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<p>IRMO, S.C. (AP) — Authorities say officers investigating a home invasion call in South Carolina fired at a man who pointed a rifle at them.</p>
<p>Lexington County deputies said no one was hurt in the shooting around 6:30 a.m. Saturday in Irmo, but three children and an adult inside the home were assaulted.</p>
<p>Deputies say officers were doing a security sweep of the home when they heard a commotion upstairs and were confronted with a man with a rifle.</p>
<p>The Lexington County Sheriff's Office said on Twitter that one officer fired several shots, but no one was injured.</p>
<p>Deputies took two suspects into custody for the home invasion. Their names were not released.</p>
<p>The State Law Enforcement Division is investigating the shooting. The races of the officer and the suspect were not released.</p>
<p>IRMO, S.C. (AP) — Authorities say officers investigating a home invasion call in South Carolina fired at a man who pointed a rifle at them.</p>
<p>Lexington County deputies said no one was hurt in the shooting around 6:30 a.m. Saturday in Irmo, but three children and an adult inside the home were assaulted.</p>
<p>Deputies say officers were doing a security sweep of the home when they heard a commotion upstairs and were confronted with a man with a rifle.</p>
<p>The Lexington County Sheriff's Office said on Twitter that one officer fired several shots, but no one was injured.</p>
<p>Deputies took two suspects into custody for the home invasion. Their names were not released.</p>
<p>The State Law Enforcement Division is investigating the shooting. The races of the officer and the suspect were not released.</p> | Deputy fires shots when man points rifle in S Carolina home | false | https://apnews.com/amp/f4e24aa6b7fa444f864a517c06b52684 | 2017-12-30 | 2least
| Deputy fires shots when man points rifle in S Carolina home
<p>IRMO, S.C. (AP) — Authorities say officers investigating a home invasion call in South Carolina fired at a man who pointed a rifle at them.</p>
<p>Lexington County deputies said no one was hurt in the shooting around 6:30 a.m. Saturday in Irmo, but three children and an adult inside the home were assaulted.</p>
<p>Deputies say officers were doing a security sweep of the home when they heard a commotion upstairs and were confronted with a man with a rifle.</p>
<p>The Lexington County Sheriff's Office said on Twitter that one officer fired several shots, but no one was injured.</p>
<p>Deputies took two suspects into custody for the home invasion. Their names were not released.</p>
<p>The State Law Enforcement Division is investigating the shooting. The races of the officer and the suspect were not released.</p>
<p>IRMO, S.C. (AP) — Authorities say officers investigating a home invasion call in South Carolina fired at a man who pointed a rifle at them.</p>
<p>Lexington County deputies said no one was hurt in the shooting around 6:30 a.m. Saturday in Irmo, but three children and an adult inside the home were assaulted.</p>
<p>Deputies say officers were doing a security sweep of the home when they heard a commotion upstairs and were confronted with a man with a rifle.</p>
<p>The Lexington County Sheriff's Office said on Twitter that one officer fired several shots, but no one was injured.</p>
<p>Deputies took two suspects into custody for the home invasion. Their names were not released.</p>
<p>The State Law Enforcement Division is investigating the shooting. The races of the officer and the suspect were not released.</p> | 500 |
<p>Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919) advocated the extermination of the American Indian in his 1899 fantasy “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. Baum was an Irish nationalist newspaper editor, a former resident of Aberdeen in the old Dakota Indian territory. His sympathies with the village pioneers caused him to invent the Oz fantasy to justify extermination. All of Baum’s “innocent” symbols clearly represent easily recognizable frontier landmarks, political realities, and peoples. These symbols were presented to frontier children, to prepare them for their racially violent future.</p>
<p>The Yellow Brick Road represents the yellow brick gold at the end of the Bozeman Road to the Montana gold fields. Chief Red Cloud had forced the razing of several posts, including Fort Phil Kearney, and had forced the signing of the Fort Laramie Treaty. When George Armstrong Custer cut “the Thieves’ Road” during his 1874 gold expedition invasion of the sacred Black Hills, he violated this treaty, and turned U.S. foreign policy toward the Little Big Horn and the Wounded Knee massacre.</p>
<p>The Winged Monkeys are the Irish Baum’s satire on the old Northwest Mounted Police, who were modelled on the Irish Constabulary. The scarlet tunic of the Mounties, and the distinctive “pillbox” forage cap with the narrow visor and strap are seen clearly in the color plate in the 1900 first edition of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. Villagers across the Dakota territory heartily despised these British police, especially after 1877, when Sitting Bull retreated across the border and into their protection after killing Custer.</p>
<p>The Shifting Sands, the Deadly Desert, the Great Sandy Waste, and the Impassable Desert are Frank Baum’s reference to that area of the froniter known always as “the great American desert”, west and south of the Great Lakes. Baum creates these fictional, barren areas as protective buffers for his Oz utopia, against hostile, foreign people. This “buffer state” practice had been part of U.S. foreign policy against the Indians, since the earliest colonial days.</p>
<p>The Emerald City of Oz recreates the Irish nationalist’s vision of the Emerald Isle, the sacred land, Ireland, set in this American desert like the sacred Paha Sapa of the Lakota people, these mineral-rich Black Hills floored by coal. Irish settlements in the territories, in Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota–at Brule City, Limerick, at Lalla Rookh, and at O’Neill two hundred miles south of Aberdeen–founded invasions of the Black Hills.</p>
<p>The Yellow Winkies, slaves, are Frank Baum’s symbol for the sizable Chinese population in the old West, emigrated for the Union-Pacific railroad, creatures with the slant or winking eyes.</p>
<p>The Deadly Poppy Field is the innocent child’s first sight of opium, that anodyne of choice for pain in the nineteenth century, sold in patent medicines, in the Wizard Oil, at the travelling Indian medicine shows. Baum’s deadly poppies are the poison opium, causing sleep and the fatal dream.</p>
<p>The Wicked Witch of the West is illustrated in the 1900 first edition as a pickaninny, with beribboned, braided pigtails extended comically. Baum repeats the word “brown” in describing her. But this symbol’s real historic depth lies in the earlier Puritans’ confounding of European witches with the equally heathen American Indians.</p>
<p>The orphan Dorothy’s violent removal from Kansas civilization, her search for secret and magical cures for her friends, her capture, enslavement to an evil figure–and the killing of this figure that is forced on her–all these themes Baum takes from the already two hundred year old tradition of the Indian captivity narrative which stoked the fires of Indian-hating and its hope of “redemption through violence”.</p>
<p>In the year immediately following the huge success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum wrote a fantasy entitled The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. It is apparent that his frontier experiences were still on his mind. The book was illustrated by Mary Cowles Clark–tomahawks, spears, the hide- covered teepees, and the faces of Indian men, women, and children, and papooses fill the pages and the margins. Baum describes the “rude tent of skins on a broad plain”.</p>
<p>Two crucial chapters are titled “The Wickedness of the Awgwas” and “The Great Battle Between Good and Evil”. The Awgwas represent native Americans: “that terrible race of creatures” and “the wicked tribe”. Baum condemns the Awgwas:</p>
<p>“You are a transient race, passing from life into nothingness. We, who live forever, pity but despise you. On earth you are scorned by all, and in Heaven you have no place! Even the mortals, after their earth life, enter another existence for all time, and so are your superiors.”.</p>
<p>Predictably enough, a few pages later, “all that remained of the wicked Awgwas was a great number of earthen hillocks dotting the plain.” Baum is recalling newspaper photos of the burial field at Wounded Knee.</p>
<p>The Wizard of Oz in 1899 ruling his empire from behind his Barrier of Invisibility evokes the 1869 Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire of the South, the Ku Klux Klan. Baum’s figure King Crow and his by-play with the Scarecrow relate to the Jim Crow lynch law at the turn of the century.</p>
<p>Lyman Frank Baum’s overwhelmingly popular fantasy, and the more violent aspects of United States foreign policy, were welded togehter in the American mind for the next century and beyond. Frank Baum’s widow, at the Hollywood premiere of “The Wizard of Oz” in 1939, complained that the story had been sentimentalized. Indeed, the old and crudely direct political symbols had been removed, and the sweetness poured in–the new U.S. foreign policy demanded more subtle justifications.</p>
<p>“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”.</p>
<p>THOMAS ST. JOHN graduated from Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, and lived in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the author of “Forgotten Dreams: Ritual in American Popular Art” (New York: The Vantage Press, 1987), a collection of essays on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables, Reverend Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, the black history driving the films “Casablanca” and the cartoon “The Three Little Pigs”, and the Dakota Indian territory symbols in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. The short book “ <a href="http://www.geocities.com/seekingthephoenix/7gables.htm" type="external">Nathaniel Hawthorne: Studies in the House of the Seven Gables</a>” is now almost complete and online. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p /> | Indian-Hating in “The Wizard of Oz” | true | https://counterpunch.org/2004/06/26/indian-hating-in-the-wizard-of-oz/ | 2004-06-26 | 4left
| Indian-Hating in “The Wizard of Oz”
<p>Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919) advocated the extermination of the American Indian in his 1899 fantasy “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. Baum was an Irish nationalist newspaper editor, a former resident of Aberdeen in the old Dakota Indian territory. His sympathies with the village pioneers caused him to invent the Oz fantasy to justify extermination. All of Baum’s “innocent” symbols clearly represent easily recognizable frontier landmarks, political realities, and peoples. These symbols were presented to frontier children, to prepare them for their racially violent future.</p>
<p>The Yellow Brick Road represents the yellow brick gold at the end of the Bozeman Road to the Montana gold fields. Chief Red Cloud had forced the razing of several posts, including Fort Phil Kearney, and had forced the signing of the Fort Laramie Treaty. When George Armstrong Custer cut “the Thieves’ Road” during his 1874 gold expedition invasion of the sacred Black Hills, he violated this treaty, and turned U.S. foreign policy toward the Little Big Horn and the Wounded Knee massacre.</p>
<p>The Winged Monkeys are the Irish Baum’s satire on the old Northwest Mounted Police, who were modelled on the Irish Constabulary. The scarlet tunic of the Mounties, and the distinctive “pillbox” forage cap with the narrow visor and strap are seen clearly in the color plate in the 1900 first edition of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. Villagers across the Dakota territory heartily despised these British police, especially after 1877, when Sitting Bull retreated across the border and into their protection after killing Custer.</p>
<p>The Shifting Sands, the Deadly Desert, the Great Sandy Waste, and the Impassable Desert are Frank Baum’s reference to that area of the froniter known always as “the great American desert”, west and south of the Great Lakes. Baum creates these fictional, barren areas as protective buffers for his Oz utopia, against hostile, foreign people. This “buffer state” practice had been part of U.S. foreign policy against the Indians, since the earliest colonial days.</p>
<p>The Emerald City of Oz recreates the Irish nationalist’s vision of the Emerald Isle, the sacred land, Ireland, set in this American desert like the sacred Paha Sapa of the Lakota people, these mineral-rich Black Hills floored by coal. Irish settlements in the territories, in Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota–at Brule City, Limerick, at Lalla Rookh, and at O’Neill two hundred miles south of Aberdeen–founded invasions of the Black Hills.</p>
<p>The Yellow Winkies, slaves, are Frank Baum’s symbol for the sizable Chinese population in the old West, emigrated for the Union-Pacific railroad, creatures with the slant or winking eyes.</p>
<p>The Deadly Poppy Field is the innocent child’s first sight of opium, that anodyne of choice for pain in the nineteenth century, sold in patent medicines, in the Wizard Oil, at the travelling Indian medicine shows. Baum’s deadly poppies are the poison opium, causing sleep and the fatal dream.</p>
<p>The Wicked Witch of the West is illustrated in the 1900 first edition as a pickaninny, with beribboned, braided pigtails extended comically. Baum repeats the word “brown” in describing her. But this symbol’s real historic depth lies in the earlier Puritans’ confounding of European witches with the equally heathen American Indians.</p>
<p>The orphan Dorothy’s violent removal from Kansas civilization, her search for secret and magical cures for her friends, her capture, enslavement to an evil figure–and the killing of this figure that is forced on her–all these themes Baum takes from the already two hundred year old tradition of the Indian captivity narrative which stoked the fires of Indian-hating and its hope of “redemption through violence”.</p>
<p>In the year immediately following the huge success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum wrote a fantasy entitled The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. It is apparent that his frontier experiences were still on his mind. The book was illustrated by Mary Cowles Clark–tomahawks, spears, the hide- covered teepees, and the faces of Indian men, women, and children, and papooses fill the pages and the margins. Baum describes the “rude tent of skins on a broad plain”.</p>
<p>Two crucial chapters are titled “The Wickedness of the Awgwas” and “The Great Battle Between Good and Evil”. The Awgwas represent native Americans: “that terrible race of creatures” and “the wicked tribe”. Baum condemns the Awgwas:</p>
<p>“You are a transient race, passing from life into nothingness. We, who live forever, pity but despise you. On earth you are scorned by all, and in Heaven you have no place! Even the mortals, after their earth life, enter another existence for all time, and so are your superiors.”.</p>
<p>Predictably enough, a few pages later, “all that remained of the wicked Awgwas was a great number of earthen hillocks dotting the plain.” Baum is recalling newspaper photos of the burial field at Wounded Knee.</p>
<p>The Wizard of Oz in 1899 ruling his empire from behind his Barrier of Invisibility evokes the 1869 Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire of the South, the Ku Klux Klan. Baum’s figure King Crow and his by-play with the Scarecrow relate to the Jim Crow lynch law at the turn of the century.</p>
<p>Lyman Frank Baum’s overwhelmingly popular fantasy, and the more violent aspects of United States foreign policy, were welded togehter in the American mind for the next century and beyond. Frank Baum’s widow, at the Hollywood premiere of “The Wizard of Oz” in 1939, complained that the story had been sentimentalized. Indeed, the old and crudely direct political symbols had been removed, and the sweetness poured in–the new U.S. foreign policy demanded more subtle justifications.</p>
<p>“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”.</p>
<p>THOMAS ST. JOHN graduated from Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, and lived in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the author of “Forgotten Dreams: Ritual in American Popular Art” (New York: The Vantage Press, 1987), a collection of essays on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables, Reverend Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, the black history driving the films “Casablanca” and the cartoon “The Three Little Pigs”, and the Dakota Indian territory symbols in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. The short book “ <a href="http://www.geocities.com/seekingthephoenix/7gables.htm" type="external">Nathaniel Hawthorne: Studies in the House of the Seven Gables</a>” is now almost complete and online. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p /> | 501 |
<p>President Trump is set to sign an executive order on Tuesday that will curtail the number of foreign workers coming to the United States on guest visas, and to require federal agencies to buy more goods and services from companies right here in America.</p>
<p>Trump is heading to Kenosha, Wisc., for an event at the headquarters of tool maker, Snap-on Inc. There, he'll sign the so-called "Buy American, Hire American" executive order.</p>
<p>The order "would direct the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Labor and State to propose new rules to prevent immigration fraud and abuse," the <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TRUMP_WISCONSIN?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2017-04-17-22-38-06" type="external">Associated Press</a> reported. "Those departments would also be asked to offer changes so that H-1B visas are awarded to the 'most-skilled or highest-paid applicants.'"</p>
<p>The White House said the program is currently undercutting American workers by bringing in cheaper labor and said some tech companies are using it to hire large numbers of workers and drive down wages.</p>
<p>Administration officials said the order also seeks to strengthen requirements that American-made products be used in certain federal construction projects, as well as in various federal transportation grant-funded projects. The officials said the commerce secretary will review how to close loopholes in enforcing the existing rules and provide recommendations to the president.</p>
<p>The order specifically asks the secretary to review waivers of these rules that exist in free-trade agreements. The administration said that if the waivers are not benefiting the United States they will be "renegotiated or revoked."</p>
<p>During his campaign, Trump said at some point that he supported high-skilled visas, then came out against them. At one debate, he called for fully ending the program, saying: "It's very bad for our workers and it's unfair for our workers. And we should end it."</p>
<p>The H-1B visa program lets more than 85,000 foreign workers into America each year, and the visiting workers often take high-skilled jobs Americans could have. Abuses have run rampant, with companies using the visas to get workers for salaries far under the prevailing wage -- who often take jobs from newly graduated college students.</p>
<p>The Trump order won't fulfill his promise to end the program. But it will rewrite rules for a lottery system that is used to determine the companies that can sponsor visas, the AP wrote.</p>
<p>On the "Buy American" plan, Trump's move will limit and tighten waivers and exemptions that federal agencies often deploy to evade procurement laws already on the books. Those laws require agencies to use U.S.-made goods and services. Trump, who throughout the campaign railed against other nations that use unfair trade practices, is also seeking to crack down on low bids that shut out U.S. companies.</p> | Trump Set to Sign 'Buy American, Hire American' Executive Order | true | https://dailywire.com/news/15490/trump-set-sign-buy-american-hire-american-joseph-curl | 2017-04-18 | 0right
| Trump Set to Sign 'Buy American, Hire American' Executive Order
<p>President Trump is set to sign an executive order on Tuesday that will curtail the number of foreign workers coming to the United States on guest visas, and to require federal agencies to buy more goods and services from companies right here in America.</p>
<p>Trump is heading to Kenosha, Wisc., for an event at the headquarters of tool maker, Snap-on Inc. There, he'll sign the so-called "Buy American, Hire American" executive order.</p>
<p>The order "would direct the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Labor and State to propose new rules to prevent immigration fraud and abuse," the <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TRUMP_WISCONSIN?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2017-04-17-22-38-06" type="external">Associated Press</a> reported. "Those departments would also be asked to offer changes so that H-1B visas are awarded to the 'most-skilled or highest-paid applicants.'"</p>
<p>The White House said the program is currently undercutting American workers by bringing in cheaper labor and said some tech companies are using it to hire large numbers of workers and drive down wages.</p>
<p>Administration officials said the order also seeks to strengthen requirements that American-made products be used in certain federal construction projects, as well as in various federal transportation grant-funded projects. The officials said the commerce secretary will review how to close loopholes in enforcing the existing rules and provide recommendations to the president.</p>
<p>The order specifically asks the secretary to review waivers of these rules that exist in free-trade agreements. The administration said that if the waivers are not benefiting the United States they will be "renegotiated or revoked."</p>
<p>During his campaign, Trump said at some point that he supported high-skilled visas, then came out against them. At one debate, he called for fully ending the program, saying: "It's very bad for our workers and it's unfair for our workers. And we should end it."</p>
<p>The H-1B visa program lets more than 85,000 foreign workers into America each year, and the visiting workers often take high-skilled jobs Americans could have. Abuses have run rampant, with companies using the visas to get workers for salaries far under the prevailing wage -- who often take jobs from newly graduated college students.</p>
<p>The Trump order won't fulfill his promise to end the program. But it will rewrite rules for a lottery system that is used to determine the companies that can sponsor visas, the AP wrote.</p>
<p>On the "Buy American" plan, Trump's move will limit and tighten waivers and exemptions that federal agencies often deploy to evade procurement laws already on the books. Those laws require agencies to use U.S.-made goods and services. Trump, who throughout the campaign railed against other nations that use unfair trade practices, is also seeking to crack down on low bids that shut out U.S. companies.</p> | 502 |
<p />
<p>Oil&#160;prices rose more than 1 percent on Thursday, on track for a fourth straight day of gains, but analysts remained cautious about record-high U.S. crude inventories.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Brent crude futures gained 61 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $54.97 a barrel by 2:21 p.m. EDT (1921 GMT). U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 1.3 percent, or 66 cents a barrel to $51.81.</p>
<p>The gains put crude on track for its best close since a March 8 rout when investors bailed out of bullish positions due to concerns about supply.</p>
<p>Crude prices have been rebounding in the last two weeks from that decline. Refinery runs are starting to increase as the U.S. summer driving season approaches and gasoline inventories have been declining.</p>
<p>Yet U.S. government data still show crude inventories at record levels, prompting some analysts to grow concerned about speculators jumping back into the market after several weeks when they reduced positions in response to inventory figures.</p>
<p>"It's hard to justify the move on the on back of fundamentals," said Robert Yawger, director in energy futures at Mizuho.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>On Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported a surprising increase of 1.57 million barrels in crude inventories, bringing total U.S. stocks to a record 535.5 million barrels .</p>
<p>U.S.&#160;oil&#160;production rose by 52,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 9.2 million bpd .</p>
<p>"The U.S. crude&#160;oil&#160;production profile is a mirror image of where it was last year, when at the end of the second quarter, production was 600,000 bpd lower than at the start of the year and this year is going to be the opposite," said Olivier Jakob, at consultancy Petromatrix.</p>
<p>"By the end of the second quarter, you could have U.S. production up by 1 million bpd."</p>
<p>Traders have been watching U.S. gasoline inventories as an indicator of what may happen with crude supplies. The latest data showed gasoline at 239 million barrels, higher than any year at this point during this century other than last year.</p>
<p>Gasoline prices trailed the rest of the market on Thursday; RBOB futures rose 0.8 percent to $1.7292 a gallon. Demand for gasoline traditionally picks up in the summer as U.S. driving season gets going.</p>
<p>U.S. crude exports have risen to a record 1.1 million bpd. Most cargoes are going to Asia, where traders see signs of a tightening market due to efforts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut output.</p>
<p>Additional production could come back online in coming days, as the 350,000-bpd Syncrude&#160;oil&#160;sands project in Alberta, which cut production to zero after a fire, is expected to restart operations in the first week of May, according to sources familiar with the matter.</p>
<p>(Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; editing by David Gregorio and Richard Chang)</p> | Oil Prices Rise, Near One-Month Highs | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/04/05/oil-prices-rise-despite-bearish-inventory-figures.html | 2017-04-06 | 0right
| Oil Prices Rise, Near One-Month Highs
<p />
<p>Oil&#160;prices rose more than 1 percent on Thursday, on track for a fourth straight day of gains, but analysts remained cautious about record-high U.S. crude inventories.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Brent crude futures gained 61 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $54.97 a barrel by 2:21 p.m. EDT (1921 GMT). U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 1.3 percent, or 66 cents a barrel to $51.81.</p>
<p>The gains put crude on track for its best close since a March 8 rout when investors bailed out of bullish positions due to concerns about supply.</p>
