he started bilateral discussions with his environmental ministry counterparts “with respect to our continued leadership” on carbon dioxide reduction.</p>
<p>Restoring the former glory of the coal industry dominated the president’s rhetoric during the presidential campaign and remains a prominent talking point for his administration. In his speech, Trump declared “we’ve ended the war on clean, beautiful coal and we’re putting our miners back to work.” He claimed “33,000 mining jobs have been added since my inauguration,” a clear reference to coal mining jobs.</p>
<p>Trump followed the lead of his EPA chief in overstating the growth of coal mining jobs since the start of 2017. In multiple television interviews earlier this month, Pruitt <a href="" type="internal">stated</a> the coal industry has grown by 50,000 job since Trump took office.</p>
<p>No data exists from government or industry sources to back up the claim that the industry has seen such a dramatic surge in coal mining jobs over this time period. The coal sector reportedly has added about 1,000 jobs since October 2016. Coal could not have added 50,000 jobs in the last eight months, since that is essentially the size of the entire coal industry, according to the <a href="https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics4_212100.htm" type="external">Bureau of Labor Statistics</a>, The Atlantic <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/pruitt-epa-coal-jobs-exaggerate/529311/" type="external">reported</a>.</p>
<p>An EPA spokeswoman later <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-epa-coal-jobs-idUSKBN18W2P4" type="external">explained</a> that Pruitt was referring to the mining sector, which includes more than coal jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics defines the mining sector as any business involved in the extraction of minerals like ores, coal, petroleum, and natural gas.</p>
<p>Solar or not, Trump’s wall is an environmental disaster that would be swamped by climate change.</p>
<p>Trump also made a case for <a href="" type="internal">putting solar panels</a> on the wall that he wants to build on the border between the United States and Mexico. “We’re thinking about building the wall as a solar wall so it creates energy and pays for itself,” he told the audience. “That’s one of the places that solar really does work, tremendous sun and heat… and I think we could make it look beautiful, too.”</p>
<p>The Financial Times looked at the economics of a solar-paneled wall on the U.S. side of the border earlier this year. The newspaper <a href="https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/02/10/2184028/what-if-trumps-wall-were-solar-powered/" type="external">concluded</a> it’s a “non-starter,” noting, for instance, that “less than 2 percent of the U.S. population lives within <a href="https://ftalphaville-cdn.ft.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/09150819/drhZs8t1.png" type="external">40 miles</a> of the Mexico border.” That means you’d need a multibillion-dollar power line, too.</p> | 2,183 |
<p />
<p>Former U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday entered the debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, hosting a forum at his presidential library extolling his successor's Asian free trade deal.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Bush, who signed several such accords during his two terms in office, met with U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman before the event to promote the strategic benefits of the agreement.</p>
<p>President Barack Obama is still pushing for Congress to approve the 12-country TPP following the Nov. 8 presidential election, even though both Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton oppose it.</p>
<p>Bush, who has largely stayed out of the campaign - in which Trump's anti-trade rhetoric fueled his rise to the Republican nomination - did not attend the forum at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.</p>
<p>"I'm very grateful for him welcoming me to this institute and having the institute host this important conversation," Froman told the audience of largely business people after his meeting with Bush. "And I'm very grateful for his support of free trade as well."</p>
<p>Ken Hersh, director of the Bush Institute, called TPP "a no-brainer on a whole host of fronts."</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The forum followed a similar event on Monday night in Houston where Froman enlisted the help of another Republican free-trader, James Baker, who served the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush as secretary of the Treasury and secretary of state, respectively.</p>
<p>"Both major party candidates for the presidency oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. And guess what? They're both wrong," Baker, 86, said at the Rice University institute that bears his name.</p>
<p>"I've often found myself in disagreement with President Obama. But on TPP I am with him, and I am with him 100 percent," Baker added.</p>
<p>In a speech at the Houston event, Froman emphasized the need for TPP as a counterbalance to China's growing economic and political influence in Asia, citing its own regional trade deal and more assertive stance in the South China Sea.</p>
<p>"If we don't act, it will create a vacuum. These economies aren't going to stand still. Beijing will step in to fill the void," Froman said.</p>
<p>At the Bush Institute, Susan Schwab, who served as George W. Bush's last trade representative, said failure to pass TPP would mark an abdication of U.S. leadership.</p>
<p>"There are countries out there that would dearly love to see the United States fall on its face by not enacting, by not ratifying this deal," she said.</p>
<p>(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Dan Grebler)</p> | Ex-President George W. Bush dips toe into U.S. trade debate | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2016/09/20/ex-president-george-w-bush-dips-toe-into-us-trade-debate.html | 2016-09-20 | 0right
| Ex-President George W. Bush dips toe into U.S. trade debate
<p />
<p>Former U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday entered the debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, hosting a forum at his presidential library extolling his successor's Asian free trade deal.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Bush, who signed several such accords during his two terms in office, met with U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman before the event to promote the strategic benefits of the agreement.</p>
<p>President Barack Obama is still pushing for Congress to approve the 12-country TPP following the Nov. 8 presidential election, even though both Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton oppose it.</p>
<p>Bush, who has largely stayed out of the campaign - in which Trump's anti-trade rhetoric fueled his rise to the Republican nomination - did not attend the forum at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.</p>
<p>"I'm very grateful for him welcoming me to this institute and having the institute host this important conversation," Froman told the audience of largely business people after his meeting with Bush. "And I'm very grateful for his support of free trade as well."</p>
<p>Ken Hersh, director of the Bush Institute, called TPP "a no-brainer on a whole host of fronts."</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The forum followed a similar event on Monday night in Houston where Froman enlisted the help of another Republican free-trader, James Baker, who served the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush as secretary of the Treasury and secretary of state, respectively.</p>
<p>"Both major party candidates for the presidency oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. And guess what? They're both wrong," Baker, 86, said at the Rice University institute that bears his name.</p>
<p>"I've often found myself in disagreement with President Obama. But on TPP I am with him, and I am with him 100 percent," Baker added.</p>
<p>In a speech at the Houston event, Froman emphasized the need for TPP as a counterbalance to China's growing economic and political influence in Asia, citing its own regional trade deal and more assertive stance in the South China Sea.</p>
<p>"If we don't act, it will create a vacuum. These economies aren't going to stand still. Beijing will step in to fill the void," Froman said.</p>
<p>At the Bush Institute, Susan Schwab, who served as George W. Bush's last trade representative, said failure to pass TPP would mark an abdication of U.S. leadership.</p>
<p>"There are countries out there that would dearly love to see the United States fall on its face by not enacting, by not ratifying this deal," she said.</p>
<p>(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Dan Grebler)</p> | 2,184 |
<p>Even the most useless males in the animal world contribute to the long-term evolutionary fitness of a species, researchers report, by weeding out the genetic flaws that would otherwise doom the females to extinction.</p>
<p>A study on the subject, <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14419.html" type="external">published online Monday by the journal Nature</a>, provides an experimentally supported answer to the age-old question, "Why do males exist?"</p>
<p>The question isn't as frivolous, or as man-hating, as it sounds: For decades, evolutionary biologists have puzzled over the pluses and minuses of sexual reproduction. The arrangement comes at a heavy cost: Only half of the species is capable of producing offspring.</p>
<p>"We wanted to understand how Darwinian selection can allow this widespread and seemingly wasteful reproductive system to persist, when a system where all individuals produce offspring without sex — as in all-female asexual reproduction — would be a far more effective route to reproduce greater numbers of offspring," Matt Gage, a biologist at the University of East Anglia in Britain, said in a <a href="https://www.uea.ac.uk/about/-/population-benefits-of-sexual-selection-explain-the-existence-of-males?icn=homepage-banner&amp;ici=180515_sexual-selection" type="external">news release about the study</a>.</p>
<p>Several explanations have been put forward over the years: For example, when environmental conditions turn stressful, mixing up male and female genes can lead to new combinations of traits that are better-suited to cope with the change.</p>
<p>Another argument goes all the way back to Charles Darwin, the biologist who pioneered evolutionary theory. He proposed that sexual selection — in which males compete for the favors of females — played a role alongside other forms of natural selection in ensuring the survival of the fittest.</p>
<p>"The theory is well-developed, but it's very difficult to test it," Ricardo Azevedo, a biologist at the University of Houston who has studied the issue, told NBC News.</p>
<p>Gage and his colleagues tested Darwin's hypothesis over the course of 10 years, by fiddling with the sex lives of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flour_beetle" type="external">Tribolium flour beetles</a>. The bugs are pests that feed off wheat and other grains, including the food in your pantry. If you've ever come across mealworms in a bag of flour that's gone bad, you know how much of a pain the beetles can be.</p>
<p>The beetles are also notable for their sex roles: The males contribute nothing to the upbringing of offspring, other than their genes. That makes them well-suited for an experiment aimed at figuring out why the females are better off even if they have to deal with useless males.</p>
<p>The research team bred several groups of beetles under different conditions — ranging from a scenario where 90 males competed to mate with just 10 females, to a scenario where the females were assigned their mates with no choice in the matter.</p>