<p>Crude prices have been rebounding in the last two weeks from that decline. Refinery runs are starting to increase as the U.S. summer driving season approaches and gasoline inventories have been declining.</p>
<p>Yet U.S. government data still show crude inventories at record levels, prompting some analysts to grow concerned about speculators jumping back into the market after several weeks when they reduced positions in response to inventory figures.</p>
<p>"It's hard to justify the move on the on back of fundamentals," said Robert Yawger, director in energy futures at Mizuho.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>On Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported a surprising increase of 1.57 million barrels in crude inventories, bringing total U.S. stocks to a record 535.5 million barrels .</p>
<p>U.S.&#160;oil&#160;production rose by 52,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 9.2 million bpd .</p>
<p>"The U.S. crude&#160;oil&#160;production profile is a mirror image of where it was last year, when at the end of the second quarter, production was 600,000 bpd lower than at the start of the year and this year is going to be the opposite," said Olivier Jakob, at consultancy Petromatrix.</p>
<p>"By the end of the second quarter, you could have U.S. production up by 1 million bpd."</p>
<p>Traders have been watching U.S. gasoline inventories as an indicator of what may happen with crude supplies. The latest data showed gasoline at 239 million barrels, higher than any year at this point during this century other than last year.</p>
<p>Gasoline prices trailed the rest of the market on Thursday; RBOB futures rose 0.8 percent to $1.7292 a gallon. Demand for gasoline traditionally picks up in the summer as U.S. driving season gets going.</p>
<p>U.S. crude exports have risen to a record 1.1 million bpd. Most cargoes are going to Asia, where traders see signs of a tightening market due to efforts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut output.</p>
<p>Additional production could come back online in coming days, as the 350,000-bpd Syncrude&#160;oil&#160;sands project in Alberta, which cut production to zero after a fire, is expected to restart operations in the first week of May, according to sources familiar with the matter.</p>
<p>(Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; editing by David Gregorio and Richard Chang)</p> | 503 |
<p />
<p>MILAN (AP) — Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's vision for the chain was largely inspired by the coffee bars he saw on his first trip to Milan more than three decades ago. But it took the company growing to about 26,000 stores in 75 countries to win the credibility he felt necessary to make the leap into the country that gave espresso to the world.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"I didn't think we were ready to come to Italy," Schultz told The Associated Press in an interview Monday. "I think Italy is such a special place. I am so respectful of the Italian coffee heritage and the Italian culture, and I think we had to earn that respect, opportunity, and I think over the years we got to the point that we are now ready to come."</p>
<p>As he prepares to step down as CEO in April, Schultz will focus on innovation. That includes a Milan location that will open in 2018 of what he called "the quintessential Roastery" — one of the high-end shops featuring in-house roasting and complex coffee drinks. The journey of 35 years, he said, completes "my own dream and the circle of Starbucks."</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, skeptics like 70-year-old Christine Kung see Starbucks as a coals-to-Newcastle enterprise.</p>
<p>"We are happy the way we are," Kung said on her way to a bar for coffee in central Milan. "We don't need to be invaded by American scenery. We already have McDonald's and that's enough."</p>
<p>Indeed, the entry of McDonald's into Italy three decades ago sparked the Slow Food movement that encourages local food traditions, although it ultimately did not prevent the Golden Arches and other fast-food chains that followed from becoming part of the Italian landscape.</p>
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<p>Still, espresso drinks are part of Italian tradition and the fabric of everyday life in a way a quick bite still is not. Italians are accustomed to "taking" an espresso standing at the bar for an average price of 1 euro, or just about a dollar, even in major cities; 1.20-1.50 euros is on par for a cappuccino.</p>
<p>In Italy, baristas generally make the coffee in full sight of the consumer, and hand brioche and other pastries across a glass case, often with a quip. Taking a seat in an Italian bar may incur an extra charge, especially in prime locations. There are few sugary embellishments and Wi-Fi access is spotty, at best.</p>
<p>It is not uncommon to see waiters with silver trays delivering coffee in porcelain cups covered with foil to neighboring business, a practice that underlies the rarity of the takeout coffee cup.</p>
<p>This sort of humanity attracted Schultz's admiration on his first Milan visit. His response is to position the first Starbucks in Italy as a premium operation.</p>
<p>The Milan store at Piazza Cordusio will be among the early wave of up to 30 Roastery locations Starbucks says it expects to open around the world. The Milan store will launch a new partnership with an Italian partner, the Princi baker, offering deli food and baked goods. The first Roastery is in Seattle, with others announced for Shanghai, New York and Tokyo.</p>
<p>Besides mainstay espresso drinks, Schultz hopes customers will be attracted by specialized brewing techniques developed by Starbucks that are not typical in Italy. As in other markets, customers can take coffee out, or drink out of porcelain cups if they're staying in. Starbucks says it hasn't yet determined its prices.</p>
<p>Located in an old post office building just steps from Milan's cathedral, the store will be the largest to date at 25,500 square feet, or about 2,400 square meters — compared with 200 square feet for the average Starbucks location.</p>
<p>It is hard to gauge how many in Italy might share Kung's wariness. Schultz says market research indicates strong brand awareness among Italians, mostly from travels abroad. And younger Italians may be more disposed toward embracing Starbucks as a place to hang out. Twenty-year-old Giulia Rizzi said she is excited for the opening and has no doubt her peers will frequent Starbucks in Italy.</p>
<p>"When I go abroad it's a place I go to very often because I like it both for the place and for what they do, which can't often be found in Italy," she said. "Of course in Italy coffee is sacred so perhaps not everyone will like it."</p>
<p>But the brand took a brief battering on social media, along with city planners in Italy's finance and fashion capital, after an oasis of palm trees appeared opposite the cathedral and it emerged that Starbucks was paying for the landscaping project, chosen by the city. Vandals burned a couple of the trees.</p>
<p>The fate of the Italian enterprise, Schultz said, will depend on winning over Italian customers, not just tourists. Schultz has been getting guidance on how to approach the Italian market from fashion designer and CEO Brunello Cucinelli. His advice: "For Starbucks to be authentic. For us to be ourselves," Schultz said.</p>
<p>After the Roastery, Starbucks plans to open other locations in Milan, a combination of traditional stores and Reserve stores, which are essentially smaller Roasteries, before it looks at other Italian cities. Schultz didn't say how many stores are planned for Milan, but noted in the past 10 to 12 have opened within the first year of entering a market.</p>
<p>So far, Starbucks' plans aren't worrying the folks at one typical Milanese coffee bar, the Giacomo Caffe with its wooden bar, round tables and straight-back chairs located in the Palazzo Reale beside Piazza Duomo, not far from the new Starbucks location.</p>
<p>"It is something completely different," said manager Antimo Santoro. "Their strongest point is to take away, to buy and take away. Our strong point is service, we serve a coffee of very high quality, with a very refined blend, a great service." ____ Charlene Pele in Milan contributed to this report.</p> | Starbucks CEO says Chain Ready to Enter Italy after 35 years | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/02/28/starbucks-ceo-says-chain-ready-to-enter-italy-after-35-years.html | 2017-02-28 | 0right
| Starbucks CEO says Chain Ready to Enter Italy after 35 years
<p />
<p>MILAN (AP) — Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's vision for the chain was largely inspired by the coffee bars he saw on his first trip to Milan more than three decades ago. But it took the company growing to about 26,000 stores in 75 countries to win the credibility he felt necessary to make the leap into the country that gave espresso to the world.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"I didn't think we were ready to come to Italy," Schultz told The Associated Press in an interview Monday. "I think Italy is such a special place. I am so respectful of the Italian coffee heritage and the Italian culture, and I think we had to earn that respect, opportunity, and I think over the years we got to the point that we are now ready to come."</p>
<p>As he prepares to step down as CEO in April, Schultz will focus on innovation. That includes a Milan location that will open in 2018 of what he called "the quintessential Roastery" — one of the high-end shops featuring in-house roasting and complex coffee drinks. The journey of 35 years, he said, completes "my own dream and the circle of Starbucks."</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, skeptics like 70-year-old Christine Kung see Starbucks as a coals-to-Newcastle enterprise.</p>
<p>"We are happy the way we are," Kung said on her way to a bar for coffee in central Milan. "We don't need to be invaded by American scenery. We already have McDonald's and that's enough."</p>
<p>Indeed, the entry of McDonald's into Italy three decades ago sparked the Slow Food movement that encourages local food traditions, although it ultimately did not prevent the Golden Arches and other fast-food chains that followed from becoming part of the Italian landscape.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Still, espresso drinks are part of Italian tradition and the fabric of everyday life in a way a quick bite still is not. Italians are accustomed to "taking" an espresso standing at the bar for an average price of 1 euro, or just about a dollar, even in major cities; 1.20-1.50 euros is on par for a cappuccino.</p>
<p>In Italy, baristas generally make the coffee in full sight of the consumer, and hand brioche and other pastries across a glass case, often with a quip. Taking a seat in an Italian bar may incur an extra charge, especially in prime locations. There are few sugary embellishments and Wi-Fi access is spotty, at best.</p>
<p>It is not uncommon to see waiters with silver trays delivering coffee in porcelain cups covered with foil to neighboring business, a practice that underlies the rarity of the takeout coffee cup.</p>
<p>This sort of humanity attracted Schultz's admiration on his first Milan visit. His response is to position the first Starbucks in Italy as a premium operation.</p>
<p>The Milan store at Piazza Cordusio will be among the early wave of up to 30 Roastery locations Starbucks says it expects to open around the world. The Milan store will launch a new partnership with an Italian partner, the Princi baker, offering deli food and baked goods. The first Roastery is in Seattle, with others announced for Shanghai, New York and Tokyo.</p>
<p>Besides mainstay espresso drinks, Schultz hopes customers will be attracted by specialized brewing techniques developed by Starbucks that are not typical in Italy. As in other markets, customers can take coffee out, or drink out of porcelain cups if they're staying in. Starbucks says it hasn't yet determined its prices.</p>
<p>Located in an old post office building just steps from Milan's cathedral, the store will be the largest to date at 25,500 square feet, or about 2,400 square meters — compared with 200 square feet for the average Starbucks location.</p>
<p>It is hard to gauge how many in Italy might share Kung's wariness. Schultz says market research indicates strong brand awareness among Italians, mostly from travels abroad. And younger Italians may be more disposed toward embracing Starbucks as a place to hang out. Twenty-year-old Giulia Rizzi said she is excited for the opening and has no doubt her peers will frequent Starbucks in Italy.</p>
<p>"When I go abroad it's a place I go to very often because I like it both for the place and for what they do, which can't often be found in Italy," she said. "Of course in Italy coffee is sacred so perhaps not everyone will like it."</p>
<p>But the brand took a brief battering on social media, along with city planners in Italy's finance and fashion capital, after an oasis of palm trees appeared opposite the cathedral and it emerged that Starbucks was paying for the landscaping project, chosen by the city. Vandals burned a couple of the trees.</p>
<p>The fate of the Italian enterprise, Schultz said, will depend on winning over Italian customers, not just tourists. Schultz has been getting guidance on how to approach the Italian market from fashion designer and CEO Brunello Cucinelli. His advice: "For Starbucks to be authentic. For us to be ourselves," Schultz said.</p>
<p>After the Roastery, Starbucks plans to open other locations in Milan, a combination of traditional stores and Reserve stores, which are essentially smaller Roasteries, before it looks at other Italian cities. Schultz didn't say how many stores are planned for Milan, but noted in the past 10 to 12 have opened within the first year of entering a market.</p>
<p>So far, Starbucks' plans aren't worrying the folks at one typical Milanese coffee bar, the Giacomo Caffe with its wooden bar, round tables and straight-back chairs located in the Palazzo Reale beside Piazza Duomo, not far from the new Starbucks location.</p>
<p>"It is something completely different," said manager Antimo Santoro. "Their strongest point is to take away, to buy and take away. Our strong point is service, we serve a coffee of very high quality, with a very refined blend, a great service." ____ Charlene Pele in Milan contributed to this report.</p> | 504 |
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<p />
<p>He is said to have the same routine in each one of the robberies. He wears a Miami Heat baseball cap, blue shirt and running shoes. He uses a note to demand money in large bills from the teller and to instruct the teller to put the money in a plastic bag.</p>
<p>FBI officials believe the robber began in Louisiana on March 1 and struck banks in Oklahoma, Arkansas and New Mexico.</p>
<p>He is between 5 feet, 10 inches and 6 feet tall and between 40 to 50 years old.</p>
<p>The suspect went into Pioneer Bank on Thursday morning and handed the teller a note. He dropped the money as he ran away, according to an FBI news release.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>He then walked into the Western Commerce Bank a few blocks away and handed the note to the teller, police said. He got away with an undisclosed amount of money.</p>
<p>A $1,000 reward is available for any information leading to an arrest.</p>
<p>Anyone with information can call Albuquerque FBI Office at 505-889-1300 or Carlsbad Police Department at 575-885-2111.</p> | Bank Robber Hit 3 Other States | false | https://abqjournal.com/6219/bank-robber-hit-3-other-states.html | 2least
| Bank Robber Hit 3 Other States
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>He is said to have the same routine in each one of the robberies. He wears a Miami Heat baseball cap, blue shirt and running shoes. He uses a note to demand money in large bills from the teller and to instruct the teller to put the money in a plastic bag.</p>
<p>FBI officials believe the robber began in Louisiana on March 1 and struck banks in Oklahoma, Arkansas and New Mexico.</p>
<p>He is between 5 feet, 10 inches and 6 feet tall and between 40 to 50 years old.</p>
<p>The suspect went into Pioneer Bank on Thursday morning and handed the teller a note. He dropped the money as he ran away, according to an FBI news release.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>He then walked into the Western Commerce Bank a few blocks away and handed the note to the teller, police said. He got away with an undisclosed amount of money.</p>
<p>A $1,000 reward is available for any information leading to an arrest.</p>
<p>Anyone with information can call Albuquerque FBI Office at 505-889-1300 or Carlsbad Police Department at 575-885-2111.</p> | 505 |
|
<p>The U.S. has far too many malls scrambling to attract consumers at a time when online shopping is tightening its grip.</p>
<p>That doesn't mean middling malls will die quickly, however.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Projections for hundreds of shopping centers to close in the next five years could prove too pessimistic. A more likely outcome, analysts said: many weaker malls will turn into zombies, staying open for years as they cycle through increasingly less successful retailers before finally being repurposed or leveled.</p>
<p>"It takes a very long time to transition these malls," said Thomas Dobrowski, executive managing director of capital markets at real estate services firm Newmark Knight Frank. "They don't die of heart attacks."</p>
<p>Part of the reason for weak malls' persistence lies in contracts signed years or decades ago. Landlords typically strike leases of 10 or 20 years with multiple tenants, making speedy exits difficult. In some cases, lease buyouts can be negotiated, but the process can be expensive and lengthy.</p>
<p>Owners hoping to close malls and redevelop them for other uses might also run into regulatory hurdles. Getting buy-in from the local community takes time and rezoning approvals might not happen, especially in areas where sales tax revenue makes up a big chunk of the local government's budget.</p>
<p>Of the 41 malls Mr. Dobrowski has helped to sell since 2012, most of which were distressed sales, only one, Granite Run Mall in Media, Penn., has been closed and redeveloped. The others are still operating as malls.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The two-story Granite Run Mall was foreclosed on in 2010 after struggling with vacancies. It was sold in 2013 to BET Investments, which is redeveloping the site into a mixed-use property with open-air retail, entertainment and roughly 400 apartments. The demolition started only in 2016 as the firm waited for leases to expire and for government approvals for the redevelopment.</p>
<p>"You can't just tear it down while tenants are in there," said Bruce Toll, principal at BET Investments and a co-founder of home builder Toll Brothers Inc.</p>
<p>Roughly 200 malls have closed since 2007, according to Newmark Knight Frank. But the amount of square feet of retail space has increased 10.4% over the same period, according to data from CoStar Group. Part of that is due to the continued development of mixed-use centers in urban markets, but the steady growth in supply is also partly due to the slow pace of demolishing or transforming struggling malls for other uses.</p>
<p>Between 2007 and 2016, at least 275 enclosed malls, strip malls and open-air shopping centers were foreclosed on after their owners ran into difficulties repaying their securitized mortgage loans, according to data from Trepp Inc. Most of the properties live on as retail entities, with some adding medical clinics, tax and insurance offices, and gyms to their tenant mix.</p>
<p>After foreclosure, distressed retail assets are sometimes sold at rock-bottom prices. Some owners do minimal work on their newly acquired shopping centers because operating them at high vacancy rates might still be profitable given lower property taxes and lower property maintenance bills.</p>
<p>Other landlords might be compelled to improve properties, buying out leases from tenants that have fallen out of favor and renovating the vacated space. Some retailers or restaurant owners on the fence of whether to stay open might be persuaded to remain even if vacancy rates go up during the renovation period.</p>
<p>"If you buy these assets dramatically below replacement costs and become one of the lowest cost providers of real estate within a region, you can repurpose these shopping centers for alternative uses," said Andy Weiner, president at Houston-based real-estate investment firm RockStep Capital, which invests in shopping centers in small-town America alongside local businesses. Partners are aware of the regional and local issues and are able to identify substitute tenants such as entertainment, fitness, government offices, hospitality uses, he said.</p>
<p>But it can take time.</p>
<p>"There are some places where a mall shouldn't have been built but has existed for 20 years," said Brian Landes, a director at real estate services firm Transwestern Commercial Services.</p>
<p>Write to Esther Fung at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>October 17, 2017 09:14 ET (13:14 GMT)</p> | How Some Malls Manage to Stay Alive Years After Losing Their Mojo | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/17/how-some-malls-manage-to-stay-alive-years-after-losing-their-mojo.html | 2017-10-17 | 0right
| How Some Malls Manage to Stay Alive Years After Losing Their Mojo
<p>The U.S. has far too many malls scrambling to attract consumers at a time when online shopping is tightening its grip.</p>
<p>That doesn't mean middling malls will die quickly, however.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Projections for hundreds of shopping centers to close in the next five years could prove too pessimistic. A more likely outcome, analysts said: many weaker malls will turn into zombies, staying open for years as they cycle through increasingly less successful retailers before finally being repurposed or leveled.</p>
<p>"It takes a very long time to transition these malls," said Thomas Dobrowski, executive managing director of capital markets at real estate services firm Newmark Knight Frank. "They don't die of heart attacks."</p>
<p>Part of the reason for weak malls' persistence lies in contracts signed years or decades ago. Landlords typically strike leases of 10 or 20 years with multiple tenants, making speedy exits difficult. In some cases, lease buyouts can be negotiated, but the process can be expensive and lengthy.</p>
<p>Owners hoping to close malls and redevelop them for other uses might also run into regulatory hurdles. Getting buy-in from the local community takes time and rezoning approvals might not happen, especially in areas where sales tax revenue makes up a big chunk of the local government's budget.</p>
<p>Of the 41 malls Mr. Dobrowski has helped to sell since 2012, most of which were distressed sales, only one, Granite Run Mall in Media, Penn., has been closed and redeveloped. The others are still operating as malls.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The two-story Granite Run Mall was foreclosed on in 2010 after struggling with vacancies. It was sold in 2013 to BET Investments, which is redeveloping the site into a mixed-use property with open-air retail, entertainment and roughly 400 apartments. The demolition started only in 2016 as the firm waited for leases to expire and for government approvals for the redevelopment.</p>
<p>"You can't just tear it down while tenants are in there," said Bruce Toll, principal at BET Investments and a co-founder of home builder Toll Brothers Inc.</p>
<p>Roughly 200 malls have closed since 2007, according to Newmark Knight Frank. But the amount of square feet of retail space has increased 10.4% over the same period, according to data from CoStar Group. Part of that is due to the continued development of mixed-use centers in urban markets, but the steady growth in supply is also partly due to the slow pace of demolishing or transforming struggling malls for other uses.</p>
<p>Between 2007 and 2016, at least 275 enclosed malls, strip malls and open-air shopping centers were foreclosed on after their owners ran into difficulties repaying their securitized mortgage loans, according to data from Trepp Inc. Most of the properties live on as retail entities, with some adding medical clinics, tax and insurance offices, and gyms to their tenant mix.</p>
<p>After foreclosure, distressed retail assets are sometimes sold at rock-bottom prices. Some owners do minimal work on their newly acquired shopping centers because operating them at high vacancy rates might still be profitable given lower property taxes and lower property maintenance bills.</p>
<p>Other landlords might be compelled to improve properties, buying out leases from tenants that have fallen out of favor and renovating the vacated space. Some retailers or restaurant owners on the fence of whether to stay open might be persuaded to remain even if vacancy rates go up during the renovation period.</p>
<p>"If you buy these assets dramatically below replacement costs and become one of the lowest cost providers of real estate within a region, you can repurpose these shopping centers for alternative uses," said Andy Weiner, president at Houston-based real-estate investment firm RockStep Capital, which invests in shopping centers in small-town America alongside local businesses. Partners are aware of the regional and local issues and are able to identify substitute tenants such as entertainment, fitness, government offices, hospitality uses, he said.</p>
<p>But it can take time.</p>
<p>"There are some places where a mall shouldn't have been built but has existed for 20 years," said Brian Landes, a director at real estate services firm Transwestern Commercial Services.</p>
<p>Write to Esther Fung at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>October 17, 2017 09:14 ET (13:14 GMT)</p> | 506 |
<p><a href="http://pienews.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Hunter.jpg" type="external" />WASHINGTON - California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter expressed concern Monday at the level of urgency surrounding the decision to swap five Taliban militants for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and questioned why other Americans in militant custody were not included in the deal.&#160; "Knowing that various lines of effort were ["]</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/06/02/GOP-Rep-on-Bergdahl-Release-Why-Were-The-Other-3-Americans-in-Militant-Custody-Not-Included" type="external">Click here to view original web page at www.breitbart.com</a></p>
<p /> | GOP Rep. on Bergdahl Release: Why Were The Other 3 Americans in Militant Custody Not Included? | true | http://politicalillusionsexposed.com/gop-rep-on-bergdahl-release-why-were-the-other-3-americans-in-militant-custody-not-included/ | 0right
| GOP Rep. on Bergdahl Release: Why Were The Other 3 Americans in Militant Custody Not Included?
<p><a href="http://pienews.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Hunter.jpg" type="external" />WASHINGTON - California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter expressed concern Monday at the level of urgency surrounding the decision to swap five Taliban militants for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and questioned why other Americans in militant custody were not included in the deal.&#160; "Knowing that various lines of effort were ["]</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/06/02/GOP-Rep-on-Bergdahl-Release-Why-Were-The-Other-3-Americans-in-Militant-Custody-Not-Included" type="external">Click here to view original web page at www.breitbart.com</a></p>
<p /> | 507 |
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<p>Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina recently did something many gay Kenyans are too frightened to do. He came out, publically.&#160;</p>
<p>Wainaina is one of the most high-profile Africans to do that, let alone Kenyans.&#160;</p>
<p>Author <a href="https://twitter.com/kevmwachiro" type="external">Kevin Mwachiro</a> says it's a big moment for the country and continent. Mwachiro is a former BBC journalist who wrote the new book, "Invisible: Stories from Kenya's Queer Community."&#160;</p>
<p>"I think Africa's gay community needed a good story," he says. "And Binyavanga's coming out was the good story that we needed. He's been challenging a lot of misconceptions about the gay community. He took the discussion, the perception, to another level."</p>
<p>Mwachiro, in his own way, is doing the same with his book.&#160;It tells the stories of LGBT Kenyans from all walks of life. So there are rural stories and urban stories, with Christians and Muslims, men and women, and transsexuals. Everyone.&#160;“It’s not just black Kenyans,” he says.</p>
<p>One example is a woman named Barbara. Her story moved Mwachiro to tears. He says Barbara was born male and made the transition to female.&#160;</p>
<p>Back in primary school, she was bullied and raped. The only saving grace for her was a Google search: "boy who feels like a girl." That one small search allowed Barbara to know what she was going through and that there was a name for it. In that moment, she made the decision to transition to female after high school.</p>
<p>"She was going to transition into being her true self," he says.</p>
<p>Early reviews for the book are positive. Here’s one response by Faith Oneya for the Kenyan literary website, <a href="http://www.wamathai.com/" type="external">Wamathai</a>:</p>
<p>“If there is anything that the collection does well, then it is to compel the reader ... to look at the roots of our prejudices against queer people in Kenya," Oneya writes, "and to consider our actions — that one time in boarding school, or while playing a dad and mum game, that kid who everyone said was a tomboy, or too much of a girl — because that is when, for most of the authors, that who they were started dawning on them.”</p>
<p>But that review, in many ways, comes from the choir. The real question is whether Mwachiro's book is getting to people who need convincing in Africa?</p>
<p>Mwachiro says yes, and that his book is one more addition that is helping change the way Kenyans talk about LGBT issues. The book is getting press in the mainstream, local media. The author illustrates the impact in a simple moment he just had,&#160;when he appeared on a local radio show. The radio host put out the question to listeners, “Is the gay community in Kenya being discriminated against?”</p>
<p>Nothing much, right?&#160;But, for Mwachiro, it was a big shift in the conversation. Before, he says, a common question being asked was, are there any gay people in Kenya?</p>
<p>So it’s progress, step by step.</p>
<p>And steps remain. His publisher is based in Germany. And while there are a couple small presses in Kenya that would publish such a book, Mwachiro thinks most big publishers would steer clear of the topic.</p>
<p>He expects that to change, too. Mwachiro says Kenya has a vibrant gay scene, albeit underground. And it’s one that will continue to surface, as each story continues to move beyond the gay community in Kenya out toward the far corners of the country.</p> | Kenya's gay community comes out, one story at a time | false | https://pri.org/stories/2014-02-17/kenyas-gay-community-comes-out-one-story-time | 2014-02-17 | 3left-center
| Kenya's gay community comes out, one story at a time
<p>Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina recently did something many gay Kenyans are too frightened to do. He came out, publically.&#160;</p>
<p>Wainaina is one of the most high-profile Africans to do that, let alone Kenyans.&#160;</p>
<p>Author <a href="https://twitter.com/kevmwachiro" type="external">Kevin Mwachiro</a> says it's a big moment for the country and continent. Mwachiro is a former BBC journalist who wrote the new book, "Invisible: Stories from Kenya's Queer Community."&#160;</p>
<p>"I think Africa's gay community needed a good story," he says. "And Binyavanga's coming out was the good story that we needed. He's been challenging a lot of misconceptions about the gay community. He took the discussion, the perception, to another level."</p>
<p>Mwachiro, in his own way, is doing the same with his book.&#160;It tells the stories of LGBT Kenyans from all walks of life. So there are rural stories and urban stories, with Christians and Muslims, men and women, and transsexuals. Everyone.&#160;“It’s not just black Kenyans,” he says.</p>
<p>One example is a woman named Barbara. Her story moved Mwachiro to tears. He says Barbara was born male and made the transition to female.&#160;</p>
<p>Back in primary school, she was bullied and raped. The only saving grace for her was a Google search: "boy who feels like a girl." That one small search allowed Barbara to know what she was going through and that there was a name for it. In that moment, she made the decision to transition to female after high school.</p>
<p>"She was going to transition into being her true self," he says.</p>
<p>Early reviews for the book are positive. Here’s one response by Faith Oneya for the Kenyan literary website, <a href="http://www.wamathai.com/" type="external">Wamathai</a>:</p>
<p>“If there is anything that the collection does well, then it is to compel the reader ... to look at the roots of our prejudices against queer people in Kenya," Oneya writes, "and to consider our actions — that one time in boarding school, or while playing a dad and mum game, that kid who everyone said was a tomboy, or too much of a girl — because that is when, for most of the authors, that who they were started dawning on them.”</p>
<p>But that review, in many ways, comes from the choir. The real question is whether Mwachiro's book is getting to people who need convincing in Africa?</p>
<p>Mwachiro says yes, and that his book is one more addition that is helping change the way Kenyans talk about LGBT issues. The book is getting press in the mainstream, local media. The author illustrates the impact in a simple moment he just had,&#160;when he appeared on a local radio show. The radio host put out the question to listeners, “Is the gay community in Kenya being discriminated against?”</p>
<p>Nothing much, right?&#160;But, for Mwachiro, it was a big shift in the conversation. Before, he says, a common question being asked was, are there any gay people in Kenya?</p>
<p>So it’s progress, step by step.</p>
<p>And steps remain. His publisher is based in Germany. And while there are a couple small presses in Kenya that would publish such a book, Mwachiro thinks most big publishers would steer clear of the topic.</p>
<p>He expects that to change, too. Mwachiro says Kenya has a vibrant gay scene, albeit underground. And it’s one that will continue to surface, as each story continues to move beyond the gay community in Kenya out toward the far corners of the country.</p> | 508 |
<p>Kim Kardashian, the most famous woman in the world for doing nothing, was accused of actually doing something this week, forgetting her one-year-old baby daughter, North West, in a hotel lobby. Kim has since came back firing at reporters and news outlets, claiming that she did not forget her daughter.</p>
<p>A&#160;report from <a href="http://www.accesshollywood.com/kim-kardashian-fires-back-at-report-claiming-she-forgot-daughter-north-at-a-hotel_article_99360" type="external">A</a> <a href="http://www.accesshollywood.com/kim-kardashian-fires-back-at-report-claiming-she-forgot-daughter-north-at-a-hotel_article_99360" type="external">ccess Hollywood</a>&#160;notes that&#160;the reality star was seen leaving the hotel and heading into a car before going back into the hotel lobby and returning with her daughter North, leaving paparazzi to believe she had left the baby in the lobby when she exited the hotel and then, after she realized what had happened, rushed back inside.</p>
<p>Kim tweeted on Friday, October 3, “Heard on the radio today some story I forgot my daughter at our hotel as I’m leaving for the airport. Are you kidding me?!?!?! LOL.”</p>
<p>She followed that tweet up with, “I went to the car to make sure the car seat was in because the day before we had a car seat issue.”</p>
<p>“Do you guys really think a one year old would be inside the lobby by herself! Oh wait she was waiting to check out lol,” she asked.</p>
<p>Kim, along with her husband Kanye West and 15-month old North, were in the City of Lights for Paris Fashion Week, one of several runway shows Kim and her daughter have been too, including Balenciaga and Givenchy where the yearling was seen on her mother’s lap in the coveted front row.</p>
<p /> | Kim Kardashian slams reports that she left daughter at hotel | false | http://natmonitor.com/2014/10/04/kim-kardashian-slams-reports-that-she-left-daughter-at-hotel/ | 2014-10-04 | 3left-center
| Kim Kardashian slams reports that she left daughter at hotel
<p>Kim Kardashian, the most famous woman in the world for doing nothing, was accused of actually doing something this week, forgetting her one-year-old baby daughter, North West, in a hotel lobby. Kim has since came back firing at reporters and news outlets, claiming that she did not forget her daughter.</p>
<p>A&#160;report from <a href="http://www.accesshollywood.com/kim-kardashian-fires-back-at-report-claiming-she-forgot-daughter-north-at-a-hotel_article_99360" type="external">A</a> <a href="http://www.accesshollywood.com/kim-kardashian-fires-back-at-report-claiming-she-forgot-daughter-north-at-a-hotel_article_99360" type="external">ccess Hollywood</a>&#160;notes that&#160;the reality star was seen leaving the hotel and heading into a car before going back into the hotel lobby and returning with her daughter North, leaving paparazzi to believe she had left the baby in the lobby when she exited the hotel and then, after she realized what had happened, rushed back inside.</p>
<p>Kim tweeted on Friday, October 3, “Heard on the radio today some story I forgot my daughter at our hotel as I’m leaving for the airport. Are you kidding me?!?!?! LOL.”</p>
<p>She followed that tweet up with, “I went to the car to make sure the car seat was in because the day before we had a car seat issue.”</p>
<p>“Do you guys really think a one year old would be inside the lobby by herself! Oh wait she was waiting to check out lol,” she asked.</p>
<p>Kim, along with her husband Kanye West and 15-month old North, were in the City of Lights for Paris Fashion Week, one of several runway shows Kim and her daughter have been too, including Balenciaga and Givenchy where the yearling was seen on her mother’s lap in the coveted front row.</p>
<p /> | 509 |
<p>Blue-chip conglomerate Wharf (0004.HK) and its controlling parent Wheelock &amp; Co. (0020.HK) said after markets closed Monday that the Hong Kong stock Exchange has approved their proposed spin-off and separate listing of commercial-property assets in Hong Kong.</p>
<p>The proposed spin-off and separate listing of Wharf Real Estate Investment Co. will be implemented through distribution by Wharf of the Wharf REIC's shares to the qualifying Wharf shareholders, the two listed companies said in a joint statement.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Wharf plans to distribute Wharf REIC's shares on the basis of one Wharf REIC's share for every Wharf's share held by existing shareholders. Wharf REIC invests in retail, office and hotel properties in Hong Kong.</p>
<p>Write to Joanne Chiu at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>September 04, 2017 20:48 ET (00:48 GMT)</p> | Wharf Gets Approval for Proposed Spin-Off of Commercial Property Assets | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/09/04/wharf-gets-approval-for-proposed-spin-off-commercial-property-assets.html | 2017-09-04 | 0right
| Wharf Gets Approval for Proposed Spin-Off of Commercial Property Assets
<p>Blue-chip conglomerate Wharf (0004.HK) and its controlling parent Wheelock &amp; Co. (0020.HK) said after markets closed Monday that the Hong Kong stock Exchange has approved their proposed spin-off and separate listing of commercial-property assets in Hong Kong.</p>
<p>The proposed spin-off and separate listing of Wharf Real Estate Investment Co. will be implemented through distribution by Wharf of the Wharf REIC's shares to the qualifying Wharf shareholders, the two listed companies said in a joint statement.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Wharf plans to distribute Wharf REIC's shares on the basis of one Wharf REIC's share for every Wharf's share held by existing shareholders. Wharf REIC invests in retail, office and hotel properties in Hong Kong.</p>
<p>Write to Joanne Chiu at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>September 04, 2017 20:48 ET (00:48 GMT)</p> | 510 |
<p />
<p>Lately, when I’ve been jogging, I seem to keep forgetting about, you know, the horror. But if you too need a reminder during your exercise sessions that “a loaded gun won’t set you free,” why not pick up these special edition <a href="http://www.hypebeast.com/2007/04/new-balance-joy-division/" type="external">New Balance Joy Division</a> tennies? They’re snazzy white and gray sneakers with the artwork from the Div’s first album Unknown Pleasures on the tongue and the sole. Actually, it’s just a prototype, but perhaps if we all lose control we can cause enough disorder so that they’ll make these shoes before the, um, new dawn fades… ugh, are they sure a loaded gun won’t set me free?</p>
<p>(Via <a href="http://www.hypebeast.com/2007/04/new-balance-joy-division/" type="external">HypeBeast</a>)</p>
<p /> | All I Want for Christmas, Part 4: New Balance Joy Division | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/12/all-i-want-christmas-part-4-new-balance-joy-division/ | 2007-12-22 | 4left
| All I Want for Christmas, Part 4: New Balance Joy Division
<p />
<p>Lately, when I’ve been jogging, I seem to keep forgetting about, you know, the horror. But if you too need a reminder during your exercise sessions that “a loaded gun won’t set you free,” why not pick up these special edition <a href="http://www.hypebeast.com/2007/04/new-balance-joy-division/" type="external">New Balance Joy Division</a> tennies? They’re snazzy white and gray sneakers with the artwork from the Div’s first album Unknown Pleasures on the tongue and the sole. Actually, it’s just a prototype, but perhaps if we all lose control we can cause enough disorder so that they’ll make these shoes before the, um, new dawn fades… ugh, are they sure a loaded gun won’t set me free?</p>
<p>(Via <a href="http://www.hypebeast.com/2007/04/new-balance-joy-division/" type="external">HypeBeast</a>)</p>
<p /> | 511 |
<p />
<p>These days, everyone seems to want a piece of the Arctic. ( <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/04/1" type="external">Diamond prospectors</a>, <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2485023.ece" type="external">bone hunters</a>, and <a href="http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9231323" type="external">global warming tourists</a> are just a few northward bound parties.) After all, who knows what treasures lurk under those hunks of melting ice?</p>
<p>But if you’re planning on skipping up to the Arctic and expecting smooth sailing, think again. Today, the International Ice Charting Working Group issued a <a href="http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMVLJVH48F_planet_0.html" type="external">report</a> on the state of the Arctic sea ice. In the report is a reminder that global warming hasn’t quite done away with icebergs yet:</p>
<p>The Arctic is already experiencing an increase in shipping, primarily for oil and gas development and tourism, and we can expect to see further increases as diminishing ice extent makes Arctic marine transportation more viable…The IICWG cautions that sea ice and icebergs will continue to present significant hazards to navigation for the foreseeable future. The Arctic will still have a winter ice cover that will linger into summer for varying lengths of time depending on a range of conditions.</p>
<p>Let’s hope it stays that way.</p>
<p /> | News Flash: Icebergs Still Exist | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/10/news-flash-icebergs-still-exist/ | 2007-10-26 | 4left
| News Flash: Icebergs Still Exist
<p />
<p>These days, everyone seems to want a piece of the Arctic. ( <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/04/1" type="external">Diamond prospectors</a>, <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2485023.ece" type="external">bone hunters</a>, and <a href="http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9231323" type="external">global warming tourists</a> are just a few northward bound parties.) After all, who knows what treasures lurk under those hunks of melting ice?</p>
<p>But if you’re planning on skipping up to the Arctic and expecting smooth sailing, think again. Today, the International Ice Charting Working Group issued a <a href="http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMVLJVH48F_planet_0.html" type="external">report</a> on the state of the Arctic sea ice. In the report is a reminder that global warming hasn’t quite done away with icebergs yet:</p>
<p>The Arctic is already experiencing an increase in shipping, primarily for oil and gas development and tourism, and we can expect to see further increases as diminishing ice extent makes Arctic marine transportation more viable…The IICWG cautions that sea ice and icebergs will continue to present significant hazards to navigation for the foreseeable future. The Arctic will still have a winter ice cover that will linger into summer for varying lengths of time depending on a range of conditions.</p>
<p>Let’s hope it stays that way.</p>
<p /> | 512 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>The Albuquerque Isotopes and Cumulus Media have extended their working partnership an additional five years, meaning KNML-AM (610) will remain the home of Isotopes baseball through the 2020 season.</p>
<p>Josh Suchon returns for his fourth season in 2016 as play-by-play announcer of Albuquerque Isotopes baseball. (Journal file)</p>
<p>No financial details regarding terms of the deal were announced.</p>
<p>Since the Isotopes' inaugural season in 2003, 610 has been the club's flagship station.</p>
<p>"Fans have been able to enjoy Isotopes games on The Sports Animal since our first year in 2003 and we're excited to continue what has been a great relationship," said Isotopes general manager John Traub said in a statement from the club. "Given the breadth and power of the Cumulus network throughout New Mexico, it's a relationship that means a lot to our success."</p>
<p>The Isotopes launch their 2016 campaign on April 7 with an eight-game road trip through Tacoma and Reno. The home opener is Friday, April 15 vs. Tacoma.</p>
<p>The club also announced that Josh Suchon will return for his fourth year as play-by-play announcer.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Isotopes, Cumulus extend radio deal | false | https://abqjournal.com/713391/isotopes-cumulus-extend-radio-deal.html | 2least
| Isotopes, Cumulus extend radio deal
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>The Albuquerque Isotopes and Cumulus Media have extended their working partnership an additional five years, meaning KNML-AM (610) will remain the home of Isotopes baseball through the 2020 season.</p>
<p>Josh Suchon returns for his fourth season in 2016 as play-by-play announcer of Albuquerque Isotopes baseball. (Journal file)</p>
<p>No financial details regarding terms of the deal were announced.</p>
<p>Since the Isotopes' inaugural season in 2003, 610 has been the club's flagship station.</p>
<p>"Fans have been able to enjoy Isotopes games on The Sports Animal since our first year in 2003 and we're excited to continue what has been a great relationship," said Isotopes general manager John Traub said in a statement from the club. "Given the breadth and power of the Cumulus network throughout New Mexico, it's a relationship that means a lot to our success."</p>
<p>The Isotopes launch their 2016 campaign on April 7 with an eight-game road trip through Tacoma and Reno. The home opener is Friday, April 15 vs. Tacoma.</p>
<p>The club also announced that Josh Suchon will return for his fourth year as play-by-play announcer.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 513 |
|
<p />
<p><a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Huckabee_We_used_to_fry_squirrels_0116.html" type="external">Huckabee on MSNBC</a>:</p>
<p>“South Carolina’s a great place for me. I mean, I know how to eat grits and speak the language. We even know how to talk about eating fried squirrel and stuff like that, so we’re on the same wavelength.”</p>
<p>“Mika, I bet you never did this,” Huckabee went on, addressing Mika Brzezinski. “When I was in college, we used to take a popcorn popper, because that was the only thing they would let us use in the dorm, and we would fry squirrels in a popcorn popper in the dorm room.“</p>
<p>My sure the Democrats are praying for this man to become the GOP nominee…</p>
<p>Update: This <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2007/12/6683_huck_you_romney.html" type="external">shouldn’t come as a surprise</a>.</p>
<p /> | Huckabee: “We Would Fry Squirrels in a Popcorn Popper” | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2008/01/huckabee-we-would-fry-squirrels-popcorn-popper/ | 2008-01-17 | 4left
| Huckabee: “We Would Fry Squirrels in a Popcorn Popper”
<p />
<p><a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Huckabee_We_used_to_fry_squirrels_0116.html" type="external">Huckabee on MSNBC</a>:</p>
<p>“South Carolina’s a great place for me. I mean, I know how to eat grits and speak the language. We even know how to talk about eating fried squirrel and stuff like that, so we’re on the same wavelength.”</p>
<p>“Mika, I bet you never did this,” Huckabee went on, addressing Mika Brzezinski. “When I was in college, we used to take a popcorn popper, because that was the only thing they would let us use in the dorm, and we would fry squirrels in a popcorn popper in the dorm room.“</p>
<p>My sure the Democrats are praying for this man to become the GOP nominee…</p>
<p>Update: This <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2007/12/6683_huck_you_romney.html" type="external">shouldn’t come as a surprise</a>.</p>
<p /> | 514 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>FreeRange Shared Workspaces will soon open in 15.000 square foot commercial building at 1700 Central SE (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Journal)</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Albuquerque’s co-working crowd will soon be getting some new digs.</p>
<p>Dentist-turned-developer Joseph Pitluck is trying to give new life to an old building at Central and University as FreeRange Shared Workspaces, an 11,000-square-foot co-work space. A banner on the side of the building — illustrated with a logo of a chicken in a necktie — proclaims its imminent opening.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>FreeRange, at 1700 Central SE,&#160; formerly housed a bookstore, a scooter shop and has current tenants — a bike shop that will soon relocate and a flamenco studio, which will continue to be a tenant. FreeRange will expand into the bike shop once the owner leaves.</p>
<p>Pitluck will unveil the concept at a Feb. 17 open house where potential clients can hear more about setting up shop in the space.</p>
<p>FreeRange developer Joseph Pitluck in the space he is remodeling for new co-work space near the University of New Mexico. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Journal)</p>
<p>The property was acquired late last year by Pitluck and his wife, Huan Yang. She continues to practice dentistry full-time at Comfort Dental while Pitluck, who is also a real estate broker and has other property investments, has stepped away from day-to-day dentistry to give FreeRange his full attention. As CEO and founder, Pitluck is aggressively marketing the new business in person and via social media.</p>
<p>The goal is to provide young entrepreneurs with more flexible office space to start businesses and to help existing businesses grow,&#160; said Pitluck.</p>
<p>As Albuquerque tries to boost its homegrown ecosystem of creative and tech startups and small businesses, co-working space is crucial, said Pitluck. FreeRange, however, will have some competition. The city already has co-working spaces at FatPipe ABQ and the Simms Space downtown, as well as several business incubators.</p>
<p>Pitluck hopes to draw interest from a variety of customers — grad students and researchers from nearby UNM, corporations wanting an off-site space for designated work teams, people regularly traveling through the region on business, and consultants in the creative and high-tech fields.</p>
<p>“There are companies all over the country where you can go and rent office space, but they are not really communities,” said Pitluck. He added that “when you have people from different backgrounds and professions meeting one another (in co-working spaces), then you build a network faster and more opportunities come up.”</p>
<p>The building, which was once listed for sale at $750,000, will get about $200,000 to $300,000 in remodeling plus new furniture.</p>