<p>The beetles were bred under these conditions for seven years, representing about 50 generations' worth of bugs. Then each community of bugs was inbred, to reveal whether or not harmful mutations had built up in the beetles' genomes.</p>
<p>Some of the beetle populations that had been involved in lusty competition were still going strong even after 20 generations of brother-sister pairings. In contrast, all of the populations that experienced little or no sexual selection to begin with went extinct within eight generations of inbreeding.</p>
<p>The results suggest that when females aren't allowed to choose fitter mates, the "mutation load" gradually builds up in the genomes of a given population — with disastrous results when the population is put under stress. Gage told NBC News that sexual selection "helps to purge out 'bad genes' from a population."</p>
<p>Azevedo said the experiment is "very exciting, because it's a very nice demonstration of what other researchers had predicted."</p>
<p>Gage said it's valid to generalize from beetles to other species, but he stressed that most males are good for more than their genes.</p>
<p>"The main exception to our model system is in making comparisons with species where males provide important direct benefits to offspring production, such as through care or feeding," he said in an email. "Trends towards monogamy are necessary for ecology to drive those mating patterns to persist (otherwise males will be investing in the offspring that they are not the father of)."</p>
<p>Thus, it's not quite right to say the study fully explains why men exist. Rather, it shows why even good-for-nothing males exist. One would hope there's a difference.</p>
<p>Could super-intelligent females find a way to do without males? Gage noted that such a scenario was outlined in a 1915 novel titled <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32" type="external">"Herland."</a> The book describes a utopia where women reproduce through parthenogenesis, or "virgin birth." Parthenogenesis occurs in species ranging from <a href="" type="internal">sharks</a> to <a href="" type="internal">snakes</a> to <a href="" type="internal">Komodo dragons</a>, but it has <a href="" type="internal">not been documented among mammals in the wild</a>.</p>
<p>The newly published study shows why it's probably better that way, Gage said.</p>
<p>"Our findings show that, while populations like 'Herland' get short-term benefits from asexual reproduction and an absence of sexual conflict, they are vulnerable to ... mutation accumulation over evolutionary timescales," he wrote. "Without sexual selection, mutations are less effectively purged from the population, putting it at higher eventual risk of extinction."</p>
<p>In addition to Gage, the authors of <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14419.html" type="external">"Sexual Selection Protects Against Extinction"</a> include Alyson Lumley, Łukasz Michalczyk, James Kitson, Lewis Spurgin, Catriona Morrison, Joanne Godwin, Matthew Dickinson, Oliver Martin, Brent Emerson and Tracey Chapman.</p> | Why Do Males Exist? The Sex Lives of Beetles Provide an Explanation | false | http://nbcnews.com/science/weird-science/why-do-males-exist-sex-lives-beetles-provide-explanation-n360706 | 2015-05-18 | 3left-center
| Why Do Males Exist? The Sex Lives of Beetles Provide an Explanation
<p>Even the most useless males in the animal world contribute to the long-term evolutionary fitness of a species, researchers report, by weeding out the genetic flaws that would otherwise doom the females to extinction.</p>
<p>A study on the subject, <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14419.html" type="external">published online Monday by the journal Nature</a>, provides an experimentally supported answer to the age-old question, "Why do males exist?"</p>
<p>The question isn't as frivolous, or as man-hating, as it sounds: For decades, evolutionary biologists have puzzled over the pluses and minuses of sexual reproduction. The arrangement comes at a heavy cost: Only half of the species is capable of producing offspring.</p>
<p>"We wanted to understand how Darwinian selection can allow this widespread and seemingly wasteful reproductive system to persist, when a system where all individuals produce offspring without sex — as in all-female asexual reproduction — would be a far more effective route to reproduce greater numbers of offspring," Matt Gage, a biologist at the University of East Anglia in Britain, said in a <a href="https://www.uea.ac.uk/about/-/population-benefits-of-sexual-selection-explain-the-existence-of-males?icn=homepage-banner&amp;ici=180515_sexual-selection" type="external">news release about the study</a>.</p>
<p>Several explanations have been put forward over the years: For example, when environmental conditions turn stressful, mixing up male and female genes can lead to new combinations of traits that are better-suited to cope with the change.</p>
<p>Another argument goes all the way back to Charles Darwin, the biologist who pioneered evolutionary theory. He proposed that sexual selection — in which males compete for the favors of females — played a role alongside other forms of natural selection in ensuring the survival of the fittest.</p>
<p>"The theory is well-developed, but it's very difficult to test it," Ricardo Azevedo, a biologist at the University of Houston who has studied the issue, told NBC News.</p>
<p>Gage and his colleagues tested Darwin's hypothesis over the course of 10 years, by fiddling with the sex lives of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flour_beetle" type="external">Tribolium flour beetles</a>. The bugs are pests that feed off wheat and other grains, including the food in your pantry. If you've ever come across mealworms in a bag of flour that's gone bad, you know how much of a pain the beetles can be.</p>
<p>The beetles are also notable for their sex roles: The males contribute nothing to the upbringing of offspring, other than their genes. That makes them well-suited for an experiment aimed at figuring out why the females are better off even if they have to deal with useless males.</p>
<p>The research team bred several groups of beetles under different conditions — ranging from a scenario where 90 males competed to mate with just 10 females, to a scenario where the females were assigned their mates with no choice in the matter.</p>
<p>The beetles were bred under these conditions for seven years, representing about 50 generations' worth of bugs. Then each community of bugs was inbred, to reveal whether or not harmful mutations had built up in the beetles' genomes.</p>
<p>Some of the beetle populations that had been involved in lusty competition were still going strong even after 20 generations of brother-sister pairings. In contrast, all of the populations that experienced little or no sexual selection to begin with went extinct within eight generations of inbreeding.</p>
<p>The results suggest that when females aren't allowed to choose fitter mates, the "mutation load" gradually builds up in the genomes of a given population — with disastrous results when the population is put under stress. Gage told NBC News that sexual selection "helps to purge out 'bad genes' from a population."</p>
<p>Azevedo said the experiment is "very exciting, because it's a very nice demonstration of what other researchers had predicted."</p>
<p>Gage said it's valid to generalize from beetles to other species, but he stressed that most males are good for more than their genes.</p>
<p>"The main exception to our model system is in making comparisons with species where males provide important direct benefits to offspring production, such as through care or feeding," he said in an email. "Trends towards monogamy are necessary for ecology to drive those mating patterns to persist (otherwise males will be investing in the offspring that they are not the father of)."</p>
<p>Thus, it's not quite right to say the study fully explains why men exist. Rather, it shows why even good-for-nothing males exist. One would hope there's a difference.</p>
<p>Could super-intelligent females find a way to do without males? Gage noted that such a scenario was outlined in a 1915 novel titled <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32" type="external">"Herland."</a> The book describes a utopia where women reproduce through parthenogenesis, or "virgin birth." Parthenogenesis occurs in species ranging from <a href="" type="internal">sharks</a> to <a href="" type="internal">snakes</a> to <a href="" type="internal">Komodo dragons</a>, but it has <a href="" type="internal">not been documented among mammals in the wild</a>.</p>
<p>The newly published study shows why it's probably better that way, Gage said.</p>
<p>"Our findings show that, while populations like 'Herland' get short-term benefits from asexual reproduction and an absence of sexual conflict, they are vulnerable to ... mutation accumulation over evolutionary timescales," he wrote. "Without sexual selection, mutations are less effectively purged from the population, putting it at higher eventual risk of extinction."</p>
<p>In addition to Gage, the authors of <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14419.html" type="external">"Sexual Selection Protects Against Extinction"</a> include Alyson Lumley, Łukasz Michalczyk, James Kitson, Lewis Spurgin, Catriona Morrison, Joanne Godwin, Matthew Dickinson, Oliver Martin, Brent Emerson and Tracey Chapman.</p> | 2,185 |
<p>WESTERVILLE, Ohio —This week marks the twentieth anniversary of a rare achievement in the uncertain world of political struggle: the election of Nelson Mandela to the presidency of South Africa and the birth of a new democratic nation.</p>
<p>In the outpouring of tributes to Mandela’s life and leadership upon his death several months ago, many people remembered this triumphant election and Mandela’s transcendent wisdom in negotiating the stormy transition from apartheid to democracy. What most people did not recall, however, was the remarkable set of events that followed.</p>
<p>In 1995, guided by President Mandela and mandated by an act of parliament, South Africa created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a massive, temporary institution whose mission was to reveal the specifics of widespread human rights abuses and to begin repairing the damage from nearly half a century of brutal repression known as apartheid.</p>
<p>To appreciate the magnitude and merit of Mandela’s accomplishments as a national conciliator requires traveling back in time – to South Africa in the middle of 1990, shortly after Mandela’s release from prison in the forty-second year of official apartheid.</p>
<p>When Mandela emerged as the chief negotiator for the African National Congress, he faced not only an entrenched apartheid government but also the beginning of unprecedented volatility in the provinces of South Africa.</p>
<p>From July 1990 to April 1994, nearly 14,000 people died in politically motivated violence, a rate of more than 300 deaths per month. Transposed to the population of the present United States, that would be 110,000 deaths due to political violence in a four-year period – or 2,300 deaths every month. Neither the difficulty nor the urgency of Mandela’s task should be underestimated.</p>
<p>After his election to the presidency, Mandela then worked with a diverse group of leaders to manage the aftermath of apartheid. The result was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.</p>
<p>To accomplish its goals of gathering truth and promoting reconciliation, the TRC obtained testimony from the victims and the perpetrators of apartheid.</p>
<p>Victims gave testimony to the Human Rights Violations Committee to document the crimes committed against them and their families and to apply for reparations. Perpetrators gave testimony to the Amnesty Committee to inform the nation of the specific crimes they carried out during apartheid and to obtain amnesty for these crimes – acts that were illegal even under apartheid law.</p>
<p>If the crimes were judged to be politically motivated, and if the perpetrators made full disclosure, they were given amnesty. Freedom was granted in exchange for truth.</p>
<p>Listening to the victims’ stories made sense for healing the wounds of apartheid, but the idea of granting amnesty to violent perpetrators faced understandably passionate opposition.</p>
<p>Heinous crimes had been committed. Tens of thousands of people had suffered lasting harm from these specific crimes, and millions had endured profound hardship due to the laws of apartheid.</p>
<p>One reasonable approach, then, would be to punish those who had committed the wrongdoing.</p>
<p>Set in motion by the forceful persuasion of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, the amnesty hearings proceeded from 1996 to 2001.</p>
<p>Acting as an itinerant axis mundi, the Amnesty Committee moved from Durban to Pretoria to Johannesburg to East London to Pietermaritzburg to Cape Town, hearing hundreds of amnesty cases and sending several resonant messages throughout South Africa: Truths about widespread human rights violations will be uncovered, secrets of illegality will be disclosed, government crimes will be illuminated and perpetrators will be held publicly accountable for their crimes.</p>
<p>The TRC that transformed an emerging set of principles for finding truth and resolving long-term national conflicts into an established tradition, a tradition that continues today in those countries working to adapt its principles to their own traditions.</p>
<p>Two truth commissions completed their work in 2012 – the Gacaca system in Rwanda and the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission in Kenya.</p>
<p>In Canada, a truth commission is currently in operation, endeavoring to investigate and repair the damage inflicted by more than 120 years of the Canadian government’s program of Indian Residential Schools. Each of these commissions drew on the work of the South African TRC.</p>
<p>For those countries traumatized by widespread injustice or sustained violence, the findings of the TRC represent news in the making, but for the rest of the world, the TRC remains the day before yesterday.</p>
<p>Over the next generation, however, as policy makers and community leaders continue to study the TRC, awareness of its principles will grow and propagate.</p>
<p>Within a generation, the TRC is likely to become both news and history. Even with its flaws and limitations, the TRC stands as an enduring example of the potential for restorative justice on a national scale and a prototype for other national truth commissions.</p>
<p>More generally, after the basic concepts of restorative justice enter the cultural lexicon, it is only a matter of time before they enter political discussions and national public policy.</p>
<p>For many nations, Nelson Mandela’s South African legacy will then become a bold possibility – a realistic solution for investigating and reconciling large-scale violations of human rights and constitutional guarantees. Indeed, we may someday see such a truth commission in the United States.</p>
<p>Robert Kraft is a professor of psychology at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio. He is also the author of “Violent Accounts: Understanding the Psychology of Perpetrators through South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (NYU Press, 2014).</p> | Celebrating Mandela's legacy on 20th anniversary of South Africa's fight to end apartheid | false | https://pri.org/stories/2014-05-13/celebrating-mandelas-legacy-20th-anniversary-south-africas-fight-end-apartheid | 2014-05-13 | 3left-center
| Celebrating Mandela's legacy on 20th anniversary of South Africa's fight to end apartheid
<p>WESTERVILLE, Ohio —This week marks the twentieth anniversary of a rare achievement in the uncertain world of political struggle: the election of Nelson Mandela to the presidency of South Africa and the birth of a new democratic nation.</p>
<p>In the outpouring of tributes to Mandela’s life and leadership upon his death several months ago, many people remembered this triumphant election and Mandela’s transcendent wisdom in negotiating the stormy transition from apartheid to democracy. What most people did not recall, however, was the remarkable set of events that followed.</p>
<p>In 1995, guided by President Mandela and mandated by an act of parliament, South Africa created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a massive, temporary institution whose mission was to reveal the specifics of widespread human rights abuses and to begin repairing the damage from nearly half a century of brutal repression known as apartheid.</p>
<p>To appreciate the magnitude and merit of Mandela’s accomplishments as a national conciliator requires traveling back in time – to South Africa in the middle of 1990, shortly after Mandela’s release from prison in the forty-second year of official apartheid.</p>
<p>When Mandela emerged as the chief negotiator for the African National Congress, he faced not only an entrenched apartheid government but also the beginning of unprecedented volatility in the provinces of South Africa.</p>
<p>From July 1990 to April 1994, nearly 14,000 people died in politically motivated violence, a rate of more than 300 deaths per month. Transposed to the population of the present United States, that would be 110,000 deaths due to political violence in a four-year period – or 2,300 deaths every month. Neither the difficulty nor the urgency of Mandela’s task should be underestimated.</p>
<p>After his election to the presidency, Mandela then worked with a diverse group of leaders to manage the aftermath of apartheid. The result was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.</p>
<p>To accomplish its goals of gathering truth and promoting reconciliation, the TRC obtained testimony from the victims and the perpetrators of apartheid.</p>
<p>Victims gave testimony to the Human Rights Violations Committee to document the crimes committed against them and their families and to apply for reparations. Perpetrators gave testimony to the Amnesty Committee to inform the nation of the specific crimes they carried out during apartheid and to obtain amnesty for these crimes – acts that were illegal even under apartheid law.</p>
<p>If the crimes were judged to be politically motivated, and if the perpetrators made full disclosure, they were given amnesty. Freedom was granted in exchange for truth.</p>
<p>Listening to the victims’ stories made sense for healing the wounds of apartheid, but the idea of granting amnesty to violent perpetrators faced understandably passionate opposition.</p>
<p>Heinous crimes had been committed. Tens of thousands of people had suffered lasting harm from these specific crimes, and millions had endured profound hardship due to the laws of apartheid.</p>
<p>One reasonable approach, then, would be to punish those who had committed the wrongdoing.</p>
<p>Set in motion by the forceful persuasion of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, the amnesty hearings proceeded from 1996 to 2001.</p>
<p>Acting as an itinerant axis mundi, the Amnesty Committee moved from Durban to Pretoria to Johannesburg to East London to Pietermaritzburg to Cape Town, hearing hundreds of amnesty cases and sending several resonant messages throughout South Africa: Truths about widespread human rights violations will be uncovered, secrets of illegality will be disclosed, government crimes will be illuminated and perpetrators will be held publicly accountable for their crimes.</p>
<p>The TRC that transformed an emerging set of principles for finding truth and resolving long-term national conflicts into an established tradition, a tradition that continues today in those countries working to adapt its principles to their own traditions.</p>
<p>Two truth commissions completed their work in 2012 – the Gacaca system in Rwanda and the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission in Kenya.</p>
<p>In Canada, a truth commission is currently in operation, endeavoring to investigate and repair the damage inflicted by more than 120 years of the Canadian government’s program of Indian Residential Schools. Each of these commissions drew on the work of the South African TRC.</p>
<p>For those countries traumatized by widespread injustice or sustained violence, the findings of the TRC represent news in the making, but for the rest of the world, the TRC remains the day before yesterday.</p>
<p>Over the next generation, however, as policy makers and community leaders continue to study the TRC, awareness of its principles will grow and propagate.</p>
<p>Within a generation, the TRC is likely to become both news and history. Even with its flaws and limitations, the TRC stands as an enduring example of the potential for restorative justice on a national scale and a prototype for other national truth commissions.</p>
<p>More generally, after the basic concepts of restorative justice enter the cultural lexicon, it is only a matter of time before they enter political discussions and national public policy.</p>
<p>For many nations, Nelson Mandela’s South African legacy will then become a bold possibility – a realistic solution for investigating and reconciling large-scale violations of human rights and constitutional guarantees. Indeed, we may someday see such a truth commission in the United States.</p>
<p>Robert Kraft is a professor of psychology at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio. He is also the author of “Violent Accounts: Understanding the Psychology of Perpetrators through South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (NYU Press, 2014).</p> | 2,186 |
<p>Sign up: With one click, get this newsletter delivered to your inbox.</p>
<p>Electronics supply chains that Apple Inc. has helped build across Asia are shuddering at the cutback in production of the latest iPhone. Apple is slashing its plans for making iPhone X handsets by half, to 20 million, in the current quarter, the WSJ's Yoko Kubota and Tripp Mickle report. Orders for components could be cut even more, by perhaps 60%, as reductions ripple across the broad eco-system of electronics manufacturing and distribution that Apple products have fostered. The latest reduction, the result of disappointing sales of the latest generation of the iPhone, is a new example of how companies in Apple's orbit can rise and fall as the company builds up new technology and then moves on or sees some features grow stale. Just last month, shares in Dialog Semiconductor, whose chips control power use in Apple products, fell by a quarter when it said its main client "has the resources and capability" to make its own power-management chips.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Harley-Davidson Inc. is scaling down its U.S. supply chain as sales of its iconic motorcycles sag inside the country and abroad. The company is closing its assembly plant in Kansas City, Mo., and consolidating that production into one of its three remaining U.S. factories, the WSJ's Andrew Tangel reports, a step back for the manufacturing sector that follows recent announcements of new factory investments. Harley's problems look bigger than broad changes in the American economy that have fueled other factory expansion, however: The company's revenue from motorcycle sales fell 6.8% last year, and sales of its signature Hog line declined for the third straight year as it loses market share to overseas competitors. Harley has been looking to get more global its production. The company said last year it would put a plant in Thailand, in part to get tax breaks for motorcycles it ships to other Southeast Asian countries. Harley will see lower taxes in the U.S., of course, but what it needs now are more sales.</p>