<p>“We’re upgrading the electrical (system), of course,” said Pitluck during a recent tour of the space, where a work crew was getting “Studio A” spruced up. “It has to have the best Wi-Fi connectivity.” The buildout is being guided by local architectural firm Design Plus.</p>
<p>The space will have open seating areas, assigned desks of the sit/stand variety, private office space, and a micro lounge with reclining chairs. “We sat on a lot of seats,” said Pitluck.</p> | University-area getting new co-work space | false | https://abqjournal.com/944582/university-area-getting-new-co-work-space.html | 2least
| University-area getting new co-work space
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>FreeRange Shared Workspaces will soon open in 15.000 square foot commercial building at 1700 Central SE (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Journal)</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Albuquerque’s co-working crowd will soon be getting some new digs.</p>
<p>Dentist-turned-developer Joseph Pitluck is trying to give new life to an old building at Central and University as FreeRange Shared Workspaces, an 11,000-square-foot co-work space. A banner on the side of the building — illustrated with a logo of a chicken in a necktie — proclaims its imminent opening.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>FreeRange, at 1700 Central SE,&#160; formerly housed a bookstore, a scooter shop and has current tenants — a bike shop that will soon relocate and a flamenco studio, which will continue to be a tenant. FreeRange will expand into the bike shop once the owner leaves.</p>
<p>Pitluck will unveil the concept at a Feb. 17 open house where potential clients can hear more about setting up shop in the space.</p>
<p>FreeRange developer Joseph Pitluck in the space he is remodeling for new co-work space near the University of New Mexico. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Journal)</p>
<p>The property was acquired late last year by Pitluck and his wife, Huan Yang. She continues to practice dentistry full-time at Comfort Dental while Pitluck, who is also a real estate broker and has other property investments, has stepped away from day-to-day dentistry to give FreeRange his full attention. As CEO and founder, Pitluck is aggressively marketing the new business in person and via social media.</p>
<p>The goal is to provide young entrepreneurs with more flexible office space to start businesses and to help existing businesses grow,&#160; said Pitluck.</p>
<p>As Albuquerque tries to boost its homegrown ecosystem of creative and tech startups and small businesses, co-working space is crucial, said Pitluck. FreeRange, however, will have some competition. The city already has co-working spaces at FatPipe ABQ and the Simms Space downtown, as well as several business incubators.</p>
<p>Pitluck hopes to draw interest from a variety of customers — grad students and researchers from nearby UNM, corporations wanting an off-site space for designated work teams, people regularly traveling through the region on business, and consultants in the creative and high-tech fields.</p>
<p>“There are companies all over the country where you can go and rent office space, but they are not really communities,” said Pitluck. He added that “when you have people from different backgrounds and professions meeting one another (in co-working spaces), then you build a network faster and more opportunities come up.”</p>
<p>The building, which was once listed for sale at $750,000, will get about $200,000 to $300,000 in remodeling plus new furniture.</p>
<p>“We’re upgrading the electrical (system), of course,” said Pitluck during a recent tour of the space, where a work crew was getting “Studio A” spruced up. “It has to have the best Wi-Fi connectivity.” The buildout is being guided by local architectural firm Design Plus.</p>
<p>The space will have open seating areas, assigned desks of the sit/stand variety, private office space, and a micro lounge with reclining chairs. “We sat on a lot of seats,” said Pitluck.</p> | 515 |
|
<p>ATLANTA (AP) _ These Georgia lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>3C-10C-6D-4H-9H</p>
<p>(3C, 10C, 6D, 4H, 9H)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Day</p>
<p>01-04-06-08-10-12-13-16-17-19-22-24</p>
<p>(one, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, thirteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-four)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Evening</p>
<p>01-04-05-06-10-12-16-18-19-22-23-24</p>
<p>(one, four, five, six, ten, twelve, sixteen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Morning</p>
<p>02-06-07-08-09-10-12-14-16-17-21-24</p>
<p>(two, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, twenty-one, twenty-four)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Night</p>
<p>02-03-04-05-07-10-13-15-19-20-22-23</p>
<p>(two, three, four, five, seven, ten, thirteen, fifteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-two, twenty-three)</p>
<p>Cash 3 Evening</p>
<p>6-3-9</p>
<p>(six, three, nine)</p>
<p>Cash 3 Midday</p>
<p>7-6-8</p>
<p>(seven, six, eight)</p>
<p>Cash 3 Night</p>
<p>9-2-5</p>
<p>(nine, two, five)</p>
<p>Cash 4 Evening</p>
<p>0-8-0-7</p>
<p>(zero, eight, zero, seven)</p>
<p>Cash 4 Midday</p>
<p>2-8-5-0</p>
<p>(two, eight, five, zero)</p>
<p>Cash 4 Night</p>
<p>2-6-6-4</p>
<p>(two, six, six, four)</p>
<p>Fantasy 5</p>
<p>02-11-13-28-29</p>
<p>(two, eleven, thirteen, twenty-eight, twenty-nine)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $125,000</p>
<p>Georgia FIVE Evening</p>
<p>7-2-9-2-8</p>
<p>(seven, two, nine, two, eight)</p>
<p>Georgia FIVE Midday</p>
<p>7-3-0-3-0</p>
<p>(seven, three, zero, three, zero)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $418 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>02-18-37-39-42, Powerball: 12, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(two, eighteen, thirty-seven, thirty-nine, forty-two; Powerball: twelve; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $460 million</p>
<p>ATLANTA (AP) _ These Georgia lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>3C-10C-6D-4H-9H</p>
<p>(3C, 10C, 6D, 4H, 9H)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Day</p>
<p>01-04-06-08-10-12-13-16-17-19-22-24</p>
<p>(one, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, thirteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-four)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Evening</p>
<p>01-04-05-06-10-12-16-18-19-22-23-24</p>
<p>(one, four, five, six, ten, twelve, sixteen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Morning</p>
<p>02-06-07-08-09-10-12-14-16-17-21-24</p>
<p>(two, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, twenty-one, twenty-four)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Night</p>
<p>02-03-04-05-07-10-13-15-19-20-22-23</p>
<p>(two, three, four, five, seven, ten, thirteen, fifteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-two, twenty-three)</p>
<p>Cash 3 Evening</p>
<p>6-3-9</p>
<p>(six, three, nine)</p>
<p>Cash 3 Midday</p>
<p>7-6-8</p>
<p>(seven, six, eight)</p>
<p>Cash 3 Night</p>
<p>9-2-5</p>
<p>(nine, two, five)</p>
<p>Cash 4 Evening</p>
<p>0-8-0-7</p>
<p>(zero, eight, zero, seven)</p>
<p>Cash 4 Midday</p>
<p>2-8-5-0</p>
<p>(two, eight, five, zero)</p>
<p>Cash 4 Night</p>
<p>2-6-6-4</p>
<p>(two, six, six, four)</p>
<p>Fantasy 5</p>
<p>02-11-13-28-29</p>
<p>(two, eleven, thirteen, twenty-eight, twenty-nine)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $125,000</p>
<p>Georgia FIVE Evening</p>
<p>7-2-9-2-8</p>
<p>(seven, two, nine, two, eight)</p>
<p>Georgia FIVE Midday</p>
<p>7-3-0-3-0</p>
<p>(seven, three, zero, three, zero)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $418 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>02-18-37-39-42, Powerball: 12, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(two, eighteen, thirty-seven, thirty-nine, forty-two; Powerball: twelve; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $460 million</p> | GA Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/amp/e05fda2533594584b334e47153bc1fc3 | 2018-01-04 | 2least
| GA Lottery
<p>ATLANTA (AP) _ These Georgia lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>3C-10C-6D-4H-9H</p>
<p>(3C, 10C, 6D, 4H, 9H)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Day</p>
<p>01-04-06-08-10-12-13-16-17-19-22-24</p>
<p>(one, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, thirteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-four)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Evening</p>
<p>01-04-05-06-10-12-16-18-19-22-23-24</p>
<p>(one, four, five, six, ten, twelve, sixteen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Morning</p>
<p>02-06-07-08-09-10-12-14-16-17-21-24</p>
<p>(two, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, twenty-one, twenty-four)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Night</p>
<p>02-03-04-05-07-10-13-15-19-20-22-23</p>
<p>(two, three, four, five, seven, ten, thirteen, fifteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-two, twenty-three)</p>
<p>Cash 3 Evening</p>
<p>6-3-9</p>
<p>(six, three, nine)</p>
<p>Cash 3 Midday</p>
<p>7-6-8</p>
<p>(seven, six, eight)</p>
<p>Cash 3 Night</p>
<p>9-2-5</p>
<p>(nine, two, five)</p>
<p>Cash 4 Evening</p>
<p>0-8-0-7</p>
<p>(zero, eight, zero, seven)</p>
<p>Cash 4 Midday</p>
<p>2-8-5-0</p>
<p>(two, eight, five, zero)</p>
<p>Cash 4 Night</p>
<p>2-6-6-4</p>
<p>(two, six, six, four)</p>
<p>Fantasy 5</p>
<p>02-11-13-28-29</p>
<p>(two, eleven, thirteen, twenty-eight, twenty-nine)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $125,000</p>
<p>Georgia FIVE Evening</p>
<p>7-2-9-2-8</p>
<p>(seven, two, nine, two, eight)</p>
<p>Georgia FIVE Midday</p>
<p>7-3-0-3-0</p>
<p>(seven, three, zero, three, zero)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $418 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>02-18-37-39-42, Powerball: 12, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(two, eighteen, thirty-seven, thirty-nine, forty-two; Powerball: twelve; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $460 million</p>
<p>ATLANTA (AP) _ These Georgia lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>3C-10C-6D-4H-9H</p>
<p>(3C, 10C, 6D, 4H, 9H)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Day</p>
<p>01-04-06-08-10-12-13-16-17-19-22-24</p>
<p>(one, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, thirteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-four)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Evening</p>
<p>01-04-05-06-10-12-16-18-19-22-23-24</p>
<p>(one, four, five, six, ten, twelve, sixteen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Morning</p>
<p>02-06-07-08-09-10-12-14-16-17-21-24</p>
<p>(two, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, twenty-one, twenty-four)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Night</p>
<p>02-03-04-05-07-10-13-15-19-20-22-23</p>
<p>(two, three, four, five, seven, ten, thirteen, fifteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-two, twenty-three)</p>
<p>Cash 3 Evening</p>
<p>6-3-9</p>
<p>(six, three, nine)</p>
<p>Cash 3 Midday</p>
<p>7-6-8</p>
<p>(seven, six, eight)</p>
<p>Cash 3 Night</p>
<p>9-2-5</p>
<p>(nine, two, five)</p>
<p>Cash 4 Evening</p>
<p>0-8-0-7</p>
<p>(zero, eight, zero, seven)</p>
<p>Cash 4 Midday</p>
<p>2-8-5-0</p>
<p>(two, eight, five, zero)</p>
<p>Cash 4 Night</p>
<p>2-6-6-4</p>
<p>(two, six, six, four)</p>
<p>Fantasy 5</p>
<p>02-11-13-28-29</p>
<p>(two, eleven, thirteen, twenty-eight, twenty-nine)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $125,000</p>
<p>Georgia FIVE Evening</p>
<p>7-2-9-2-8</p>
<p>(seven, two, nine, two, eight)</p>
<p>Georgia FIVE Midday</p>
<p>7-3-0-3-0</p>
<p>(seven, three, zero, three, zero)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $418 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>02-18-37-39-42, Powerball: 12, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(two, eighteen, thirty-seven, thirty-nine, forty-two; Powerball: twelve; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $460 million</p> | 516 |
<p>A seventeen-year-old boy is locked in an interrogation cell in Guantanamo. He breaks down crying and says he wants his family. The interrogator senses the boy is psychologically vulnerable and consults with a psychologist. The psychologist has evaluated the boy prior to the questioning and says, “Tell him his family has forgotten him.” The psychologist also prescribes “linguistic isolation” (not letting him have contact with anyone who speaks his language.) The boy attempts suicide a few weeks later. On the eve of the boy’s trial, the psychologist apparently fearing her testimony will only further implicate her, indicates she will plead the Fifth Amendment if she is called to the stand. The trial is postponed, leaving the boy in further limbo.</p>
<p>The military psychologist is merely a foot soldier in psychology’s participation in torture. It goes much deeper. We now know that psychologists helped design and implement significant segments of George Bush’s torture program.&#160; Despite their credo, “Above all, do no harm,” two psychologists developed instruments of psychological torture. They “reversed engineered” psychological principles. They used the very therapeutic interventions psychologists use to ameliorate psychological suffering, but “reversed” their direction to create psychological distress and instability.&#160; If one’s reality sense is threatened, a good therapist validates and supports it as appropriate. In reverse engineering, the environment is deliberately made more confusing and the victim’s trust in his own perceptions is intentionally undermined.&#160; In extreme form, this can ultimately drive a person to insanity from which some never come back. These were the types of techniques that were used on the seventeen-year-old detainee and others.</p>
<p>Military psychologists also colluded with the Justice Department to help CIA operatives circumvent the legal prohibitions against torture. Under the Justice Department definition of torture, if a detainee was sent to a psychologist for a mental health evaluation prior to interrogation it was per se evidence that the interrogator had no legal intent to torture the detainee because the referral “demonstrated concern” for the welfare of the detainee.</p>
<p>Most remarkably of all, this whole process occurred under a protective “ethical” seal from the American Psychological Association (APA), psychologists’ largest national organization. The APA governance repeatedly rejected calls from its membership for APA to join other health organizations in declaring participation in Bush detention center interrogations unethical.</p>
<p>Most psychologists are appalled at what the APA has done, and many, like me, have resigned from the APA. But the true story behind APA’s involvement with torture has not been fully told.</p>
<p>I have had ample opportunity to observe both the inner workings of the APA and the personalities and organizational vicissitudes that have affected it over the last two decades. For most of the twenty-year period from 1983 to 2003, I either worked inside the APA central office as the first Executive Director of the APA Practice Directorate, or I served in various governance positions, including Chair of the APA Board of Professional Affairs and member of the APA Council of Representatives. Since leaving APA I have maintained a keen interest in the organization.</p>
<p>The transformation of APA, in the past decade, from a historically liberal organization to an authoritarian one that actively assists in torture has been an astonishing process.&#160; As with many usurpations of democratic liberal values, the transformation was accomplished by a surprisingly small number of people. APA is an invaluable case study in the psychological manipulations that influence our governmental and non-governmental institutions.</p>
<p>To explain APA’s behavior two questions have to be answered. First, how did the APA develop the connections with the military that fostered the shameful role it has played in torture? Second, why did the APA governance not join other health professions in prohibiting participation in the Bush Administration’s “enhanced interrogations,” as APA’s rank and file members were demanding?</p>
<p>The APA-military connection</p>
<p>One source of APA’s military connections is obvious to anyone who has worked at APA over the last twenty-five years.&#160; Strangely, it has been overlooked by the media. Since the early 1980’s, APA has had a unique relationship with Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye’s office. Inouye was an honored WWII veteran, a Japanese American who himself was a medical volunteer in the midst of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He entered office in 1962. For much of the ‘70s, he was Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Later he became, and is currently, the chair of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which, of course, makes up the largest chunk of federal discretionary spending and is why economists often split discretionary government funding into defense spending versus “everything else.” This appropriations committee covers not only all of the armed forces but the CIA as well. Put succinctly, Inouye controls the military purse strings, and is very influential with military brass.</p>
<p>One of Inouye’s administrative assistants, psychologist Patrick Deleon, has long been active in the APA and served a term in 2000 as APA president. For significant periods of time DeLeon has literally directed APA staff on federal policy matters and has dominated the APA governance on political matters. For over twenty-five years, relationships between the APA and the Department of Defense (DOD) have been strongly encouraged and closely coordinated by DeLeon.</p>
<p>Inouye himself has served as an apologist for the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp (“Gitmo”) since the inception of the War on Terror. In a press briefing at the U.S. State Department, held shortly after his trip to Gitmo in February of 2002, Inouye affirmed Rumsfeld’s propagandist vision of the site, and then remarked:&#160; “Watching our men and women treat these detainees was rather impressive. They would go out of their way to be considerate. …”</p>
<p>From what we know now, that is true, but not in the benevolent way Inouye implied. Inouye’s comments bore a chilling similarity to Barbara Bush’s famous comments about the alleged good fortune of Katrina victims, in the Houston Astrodome. The detainees, he said, are being treated “in some ways better than we treat our people.” (R. Burns, Associated Press, 2002). And he compared the Guantanamo climate to Hawaii’s. (It is “somewhat warmer.”)</p>
<p>More significantly, it was Inouye who recently stripped the funding needed for closing Gitmo from a supplemental appropriations bill. This “Inouye Amendment,” threw a stick in the spokes of any U.S. movement away from the worst of global war on terror policies. In announcing the funding cut, Inouye’s press release was a remarkable illustration of Orwellian “newspeak,” ostensibly supporting the very opposite of what he was doing</p>
<p>But let me be clear. We need to close the Guantanamo prison. Yes, it is a fine facility. I, too, have visited the site. Yes, the detainees are being well cared for. Our servicemen and servicewomen are doing great work. But the fact of the matter is Guantanamo is a symbol of the wrongdoings which have occurred, and we must eliminate that connection. (Inouye, Press Release May 20, 2009).</p>
<p>DeLeon’s connection with Inouye is not by any means the only APA connection with defense interests. In 1951 the military established The Human Resource Research Organization (HumRRO) to develop techniques for “psychological warfare.” HumRRO was run by psychologist Dr. Meredith Crawford who spent ten years as APA treasurer and was deeply involved in APA activities for three decades. Crawford’s former student, Raymond Fowler, became Chief Executive Officer of APA in 1989 and stayed in that position until 2003. Today, fifty-five percent of HumRRO’s budget comes from the military.</p>
<p>As CEO, Fowler hired his two most important lieutenants from HumRRO, Chief Financial Officer, Charles “Jack” McKay, and in-house attorney, James McHugh. Both men have now, after lengthy APA tenures, left the APA and returned to HumRRO in &#160;very senior roles. McHugh is Chairman of the HumRRO Board of Trustees and McKay is Vice-Chairman and Treasurer. The current President of HumRRO, psychologist William Strickland, has been an outspoken supporter of APA’s policies on the torture issue. He served on the APA Council of Representatives throughout the APA deliberations on torture.</p>
<p>Whether and how the longstanding relationships and frequent circulation of key personnel between APA and HumRRO positions have shaped APA’s involvement with the military is unclear, but given recent events, it certainly warrants more careful scrutiny than it has received from psychologists. In fact, I do not believe many psychologists are even aware of these relationships.</p>
<p>Regardless of HumRRO’s role, however, as psychologists, most APA governance members have little Washington political experience. For them, Patrick DeLeon, because of his connection with Inouye, is perceived as a canny psychology politician and political force on Capitol Hill. Regardless of the accuracy of that perception, I have no reason to think DeLeon is a corrupt or evil person. Instead, from my perspective, the most interesting aspect of DeLeon has always been his apparent preoccupation with issues of status for psychologists, irrespective of the issues’ actual significance either for psychologists or the public.</p>
<p>DeLeon wanted to make sure a psychologist, not just physicians, for example, would be eligible to fill this or that position in the Veteran’s Administration, and he campaigned for years for VA psychologists to receive a minuscule pay increase when they became board certified. On the whole, I found these matters harmless and of at least some marginal benefit to people. Using funding from the Department of Defense he has also launched a campaign for psychologists to be given legal rights to prescribe psychiatric medications.</p>
<p>The torture issue is, of course, quite different. Viewed through the eyes of DeLeon’s adherents, psychology’s new found role as architects of a central component of the war on terror was a tremendous “victory” for the field of psychology. That it involved torture was peripheral, obscured by the headiness of being involved in high-level, important, clandestine government affairs. In discussions about APA’s role in the interrogations, a senior member of the APA governance described himself as “addicted” to the television show 24. Now he had his own reality TV show.</p>
<p>DeLeon’s influence in the APA and with many individual psychologists, especially those from Hawaii, came in very handy for Inouye in his efforts to support the Department of Defense.&#160; When the military needed a mental health professional to help implement its interrogation procedures, and the other professions subsequently refused to comply, the military had a friend in Senator Inouye’s office, one that could reap the political dividends of seeds sown by DeLeon over many years.</p>
<p>While we are only now uncovering the names of the individuals who participated most directly in the interrogations, I think a surprising number of them will turn out to be people brought into the military through Inouye’s office, many by DeLeon himself.</p>
<p>APA’s Organizational Decline</p>
<p>But this leads to the second and more complex question. Why did the governance of the APA let this happen under the apparent imprimatur of the world’s largest organization of psychologists? Some people assume APA’s horrifying recent behavior involved large sums of money changing hands. I could certainly be wrong, but I think the more likely (and more remarkable and pressing) mechanism has little to do with money.&#160; For reasons described below, the APA leaders who were making these decisions simply exercised judgment that was both bad and insensitive to the realities of human suffering. In my opinion, schooled by 25 years of experience with the APA, it was neither greed nor financial corruption that brought the APA governance into alliance with the Bush Administration. Instead, it was a malignant organizational grandiosity that first weakened the APA and then, ultimately, allowed military and intelligence agencies to have their way with the APA throughout the Bush Administration.</p>
<p>But how did the APA, of all organizations, get this way? What led to this grandiose culture? An organization does not rise or fall with a single event any more than the fall of Rome truly occurred in 476 AD.&#160; The culture of grandiosity was carefully cultivated for more than a decade by a few self-interested individuals.</p>
<p>What has been observable and unarguable about the APA of recent years is that the pluralistic and multi-faceted governance process I witnessed when first entering the APA in the early 1980’s was sharply curtailed during the 1990’s. Differences of opinion disappeared, and the APA suffered a terrible organizational decline. Increasingly inbred and infantilized under the tightly controlled administration of Raymond Fowler, the association agenda was primarily and at times exclusively financial, focused on making money either through real estate ventures or through what I and others felt was the unnecessarily harsh financial treatment of lower level APA employees.</p>
<p>Whatever one’s view of APA, few can dispute that Fowler, more than any other individual, made APA what it is today. The CEO of APA for almost fifteen years, Fowler served in one capacity or another on the APA Board of Directors for twenty-five consecutive years. While his supporters would characterize him as “astute” and his critics as “devious,” few could reasonably disagree that Fowler was the main mover in the APA for the fifteen years leading up to the torture debacle.</p>