<p>The era of driverless cars and delivery vehicles is well underway as far as some architects and developers are concerned. Planners in cities in North America, Europe and Asia are drawing up designs for streets with curbside drop-off areas for e-commerce deliveries and passengers rather than parking spaces, the WSJ's Peter Grant writes, while architects are laying out office and residential buildings with space for stacking up packages and delivery lockers. The goal for many planners, says an executive at one architecture firm, is to "future-proof" everything from roads to parking garages against what they say is an upheaval in transportation of goods and people. Real-estate developers and architects are thinking about a driverless future today because many of the structures and streets they're designing will still be around decades from now. They want to include flexibility so they can later adapt to changing transportation and shipping patterns with limited cost.</p>
<p>TRANSPORTATION</p>
<p>The very meager production of Tesla Inc. Model 3 sedans has created an unusual , big-money market for the electric cars. A shortage of the vehicles is fueling a frenzy among curious competitors, the WSJ's Tim Higgins reports, with some automotive companies paying upward of $500,000 to get their hands on the car billed as Tesla's entry into mass-market sales. The Model 3 so far hasn't worked out that way, with supply chain problems and production bottlenecks leaving fewer than 2,000 of the cars rolling out over the past two quarters. That's made the sedan a kind of model for the impact of supply scarcity in a market, with competitors and analysts scrambling to get their hands on the car. For some, it's purely a business decision. Engineering firm Caresoft Global Inc. has bought three Model 3s for around three times the list price each. They're in it not for the ride but for the technical analysis that Caresoft believes it can sell to competitors.</p>
<p>QUOTABLE</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>IN OTHER NEWS</p>
<p>President Donald Trump called for spending of "at least $1.5 trillion" on infrastructure but offered scant details on his State of the Union address on how to fund such a program. (WSJ)</p>
<p>U.S. consumer confidence rose in January. (WSJ)</p>
<p>A revival of the French economy helped the eurozone clock its strongest growth in a decade last year. (WSJ)</p>
<p>Mexico's economy expanded at its fastest pace in more than a year in the fourth quarter. (WSJ)</p>
<p>The U.S. homeownership rate rose in 2017 for the first time in 13 years. (WSJ)</p>
<p>Growth in U.S. home prices accelerated in November on tight supply. (WSJ)</p>
<p>Amazon.com Inc., Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co. are forming a company looking to reduce health-care costs for their U.S. employees. (WSJ)</p>
<p>Pfizer Inc. plans to invest $5 billion in manufacturing and other capital projects in the U.S. over the next five years. (WSJ)</p>
<p>McDonald's Corp. gained sales again by luring core customers to its cheapest meals and drinks. (WSJ)</p>
<p>Nikola Motor Co. chose the Phoenix area for a $1 billion manufacturing plant for its hydrogen-fueled heavy-duty trucks. (Reuters)</p>
<p>Sequoia Capital led a $21 million funding round for online freight marketplace Next Trucking. (VentureBeat)</p>
<p>U.S. steel imports rose 15.4% last year from the year before. (Northwest Indiana Times)</p>
<p>An investigation shows drug distributors sent 20.8 million prescription pain killers to a West Virginia town with 2,900 residents. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)</p>
<p>Uber Technologies Inc. reportedly looked at buying Chicago-based freight broker Load Delivered Logistics to bolster its Uber Freight service. (Recode)</p>
<p>Truckload carrier Werner Enterprises Inc.'s fourth-quarter operating profit soared 29% on a 9% gain in overall revenue. (Omaha World-Herald)</p>
<p>Covenant Transportation Group Inc. expects a measure of truck pricing to rise at a mid to high single-digit percentage rate this year. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)</p>
<p>CMA CGM Group is starting a incubator called Ze Box for digital shipping technology startups. (American Shipper)</p>
<p>India's Jawaharlal Nehru Port will open its fourth container terminal this week. (DNA India)</p>
<p>French logistics group Bolloré Logistics acquired majority control of Danish freight forwarder Global Solutions. (The Loadstar)</p>
<p>Private equity group Leonard Green &amp; Partners bought packaging machinery manufacturer ProMach. (Business Journals)</p>
<p>Parcel volume at U.K. delivery company Hermes expanded 12% year-over-year during the holiday peak season. (Motor Transport)</p>
<p>Colombian authorities seized 185 kilos of cocaine and arrested 10 suspected drug smugglers aboard a Hapag-Lloyd AG container ship. (Splash 14/7)</p>
<p>ABOUT US</p>
<p>Paul Page is deputy editor of WSJ Logistics Report. Follow him at @PaulPage, and follow the entire WSJ Logistics Report team: @brianjbaskin , @jensmithWSJ and @EEPhillips_WSJ. Follow the WSJ Logistics Report on Twitter at @WSJLogistics.</p>
<p>Write to Paul Page at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>January 31, 2018 07:13 ET (12:13 GMT)</p> | Today's Top Supply Chain and Logistics News From WSJ | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/11/01/todays-top-supply-chain-and-logistics-news-from-wsj.html | 2018-01-31 | 0right
| Today's Top Supply Chain and Logistics News From WSJ
<p>Sign up: With one click, get this newsletter delivered to your inbox.</p>
<p>Electronics supply chains that Apple Inc. has helped build across Asia are shuddering at the cutback in production of the latest iPhone. Apple is slashing its plans for making iPhone X handsets by half, to 20 million, in the current quarter, the WSJ's Yoko Kubota and Tripp Mickle report. Orders for components could be cut even more, by perhaps 60%, as reductions ripple across the broad eco-system of electronics manufacturing and distribution that Apple products have fostered. The latest reduction, the result of disappointing sales of the latest generation of the iPhone, is a new example of how companies in Apple's orbit can rise and fall as the company builds up new technology and then moves on or sees some features grow stale. Just last month, shares in Dialog Semiconductor, whose chips control power use in Apple products, fell by a quarter when it said its main client "has the resources and capability" to make its own power-management chips.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Harley-Davidson Inc. is scaling down its U.S. supply chain as sales of its iconic motorcycles sag inside the country and abroad. The company is closing its assembly plant in Kansas City, Mo., and consolidating that production into one of its three remaining U.S. factories, the WSJ's Andrew Tangel reports, a step back for the manufacturing sector that follows recent announcements of new factory investments. Harley's problems look bigger than broad changes in the American economy that have fueled other factory expansion, however: The company's revenue from motorcycle sales fell 6.8% last year, and sales of its signature Hog line declined for the third straight year as it loses market share to overseas competitors. Harley has been looking to get more global its production. The company said last year it would put a plant in Thailand, in part to get tax breaks for motorcycles it ships to other Southeast Asian countries. Harley will see lower taxes in the U.S., of course, but what it needs now are more sales.</p>
<p>The era of driverless cars and delivery vehicles is well underway as far as some architects and developers are concerned. Planners in cities in North America, Europe and Asia are drawing up designs for streets with curbside drop-off areas for e-commerce deliveries and passengers rather than parking spaces, the WSJ's Peter Grant writes, while architects are laying out office and residential buildings with space for stacking up packages and delivery lockers. The goal for many planners, says an executive at one architecture firm, is to "future-proof" everything from roads to parking garages against what they say is an upheaval in transportation of goods and people. Real-estate developers and architects are thinking about a driverless future today because many of the structures and streets they're designing will still be around decades from now. They want to include flexibility so they can later adapt to changing transportation and shipping patterns with limited cost.</p>
<p>TRANSPORTATION</p>
<p>The very meager production of Tesla Inc. Model 3 sedans has created an unusual , big-money market for the electric cars. A shortage of the vehicles is fueling a frenzy among curious competitors, the WSJ's Tim Higgins reports, with some automotive companies paying upward of $500,000 to get their hands on the car billed as Tesla's entry into mass-market sales. The Model 3 so far hasn't worked out that way, with supply chain problems and production bottlenecks leaving fewer than 2,000 of the cars rolling out over the past two quarters. That's made the sedan a kind of model for the impact of supply scarcity in a market, with competitors and analysts scrambling to get their hands on the car. For some, it's purely a business decision. Engineering firm Caresoft Global Inc. has bought three Model 3s for around three times the list price each. They're in it not for the ride but for the technical analysis that Caresoft believes it can sell to competitors.</p>
<p>QUOTABLE</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>IN OTHER NEWS</p>
<p>President Donald Trump called for spending of "at least $1.5 trillion" on infrastructure but offered scant details on his State of the Union address on how to fund such a program. (WSJ)</p>
<p>U.S. consumer confidence rose in January. (WSJ)</p>
<p>A revival of the French economy helped the eurozone clock its strongest growth in a decade last year. (WSJ)</p>
<p>Mexico's economy expanded at its fastest pace in more than a year in the fourth quarter. (WSJ)</p>
<p>The U.S. homeownership rate rose in 2017 for the first time in 13 years. (WSJ)</p>
<p>Growth in U.S. home prices accelerated in November on tight supply. (WSJ)</p>
<p>Amazon.com Inc., Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co. are forming a company looking to reduce health-care costs for their U.S. employees. (WSJ)</p>
<p>Pfizer Inc. plans to invest $5 billion in manufacturing and other capital projects in the U.S. over the next five years. (WSJ)</p>
<p>McDonald's Corp. gained sales again by luring core customers to its cheapest meals and drinks. (WSJ)</p>
<p>Nikola Motor Co. chose the Phoenix area for a $1 billion manufacturing plant for its hydrogen-fueled heavy-duty trucks. (Reuters)</p>
<p>Sequoia Capital led a $21 million funding round for online freight marketplace Next Trucking. (VentureBeat)</p>
<p>U.S. steel imports rose 15.4% last year from the year before. (Northwest Indiana Times)</p>
<p>An investigation shows drug distributors sent 20.8 million prescription pain killers to a West Virginia town with 2,900 residents. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)</p>
<p>Uber Technologies Inc. reportedly looked at buying Chicago-based freight broker Load Delivered Logistics to bolster its Uber Freight service. (Recode)</p>
<p>Truckload carrier Werner Enterprises Inc.'s fourth-quarter operating profit soared 29% on a 9% gain in overall revenue. (Omaha World-Herald)</p>
<p>Covenant Transportation Group Inc. expects a measure of truck pricing to rise at a mid to high single-digit percentage rate this year. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)</p>
<p>CMA CGM Group is starting a incubator called Ze Box for digital shipping technology startups. (American Shipper)</p>
<p>India's Jawaharlal Nehru Port will open its fourth container terminal this week. (DNA India)</p>
<p>French logistics group Bolloré Logistics acquired majority control of Danish freight forwarder Global Solutions. (The Loadstar)</p>
<p>Private equity group Leonard Green &amp; Partners bought packaging machinery manufacturer ProMach. (Business Journals)</p>
<p>Parcel volume at U.K. delivery company Hermes expanded 12% year-over-year during the holiday peak season. (Motor Transport)</p>
<p>Colombian authorities seized 185 kilos of cocaine and arrested 10 suspected drug smugglers aboard a Hapag-Lloyd AG container ship. (Splash 14/7)</p>
<p>ABOUT US</p>
<p>Paul Page is deputy editor of WSJ Logistics Report. Follow him at @PaulPage, and follow the entire WSJ Logistics Report team: @brianjbaskin , @jensmithWSJ and @EEPhillips_WSJ. Follow the WSJ Logistics Report on Twitter at @WSJLogistics.</p>
<p>Write to Paul Page at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>January 31, 2018 07:13 ET (12:13 GMT)</p> | 2,187 |
<p>“Breitbart News is now running America,” declared Michael Savage on his Friday radio show.</p>
<p>Seemingly fueling a feud with Breitbart News, Savage described Stephen K. Bannon - the news outlet’s former chairman - as “jealous” and an “enemy:”</p>
<p>"Breitbart’s never been a fan of Michael Savage. Breitbart’s run by Steve Bannon, who is inside the White House. Steve Bannon has always been jealous of Michael Savage. Steve Bannon tried a radio show that failed on Sirius XM. So let’s get things in order, that’s number one. Nobody on Breitbart likes me because I’m a competitor of theirs and I’m far more talented than any one of those people who tried radio, and that’s by the way with due respect to those who write great columns for them. Please don’t quote my enemy or my competitor and tell me that what they’re saying is the truth."</p>
<p>Savage praised Breitbart News's chief editor Alex Marlow while depicting him as subservient to Bannon's implied agenda of hostility towards him:</p>
<p>"I love Alex Marlow, I love him. Who pays Alex Marlow? Who pays Alex Marlow's bills?</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>Did [Bannon] disconnect from Breitbart? Did [Bannon] break all ties with Breitbart?</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>I don’t want any news organization running America. All journalism is biased. All websites are biased. All of them are tabloid websites. I don’t want any tabloid website running the country."</p>
<p>Listen to the audio below.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | Savage Disses Breitbart News, Bannon | true | https://dailywire.com/news/13161/savage-disses-breitbart-news-bannon-robert-kraychik | 2017-02-05 | 0right
| Savage Disses Breitbart News, Bannon
<p>“Breitbart News is now running America,” declared Michael Savage on his Friday radio show.</p>
<p>Seemingly fueling a feud with Breitbart News, Savage described Stephen K. Bannon - the news outlet’s former chairman - as “jealous” and an “enemy:”</p>
<p>"Breitbart’s never been a fan of Michael Savage. Breitbart’s run by Steve Bannon, who is inside the White House. Steve Bannon has always been jealous of Michael Savage. Steve Bannon tried a radio show that failed on Sirius XM. So let’s get things in order, that’s number one. Nobody on Breitbart likes me because I’m a competitor of theirs and I’m far more talented than any one of those people who tried radio, and that’s by the way with due respect to those who write great columns for them. Please don’t quote my enemy or my competitor and tell me that what they’re saying is the truth."</p>
<p>Savage praised Breitbart News's chief editor Alex Marlow while depicting him as subservient to Bannon's implied agenda of hostility towards him:</p>
<p>"I love Alex Marlow, I love him. Who pays Alex Marlow? Who pays Alex Marlow's bills?</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>Did [Bannon] disconnect from Breitbart? Did [Bannon] break all ties with Breitbart?</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>I don’t want any news organization running America. All journalism is biased. All websites are biased. All of them are tabloid websites. I don’t want any tabloid website running the country."</p>
<p>Listen to the audio below.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | 2,188 |
<p>Newt Gingrich.&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/5438140228/sizes/z/in/photostream/"&gt;Gage Skidmore&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p />
<p>Questioned by Fox News’ Bret Baier on his conservative credentials at Thursday’s GOP debate in Iowa, Newt Gingrich made a curious claim:&#160;As Speaker of the House, he said, he’d balanced the federal budget four times. It’s a claim he’s made before—in a video on his campaign website, and on the stump. But as <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/11/newt-gingrich/newt-gingrich-inaccurate-budget-debt-claims-video-/" type="external">Politifact notes</a>, it’s false:&#160;Although Congress did pass balanced budgets for four straight years beginning in the late 1990s, the latter two came after Gingrich had resigned from the House and he’d played no part in crafting them.</p>
<p>Per Politifact:</p>
<p>The federal budget runs on a fiscal year calendar that begins October 1 and ends September 30. During fiscal years 1996 and 1997—the first two that Gingrich helped shape as speaker—there were deficits, of $107 billion in 1996 and about $22 billion in 1997.</p>
<p>By fiscal year 1998, the federal budget did reach a surplus of $69 billion. And in fiscal year 1999—which Gingrich can claim some responsibility for, even though he was out as speaker for most of the fiscal year—it was in surplus as well, to the tune of $126 billion.</p>
<p>But that’s only two balanced budgets he can claim credit for. The federal government did run four consecutive surpluses, but for the last two of those—fiscal years 2000 and 2001—Gingrich was no longer serving in the House.</p>
<p /> | Newt’s Balanced Budget Claim Doesn’t Add Up | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/newts-balanced-budget-claim-doesnt-add/ | 2011-12-16 | 4left
| Newt’s Balanced Budget Claim Doesn’t Add Up
<p>Newt Gingrich.&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/5438140228/sizes/z/in/photostream/"&gt;Gage Skidmore&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p />
<p>Questioned by Fox News’ Bret Baier on his conservative credentials at Thursday’s GOP debate in Iowa, Newt Gingrich made a curious claim:&#160;As Speaker of the House, he said, he’d balanced the federal budget four times. It’s a claim he’s made before—in a video on his campaign website, and on the stump. But as <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/11/newt-gingrich/newt-gingrich-inaccurate-budget-debt-claims-video-/" type="external">Politifact notes</a>, it’s false:&#160;Although Congress did pass balanced budgets for four straight years beginning in the late 1990s, the latter two came after Gingrich had resigned from the House and he’d played no part in crafting them.</p>
<p>Per Politifact:</p>
<p>The federal budget runs on a fiscal year calendar that begins October 1 and ends September 30. During fiscal years 1996 and 1997—the first two that Gingrich helped shape as speaker—there were deficits, of $107 billion in 1996 and about $22 billion in 1997.</p>
<p>By fiscal year 1998, the federal budget did reach a surplus of $69 billion. And in fiscal year 1999—which Gingrich can claim some responsibility for, even though he was out as speaker for most of the fiscal year—it was in surplus as well, to the tune of $126 billion.</p>
<p>But that’s only two balanced budgets he can claim credit for. The federal government did run four consecutive surpluses, but for the last two of those—fiscal years 2000 and 2001—Gingrich was no longer serving in the House.</p>
<p /> | 2,189 |
<p>New York City taxpayers will be paying $500,000 to the <a href="http://www.arabamericanny.org/" type="external">Arab American Association of New York</a> (AAANY), a registered non-profit run by leftist Muslim Linda Sarsour. Aligned with racial nationalist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and an ally of the city’s neo-Marxist mayor Bill de Blasio, Sarsour is openly anti-Zionist and a supporter of the Palestinian mission to destroy Jewish statehood in Israel.</p>
<p>The so-called Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York, via a “public-private partnership,” has <a href="http://www1.nyc.gov/site/fund/initiatives/connections-to-care.page" type="external">allocated</a> $30 million dollars to ostensibly increase availability of mental health services to “low-income” and “at-risk populations.”</p>
<p>Rather than directly grant money to individuals demonstrating financial need, the aforementioned “public-private partnership” will be dispensing money to non-profit groups - which appear to be mostly left-wing - lacking the necessary expertise to provide professional mental health services.</p>
<p>The “primary target population” of the AAANY is listed as “all” by an official communication from the city.</p>
<p>The AAANY <a href="http://www.arabamericanny.org/nyc-says-welcome-to-refugees/" type="external">advocates</a> for greater admission of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and other Muslim-majority countries and failed states. The left-wing organization also supports widespread amnesty for illegal immigrants. Also hyped is “ <a href="http://www.arabamericanny.org/islamophobia-intern-for-take-on-hate-campaign/" type="external">Islamophobia</a>” in America as if it is a real social force and phenomenon.</p>
<p>Sarsour previously worked for the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/champions/giving-back-to-community/linda-sarsour" type="external">White House</a> in as a Muslim and Arab liaison for ethnic and religiously-driven politicking for President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>Invited to speak at the neo-Marxist “Million Man March” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Sarsour <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igwtMJ_rqOw" type="external">joined</a> fellow racial nationalist and neo-Marxist Jeremiah Wright.</p>
<p>Republican pollster Frank Luntz had Sarsour present herself as something other than a professional left-wing Muslim agitator during a focus group segment produced for CBS, in which she <a href="" type="internal">declared</a> that Donald Trump’s political rhetoric was psychologically damaging to Muslim children.</p>
<p>Along with socialist Melissa Harris-Perry, Sarsour <a href="" type="internal">derided</a> The New York Times for showing a profile photo of one half of San Bernardino’s mass murdering couple Tashfeeen Malik, implying that depictions of the Islamic terrorist wearing a hijab would unjustifiably impugn Muslims.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | NYC Grants $500K To Fanatical Left-Wing Anti-American Islamic NGO | true | https://dailywire.com/news/4620/nyc-grants-500k-fanatical-left-wing-anti-american-robert-kraychik | 2016-04-03 | 0right
| NYC Grants $500K To Fanatical Left-Wing Anti-American Islamic NGO
<p>New York City taxpayers will be paying $500,000 to the <a href="http://www.arabamericanny.org/" type="external">Arab American Association of New York</a> (AAANY), a registered non-profit run by leftist Muslim Linda Sarsour. Aligned with racial nationalist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and an ally of the city’s neo-Marxist mayor Bill de Blasio, Sarsour is openly anti-Zionist and a supporter of the Palestinian mission to destroy Jewish statehood in Israel.</p>