<p>Most peculiarly, Fowler’s “agenda” for APA was encapsulated in the phrase “Working Together,” a noble idea that to the best of my knowledge was never attached to any actual substantive agenda. Instead, it served as a means of social control, a subtle injunction against raising any of the conflict-laden issues, challenges, or ideas that need to be addressed in any vital and accountable organization. The governance of the APA became either conformist or placid and increasingly detached from the real world.</p>
<p>The result was that much of the activity of the APA Council of Representatives, the legislative group with ultimate authority in the APA governance, turned away from substantive matters into an odd system of fawning over one another. Many members appeared to simply bathe in the good feeling that came from “working together.” The bath was characterized by grandiose self-referents and shared lofty opinions of one another. As it became more and more detached from reality, the organizational dysfunction became more pronounced, but this was ignored and obscured by the self-congratulatory organizational style. During this period, isolated dissent from rank-and-file members was stifled with a heavy-handed letter from the APA attorney threatening legal action or by communications from prominent members of the APA governance threatening “ethics” charges if policy protests were not discontinued. (It is unethical for psychologists to lie, and I can attest that one former APA president concluded that disagreeing with him was per se “lying.”)</p>
<p>Deliberations on Torture</p>
<p>This same grandiosity was ubiquitous in the governance’s rhetoric at the heart of the Association’s discussions on torture. Banning psychologists’ participation in reputed torture mills was clearly unnecessary, proponents of the APA policy argued.&#160; To do so would be an “insult” to military psychologists everywhere. No psychologist would ever engage in torture. Insisting on a change in APA policy reflected a mean-spirited attitude toward the military psychologists. The supporters of the APA policy managed to transform the military into the victims in the interrogation issue.</p>
<p>In the end, however, it was psychologists’ self-assumed importance that carried the day on the torture issue. Psychologists’ participation in these detention centers, it was asserted, was an antidote to torture, since psychologists’ very presence could protect the potential torture victims (presumably from Rumsfeld and Cheney, no less!). The debates on the APA Council floor, year after year, concluded with the general consensus that, indeed, psychology was very, very important to our nation’s security.</p>
<p>We psychologists were both too good and too important to join our professional colleagues in other professions who were taking an absolutist moral position against one of the most shameful eras in our country’s history. While the matter was clearly orchestrated by others, it was this self-reinforcing grandiosity that led the traditionally liberal APA governance down the slippery slope to the Bush Administration’s torture program.</p>
<p>During this period I had numerous personal communications with members of the APA governance structure in an attempt to dissuade them from ignoring the rank-and-file psychologists who abhorred the APA’s position.&#160; I have been involved in many policy disagreements over the course of my career, but the smugness and illogic that characterized the response to these efforts were astonishing and went far beyond normal, even heated, give and take. Most dramatically, the intelligence that I have always found to characterize the profession of psychology was sorely lacking.</p>
<p>Outside the self-absorbed culture of the current APA governance, to the rest of the world, the APA arguments simply do not pass the red-face test for credibility. Instead, their transparent disingenuousness only made the APA sound embarrassingly like apologists for the Bush Administration.</p>
<p>The Conclusion</p>
<p>The inability to deliberate rationally on the torture issue was but the tragic denouement of an organizational process that was actually set in motion in the early 1990’s, largely to serve the convenience of a very small number of individuals. As a result of the management style of the 90’s, the governance of APA was ill prepared for thoughtful deliberation on a matter as important as the torture issue. The governance was simply over its head in trying to effectively address such a socially and ethically consequential issue. This was especially true in a debate in which one side had organized support from powerful military interests, then-current APA presidents like Gerald Koocher and Ronald Levant, and Senator Inouye’s office all pushing for APA involvement in the interrogations. Few people stood up to them, and those who did were people who were inexperienced in the duplicity and manipulative style of politics that characterized APA.</p>
<p>With the increasing uproar from the membership and the media, APA’s more recently elected leaders and the current CEO, Norman Anderson, have been extraordinarily quiet on the subject of psychologist and APA involvement in the torture issue. Instead, second level APA employees have been put out front to defend the APA position to the membership and to the public. These are almost exclusively people hired by Fowler to fit into his carefully designed model of an organization that would be controllable, if somewhat non-dynamic and uncreative. Thus, the public relations staff Fowler hired, the staff legal and psychological expertise he hired, and most remarkably his ethics director have all served as the “face of APA” on the torture issue in recent years. Not surprisingly, forced to function under the watchful eye of the public they have not acquitted themselves in credible fashion.</p>
<p>In a recent book, I used several organizational examples to illustrate that many of the same techniques of political manipulation used in the Bush Administration were used in other organizational settings. Many of those examples were drawn from the APA. At the time of writing I never dreamed the techniques would lead to APA’s complicity in torture.</p>
<p>But such is the fate of a regressed and chronically manipulated organization. Despite being an organization of psychologists, APA has been subjected to considerable manipulation but to very little analysis. The people who run APA have “reverse engineered” the very field of psychology itself and used it against its own membership.</p>
<p>Psychologists are amongst the most moral and ethical people I know. They deserved better from their national organization, just as Americans throughout that same era deserved better from their government.</p>
<p>Bryant Welch is a clinical psychologist and attorney living in Hilton Head, SC.&#160; He is the author of <a href="" type="internal">State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind,</a> St. Martins Press, 2008.)</p> | Torture, Psychology and Sen. Daniel Inouye | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/06/17/torture-psychology-and-sen-daniel-inouye/ | 2009-06-17 | 4left
| Torture, Psychology and Sen. Daniel Inouye
<p>A seventeen-year-old boy is locked in an interrogation cell in Guantanamo. He breaks down crying and says he wants his family. The interrogator senses the boy is psychologically vulnerable and consults with a psychologist. The psychologist has evaluated the boy prior to the questioning and says, “Tell him his family has forgotten him.” The psychologist also prescribes “linguistic isolation” (not letting him have contact with anyone who speaks his language.) The boy attempts suicide a few weeks later. On the eve of the boy’s trial, the psychologist apparently fearing her testimony will only further implicate her, indicates she will plead the Fifth Amendment if she is called to the stand. The trial is postponed, leaving the boy in further limbo.</p>
<p>The military psychologist is merely a foot soldier in psychology’s participation in torture. It goes much deeper. We now know that psychologists helped design and implement significant segments of George Bush’s torture program.&#160; Despite their credo, “Above all, do no harm,” two psychologists developed instruments of psychological torture. They “reversed engineered” psychological principles. They used the very therapeutic interventions psychologists use to ameliorate psychological suffering, but “reversed” their direction to create psychological distress and instability.&#160; If one’s reality sense is threatened, a good therapist validates and supports it as appropriate. In reverse engineering, the environment is deliberately made more confusing and the victim’s trust in his own perceptions is intentionally undermined.&#160; In extreme form, this can ultimately drive a person to insanity from which some never come back. These were the types of techniques that were used on the seventeen-year-old detainee and others.</p>
<p>Military psychologists also colluded with the Justice Department to help CIA operatives circumvent the legal prohibitions against torture. Under the Justice Department definition of torture, if a detainee was sent to a psychologist for a mental health evaluation prior to interrogation it was per se evidence that the interrogator had no legal intent to torture the detainee because the referral “demonstrated concern” for the welfare of the detainee.</p>
<p>Most remarkably of all, this whole process occurred under a protective “ethical” seal from the American Psychological Association (APA), psychologists’ largest national organization. The APA governance repeatedly rejected calls from its membership for APA to join other health organizations in declaring participation in Bush detention center interrogations unethical.</p>
<p>Most psychologists are appalled at what the APA has done, and many, like me, have resigned from the APA. But the true story behind APA’s involvement with torture has not been fully told.</p>
<p>I have had ample opportunity to observe both the inner workings of the APA and the personalities and organizational vicissitudes that have affected it over the last two decades. For most of the twenty-year period from 1983 to 2003, I either worked inside the APA central office as the first Executive Director of the APA Practice Directorate, or I served in various governance positions, including Chair of the APA Board of Professional Affairs and member of the APA Council of Representatives. Since leaving APA I have maintained a keen interest in the organization.</p>
<p>The transformation of APA, in the past decade, from a historically liberal organization to an authoritarian one that actively assists in torture has been an astonishing process.&#160; As with many usurpations of democratic liberal values, the transformation was accomplished by a surprisingly small number of people. APA is an invaluable case study in the psychological manipulations that influence our governmental and non-governmental institutions.</p>
<p>To explain APA’s behavior two questions have to be answered. First, how did the APA develop the connections with the military that fostered the shameful role it has played in torture? Second, why did the APA governance not join other health professions in prohibiting participation in the Bush Administration’s “enhanced interrogations,” as APA’s rank and file members were demanding?</p>
<p>The APA-military connection</p>
<p>One source of APA’s military connections is obvious to anyone who has worked at APA over the last twenty-five years.&#160; Strangely, it has been overlooked by the media. Since the early 1980’s, APA has had a unique relationship with Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye’s office. Inouye was an honored WWII veteran, a Japanese American who himself was a medical volunteer in the midst of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He entered office in 1962. For much of the ‘70s, he was Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Later he became, and is currently, the chair of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which, of course, makes up the largest chunk of federal discretionary spending and is why economists often split discretionary government funding into defense spending versus “everything else.” This appropriations committee covers not only all of the armed forces but the CIA as well. Put succinctly, Inouye controls the military purse strings, and is very influential with military brass.</p>
<p>One of Inouye’s administrative assistants, psychologist Patrick Deleon, has long been active in the APA and served a term in 2000 as APA president. For significant periods of time DeLeon has literally directed APA staff on federal policy matters and has dominated the APA governance on political matters. For over twenty-five years, relationships between the APA and the Department of Defense (DOD) have been strongly encouraged and closely coordinated by DeLeon.</p>
<p>Inouye himself has served as an apologist for the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp (“Gitmo”) since the inception of the War on Terror. In a press briefing at the U.S. State Department, held shortly after his trip to Gitmo in February of 2002, Inouye affirmed Rumsfeld’s propagandist vision of the site, and then remarked:&#160; “Watching our men and women treat these detainees was rather impressive. They would go out of their way to be considerate. …”</p>
<p>From what we know now, that is true, but not in the benevolent way Inouye implied. Inouye’s comments bore a chilling similarity to Barbara Bush’s famous comments about the alleged good fortune of Katrina victims, in the Houston Astrodome. The detainees, he said, are being treated “in some ways better than we treat our people.” (R. Burns, Associated Press, 2002). And he compared the Guantanamo climate to Hawaii’s. (It is “somewhat warmer.”)</p>
<p>More significantly, it was Inouye who recently stripped the funding needed for closing Gitmo from a supplemental appropriations bill. This “Inouye Amendment,” threw a stick in the spokes of any U.S. movement away from the worst of global war on terror policies. In announcing the funding cut, Inouye’s press release was a remarkable illustration of Orwellian “newspeak,” ostensibly supporting the very opposite of what he was doing</p>
<p>But let me be clear. We need to close the Guantanamo prison. Yes, it is a fine facility. I, too, have visited the site. Yes, the detainees are being well cared for. Our servicemen and servicewomen are doing great work. But the fact of the matter is Guantanamo is a symbol of the wrongdoings which have occurred, and we must eliminate that connection. (Inouye, Press Release May 20, 2009).</p>
<p>DeLeon’s connection with Inouye is not by any means the only APA connection with defense interests. In 1951 the military established The Human Resource Research Organization (HumRRO) to develop techniques for “psychological warfare.” HumRRO was run by psychologist Dr. Meredith Crawford who spent ten years as APA treasurer and was deeply involved in APA activities for three decades. Crawford’s former student, Raymond Fowler, became Chief Executive Officer of APA in 1989 and stayed in that position until 2003. Today, fifty-five percent of HumRRO’s budget comes from the military.</p>
<p>As CEO, Fowler hired his two most important lieutenants from HumRRO, Chief Financial Officer, Charles “Jack” McKay, and in-house attorney, James McHugh. Both men have now, after lengthy APA tenures, left the APA and returned to HumRRO in &#160;very senior roles. McHugh is Chairman of the HumRRO Board of Trustees and McKay is Vice-Chairman and Treasurer. The current President of HumRRO, psychologist William Strickland, has been an outspoken supporter of APA’s policies on the torture issue. He served on the APA Council of Representatives throughout the APA deliberations on torture.</p>
<p>Whether and how the longstanding relationships and frequent circulation of key personnel between APA and HumRRO positions have shaped APA’s involvement with the military is unclear, but given recent events, it certainly warrants more careful scrutiny than it has received from psychologists. In fact, I do not believe many psychologists are even aware of these relationships.</p>
<p>Regardless of HumRRO’s role, however, as psychologists, most APA governance members have little Washington political experience. For them, Patrick DeLeon, because of his connection with Inouye, is perceived as a canny psychology politician and political force on Capitol Hill. Regardless of the accuracy of that perception, I have no reason to think DeLeon is a corrupt or evil person. Instead, from my perspective, the most interesting aspect of DeLeon has always been his apparent preoccupation with issues of status for psychologists, irrespective of the issues’ actual significance either for psychologists or the public.</p>
<p>DeLeon wanted to make sure a psychologist, not just physicians, for example, would be eligible to fill this or that position in the Veteran’s Administration, and he campaigned for years for VA psychologists to receive a minuscule pay increase when they became board certified. On the whole, I found these matters harmless and of at least some marginal benefit to people. Using funding from the Department of Defense he has also launched a campaign for psychologists to be given legal rights to prescribe psychiatric medications.</p>
<p>The torture issue is, of course, quite different. Viewed through the eyes of DeLeon’s adherents, psychology’s new found role as architects of a central component of the war on terror was a tremendous “victory” for the field of psychology. That it involved torture was peripheral, obscured by the headiness of being involved in high-level, important, clandestine government affairs. In discussions about APA’s role in the interrogations, a senior member of the APA governance described himself as “addicted” to the television show 24. Now he had his own reality TV show.</p>
<p>DeLeon’s influence in the APA and with many individual psychologists, especially those from Hawaii, came in very handy for Inouye in his efforts to support the Department of Defense.&#160; When the military needed a mental health professional to help implement its interrogation procedures, and the other professions subsequently refused to comply, the military had a friend in Senator Inouye’s office, one that could reap the political dividends of seeds sown by DeLeon over many years.</p>
<p>While we are only now uncovering the names of the individuals who participated most directly in the interrogations, I think a surprising number of them will turn out to be people brought into the military through Inouye’s office, many by DeLeon himself.</p>
<p>APA’s Organizational Decline</p>
<p>But this leads to the second and more complex question. Why did the governance of the APA let this happen under the apparent imprimatur of the world’s largest organization of psychologists? Some people assume APA’s horrifying recent behavior involved large sums of money changing hands. I could certainly be wrong, but I think the more likely (and more remarkable and pressing) mechanism has little to do with money.&#160; For reasons described below, the APA leaders who were making these decisions simply exercised judgment that was both bad and insensitive to the realities of human suffering. In my opinion, schooled by 25 years of experience with the APA, it was neither greed nor financial corruption that brought the APA governance into alliance with the Bush Administration. Instead, it was a malignant organizational grandiosity that first weakened the APA and then, ultimately, allowed military and intelligence agencies to have their way with the APA throughout the Bush Administration.</p>
<p>But how did the APA, of all organizations, get this way? What led to this grandiose culture? An organization does not rise or fall with a single event any more than the fall of Rome truly occurred in 476 AD.&#160; The culture of grandiosity was carefully cultivated for more than a decade by a few self-interested individuals.</p>
<p>What has been observable and unarguable about the APA of recent years is that the pluralistic and multi-faceted governance process I witnessed when first entering the APA in the early 1980’s was sharply curtailed during the 1990’s. Differences of opinion disappeared, and the APA suffered a terrible organizational decline. Increasingly inbred and infantilized under the tightly controlled administration of Raymond Fowler, the association agenda was primarily and at times exclusively financial, focused on making money either through real estate ventures or through what I and others felt was the unnecessarily harsh financial treatment of lower level APA employees.</p>
<p>Whatever one’s view of APA, few can dispute that Fowler, more than any other individual, made APA what it is today. The CEO of APA for almost fifteen years, Fowler served in one capacity or another on the APA Board of Directors for twenty-five consecutive years. While his supporters would characterize him as “astute” and his critics as “devious,” few could reasonably disagree that Fowler was the main mover in the APA for the fifteen years leading up to the torture debacle.</p>
<p>Most peculiarly, Fowler’s “agenda” for APA was encapsulated in the phrase “Working Together,” a noble idea that to the best of my knowledge was never attached to any actual substantive agenda. Instead, it served as a means of social control, a subtle injunction against raising any of the conflict-laden issues, challenges, or ideas that need to be addressed in any vital and accountable organization. The governance of the APA became either conformist or placid and increasingly detached from the real world.</p>
<p>The result was that much of the activity of the APA Council of Representatives, the legislative group with ultimate authority in the APA governance, turned away from substantive matters into an odd system of fawning over one another. Many members appeared to simply bathe in the good feeling that came from “working together.” The bath was characterized by grandiose self-referents and shared lofty opinions of one another. As it became more and more detached from reality, the organizational dysfunction became more pronounced, but this was ignored and obscured by the self-congratulatory organizational style. During this period, isolated dissent from rank-and-file members was stifled with a heavy-handed letter from the APA attorney threatening legal action or by communications from prominent members of the APA governance threatening “ethics” charges if policy protests were not discontinued. (It is unethical for psychologists to lie, and I can attest that one former APA president concluded that disagreeing with him was per se “lying.”)</p>
<p>Deliberations on Torture</p>
<p>This same grandiosity was ubiquitous in the governance’s rhetoric at the heart of the Association’s discussions on torture. Banning psychologists’ participation in reputed torture mills was clearly unnecessary, proponents of the APA policy argued.&#160; To do so would be an “insult” to military psychologists everywhere. No psychologist would ever engage in torture. Insisting on a change in APA policy reflected a mean-spirited attitude toward the military psychologists. The supporters of the APA policy managed to transform the military into the victims in the interrogation issue.</p>
<p>In the end, however, it was psychologists’ self-assumed importance that carried the day on the torture issue. Psychologists’ participation in these detention centers, it was asserted, was an antidote to torture, since psychologists’ very presence could protect the potential torture victims (presumably from Rumsfeld and Cheney, no less!). The debates on the APA Council floor, year after year, concluded with the general consensus that, indeed, psychology was very, very important to our nation’s security.</p>
<p>We psychologists were both too good and too important to join our professional colleagues in other professions who were taking an absolutist moral position against one of the most shameful eras in our country’s history. While the matter was clearly orchestrated by others, it was this self-reinforcing grandiosity that led the traditionally liberal APA governance down the slippery slope to the Bush Administration’s torture program.</p>
<p>During this period I had numerous personal communications with members of the APA governance structure in an attempt to dissuade them from ignoring the rank-and-file psychologists who abhorred the APA’s position.&#160; I have been involved in many policy disagreements over the course of my career, but the smugness and illogic that characterized the response to these efforts were astonishing and went far beyond normal, even heated, give and take. Most dramatically, the intelligence that I have always found to characterize the profession of psychology was sorely lacking.</p>
<p>Outside the self-absorbed culture of the current APA governance, to the rest of the world, the APA arguments simply do not pass the red-face test for credibility. Instead, their transparent disingenuousness only made the APA sound embarrassingly like apologists for the Bush Administration.</p>
<p>The Conclusion</p>
<p>The inability to deliberate rationally on the torture issue was but the tragic denouement of an organizational process that was actually set in motion in the early 1990’s, largely to serve the convenience of a very small number of individuals. As a result of the management style of the 90’s, the governance of APA was ill prepared for thoughtful deliberation on a matter as important as the torture issue. The governance was simply over its head in trying to effectively address such a socially and ethically consequential issue. This was especially true in a debate in which one side had organized support from powerful military interests, then-current APA presidents like Gerald Koocher and Ronald Levant, and Senator Inouye’s office all pushing for APA involvement in the interrogations. Few people stood up to them, and those who did were people who were inexperienced in the duplicity and manipulative style of politics that characterized APA.</p>
<p>With the increasing uproar from the membership and the media, APA’s more recently elected leaders and the current CEO, Norman Anderson, have been extraordinarily quiet on the subject of psychologist and APA involvement in the torture issue. Instead, second level APA employees have been put out front to defend the APA position to the membership and to the public. These are almost exclusively people hired by Fowler to fit into his carefully designed model of an organization that would be controllable, if somewhat non-dynamic and uncreative. Thus, the public relations staff Fowler hired, the staff legal and psychological expertise he hired, and most remarkably his ethics director have all served as the “face of APA” on the torture issue in recent years. Not surprisingly, forced to function under the watchful eye of the public they have not acquitted themselves in credible fashion.</p>
<p>In a recent book, I used several organizational examples to illustrate that many of the same techniques of political manipulation used in the Bush Administration were used in other organizational settings. Many of those examples were drawn from the APA. At the time of writing I never dreamed the techniques would lead to APA’s complicity in torture.</p>
<p>But such is the fate of a regressed and chronically manipulated organization. Despite being an organization of psychologists, APA has been subjected to considerable manipulation but to very little analysis. The people who run APA have “reverse engineered” the very field of psychology itself and used it against its own membership.</p>
<p>Psychologists are amongst the most moral and ethical people I know. They deserved better from their national organization, just as Americans throughout that same era deserved better from their government.</p>
<p>Bryant Welch is a clinical psychologist and attorney living in Hilton Head, SC.&#160; He is the author of <a href="" type="internal">State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind,</a> St. Martins Press, 2008.)</p> | 517 |
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — Dee Gordon hit a two-hopper with runners at the corners in the eighth inning, Adeiny Hechavarria raced home to beat first baseman Garrett Jones' high throw and plate umpire Dale Scott signaled safe.</p>
<p>Game tied.</p>
<p>Then the Yankees asked for a video review.</p>
<p>After a delay of 2 minutes, 41 seconds, an umpire in downtown Manhattan decided catcher Brian McCann tagged Hechavarria's left knee before his right toe touched the plate, and New York held on to beat the Miami Marlins 2-1 Wednesday night.</p>
<p>"I made a point to slide to the outside of the plate, and I really thought my foot got in there," Hechavarria said through a translator. "After the play happened, I came into the clubhouse and looked at the replay and still believe I was safe."</p>
<p>Jones thought Hechavarria hesitated at third rather than run on contact.</p>
<p>"All of a sudden as I'm fielding it, I see him going," Jones said. "He kind of caught me off guard late. ... If he goes right away, I think there's no play."</p>
<p>After the video review, Marlins manager Dan Jennings went out to Scott and double checked that McCann left the runner an open lane. Scott said he had.</p>
<p>"It was a momentum killer for sure," Jennings said.</p>
<p>Alex Rodriguez singled twice to raise his career hits total to 2,997, and Michael Pineda carried a no-hit bid into the seventh inning before allowing Christian Yelich's home run.</p>
<p>Rodriguez lined an RBI single to center in the first inning, singled softly to center in the fifth, walked twice to reach in all four plate appearances and also was thrown out at home plate.</p>
<p>Miami rookie Jose Urena (1-3), trying to impress enough to stay in the rotation with Jose Fernandez and Jarred Cosart set to return from the disabled list, gave up two runs and six hits in six innings. Carlos Beltran's RBI single made it 2-0 in the fifth, with center fielder Marcell Ozuna throwing out Rodriguez at the plate when he tried to score from second.</p>
<p>"Unfortunately my breaking ball was out of the zone," Urena said through a translator.</p>
<p>Pineda (8-3) retired his first 11 batters, then walked Yelich with two outs in the fourth and Justin Bour with one out in the fifth. Yelich reached down and sent a 91 mph fastball into the Yankees' bullpen in right-center leading off the seventh — Miami's first ball out of the infield.</p>
<p>"He was pounding us with that cutter and slider all game," Yelich said.</p>
<p>Pineda, who struck out nine, retired the next two batters and then was replaced by Chasen Shreve following his 100th pitch.</p>
<p>Dellin Betances relieved Justin Wilson with runners at the corners and one out in the eighth and finished the three-hitter for his fourth save. With two on and two outs in the ninth, Jeff Mathis swung over an 86 mph breaking ball for strike three.</p>
<p>Miami was impressed with Betances, who has a 0.26 ERA.</p>
<p>"He lets go of the ball one inch from the plate," said slugger Giancarlo Stanton, who took a called third strike in the ninth.</p>
<p>Miami was playing in new Yankee Stadium for the first time, leaving St. Louis and San Diego as the only teams that have not appeared in the ballpark, which opened in 2009.</p>
<p>"I told these guys when we came in to keep your heads up," Gordon said. "We almost got no-hit, and we still had a chance to win."</p>
<p>WEB GEM</p>
<p>Bour made a diving backhand play at first to rob Jones of a two-run hit in the seventh, the ball sticking out of his glove's webbing.</p>
<p>TRAINER'S ROOM</p>
<p>Marlins: Fernandez, targeting a July 2 return from Tommy John surgery, gave up one run and four hits in 4 2-3 innings for Class A Jupiter. He struck out 10, walked one and allowed a homer. ... Cosart, who hasn't pitched for the Marlins since May 13 because of vertigo, threw 106 pitches over 5 1-3 innings for Triple-A New Orleans on Tuesday night and could be back with the big league club this weekend. ... Michael Morse, sidelined since May 23 by a sprained right ring finger, started a rehab assignment with Double-A Jacksonville. He played first base and was 0 for 5 with three strikeouts. ... Martin Prado, who hurt his right shoulder Sunday, did not make the trip to New York.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Miami RHP Mat Latos (2-4) starts Thursday's series finale against CC Sabathia (3-7).</p>
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — Dee Gordon hit a two-hopper with runners at the corners in the eighth inning, Adeiny Hechavarria raced home to beat first baseman Garrett Jones' high throw and plate umpire Dale Scott signaled safe.</p>
<p>Game tied.</p>
<p>Then the Yankees asked for a video review.</p>
<p>After a delay of 2 minutes, 41 seconds, an umpire in downtown Manhattan decided catcher Brian McCann tagged Hechavarria's left knee before his right toe touched the plate, and New York held on to beat the Miami Marlins 2-1 Wednesday night.</p>
<p>"I made a point to slide to the outside of the plate, and I really thought my foot got in there," Hechavarria said through a translator. "After the play happened, I came into the clubhouse and looked at the replay and still believe I was safe."</p>
<p>Jones thought Hechavarria hesitated at third rather than run on contact.</p>
<p>"All of a sudden as I'm fielding it, I see him going," Jones said. "He kind of caught me off guard late. ... If he goes right away, I think there's no play."</p>
<p>After the video review, Marlins manager Dan Jennings went out to Scott and double checked that McCann left the runner an open lane. Scott said he had.</p>
<p>"It was a momentum killer for sure," Jennings said.</p>
<p>Alex Rodriguez singled twice to raise his career hits total to 2,997, and Michael Pineda carried a no-hit bid into the seventh inning before allowing Christian Yelich's home run.</p>
<p>Rodriguez lined an RBI single to center in the first inning, singled softly to center in the fifth, walked twice to reach in all four plate appearances and also was thrown out at home plate.</p>
<p>Miami rookie Jose Urena (1-3), trying to impress enough to stay in the rotation with Jose Fernandez and Jarred Cosart set to return from the disabled list, gave up two runs and six hits in six innings. Carlos Beltran's RBI single made it 2-0 in the fifth, with center fielder Marcell Ozuna throwing out Rodriguez at the plate when he tried to score from second.</p>
<p>"Unfortunately my breaking ball was out of the zone," Urena said through a translator.</p>
<p>Pineda (8-3) retired his first 11 batters, then walked Yelich with two outs in the fourth and Justin Bour with one out in the fifth. Yelich reached down and sent a 91 mph fastball into the Yankees' bullpen in right-center leading off the seventh — Miami's first ball out of the infield.</p>
<p>"He was pounding us with that cutter and slider all game," Yelich said.</p>
<p>Pineda, who struck out nine, retired the next two batters and then was replaced by Chasen Shreve following his 100th pitch.</p>
<p>Dellin Betances relieved Justin Wilson with runners at the corners and one out in the eighth and finished the three-hitter for his fourth save. With two on and two outs in the ninth, Jeff Mathis swung over an 86 mph breaking ball for strike three.</p>
<p>Miami was impressed with Betances, who has a 0.26 ERA.</p>
<p>"He lets go of the ball one inch from the plate," said slugger Giancarlo Stanton, who took a called third strike in the ninth.</p>
<p>Miami was playing in new Yankee Stadium for the first time, leaving St. Louis and San Diego as the only teams that have not appeared in the ballpark, which opened in 2009.</p>
<p>"I told these guys when we came in to keep your heads up," Gordon said. "We almost got no-hit, and we still had a chance to win."</p>
<p>WEB GEM</p>
<p>Bour made a diving backhand play at first to rob Jones of a two-run hit in the seventh, the ball sticking out of his glove's webbing.</p>
<p>TRAINER'S ROOM</p>
<p>Marlins: Fernandez, targeting a July 2 return from Tommy John surgery, gave up one run and four hits in 4 2-3 innings for Class A Jupiter. He struck out 10, walked one and allowed a homer. ... Cosart, who hasn't pitched for the Marlins since May 13 because of vertigo, threw 106 pitches over 5 1-3 innings for Triple-A New Orleans on Tuesday night and could be back with the big league club this weekend. ... Michael Morse, sidelined since May 23 by a sprained right ring finger, started a rehab assignment with Double-A Jacksonville. He played first base and was 0 for 5 with three strikeouts. ... Martin Prado, who hurt his right shoulder Sunday, did not make the trip to New York.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Miami RHP Mat Latos (2-4) starts Thursday's series finale against CC Sabathia (3-7).</p> | Overturned call at plate sends Marlins to 2-1 loss to Yanks | false | https://apnews.com/amp/eae52ff901fe409682f52e2a894f1b78 | 2015-06-18 | 2least
| Overturned call at plate sends Marlins to 2-1 loss to Yanks
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — Dee Gordon hit a two-hopper with runners at the corners in the eighth inning, Adeiny Hechavarria raced home to beat first baseman Garrett Jones' high throw and plate umpire Dale Scott signaled safe.</p>
<p>Game tied.</p>
<p>Then the Yankees asked for a video review.</p>
<p>After a delay of 2 minutes, 41 seconds, an umpire in downtown Manhattan decided catcher Brian McCann tagged Hechavarria's left knee before his right toe touched the plate, and New York held on to beat the Miami Marlins 2-1 Wednesday night.</p>
<p>"I made a point to slide to the outside of the plate, and I really thought my foot got in there," Hechavarria said through a translator. "After the play happened, I came into the clubhouse and looked at the replay and still believe I was safe."</p>
<p>Jones thought Hechavarria hesitated at third rather than run on contact.</p>
<p>"All of a sudden as I'm fielding it, I see him going," Jones said. "He kind of caught me off guard late. ... If he goes right away, I think there's no play."</p>
<p>After the video review, Marlins manager Dan Jennings went out to Scott and double checked that McCann left the runner an open lane. Scott said he had.</p>
<p>"It was a momentum killer for sure," Jennings said.</p>
<p>Alex Rodriguez singled twice to raise his career hits total to 2,997, and Michael Pineda carried a no-hit bid into the seventh inning before allowing Christian Yelich's home run.</p>
<p>Rodriguez lined an RBI single to center in the first inning, singled softly to center in the fifth, walked twice to reach in all four plate appearances and also was thrown out at home plate.</p>
<p>Miami rookie Jose Urena (1-3), trying to impress enough to stay in the rotation with Jose Fernandez and Jarred Cosart set to return from the disabled list, gave up two runs and six hits in six innings. Carlos Beltran's RBI single made it 2-0 in the fifth, with center fielder Marcell Ozuna throwing out Rodriguez at the plate when he tried to score from second.</p>
<p>"Unfortunately my breaking ball was out of the zone," Urena said through a translator.</p>
<p>Pineda (8-3) retired his first 11 batters, then walked Yelich with two outs in the fourth and Justin Bour with one out in the fifth. Yelich reached down and sent a 91 mph fastball into the Yankees' bullpen in right-center leading off the seventh — Miami's first ball out of the infield.</p>
<p>"He was pounding us with that cutter and slider all game," Yelich said.</p>
<p>Pineda, who struck out nine, retired the next two batters and then was replaced by Chasen Shreve following his 100th pitch.</p>
<p>Dellin Betances relieved Justin Wilson with runners at the corners and one out in the eighth and finished the three-hitter for his fourth save. With two on and two outs in the ninth, Jeff Mathis swung over an 86 mph breaking ball for strike three.</p>
<p>Miami was impressed with Betances, who has a 0.26 ERA.</p>
<p>"He lets go of the ball one inch from the plate," said slugger Giancarlo Stanton, who took a called third strike in the ninth.</p>
<p>Miami was playing in new Yankee Stadium for the first time, leaving St. Louis and San Diego as the only teams that have not appeared in the ballpark, which opened in 2009.</p>
<p>"I told these guys when we came in to keep your heads up," Gordon said. "We almost got no-hit, and we still had a chance to win."</p>
<p>WEB GEM</p>
<p>Bour made a diving backhand play at first to rob Jones of a two-run hit in the seventh, the ball sticking out of his glove's webbing.</p>
<p>TRAINER'S ROOM</p>
<p>Marlins: Fernandez, targeting a July 2 return from Tommy John surgery, gave up one run and four hits in 4 2-3 innings for Class A Jupiter. He struck out 10, walked one and allowed a homer. ... Cosart, who hasn't pitched for the Marlins since May 13 because of vertigo, threw 106 pitches over 5 1-3 innings for Triple-A New Orleans on Tuesday night and could be back with the big league club this weekend. ... Michael Morse, sidelined since May 23 by a sprained right ring finger, started a rehab assignment with Double-A Jacksonville. He played first base and was 0 for 5 with three strikeouts. ... Martin Prado, who hurt his right shoulder Sunday, did not make the trip to New York.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Miami RHP Mat Latos (2-4) starts Thursday's series finale against CC Sabathia (3-7).</p>
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — Dee Gordon hit a two-hopper with runners at the corners in the eighth inning, Adeiny Hechavarria raced home to beat first baseman Garrett Jones' high throw and plate umpire Dale Scott signaled safe.</p>
<p>Game tied.</p>
<p>Then the Yankees asked for a video review.</p>
<p>After a delay of 2 minutes, 41 seconds, an umpire in downtown Manhattan decided catcher Brian McCann tagged Hechavarria's left knee before his right toe touched the plate, and New York held on to beat the Miami Marlins 2-1 Wednesday night.</p>
<p>"I made a point to slide to the outside of the plate, and I really thought my foot got in there," Hechavarria said through a translator. "After the play happened, I came into the clubhouse and looked at the replay and still believe I was safe."</p>
<p>Jones thought Hechavarria hesitated at third rather than run on contact.</p>
<p>"All of a sudden as I'm fielding it, I see him going," Jones said. "He kind of caught me off guard late. ... If he goes right away, I think there's no play."</p>
<p>After the video review, Marlins manager Dan Jennings went out to Scott and double checked that McCann left the runner an open lane. Scott said he had.</p>
<p>"It was a momentum killer for sure," Jennings said.</p>
<p>Alex Rodriguez singled twice to raise his career hits total to 2,997, and Michael Pineda carried a no-hit bid into the seventh inning before allowing Christian Yelich's home run.</p>
<p>Rodriguez lined an RBI single to center in the first inning, singled softly to center in the fifth, walked twice to reach in all four plate appearances and also was thrown out at home plate.</p>
<p>Miami rookie Jose Urena (1-3), trying to impress enough to stay in the rotation with Jose Fernandez and Jarred Cosart set to return from the disabled list, gave up two runs and six hits in six innings. Carlos Beltran's RBI single made it 2-0 in the fifth, with center fielder Marcell Ozuna throwing out Rodriguez at the plate when he tried to score from second.</p>
<p>"Unfortunately my breaking ball was out of the zone," Urena said through a translator.</p>
<p>Pineda (8-3) retired his first 11 batters, then walked Yelich with two outs in the fourth and Justin Bour with one out in the fifth. Yelich reached down and sent a 91 mph fastball into the Yankees' bullpen in right-center leading off the seventh — Miami's first ball out of the infield.</p>
<p>"He was pounding us with that cutter and slider all game," Yelich said.</p>
<p>Pineda, who struck out nine, retired the next two batters and then was replaced by Chasen Shreve following his 100th pitch.</p>
<p>Dellin Betances relieved Justin Wilson with runners at the corners and one out in the eighth and finished the three-hitter for his fourth save. With two on and two outs in the ninth, Jeff Mathis swung over an 86 mph breaking ball for strike three.</p>
<p>Miami was impressed with Betances, who has a 0.26 ERA.</p>
<p>"He lets go of the ball one inch from the plate," said slugger Giancarlo Stanton, who took a called third strike in the ninth.</p>
<p>Miami was playing in new Yankee Stadium for the first time, leaving St. Louis and San Diego as the only teams that have not appeared in the ballpark, which opened in 2009.</p>
<p>"I told these guys when we came in to keep your heads up," Gordon said. "We almost got no-hit, and we still had a chance to win."</p>
<p>WEB GEM</p>
<p>Bour made a diving backhand play at first to rob Jones of a two-run hit in the seventh, the ball sticking out of his glove's webbing.</p>
<p>TRAINER'S ROOM</p>
<p>Marlins: Fernandez, targeting a July 2 return from Tommy John surgery, gave up one run and four hits in 4 2-3 innings for Class A Jupiter. He struck out 10, walked one and allowed a homer. ... Cosart, who hasn't pitched for the Marlins since May 13 because of vertigo, threw 106 pitches over 5 1-3 innings for Triple-A New Orleans on Tuesday night and could be back with the big league club this weekend. ... Michael Morse, sidelined since May 23 by a sprained right ring finger, started a rehab assignment with Double-A Jacksonville. He played first base and was 0 for 5 with three strikeouts. ... Martin Prado, who hurt his right shoulder Sunday, did not make the trip to New York.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Miami RHP Mat Latos (2-4) starts Thursday's series finale against CC Sabathia (3-7).</p> | 518 |
<p>Promotional image forBatman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Source: Time Warner</p>
<p>Time Warner has a lot riding on the success of its latest blockbuster, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The film, which will make its theatrical debut on Friday, pits two of DC Comics' most iconic characters against each other.With a production budget of $250 million, Time Warner has a lot invested in the film. But there is more to it than just a single film: Batman v Superman is intended to be the opening salvo in a long-running initiative that will shape its business for years to come.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>It's somewhat troubling, then, that the film has been so poorly received by critics. It remains to be seen how well the film will ultimately perform at the box office this weekend, but this is a development that should concern Time Warner shareholders.</p>
<p>A rotten receptionWhen it comes to movies, Rotten Tomatoes is perhaps the most well-regarded review aggregator. The site compiles the views of dozens of professional critics to assess the relative quality of a given film. Individual reviews are labeled either rotten (bad) or fresh (good), and the number of each is compared in order to award a composite score.A film with a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes indicates that every single critic surveyed enjoyed the film, while a score of 0% means no one liked it.</p>
<p>Currently, <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/batman_v_superman_dawn_of_justice/#contentReviews" type="external">Rotten Tomatoes</a> has surveyed 167 different critics and from their reviews, has awarded the film a meager 31%. Among top critics -- those who write for more reputable publications, such as The New York Times -- the reception has been even worse as just 29% enjoyed the film.</p>
<p>By comparison, Walt Disney's first superhero crossover film, The Avengers, garnered an impressive 92% rating. Its sequel scored lower with just 75%, but that was still enough to receive Rotten Tomatoes' "certified fresh" designation. Other recent Marvel movies, including Ant-Man, Iron Man 3, Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Captain America: The First Avenger have allmanaged to land scores of 75% or greater.</p>
<p>Critics have taken issue with Batman v Superman's pacing; its messy, humorless plot; and its tendency to shoehorn references to future DC films. <a href="http://www.timeout.com/us/film/batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice" type="external">TimeOut's</a> Joshua Rothkopf used particularly colorful language, labeling it a "a $250 million tombstone".A.O. Scott of called the film a "cynical cash grab".</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>But does any of that actually matter? Are audiences swayed by critical response?</p>
<p>Critical favorites -- the sort of films that regularly dominate the Academy Awards -- are rarely big budget success stories. Still, there does seem to be some correlation between strong reviews and ticket sales. Of the top 10 highest-grossing films of all time, every single one scored at least 72% or better on Rotten Tomatoes. Brendan Bettinger, writing for <a href="http://collider.com/box-office-reviews-statistics/" type="external">Collider</a> back in 2012, looked at the major films released in 2011 and found that strong Rotten Tomatoes scores do correlate with box office success.</p>
<p>Building an extended universeNevertheless, Batman v Superman is unlikely to bomb. Warner Bros. has been marketing the film aggressively for most of the last two years, building anticipation for its release. According to <a href="http://deadline.com/2016/03/batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice-global-box-office-opening-1201723873/" type="external">Deadline</a>, the film could generate $350 million in its debut.</p>
<p>The risk for Time Warner is that, even if audiences are willing to see it, they may not return. In August, Time Warner will release its second major DC crossover, Suicide Squad, followed by Wonder Woman and Justice League films in 2017. Other DC superheroes, including The Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg are slated to receive their own movies in the years to come. If audiences find it just as distasteful as critics, they may lose their appetite for additional DC entries.</p>
<p>That could affect other portions of Time Warner's business. The company has been infusing its Turner cable networks with new series featuring DC characters, such as The Flash and Teen Titans Go. Its premium cable network offers its Warner Bros. films to subscribers, and since <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/22/can-you-guess-what-hbo-subscribers-spend-most-of-t.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">movies are a big part of HBO's draw</a>, strong demand for DC films could lead to more HBO subscriptions.</p>
<p>Warner Bros. has expanded into video games in recent years and utilizes the intellectual property of its films to attract gamers to major releases. Video games based on Batman v Superman and other DC properties should form the basis of much of Time Warner's video game output in the quarters to come, and if the films themselves capture little interest, gamers may be similarly unaffected.</p>
<p>Likewise, box office underperformance could weigh on Time Warner's aspirations for consumer products. In November, CEO Jeff Bewkes noted that the company was hoping to leverage DC success to sell merchandise. "The next stage of growth for DC will be in film, which is also a critical driver in our plans to further expand our consumer products business," he said.</p>
<p>To be fair, there's more to Warner Bros. than DC Comics -- the company will reenter the world of Harry Potter with Fantastical Beasts in November -- and perhaps audiences will find the movie far more favorable than critics. Still, its poor critical reception is not an encouraging sign by any means.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/24/batman-v-superman-time-warner-incs-250-million-tom.aspx" type="external">"Batman v Superman": Time Warner Inc's $250 Million Tombstone?</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFMattera/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Sam Mattera</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Time Warner and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool recommends The New York Times. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy</a>.</p> | "Batman v Superman": Time Warner Inc's $250 Million Tombstone? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/03/24/batman-v-superman-time-warner-inc-250-million-tombstone.html | 2016-03-24 | 0right
| "Batman v Superman": Time Warner Inc's $250 Million Tombstone?