<p>The so-called Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York, via a “public-private partnership,” has <a href="http://www1.nyc.gov/site/fund/initiatives/connections-to-care.page" type="external">allocated</a> $30 million dollars to ostensibly increase availability of mental health services to “low-income” and “at-risk populations.”</p>
<p>Rather than directly grant money to individuals demonstrating financial need, the aforementioned “public-private partnership” will be dispensing money to non-profit groups - which appear to be mostly left-wing - lacking the necessary expertise to provide professional mental health services.</p>
<p>The “primary target population” of the AAANY is listed as “all” by an official communication from the city.</p>
<p>The AAANY <a href="http://www.arabamericanny.org/nyc-says-welcome-to-refugees/" type="external">advocates</a> for greater admission of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and other Muslim-majority countries and failed states. The left-wing organization also supports widespread amnesty for illegal immigrants. Also hyped is “ <a href="http://www.arabamericanny.org/islamophobia-intern-for-take-on-hate-campaign/" type="external">Islamophobia</a>” in America as if it is a real social force and phenomenon.</p>
<p>Sarsour previously worked for the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/champions/giving-back-to-community/linda-sarsour" type="external">White House</a> in as a Muslim and Arab liaison for ethnic and religiously-driven politicking for President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>Invited to speak at the neo-Marxist “Million Man March” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Sarsour <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igwtMJ_rqOw" type="external">joined</a> fellow racial nationalist and neo-Marxist Jeremiah Wright.</p>
<p>Republican pollster Frank Luntz had Sarsour present herself as something other than a professional left-wing Muslim agitator during a focus group segment produced for CBS, in which she <a href="" type="internal">declared</a> that Donald Trump’s political rhetoric was psychologically damaging to Muslim children.</p>
<p>Along with socialist Melissa Harris-Perry, Sarsour <a href="" type="internal">derided</a> The New York Times for showing a profile photo of one half of San Bernardino’s mass murdering couple Tashfeeen Malik, implying that depictions of the Islamic terrorist wearing a hijab would unjustifiably impugn Muslims.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | 2,190 |
<p>A woman with cancer was <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/woman-with-cancer-booted-off-flight/" type="external">reportedly</a> kicked off an Alaska Airlines flight after airline employees demanded a doctor’s note saying that she was cleared to fly.</p>
<p>Elizabeth Sedway of Granite Hill, California was prepared to travel from Hawaii back home to California&#160;when some airline employees noticed that Sedway has put on a mask to avoid germs on the plane. When asked about&#160;the state of her health she was asked not to fly until they could confirm the safety of the journey.</p>
<p>The issues that have arisen in the circumstances are not only that Sedway’s children will miss school why they wait for the go ahead to fly, but that she will miss some of her chemotherapy treatments for her&#160;multiple myeloma.</p>
<p>Sedway took to her Facebook page to discuss her trying&#160; <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/travel/alaska-airlines-kicks-woman-cancer-flight-hawaii-c/nkpHX/" type="external">experience</a>.</p>
<p>“An airline employee saw me seated in the handicap section of the boarding area. She asked me if I needed anything. The first time. I said no. The second time, [I] said, well I might need a bit of extra time to board, sometimes I feel weak,” she began,</p>
<p>“Because I said the word weak, the Alaska Airlines employee called a doctor, she claimed was associated with the airlines. After we board the plane. An Alaska representative boarded the plane, and told us I could not fly without a note from a doctor stating that I was cleared to fly.”</p>
<p>Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Halley Knigge released a public <a href="http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/04/07/alaska-airlines-kick-california-mom-with-cancer-no-note-to-fly-off-plane-with-family/" type="external">apology</a> to the family.</p>
<p>“We regret the inconvenience Ms. Sedway experienced yesterday and are very sorry for how the situation was handled. Her family’s tickets have been refunded and we will cover the cost of her family’s overnight accommodations in Lihue. While our employee had the customer’s well-being in mind, the situation could have been handled differently.”</p>
<p>The family was rebooked for a flight the following day.</p>
<p /> | Woman with cancer is removed from flight home | false | http://natmonitor.com/2015/04/07/woman-with-cancer-is-removed-from-flight-home/ | 2015-04-07 | 3left-center
| Woman with cancer is removed from flight home
<p>A woman with cancer was <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/woman-with-cancer-booted-off-flight/" type="external">reportedly</a> kicked off an Alaska Airlines flight after airline employees demanded a doctor’s note saying that she was cleared to fly.</p>
<p>Elizabeth Sedway of Granite Hill, California was prepared to travel from Hawaii back home to California&#160;when some airline employees noticed that Sedway has put on a mask to avoid germs on the plane. When asked about&#160;the state of her health she was asked not to fly until they could confirm the safety of the journey.</p>
<p>The issues that have arisen in the circumstances are not only that Sedway’s children will miss school why they wait for the go ahead to fly, but that she will miss some of her chemotherapy treatments for her&#160;multiple myeloma.</p>
<p>Sedway took to her Facebook page to discuss her trying&#160; <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/travel/alaska-airlines-kicks-woman-cancer-flight-hawaii-c/nkpHX/" type="external">experience</a>.</p>
<p>“An airline employee saw me seated in the handicap section of the boarding area. She asked me if I needed anything. The first time. I said no. The second time, [I] said, well I might need a bit of extra time to board, sometimes I feel weak,” she began,</p>
<p>“Because I said the word weak, the Alaska Airlines employee called a doctor, she claimed was associated with the airlines. After we board the plane. An Alaska representative boarded the plane, and told us I could not fly without a note from a doctor stating that I was cleared to fly.”</p>
<p>Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Halley Knigge released a public <a href="http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/04/07/alaska-airlines-kick-california-mom-with-cancer-no-note-to-fly-off-plane-with-family/" type="external">apology</a> to the family.</p>
<p>“We regret the inconvenience Ms. Sedway experienced yesterday and are very sorry for how the situation was handled. Her family’s tickets have been refunded and we will cover the cost of her family’s overnight accommodations in Lihue. While our employee had the customer’s well-being in mind, the situation could have been handled differently.”</p>
<p>The family was rebooked for a flight the following day.</p>
<p /> | 2,191 |
<p>The St. Louis Blues placed captain <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Alex-Pietrangelo/" type="external">Alex Pietrangelo</a> on injured reserve and recalled fellow defenseman Jordan Schmaltz from San Antonio of the American Hockey League, the team announced Tuesday.</p>
<p>Pietrangelo, who is nursing a lower-body injury, has collected seven goals and 16 assists in 30 games this season.</p>
<p>The 27-year-old Ontario native has played in at least 80 games in three of the last four seasons. He has 72 goals and 254 assists in 569 career contests since being selected by St. Louis with the fourth overall pick of the 2008 draft.</p>
<p>Schmaltz, who had two assists in nine games for the Blues in 2016-17, has scored five goals and set up 14 others in 24 games for the Rampage this season. The 24-year-old was selected by St. Louis with the 25th overall pick of the 2012 draft.</p> | St. Louis Blues: Alex Pietrangelo placed on IR | false | https://newsline.com/st-louis-blues-alex-pietrangelo-placed-on-ir/ | 2017-12-12 | 1right-center
| St. Louis Blues: Alex Pietrangelo placed on IR
<p>The St. Louis Blues placed captain <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Alex-Pietrangelo/" type="external">Alex Pietrangelo</a> on injured reserve and recalled fellow defenseman Jordan Schmaltz from San Antonio of the American Hockey League, the team announced Tuesday.</p>
<p>Pietrangelo, who is nursing a lower-body injury, has collected seven goals and 16 assists in 30 games this season.</p>
<p>The 27-year-old Ontario native has played in at least 80 games in three of the last four seasons. He has 72 goals and 254 assists in 569 career contests since being selected by St. Louis with the fourth overall pick of the 2008 draft.</p>
<p>Schmaltz, who had two assists in nine games for the Blues in 2016-17, has scored five goals and set up 14 others in 24 games for the Rampage this season. The 24-year-old was selected by St. Louis with the 25th overall pick of the 2012 draft.</p> | 2,192 |
<p>Well, we here at Truthdig already think he’s the best, but it’s fantastic news that the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has singled out veteran journalist, author and Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer as this year’s recipient of the Distinguished Work in New Media Award.</p>
<p>This award from the SPJ/LA truly puts the “new” in new media, as it’s been in existence for only two years. Our heartiest congratulations to Scheer for his well-deserved honor, proving once again that his vision and voice have made their indelible mark, even in a medium that’s constantly changing. –KA</p>
<p>SPJLA.org:</p>
<p>The Distinguished Work in New Media award was created in 2008 and is given to a journalist who uses the new media’s unique characteristics and capabilities while striving to uphold traditional journalism’s highest standards of honesty, accuracy, responsibility and accountability.</p>
<p />
<p>[…] Robert Scheer, editor-in-chief of the Webby Award-winning Internet magazine Truthdig, has built a reputation for strong social and political writing during his 45 years as a journalist. Between 1964 and 1969, he was Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor-in-chief of Ramparts magazine. From 1976 to 1993, he served as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, writing on such diverse topics as the Soviet Union, arms control, national politics and the military. In 1993, he launched a syndicated column now based at Truthdig. He has written nine books, including his latest, the L.A. Times’ bestseller, “The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street.” Scheer is a co-host of the weekly political radio program “Left, Right &amp; Center” on KCRW, the National Public Radio affiliate in Santa Monica, and also is a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication &amp; Journalism. He lives in Los Angeles.</p>
<p><a href="http://spjla.org/?p=855" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Robert Scheer Nabs SPJ/LA's New Media Prize | true | http://truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/robert_scheer_nabs_spjs_new_media_prize_20101216/ | 2010-12-17 | 4left
| Robert Scheer Nabs SPJ/LA's New Media Prize