<p>Promotional image forBatman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Source: Time Warner</p>
<p>Time Warner has a lot riding on the success of its latest blockbuster, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The film, which will make its theatrical debut on Friday, pits two of DC Comics' most iconic characters against each other.With a production budget of $250 million, Time Warner has a lot invested in the film. But there is more to it than just a single film: Batman v Superman is intended to be the opening salvo in a long-running initiative that will shape its business for years to come.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>It's somewhat troubling, then, that the film has been so poorly received by critics. It remains to be seen how well the film will ultimately perform at the box office this weekend, but this is a development that should concern Time Warner shareholders.</p>
<p>A rotten receptionWhen it comes to movies, Rotten Tomatoes is perhaps the most well-regarded review aggregator. The site compiles the views of dozens of professional critics to assess the relative quality of a given film. Individual reviews are labeled either rotten (bad) or fresh (good), and the number of each is compared in order to award a composite score.A film with a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes indicates that every single critic surveyed enjoyed the film, while a score of 0% means no one liked it.</p>
<p>Currently, <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/batman_v_superman_dawn_of_justice/#contentReviews" type="external">Rotten Tomatoes</a> has surveyed 167 different critics and from their reviews, has awarded the film a meager 31%. Among top critics -- those who write for more reputable publications, such as The New York Times -- the reception has been even worse as just 29% enjoyed the film.</p>
<p>By comparison, Walt Disney's first superhero crossover film, The Avengers, garnered an impressive 92% rating. Its sequel scored lower with just 75%, but that was still enough to receive Rotten Tomatoes' "certified fresh" designation. Other recent Marvel movies, including Ant-Man, Iron Man 3, Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Captain America: The First Avenger have allmanaged to land scores of 75% or greater.</p>
<p>Critics have taken issue with Batman v Superman's pacing; its messy, humorless plot; and its tendency to shoehorn references to future DC films. <a href="http://www.timeout.com/us/film/batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice" type="external">TimeOut's</a> Joshua Rothkopf used particularly colorful language, labeling it a "a $250 million tombstone".A.O. Scott of called the film a "cynical cash grab".</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>But does any of that actually matter? Are audiences swayed by critical response?</p>
<p>Critical favorites -- the sort of films that regularly dominate the Academy Awards -- are rarely big budget success stories. Still, there does seem to be some correlation between strong reviews and ticket sales. Of the top 10 highest-grossing films of all time, every single one scored at least 72% or better on Rotten Tomatoes. Brendan Bettinger, writing for <a href="http://collider.com/box-office-reviews-statistics/" type="external">Collider</a> back in 2012, looked at the major films released in 2011 and found that strong Rotten Tomatoes scores do correlate with box office success.</p>
<p>Building an extended universeNevertheless, Batman v Superman is unlikely to bomb. Warner Bros. has been marketing the film aggressively for most of the last two years, building anticipation for its release. According to <a href="http://deadline.com/2016/03/batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice-global-box-office-opening-1201723873/" type="external">Deadline</a>, the film could generate $350 million in its debut.</p>
<p>The risk for Time Warner is that, even if audiences are willing to see it, they may not return. In August, Time Warner will release its second major DC crossover, Suicide Squad, followed by Wonder Woman and Justice League films in 2017. Other DC superheroes, including The Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg are slated to receive their own movies in the years to come. If audiences find it just as distasteful as critics, they may lose their appetite for additional DC entries.</p>
<p>That could affect other portions of Time Warner's business. The company has been infusing its Turner cable networks with new series featuring DC characters, such as The Flash and Teen Titans Go. Its premium cable network offers its Warner Bros. films to subscribers, and since <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/22/can-you-guess-what-hbo-subscribers-spend-most-of-t.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">movies are a big part of HBO's draw</a>, strong demand for DC films could lead to more HBO subscriptions.</p>
<p>Warner Bros. has expanded into video games in recent years and utilizes the intellectual property of its films to attract gamers to major releases. Video games based on Batman v Superman and other DC properties should form the basis of much of Time Warner's video game output in the quarters to come, and if the films themselves capture little interest, gamers may be similarly unaffected.</p>
<p>Likewise, box office underperformance could weigh on Time Warner's aspirations for consumer products. In November, CEO Jeff Bewkes noted that the company was hoping to leverage DC success to sell merchandise. "The next stage of growth for DC will be in film, which is also a critical driver in our plans to further expand our consumer products business," he said.</p>
<p>To be fair, there's more to Warner Bros. than DC Comics -- the company will reenter the world of Harry Potter with Fantastical Beasts in November -- and perhaps audiences will find the movie far more favorable than critics. Still, its poor critical reception is not an encouraging sign by any means.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/24/batman-v-superman-time-warner-incs-250-million-tom.aspx" type="external">"Batman v Superman": Time Warner Inc's $250 Million Tombstone?</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFMattera/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Sam Mattera</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Time Warner and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool recommends The New York Times. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy</a>.</p> | 519 |
<p>Let’s try to figure this one outshall we</p>
<p>Four of America’s largest news organizations recently carried reports about a major new development in the biggest murder case in Philadelphia’s history yet Philly’s two largest newspapers treated this hometown news as snooze unworthy of coverage.</p>
<p>These reports covered the federal Third Circuit appeals court issuing an order in the Mumia Abu-Jamal case that the Associated Press (AP) news wire service described as “the most significant ruling in the case in four years”</p>
<p>The Third Circuit order stated it would consider three of Abu- Jamal’s claims appealing his conviction for murdering a Philadelphia policeman in 1981.</p>
<p>The import of the Third Circuit order–a/k/a ‘news’ about this development–is two-fold:</p>
<p>(1) significantly, the Third Circuit agreed to hear two more appeal claims than a federal District Court judge certified for appeal in his 2001 ruling; and</p>
<p>(2) the Third Circuit apparently is not back-handing Abu-Jamal’s appeal like Pa state courts routinely do.</p>
<p>Under standard journalism text book definitions of news the Third Circuit order constitutes news–not front-page headline news yet news arguably meriting more than brief coverage since Abu-Jamal’s case constantly receives international attention…inclusive of foreign governmental leaders.</p>
<p>The AP, along with ABC, CBS and CNN carried articles on the Third Circuit order.</p>
<p>This contrasted starkly to the Philadelphia Daily News which only carried a ‘news brief’ and the Philadelphia Inquirer which initially ignored the order.</p>
<p>The ‘Inky’ did run a ‘news brief’ days after release of the order on the same day that the New York Times carried a news brief item on this major case from the center of the Inquirer’s coverage area.</p>
<p>Both the scene of the 1981 murder producing Abu-Jamal’s conviction and where he grew up are just blocks from the Inky’s main office.</p>
<p>Now, let’s be clear: determinations on the news ‘value’ of events are subjective decisions made daily by experienced editors and reporters in the news business.</p>
<p>There is legitimate debate among news professionals on where a valid news item should be placed in a newspaper and what headline that item should carry.</p>
<p>However, it should be a no-brainer for news professionals that a “significant” development in clearly the most widely examined murder case in Philly’s history constitutes valid news that should not be downplayed or dismissed.</p>
<p>The fact that the Daily News and Inquirer downplayed news of this federal appeals court order–while seemingly startling–is sadly consistent with the dismissive coverage procedures practiced by Philly’s mainstream news media in the Abu-Jamal casepractices too often replicated by non-Philly news media.</p>
<p>Noted media critic and University of Pennsylvania Professor Edward Herman termed these coverage practices ‘Hometown Hostility’ in an analysis of Inquirer coverage of the Abu-Jamal case published in 2000.</p>
<p>“Biased coverage” by the Inquirer on the Abu-Jamal case is “typical” Herman noted in his analysis.</p>
<p>“Although, the Inquirer has been exceedingly reluctant to feature or even report on rallies, tribunals or reports supporting Abu-Jamal, it has found negative news about his supporters highly newsworthy,” Herman wrote.</p>
<p>Philadelphia area investigative reporter David Lindorff, author of the best&amp;only non-partisan book examining the Abu-Jamal case, is also critical of Philadelphia news coverage of this case.</p>
<p>“For a long time, it has been obvious that with the Mumia Abu- Jamal story, the farther you got from Philadelphia, the more honest and fair the coverage. Conversely, the closer you get to Philadelphia, the more strained and skittish the coverage, if developments get covered at all,” Lindorff stated during a recent interview.</p>
<p>“The latest news development in the case, which is really quite dramatic and important for several reasons, provides a case study in local media gutlessness,” Lindorff noted.</p>
<p>So, what is news?</p>
<p>Well, Philly print and broadcast mainstream news media could have ‘discovered’ news in the fact that Abu-Jamal’s main support group–based in Philadelphia–immediately posted Lindorff’s article on the court order on its web site.</p>
<p>How is that news?</p>
<p>Well, many of Abu-Jamal’s staunchest supporters–including the Philly based group–have trashed Lindorff’s meticulously researched book, damning it as too objective in part for its failings to exude the hero-worship posture they desire.</p>
<p>The web based Counterpunch and Salon.com posted Lindorff’s articles on the order.</p>
<p>On a more substantial matter, Philly’s news media could have found news in the fact that twice this year, the Third Circuit granted relief in Philadelphia murder cases on the issue of prosecution discrimination in jury selection–one of the appeal points in last week’s Abu-Jamal order.</p>
<p>One of these two rulings occurred in mid-October.</p>
<p>These rulings, and others on this legal point since the mid- 1980s, expose a pattern of jury discrimination practices by Philadelphia prosecutors that bracket Abu-Jamal’s heavily criticized 1982 trial. An Amnesty International report on Abu- Jamal’s case described that ’82 trial as “deeply flawed” failing to meet “international standards for a fair trial.”</p>
<p>Evidence cited by Philadelphia based federal judges when voiding jury discrimination tainted murder convictions includes notes prosecutors kept on the race of potential jury members and a videotaped training session where a veteran prosecutor instructed rookie prosecutors on how to craftily rid juries of non- whites and whites living in racially integrated, liberal communities of Philadelphia.</p>
<p>In 1991, the Inquirer ran articles on Charles Diggs and Harold McKendrick, after local federal judges voided their respective murder convictions due to jury selection bias by Philly prosecutors.</p>
<p>These articles ran during a period when local media ignored discriminatory US Supreme Court actions refusing to grant Abu- Jamal relief on the same constitutional protection that Court was giving two convicted murderers: a white racist prison gang member and a white devil worshiper.</p>
<p>Email exchanges immediately after issuance of the Third Circuit’s order provide a window into the news decision making at the Inquirer and Daily News.</p>
<p>An Inquirer staffer deemed the court order “a procedural development that is notenough to warrant a story.”</p>
<p>A Daily News staffer stated “the evaluation of our reporters, editors and lawyer [is] that this is NOT a big deal”</p>
<p>Well, there you have it–go figure?</p>
<p>Linn Washington Jr. a journalism professor at Temple University, has covered the Abu-Jamal case since December 1981.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | The Philly Media and Mumia Abu-Jamal | true | https://counterpunch.org/2005/12/10/the-philly-media-and-mumia-abu-jamal/ | 2005-12-10 | 4left
| The Philly Media and Mumia Abu-Jamal
<p>Let’s try to figure this one outshall we</p>
<p>Four of America’s largest news organizations recently carried reports about a major new development in the biggest murder case in Philadelphia’s history yet Philly’s two largest newspapers treated this hometown news as snooze unworthy of coverage.</p>
<p>These reports covered the federal Third Circuit appeals court issuing an order in the Mumia Abu-Jamal case that the Associated Press (AP) news wire service described as “the most significant ruling in the case in four years”</p>
<p>The Third Circuit order stated it would consider three of Abu- Jamal’s claims appealing his conviction for murdering a Philadelphia policeman in 1981.</p>
<p>The import of the Third Circuit order–a/k/a ‘news’ about this development–is two-fold:</p>
<p>(1) significantly, the Third Circuit agreed to hear two more appeal claims than a federal District Court judge certified for appeal in his 2001 ruling; and</p>
<p>(2) the Third Circuit apparently is not back-handing Abu-Jamal’s appeal like Pa state courts routinely do.</p>
<p>Under standard journalism text book definitions of news the Third Circuit order constitutes news–not front-page headline news yet news arguably meriting more than brief coverage since Abu-Jamal’s case constantly receives international attention…inclusive of foreign governmental leaders.</p>
<p>The AP, along with ABC, CBS and CNN carried articles on the Third Circuit order.</p>
<p>This contrasted starkly to the Philadelphia Daily News which only carried a ‘news brief’ and the Philadelphia Inquirer which initially ignored the order.</p>
<p>The ‘Inky’ did run a ‘news brief’ days after release of the order on the same day that the New York Times carried a news brief item on this major case from the center of the Inquirer’s coverage area.</p>
<p>Both the scene of the 1981 murder producing Abu-Jamal’s conviction and where he grew up are just blocks from the Inky’s main office.</p>
<p>Now, let’s be clear: determinations on the news ‘value’ of events are subjective decisions made daily by experienced editors and reporters in the news business.</p>
<p>There is legitimate debate among news professionals on where a valid news item should be placed in a newspaper and what headline that item should carry.</p>
<p>However, it should be a no-brainer for news professionals that a “significant” development in clearly the most widely examined murder case in Philly’s history constitutes valid news that should not be downplayed or dismissed.</p>
<p>The fact that the Daily News and Inquirer downplayed news of this federal appeals court order–while seemingly startling–is sadly consistent with the dismissive coverage procedures practiced by Philly’s mainstream news media in the Abu-Jamal casepractices too often replicated by non-Philly news media.</p>
<p>Noted media critic and University of Pennsylvania Professor Edward Herman termed these coverage practices ‘Hometown Hostility’ in an analysis of Inquirer coverage of the Abu-Jamal case published in 2000.</p>
<p>“Biased coverage” by the Inquirer on the Abu-Jamal case is “typical” Herman noted in his analysis.</p>
<p>“Although, the Inquirer has been exceedingly reluctant to feature or even report on rallies, tribunals or reports supporting Abu-Jamal, it has found negative news about his supporters highly newsworthy,” Herman wrote.</p>
<p>Philadelphia area investigative reporter David Lindorff, author of the best&amp;only non-partisan book examining the Abu-Jamal case, is also critical of Philadelphia news coverage of this case.</p>
<p>“For a long time, it has been obvious that with the Mumia Abu- Jamal story, the farther you got from Philadelphia, the more honest and fair the coverage. Conversely, the closer you get to Philadelphia, the more strained and skittish the coverage, if developments get covered at all,” Lindorff stated during a recent interview.</p>
<p>“The latest news development in the case, which is really quite dramatic and important for several reasons, provides a case study in local media gutlessness,” Lindorff noted.</p>
<p>So, what is news?</p>
<p>Well, Philly print and broadcast mainstream news media could have ‘discovered’ news in the fact that Abu-Jamal’s main support group–based in Philadelphia–immediately posted Lindorff’s article on the court order on its web site.</p>
<p>How is that news?</p>
<p>Well, many of Abu-Jamal’s staunchest supporters–including the Philly based group–have trashed Lindorff’s meticulously researched book, damning it as too objective in part for its failings to exude the hero-worship posture they desire.</p>
<p>The web based Counterpunch and Salon.com posted Lindorff’s articles on the order.</p>
<p>On a more substantial matter, Philly’s news media could have found news in the fact that twice this year, the Third Circuit granted relief in Philadelphia murder cases on the issue of prosecution discrimination in jury selection–one of the appeal points in last week’s Abu-Jamal order.</p>
<p>One of these two rulings occurred in mid-October.</p>
<p>These rulings, and others on this legal point since the mid- 1980s, expose a pattern of jury discrimination practices by Philadelphia prosecutors that bracket Abu-Jamal’s heavily criticized 1982 trial. An Amnesty International report on Abu- Jamal’s case described that ’82 trial as “deeply flawed” failing to meet “international standards for a fair trial.”</p>
<p>Evidence cited by Philadelphia based federal judges when voiding jury discrimination tainted murder convictions includes notes prosecutors kept on the race of potential jury members and a videotaped training session where a veteran prosecutor instructed rookie prosecutors on how to craftily rid juries of non- whites and whites living in racially integrated, liberal communities of Philadelphia.</p>
<p>In 1991, the Inquirer ran articles on Charles Diggs and Harold McKendrick, after local federal judges voided their respective murder convictions due to jury selection bias by Philly prosecutors.</p>
<p>These articles ran during a period when local media ignored discriminatory US Supreme Court actions refusing to grant Abu- Jamal relief on the same constitutional protection that Court was giving two convicted murderers: a white racist prison gang member and a white devil worshiper.</p>
<p>Email exchanges immediately after issuance of the Third Circuit’s order provide a window into the news decision making at the Inquirer and Daily News.</p>
<p>An Inquirer staffer deemed the court order “a procedural development that is notenough to warrant a story.”</p>
<p>A Daily News staffer stated “the evaluation of our reporters, editors and lawyer [is] that this is NOT a big deal”</p>
<p>Well, there you have it–go figure?</p>
<p>Linn Washington Jr. a journalism professor at Temple University, has covered the Abu-Jamal case since December 1981.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 520 |
<p>Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County Sheriff convicted of criminal contempt last year in a racial profiling case, is keeping his calendar open in case President Donald Trump decides to pardon him, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/21/will-trump-pardon-sheriff-joe-arpaio-241870" type="external">he told Politico</a> Monday.</p>
<p>“I’ve been doing rallies with him many, many times, and sometimes things are done the last minute,” he said.</p>
<p>Trump is scheduled to be in Phoenix on Tuesday for a campaign-style rally. He told Fox News last week he was “seriously considering” pardoning Arpaio, who faces a maximum of six months in jail for defying a federal court’s order to cease and desist rounding up illegal immigrants.</p>
<p>Arpaio, 85, is a big Trump supporter who has said he would accept a pardon but would not ask for one.</p>
<p>“I don’t expect anything in return from the president, but I think he understands that this is a travesty, and he’s just trying to correct it, doing the right thing, and he has the courage and the guts to do it,” <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/joe-arpaio-accept-donald-trump-pardon/2017/08/14/id/807628/" type="external">Arpaio told</a> guest host Rita Cosby last Monday on “ <a href="http://www.newsmaxtv.com/Shows/The-Schnitt-Show" type="external">The Schnitt Show</a>.”</p> | Politico: Arpaio Clears Calendar in Case Trump Pardons Him | false | https://newsline.com/politico-arpaio-clears-calendar-in-case-trump-pardons-him/ | 2017-08-21 | 1right-center
| Politico: Arpaio Clears Calendar in Case Trump Pardons Him
<p>Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County Sheriff convicted of criminal contempt last year in a racial profiling case, is keeping his calendar open in case President Donald Trump decides to pardon him, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/21/will-trump-pardon-sheriff-joe-arpaio-241870" type="external">he told Politico</a> Monday.</p>
<p>“I’ve been doing rallies with him many, many times, and sometimes things are done the last minute,” he said.</p>
<p>Trump is scheduled to be in Phoenix on Tuesday for a campaign-style rally. He told Fox News last week he was “seriously considering” pardoning Arpaio, who faces a maximum of six months in jail for defying a federal court’s order to cease and desist rounding up illegal immigrants.</p>
<p>Arpaio, 85, is a big Trump supporter who has said he would accept a pardon but would not ask for one.</p>
<p>“I don’t expect anything in return from the president, but I think he understands that this is a travesty, and he’s just trying to correct it, doing the right thing, and he has the courage and the guts to do it,” <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/joe-arpaio-accept-donald-trump-pardon/2017/08/14/id/807628/" type="external">Arpaio told</a> guest host Rita Cosby last Monday on “ <a href="http://www.newsmaxtv.com/Shows/The-Schnitt-Show" type="external">The Schnitt Show</a>.”</p> | 521 |
<p>Toledo mayoral candidate Opal Covey, who has warned that <a href="" type="internal">God will destroy her city</a> if she isn’t elected, has been interviewed by <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a39201/opal-covey-toledo-mayor-candidate-prophet-exorcist/" type="external">Esquire</a>. Ms. Covey, a Donald Trump fan and exorcist who can cure blindness with her Holy Touch, reveals that she was sent by the Lord Almighty Himself to stop the Democrats:</p>
<p>“I perform miracles through the holy spirit,” Covey told Esquire.com in a phone interview this morning. She claims to have given a blind woman sight. She says she’s healed deformed limbs. Covey speaks fondly of the exorcisms she has conducted, casting out 30 demons. She can speak in tongues. “I have traveled, and everywhere I go people are helped because they know I am a woman of God. Everything I tell them comes to pass,” Covey said. In 1977, God sent her to Toledo, Ohio. “God sent me here to bring the citizens out of slavery from the Democrats, they’ve been in power for 48 years,” she said, the sound of cats meowing through her south Toledo house. “I came here to bring them out like Moses brought the slaves out from under this horrible Democrat government that we have in Toledo.”</p>
<p>The above-linked interview closes with this quote: “Speaking in tongues–it’s god speaking but you cannot understand what he’s saying. You have to yield yourself to that … cowya kasha baki … there was one right there.” (Tipped by JMG reader Brian)</p> | Opal Covey: God Sent Me To Stop The Democrats | true | http://joemygod.com/2015/10/27/opal-covey-god-sent-me-to-stop-the-democrats/ | 2015-10-27 | 4left
| Opal Covey: God Sent Me To Stop The Democrats
<p>Toledo mayoral candidate Opal Covey, who has warned that <a href="" type="internal">God will destroy her city</a> if she isn’t elected, has been interviewed by <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a39201/opal-covey-toledo-mayor-candidate-prophet-exorcist/" type="external">Esquire</a>. Ms. Covey, a Donald Trump fan and exorcist who can cure blindness with her Holy Touch, reveals that she was sent by the Lord Almighty Himself to stop the Democrats:</p>
<p>“I perform miracles through the holy spirit,” Covey told Esquire.com in a phone interview this morning. She claims to have given a blind woman sight. She says she’s healed deformed limbs. Covey speaks fondly of the exorcisms she has conducted, casting out 30 demons. She can speak in tongues. “I have traveled, and everywhere I go people are helped because they know I am a woman of God. Everything I tell them comes to pass,” Covey said. In 1977, God sent her to Toledo, Ohio. “God sent me here to bring the citizens out of slavery from the Democrats, they’ve been in power for 48 years,” she said, the sound of cats meowing through her south Toledo house. “I came here to bring them out like Moses brought the slaves out from under this horrible Democrat government that we have in Toledo.”</p>
<p>The above-linked interview closes with this quote: “Speaking in tongues–it’s god speaking but you cannot understand what he’s saying. You have to yield yourself to that … cowya kasha baki … there was one right there.” (Tipped by JMG reader Brian)</p> | 522 |
<p />
<p>Climate change and its resultant shortage of ecological resources could be to blame for armed conflicts in the future. According to a paper published in <a href="http://www.springer-sbm.com/index.php?id=291&amp;backPID=132&amp;L=0&amp;tx_tnc_news=3496&amp;cHash=340313d096" type="external">Human Ecology,</a> changing temperatures and dwindling agricultural production correlated with warfare frequency in eastern China in the past. The authors reviewed warfare data from 899 wars in eastern China between 1000 and 1911, and cross-referenced these data with Northern Hemispheric climate data for the same period. They found that warfare increased significantly when temperatures fluctuated enough to affect food crops. Their conclusion: in times of ecological stress, <a href="/news/feature/2005/09/scorched_earth.html" type="external">warfare</a> could be the ultimate means of redistributing resources. <a href="http://julia.whitty.googlepages.com/home" type="external">JULIA WHITTY</a></p>
<p /> | Climate Change The Root Of Armed Conflicts? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/07/climate-change-root-armed-conflicts-2/ | 2007-07-10 | 4left
| Climate Change The Root Of Armed Conflicts?