<p>Well, we here at Truthdig already think he’s the best, but it’s fantastic news that the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has singled out veteran journalist, author and Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer as this year’s recipient of the Distinguished Work in New Media Award.</p>
<p>This award from the SPJ/LA truly puts the “new” in new media, as it’s been in existence for only two years. Our heartiest congratulations to Scheer for his well-deserved honor, proving once again that his vision and voice have made their indelible mark, even in a medium that’s constantly changing. –KA</p>
<p>SPJLA.org:</p>
<p>The Distinguished Work in New Media award was created in 2008 and is given to a journalist who uses the new media’s unique characteristics and capabilities while striving to uphold traditional journalism’s highest standards of honesty, accuracy, responsibility and accountability.</p>
<p />
<p>[…] Robert Scheer, editor-in-chief of the Webby Award-winning Internet magazine Truthdig, has built a reputation for strong social and political writing during his 45 years as a journalist. Between 1964 and 1969, he was Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor-in-chief of Ramparts magazine. From 1976 to 1993, he served as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, writing on such diverse topics as the Soviet Union, arms control, national politics and the military. In 1993, he launched a syndicated column now based at Truthdig. He has written nine books, including his latest, the L.A. Times’ bestseller, “The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street.” Scheer is a co-host of the weekly political radio program “Left, Right &amp; Center” on KCRW, the National Public Radio affiliate in Santa Monica, and also is a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication &amp; Journalism. He lives in Los Angeles.</p>
<p><a href="http://spjla.org/?p=855" type="external">Read more</a></p> | 2,193 |
<p>On the June 19 edition of The Daily Show, host Trevor Noah turned his focus to the Philando Castile verdict, where the cop who killed Castile in July of last year was <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/7/7/12116288/minnesota-police-shooting-philando-castile-falcon-heights-video" type="external">acquitted of all charges</a> this Friday. Noah started out his rant with one simple question: “How?”</p>
<p>“Every time I watch that video,” Noah began, referring to Castille’s girlfriend’s Facebook Live video that showed the shooting’s immediate aftermath, “the question I ask myself is, ‘How?’ Just … how? How does a black person not get shot in America? Because if you think about it, the bar is always moving. The goalposts are always shifting. There’s always a different thing that explains why a person got shot … at some point you realize, there’s no real answer.”</p>
<p>Noah pointed out the blatant hypocrisy of the NRA, who was “completely silent” in the wake of the verdict despite that the shooting symbolizes “everything they stand against: an officer of the state depriving a citizen of his life because he was legally carrying a firearm.”</p>
<p>He then played a clip of a speech at 2014’s CPAC where NRA president Wayne LaPierre said that there’s “no greater freedom” than to be able to own “all the rifles, shotguns and handguns we want.”</p>
<p>“…‘Unless you’re black,’ is what [LaPierre] should’ve said,” Noah said, commenting on the video. “It’s interesting how the people who define themselves by one fundamental American right — the right to bear arms — show that once race is involved, the only right that they believe in is the right to remain silent.”</p>
<p>Watch the video below:</p>
<p />
<p>Featured image via screen grab</p> | Trevor Noah on Philando Castile: The NRA champions legal gun owners — unless they’re black | true | http://deadstate.org/trevor-noah-on-philando-castile-the-nra-champions-legal-gun-owners-unless-theyre-black/ | 2017-06-20 | 4left
| Trevor Noah on Philando Castile: The NRA champions legal gun owners — unless they’re black
<p>On the June 19 edition of The Daily Show, host Trevor Noah turned his focus to the Philando Castile verdict, where the cop who killed Castile in July of last year was <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/7/7/12116288/minnesota-police-shooting-philando-castile-falcon-heights-video" type="external">acquitted of all charges</a> this Friday. Noah started out his rant with one simple question: “How?”</p>
<p>“Every time I watch that video,” Noah began, referring to Castille’s girlfriend’s Facebook Live video that showed the shooting’s immediate aftermath, “the question I ask myself is, ‘How?’ Just … how? How does a black person not get shot in America? Because if you think about it, the bar is always moving. The goalposts are always shifting. There’s always a different thing that explains why a person got shot … at some point you realize, there’s no real answer.”</p>
<p>Noah pointed out the blatant hypocrisy of the NRA, who was “completely silent” in the wake of the verdict despite that the shooting symbolizes “everything they stand against: an officer of the state depriving a citizen of his life because he was legally carrying a firearm.”</p>
<p>He then played a clip of a speech at 2014’s CPAC where NRA president Wayne LaPierre said that there’s “no greater freedom” than to be able to own “all the rifles, shotguns and handguns we want.”</p>
<p>“…‘Unless you’re black,’ is what [LaPierre] should’ve said,” Noah said, commenting on the video. “It’s interesting how the people who define themselves by one fundamental American right — the right to bear arms — show that once race is involved, the only right that they believe in is the right to remain silent.”</p>
<p>Watch the video below:</p>
<p />
<p>Featured image via screen grab</p> | 2,194 |
<p><a href="http://www.tradeking.com/events" type="external">here Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Analysis from Candlechart.com’s <a href="http://www.candlecharts.com/free-education/tradeking/" type="external">Dave Forster Opens a New Window.</a>:</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Discussion from TradeKing Options Analyst Brian Overby:</p>
<p><a href="http://community.tradeking.com/members/optionsguy/blogs/97018-vix-options-how-to-video" type="external">VIX Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Dave Forster’s Chart of the Day is Fifth Third Bank – symbol FITB</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tradeking.com/education/stocks/technical-analysis-explained" type="external">Support / resistance Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Brian Overby’s potential strategy based on Dave’s chart – FITB – Long Spread</p>
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<p><a href="http://community.tradeking.com/members/tk-all-star/details" type="external">All-Star Roster Opens a New Window.</a></p> | TradeKing Midday Market Call Recap: SPX, VIX, FITB | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2012/08/01/tradeking-midday-market-call-recap-spx-vix-fitb.html | 2016-03-03 | 0right
| TradeKing Midday Market Call Recap: SPX, VIX, FITB
<p><a href="http://www.tradeking.com/events" type="external">here Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Analysis from Candlechart.com’s <a href="http://www.candlecharts.com/free-education/tradeking/" type="external">Dave Forster Opens a New Window.</a>:</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Discussion from TradeKing Options Analyst Brian Overby:</p>
<p><a href="http://community.tradeking.com/members/optionsguy/blogs/97018-vix-options-how-to-video" type="external">VIX Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Dave Forster’s Chart of the Day is Fifth Third Bank – symbol FITB</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tradeking.com/education/stocks/technical-analysis-explained" type="external">Support / resistance Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Brian Overby’s potential strategy based on Dave’s chart – FITB – Long Spread</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.tradeking.com/ODD" type="external">www.TradeKing.com/ODD Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://content.tradeking.com/wiki/display/tkservice/Multi-Leg+Option+Orders" type="external">additional risks and multiple commissions Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.tradeking.com/rates" type="external">Commissions + Fees page Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://community.tradeking.com/members/tk-all-star/blogs" type="external">TradeKing All-Star Blog Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.tradeking.com/education/list/video" type="external">TradeKing Webinars Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://community.tradeking.com/members/tk-all-star/details" type="external">All-Star Roster Opens a New Window.</a></p> | 2,195 |
<p>Two days after gunman unloaded on a church in Sutherland, Texas, lawmakers have introduced legislation for permit gun carriers into places previously off limits. And this includes college campuses.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/michigan/articles/2017-11-07/michigan-bill-lets-teachers-carry-concealed-guns-in-schools" type="external">AP reported</a>that the “Republican-controlled <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/michigan" type="external">Michigan</a> Senate began passing fast-tracked legislation” to re-designate schools, among other places, as no longer gun-free zones. Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof said in a statement, "Anybody who wants to exercise their right to protect themselves and have a firearm should be able to do that where they need to." The senator was a sponsor of this bill that has already been approved by a committee on 3-2 party-line votes.</p>
<p>In Michigan, under the state’s law, it is currently illegal to carry “concealed weapons... in designated gun-free zones.” The recently introduced bill has been a source of concern for officials of the state’s many schools, who have begun pushing back against such security measures, as a full vote in the state’s chamber is expected to occur on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Many U.S. public colleges in about 11 states already allow students to carry guns, though with restrictions -- and many more schools are expected to increase the rights to carry. Business Insider reports that "Utah was the first state to allow guns on campus in 2004," while Georgia was the most recent in 2017.</p>
<p>A survey by <a href="https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2017-11-01/what-parents-students-need-to-know-about-campus-carry-policies" type="external">U.S. News</a> found that “103 colleges and universities reported that they allow students to carry firearms.” The survey found that 40 of those schools “have concealed carry policies, meaning eligible students can possess handguns across most of campus if the weapons are hidden from view.” Policies are a bit more restrictive on other campuses.</p>
<p>In 2017, there are at least <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/states-that-allow-guns-on-college-campuses-2017-4" type="external">16 other schools</a> that have proposed similar campus carry bills.</p>
<p>In an article, two professors argued that “The prevailing sentiments at many schools across the U.S. seem to suggest that institutions of higher learning likely don’t view campus carry as enhancing safety.”</p>
<p>Researchers at <a href="https://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-gun-policy-and-research/_pdfs/GunsOnCampus.pdf" type="external">Johns Hopkins University</a>, too, found that campus carry bills aren’t any more “effective in reducing victims’ risk of injury than other victim responses to attempted violent crimes.”</p>
<p>The tragedy at Sutherland, Texas, left over 20 people dead. And schools are going to have to determine on their own, outside of state laws, how to ensure continued safety on campuses, with or without guns.</p> | It’s time for colleges to talk about guns on campus | false | https://circa.com/story/2017/11/07/campus/its-time-for-colleges-to-talk-about-guns | 2017-11-08 | 1right-center
| It’s time for colleges to talk about guns on campus
<p>Two days after gunman unloaded on a church in Sutherland, Texas, lawmakers have introduced legislation for permit gun carriers into places previously off limits. And this includes college campuses.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/michigan/articles/2017-11-07/michigan-bill-lets-teachers-carry-concealed-guns-in-schools" type="external">AP reported</a>that the “Republican-controlled <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/michigan" type="external">Michigan</a> Senate began passing fast-tracked legislation” to re-designate schools, among other places, as no longer gun-free zones. Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof said in a statement, "Anybody who wants to exercise their right to protect themselves and have a firearm should be able to do that where they need to." The senator was a sponsor of this bill that has already been approved by a committee on 3-2 party-line votes.</p>
<p>In Michigan, under the state’s law, it is currently illegal to carry “concealed weapons... in designated gun-free zones.” The recently introduced bill has been a source of concern for officials of the state’s many schools, who have begun pushing back against such security measures, as a full vote in the state’s chamber is expected to occur on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Many U.S. public colleges in about 11 states already allow students to carry guns, though with restrictions -- and many more schools are expected to increase the rights to carry. Business Insider reports that "Utah was the first state to allow guns on campus in 2004," while Georgia was the most recent in 2017.</p>
<p>A survey by <a href="https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2017-11-01/what-parents-students-need-to-know-about-campus-carry-policies" type="external">U.S. News</a> found that “103 colleges and universities reported that they allow students to carry firearms.” The survey found that 40 of those schools “have concealed carry policies, meaning eligible students can possess handguns across most of campus if the weapons are hidden from view.” Policies are a bit more restrictive on other campuses.</p>
<p>In 2017, there are at least <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/states-that-allow-guns-on-college-campuses-2017-4" type="external">16 other schools</a> that have proposed similar campus carry bills.</p>
<p>In an article, two professors argued that “The prevailing sentiments at many schools across the U.S. seem to suggest that institutions of higher learning likely don’t view campus carry as enhancing safety.”</p>
<p>Researchers at <a href="https://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-gun-policy-and-research/_pdfs/GunsOnCampus.pdf" type="external">Johns Hopkins University</a>, too, found that campus carry bills aren’t any more “effective in reducing victims’ risk of injury than other victim responses to attempted violent crimes.”</p>
<p>The tragedy at Sutherland, Texas, left over 20 people dead. And schools are going to have to determine on their own, outside of state laws, how to ensure continued safety on campuses, with or without guns.</p> | 2,196 |
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Las Cruces mother suspected of failing to provide adequate nutrition for her 10-month-old underdeveloped daughter has been arrested and charged with child abuse, Las Cruces police said in a news release.</p>
<p>Sarah A. Chavez, 27, was arrested March 27 and booked into the Dona Ana County Detention Center on a $10,000 bond, which she posted the same day, the release said. She is facing one count of negligent child abuse.</p>
<p>Police detectives said the 10-month-old girl was admitted to El Paso Children’s Hospital on March 14 because she was small for her age, had difficulty sitting without support and weighed around 13 pounds, and medical professionals said the girl was not receiving the proper nutrition for her age.</p>
<p>Detectives said that while at the hospital Chavez failed to feed her daughter as directed by medical staff during the hours of 8:30 p.m. and 4 a.m. because she allegedly believed the child would get used to eating during those hours, according to the news release.</p>
<p>Chavez also removed her daughter from the hospital against medical advice on March 17, Child Protective Services told the detectives.</p>
<p>Child Protective Services later took custody of the child, who was readmitted to the El Paso Children’s Hospital on March 19, where she has been receiving enough nutrition to gain weight, according to police.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Las Cruces mom accused of child abuse | false | https://abqjournal.com/184954/las-cruces-mother-accused-of-child-abuse.html | 2013-04-04 | 2least
| Las Cruces mom accused of child abuse
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Las Cruces mother suspected of failing to provide adequate nutrition for her 10-month-old underdeveloped daughter has been arrested and charged with child abuse, Las Cruces police said in a news release.</p>
<p>Sarah A. Chavez, 27, was arrested March 27 and booked into the Dona Ana County Detention Center on a $10,000 bond, which she posted the same day, the release said. She is facing one count of negligent child abuse.</p>
<p>Police detectives said the 10-month-old girl was admitted to El Paso Children’s Hospital on March 14 because she was small for her age, had difficulty sitting without support and weighed around 13 pounds, and medical professionals said the girl was not receiving the proper nutrition for her age.</p>
<p>Detectives said that while at the hospital Chavez failed to feed her daughter as directed by medical staff during the hours of 8:30 p.m. and 4 a.m. because she allegedly believed the child would get used to eating during those hours, according to the news release.</p>
<p>Chavez also removed her daughter from the hospital against medical advice on March 17, Child Protective Services told the detectives.</p>
<p>Child Protective Services later took custody of the child, who was readmitted to the El Paso Children’s Hospital on March 19, where she has been receiving enough nutrition to gain weight, according to police.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 2,197 |
<p>Syrian government forces stormed the city of Rastan on Wednesday, according to <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h1D_PqzO_qJtV7Q7PhOIIH_H74Hw?docId=CNG.d1926684f6af46c9c44baf84e71e45dc.111" type="external">Agence France Presse</a>. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that counts the Syria dead, said 12 were killed in violence across the country today.</p>
<p>Troops have been trying to retake Rastan for over a week, wrote the news wire. Water and food supplies have run low, but the shells - which at one point reportedly rained down at one per minute - slowed after UN observers visited the town.</p>
<p>"God protect us when they leave," said Abu Rawan, an activist.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/syria/120521/syria-united-nations-peace-plan-fsa-idlib" type="external">The Syrian tumult</a></p>
<p>Troops fired on protesters in Aleppo, causing a melee, but few details were available, according to the news wire. In Damascus, a bomb exploded under a bus that was carrying soldiers. One was killed and nearly two dozen were injured, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/syrian-oil-minister-says-sanctions-have-sucked-4-billion-out-of-economy/2012/05/23/gJQAGEFOkU_story.html" type="external">according to the Associated Press</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Syria's oil minister said Tuesday that sanctions on the country have in fact exacted a large toll, the AP wrote. Sufian Allaw, the country's oil minister, told a press conference, "The oil sector has lost almost $4 billion because of the unjust European and US sanctions, blocking exports and imports of oil and oil derivatives." The country has had trouble meeting domestic gas needs.</p>
<p>The number of United Nations observers continues to climb, but violence has yet to stop completely.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/syria/120515/syria-al-qaeda-terrorists-iraq" type="external">Syria: The new land of jihad?</a></p> | Syria violence continues as government assaults Rastan | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-05-23/syria-violence-continues-government-assaults-rastan | 2012-05-23 | 3left-center
| Syria violence continues as government assaults Rastan
<p>Syrian government forces stormed the city of Rastan on Wednesday, according to <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h1D_PqzO_qJtV7Q7PhOIIH_H74Hw?docId=CNG.d1926684f6af46c9c44baf84e71e45dc.111" type="external">Agence France Presse</a>. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that counts the Syria dead, said 12 were killed in violence across the country today.</p>
<p>Troops have been trying to retake Rastan for over a week, wrote the news wire. Water and food supplies have run low, but the shells - which at one point reportedly rained down at one per minute - slowed after UN observers visited the town.</p>
<p>"God protect us when they leave," said Abu Rawan, an activist.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/syria/120521/syria-united-nations-peace-plan-fsa-idlib" type="external">The Syrian tumult</a></p>
<p>Troops fired on protesters in Aleppo, causing a melee, but few details were available, according to the news wire. In Damascus, a bomb exploded under a bus that was carrying soldiers. One was killed and nearly two dozen were injured, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/syrian-oil-minister-says-sanctions-have-sucked-4-billion-out-of-economy/2012/05/23/gJQAGEFOkU_story.html" type="external">according to the Associated Press</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Syria's oil minister said Tuesday that sanctions on the country have in fact exacted a large toll, the AP wrote. Sufian Allaw, the country's oil minister, told a press conference, "The oil sector has lost almost $4 billion because of the unjust European and US sanctions, blocking exports and imports of oil and oil derivatives." The country has had trouble meeting domestic gas needs.</p>
<p>The number of United Nations observers continues to climb, but violence has yet to stop completely.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/syria/120515/syria-al-qaeda-terrorists-iraq" type="external">Syria: The new land of jihad?</a></p> | 2,198 |
<p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Sunday evening’s drawing of the Indiana Lottery’s “Daily Three-Evening” game were:</p>
<p>1-9-8, SB: 1</p>
<p>(one, nine, eight; SB: one)</p>
<p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Sunday evening’s drawing of the Indiana Lottery’s “Daily Three-Evening” game were:</p>
<p>1-9-8, SB: 1</p>
<p>(one, nine, eight; SB: one)</p> | Winning numbers drawn in ‘Daily Three-Evening’ game | false | https://apnews.com/2e7eb3b5ea2f4b908ba73cd02ccfabcc | 2018-01-22 | 2least
| Winning numbers drawn in ‘Daily Three-Evening’ game
<p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Sunday evening’s drawing of the Indiana Lottery’s “Daily Three-Evening” game were:</p>
<p>1-9-8, SB: 1</p>
<p>(one, nine, eight; SB: one)</p>
<p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Sunday evening’s drawing of the Indiana Lottery’s “Daily Three-Evening” game were:</p>
<p>1-9-8, SB: 1</p>
<p>(one, nine, eight; SB: one)</p> | 2,199 |
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