<p />
<p>Climate change and its resultant shortage of ecological resources could be to blame for armed conflicts in the future. According to a paper published in <a href="http://www.springer-sbm.com/index.php?id=291&amp;backPID=132&amp;L=0&amp;tx_tnc_news=3496&amp;cHash=340313d096" type="external">Human Ecology,</a> changing temperatures and dwindling agricultural production correlated with warfare frequency in eastern China in the past. The authors reviewed warfare data from 899 wars in eastern China between 1000 and 1911, and cross-referenced these data with Northern Hemispheric climate data for the same period. They found that warfare increased significantly when temperatures fluctuated enough to affect food crops. Their conclusion: in times of ecological stress, <a href="/news/feature/2005/09/scorched_earth.html" type="external">warfare</a> could be the ultimate means of redistributing resources. <a href="http://julia.whitty.googlepages.com/home" type="external">JULIA WHITTY</a></p>
<p /> | 523 |
<p>Fred H. Harrington is a forgotten name to many, though there was a time when he was a big name in American letters. His academic specialty was American diplomatic history, which he taught at University of Wisconsin before becoming that school’s president in 1962. His writings, including his 1935 MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW essay “The Anti-Imperialists: Too Few, Too Feeble”, shaped men such as William A. Williams and others who comprised the “Wisconsin School” of diplomatic history.</p>
<p>Why does a 1935 discussion of those who opposed US Imperialism between 1898 and 2000 matter today? Because, as I type this, plans are being made for US military action throughout the world. Perhaps because those plans are lower-profile than the run-up to the recent liberation, the masses aren’t thronged in the streets, protesting the Pentagon’s systemic destruction of strategically-positioned, mineral-rich cultures.</p>
<p>The danger in protesting the Iraqi war as if it were a singular action cannot be understated. Even if the invasion of Iraq had been “stopped” — neglected is the contention that the 1991 hostilities had never actually ended — what really would have changed in the Pentagon? We’d still have Rumsfeld spinning some delightfully dadaist swill about “the unknowable”, and there would still be “total information awareness”, and Washington would still be leveraging itself out to support its military-socialism habit. They would still, like needle junkies, search for veins to tap and rationales to support their actions.</p>
<p>And we who hate their wars and their fatuous rationales, in all likelihood, would fare no better than those who opposed aggression upon Spanish holdings. As Harrington asserts, “in approaching the anti-imperialist movement, it is well to bear in mind that it was based almost exclusively on grounds of abstract political principle. The anti-imperialists did not oppose colonial expansion for commercial, religious, or constitutional” reasons, but because they felt “expansion” ran counter to the principles in which the United States government finds its rhetorical ballast, or “legitimacy”. Government by, for, and about the people, in other words.</p>
<p>With the advantage of hindsight, it can be argued that the more internationalist anti-war protesters in the most recent case would’ve been better served by recycling the words and ideas of William Jennings Bryan, who saw aggression against Spain as an attempt to destroy “that self-evident truth that governments derive their just powers, not from superior force, but from the consent of the governed.” Or Grover Cleveland, some guy in the White House between Lincoln and FDR, who likened colonial aggrandizement to the abandonment of old landmarks.</p>
<p>History has proven right those who saw aggression against Spain as a prelude to “perpetual war for perpetual peace” [to borrow a fashionable phrase.] At this point, the military is ensconced in public life to a degree unimaginable to those whose “presidents” aren’t former generals. One of the greater utilities of Harrington’s essay is how it outlines the broad spectrum of opposition to the war, united in defense of the twained fates of anti-interventionism and national sovereignty. Andrew Carnegie opposed the wars, as did leaders of domestic agricultural concerns that would be threatened by cheap Filipino imports. And, as Harrington puts it, “the political elements represented in the movement fall into four distinct groups — the independents, the Gold democrats, the Bryan Democrats, and the regular Republicans,” including former President Harrison.</p>
<p>With such a broad coalition of support, why did the 1890s anti-Imperialist movement fail? Harrington attributes their lack of success to the extremity of their views and rhetoric, which ran counter to “the people being stirred by the thought of distant possessions,” a fervor that cooled with time. Harrington claims also that the “anti-imperialists were handicapped by the nature of their cause. They were forced to preach abnegation rather than indulgence, to urge the pride of renunciation as against the pride of glory and possession.” A brilliant point, and again, it’s applicable to the opposition of the recent cakewalk.</p>
<p>But Harrington saves his most trenchant criticism of those who opposed foreign wars for his conclusion. “Most tragic of all”, he writes, “was the failure to unite in support of a political leader. The majority of the great anti-imperialists showed no disposition to head a great protest movement. The one available champion of the cause,” the discredited William Jennings Bryan, “was absolutely unacceptable to many anti-imperialists. Men found themselves apologizing rather than fighting for the standard bearer for their cause.” Jesse, Ramsey, call your offices.</p>
<p>One can’t help but hear the echoes of mainstream opponents of the war scuttling to distance themselves from such as the International ANSWER apparatus. Harrington could’ve predicted such an end to an anti-war movement, “a great crusade without crusaders.” Those who opposed taking Spain on, the historian writes, “wavered every time they met the enemy” war machine and “suffered a rout from which they” — and the nation itself — “from which they would never recover.”</p>
<p>ANTHONY GANCARSKI is a regular CounterPunch columnist. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Anti-Imperialism, Then and Now | true | https://counterpunch.org/2003/05/29/anti-imperialism-then-and-now/ | 2003-05-29 | 4left
| Anti-Imperialism, Then and Now
<p>Fred H. Harrington is a forgotten name to many, though there was a time when he was a big name in American letters. His academic specialty was American diplomatic history, which he taught at University of Wisconsin before becoming that school’s president in 1962. His writings, including his 1935 MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW essay “The Anti-Imperialists: Too Few, Too Feeble”, shaped men such as William A. Williams and others who comprised the “Wisconsin School” of diplomatic history.</p>
<p>Why does a 1935 discussion of those who opposed US Imperialism between 1898 and 2000 matter today? Because, as I type this, plans are being made for US military action throughout the world. Perhaps because those plans are lower-profile than the run-up to the recent liberation, the masses aren’t thronged in the streets, protesting the Pentagon’s systemic destruction of strategically-positioned, mineral-rich cultures.</p>
<p>The danger in protesting the Iraqi war as if it were a singular action cannot be understated. Even if the invasion of Iraq had been “stopped” — neglected is the contention that the 1991 hostilities had never actually ended — what really would have changed in the Pentagon? We’d still have Rumsfeld spinning some delightfully dadaist swill about “the unknowable”, and there would still be “total information awareness”, and Washington would still be leveraging itself out to support its military-socialism habit. They would still, like needle junkies, search for veins to tap and rationales to support their actions.</p>
<p>And we who hate their wars and their fatuous rationales, in all likelihood, would fare no better than those who opposed aggression upon Spanish holdings. As Harrington asserts, “in approaching the anti-imperialist movement, it is well to bear in mind that it was based almost exclusively on grounds of abstract political principle. The anti-imperialists did not oppose colonial expansion for commercial, religious, or constitutional” reasons, but because they felt “expansion” ran counter to the principles in which the United States government finds its rhetorical ballast, or “legitimacy”. Government by, for, and about the people, in other words.</p>
<p>With the advantage of hindsight, it can be argued that the more internationalist anti-war protesters in the most recent case would’ve been better served by recycling the words and ideas of William Jennings Bryan, who saw aggression against Spain as an attempt to destroy “that self-evident truth that governments derive their just powers, not from superior force, but from the consent of the governed.” Or Grover Cleveland, some guy in the White House between Lincoln and FDR, who likened colonial aggrandizement to the abandonment of old landmarks.</p>
<p>History has proven right those who saw aggression against Spain as a prelude to “perpetual war for perpetual peace” [to borrow a fashionable phrase.] At this point, the military is ensconced in public life to a degree unimaginable to those whose “presidents” aren’t former generals. One of the greater utilities of Harrington’s essay is how it outlines the broad spectrum of opposition to the war, united in defense of the twained fates of anti-interventionism and national sovereignty. Andrew Carnegie opposed the wars, as did leaders of domestic agricultural concerns that would be threatened by cheap Filipino imports. And, as Harrington puts it, “the political elements represented in the movement fall into four distinct groups — the independents, the Gold democrats, the Bryan Democrats, and the regular Republicans,” including former President Harrison.</p>
<p>With such a broad coalition of support, why did the 1890s anti-Imperialist movement fail? Harrington attributes their lack of success to the extremity of their views and rhetoric, which ran counter to “the people being stirred by the thought of distant possessions,” a fervor that cooled with time. Harrington claims also that the “anti-imperialists were handicapped by the nature of their cause. They were forced to preach abnegation rather than indulgence, to urge the pride of renunciation as against the pride of glory and possession.” A brilliant point, and again, it’s applicable to the opposition of the recent cakewalk.</p>
<p>But Harrington saves his most trenchant criticism of those who opposed foreign wars for his conclusion. “Most tragic of all”, he writes, “was the failure to unite in support of a political leader. The majority of the great anti-imperialists showed no disposition to head a great protest movement. The one available champion of the cause,” the discredited William Jennings Bryan, “was absolutely unacceptable to many anti-imperialists. Men found themselves apologizing rather than fighting for the standard bearer for their cause.” Jesse, Ramsey, call your offices.</p>
<p>One can’t help but hear the echoes of mainstream opponents of the war scuttling to distance themselves from such as the International ANSWER apparatus. Harrington could’ve predicted such an end to an anti-war movement, “a great crusade without crusaders.” Those who opposed taking Spain on, the historian writes, “wavered every time they met the enemy” war machine and “suffered a rout from which they” — and the nation itself — “from which they would never recover.”</p>
<p>ANTHONY GANCARSKI is a regular CounterPunch columnist. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 524 |
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<p>The House voted 32-31 in favor of the legislation, <a href="http://www.nmlegis.gov/lcs/legislation.aspx?Chamber=S&amp;LegType=B&amp;LegNo=226&amp;year=15" type="external">Senate Bill 226</a>, sending it to Gov. Susana Martinez’s desk for final consideration.</p>
<p>The legislation was prompted by a 2014 opinion by then-Attorney General King that said New Mexico law does not expressly prohibit fishermen from wading and fishing in all&#160;streams, as long as they don’t trespass on adjacent public lands.</p>
<p>Critics of the bill said during tonight’s debate it would restrict public access and could&#160;turn quality fishing waters into commodities.</p>
<p>“Basically, this bill privatizes access to public streams,” said Rep. Debbie Rodella, D-Espanola.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>But backers of the measure said it would merely put into law current regulations of the Department of Game and Fish that require people to get owners’ permission to wade or walk on private property. The bill is supported by a coalition of ranchers, farmers, lodge owners and fishing guides.</p>
<p>“We are not trying to deny access to public waters,” said Rep. Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Roswell.</p>
<p>River access laws vary by state, with some states — like Montana — allowing the public to use all&#160;rivers and streams for recreational purposes&#160;up to the normal high-water mark.</p> | NM House votes 32-31 to approve stream access bill | false | https://abqjournal.com/558335/nm-house-votes-32-31-to-approve-stream-access-bill.html | 2least
| NM House votes 32-31 to approve stream access bill
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<p />
<p>The House voted 32-31 in favor of the legislation, <a href="http://www.nmlegis.gov/lcs/legislation.aspx?Chamber=S&amp;LegType=B&amp;LegNo=226&amp;year=15" type="external">Senate Bill 226</a>, sending it to Gov. Susana Martinez’s desk for final consideration.</p>
<p>The legislation was prompted by a 2014 opinion by then-Attorney General King that said New Mexico law does not expressly prohibit fishermen from wading and fishing in all&#160;streams, as long as they don’t trespass on adjacent public lands.</p>
<p>Critics of the bill said during tonight’s debate it would restrict public access and could&#160;turn quality fishing waters into commodities.</p>
<p>“Basically, this bill privatizes access to public streams,” said Rep. Debbie Rodella, D-Espanola.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>But backers of the measure said it would merely put into law current regulations of the Department of Game and Fish that require people to get owners’ permission to wade or walk on private property. The bill is supported by a coalition of ranchers, farmers, lodge owners and fishing guides.</p>
<p>“We are not trying to deny access to public waters,” said Rep. Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Roswell.</p>
<p>River access laws vary by state, with some states — like Montana — allowing the public to use all&#160;rivers and streams for recreational purposes&#160;up to the normal high-water mark.</p> | 525 |
|
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Oracle</a>, the No. 1 database developer, rejected a $272 million settlement from German arch-rival SAP over alleged infringement of intellectual property.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Oracle had won a $1.3 billion jury award over unauthorized access to its servers by SAP unit TomorrowNow, which the German rival acquired in 2005.</p>
<p>But a federal judge slashed payout to Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle nearly 80 percent because she believed the award was too high.</p>
<p>Shares of Oracle fell 11 cents to $28.89 Tuesday, as U.S. shares of SAP rose 66 cents to $63.65.</p>
<p>SAP said it was "disappointed" Oracle had rejected a settlement and added it would try to end the dispute. The case is pending in U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif. before Judge Phyliss Hamilton.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Oracle remains embroiled in a totally separate case against Google, the No. 1 search company, over alleged infringement of Java patents Oracle acquired via its $7.3 billion acquisition of <a href="" type="internal">Sun Microsystems</a> in 2010. Oracle alleged Google had abused the patents to develop the Android OS for smartphones and tablets.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In that case, in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Judge William Alsup ordered Oracle CEO <a href="" type="internal">Larry Ellison</a> and Google CEO <a href="" type="internal">Larry Page</a> to appear before a U.S. magistrate in San Jose, Calif., last fall.</p>
<p>Alsup had rejected a demand by Oracle that Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., pay as much as $6.1 billion in damages. After face-to-face negotiations failed, the judge scheduled a trial date of March 12 but subsequently scrubbed it.</p>
<p>On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that an email written by a Google engineer that could be damaging can't be excluded from the case.</p>
<p>In it, the Google engineer wrote that he'd been asked by CEO Page and co-founder <a href="" type="internal">Sergey Brin</a> to find "technical alternatives" to Java but "they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need."</p> | Oracle Rejects Pact, Wants New Trial in SAP Copyright Dispute | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/02/07/oracle-rejects-pact-wants-new-trial-in-sap-copyright-dispute.html | 2016-03-03 | 0right
| Oracle Rejects Pact, Wants New Trial in SAP Copyright Dispute
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Oracle</a>, the No. 1 database developer, rejected a $272 million settlement from German arch-rival SAP over alleged infringement of intellectual property.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Oracle had won a $1.3 billion jury award over unauthorized access to its servers by SAP unit TomorrowNow, which the German rival acquired in 2005.</p>
<p>But a federal judge slashed payout to Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle nearly 80 percent because she believed the award was too high.</p>
<p>Shares of Oracle fell 11 cents to $28.89 Tuesday, as U.S. shares of SAP rose 66 cents to $63.65.</p>
<p>SAP said it was "disappointed" Oracle had rejected a settlement and added it would try to end the dispute. The case is pending in U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif. before Judge Phyliss Hamilton.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Oracle remains embroiled in a totally separate case against Google, the No. 1 search company, over alleged infringement of Java patents Oracle acquired via its $7.3 billion acquisition of <a href="" type="internal">Sun Microsystems</a> in 2010. Oracle alleged Google had abused the patents to develop the Android OS for smartphones and tablets.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In that case, in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Judge William Alsup ordered Oracle CEO <a href="" type="internal">Larry Ellison</a> and Google CEO <a href="" type="internal">Larry Page</a> to appear before a U.S. magistrate in San Jose, Calif., last fall.</p>
<p>Alsup had rejected a demand by Oracle that Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., pay as much as $6.1 billion in damages. After face-to-face negotiations failed, the judge scheduled a trial date of March 12 but subsequently scrubbed it.</p>
<p>On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that an email written by a Google engineer that could be damaging can't be excluded from the case.</p>
<p>In it, the Google engineer wrote that he'd been asked by CEO Page and co-founder <a href="" type="internal">Sergey Brin</a> to find "technical alternatives" to Java but "they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need."</p> | 526 |
<p><a href="https://www.investing.com/news/economy-news/dollar-steady-with-focus-on-fed-meeting-kiwi-near-twoweek-highs-980209" type="external">Dollar firm with focus on Fed meeting; kiwi edges higher</a>Reuters <a href="https://www.investing.com/news/economy-news" type="external">Economy</a></p>
<p>By Masayuki Kitano SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The dollar held firm near two-week highs versus a basket of major currencies on Tuesday, with traders awaiting the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy meeting this week for fresh catalysts. The dollar index, (DXY) which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major peers, inched up 0.1 percent to 93.931. That …</p> | Understanding the #MeToo phenomenon | false | https://newsline.com/understanding-the-metoo-phenomenon/ | 2017-12-12 | 1right-center
| Understanding the #MeToo phenomenon
<p><a href="https://www.investing.com/news/economy-news/dollar-steady-with-focus-on-fed-meeting-kiwi-near-twoweek-highs-980209" type="external">Dollar firm with focus on Fed meeting; kiwi edges higher</a>Reuters <a href="https://www.investing.com/news/economy-news" type="external">Economy</a></p>
<p>By Masayuki Kitano SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The dollar held firm near two-week highs versus a basket of major currencies on Tuesday, with traders awaiting the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy meeting this week for fresh catalysts. The dollar index, (DXY) which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major peers, inched up 0.1 percent to 93.931. That …</p> | 527 |
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<p>Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called the prospect of a registry "abhorrent." Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said the idea was "unnecessary" and not something Americans would support. And Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who has largely avoided criticizing Trump throughout the 2016 campaign, said, "I'm not a fan of government registries of American citizens."</p>
<p>"The First Amendment protects religious liberty, and I've spent the past several decades defending the religious liberty of every American," Cruz told reporters in Sioux City, Iowa.</p>
<p>The rebukes came after Trump voiced support for a mandatory database for Muslims in the U.S. while campaigning Thursday in Iowa. The real estate mogul was asked by an NBC News reporter about the prospect of a database and whether Muslims would be required to be registered. In a video posted by the network, Trump said, "They have to be."</p>
<p>On Friday, Trump said on Twitter that he didn't suggest creating a database, but instead was answering a question from a reporter. However, he did not disavow the prospect of a registry on social media or at an event Friday morning.</p>
<p>Trump has also voiced support for closing certain mosques as a way to contain the terror threat in the U.S.</p>
<p>His comments followed the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility, elevating fears in the U.S. and prompting calls for new restrictions on refugees fleeing war-torn Syria.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The U.S. House, with a veto-proof majority, passed legislation this week that would practically bar Syrian and Iraqi refugees from the United States. President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the bill.</p>
<p>The bill's chances in the Senate are unclear.</p>
<p>The Republican candidates' unified criticism of Trump was striking. His rivals have vacillated in their handling of other inflammatory comments from him, wary of alienating his supporters while increasingly concerned that he's maintained his grip on the GOP race deep into the fall.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Trump's rivals decry Muslim registry idea | false | https://abqjournal.com/679850/trumps-rivals-decry-muslim-registry-idea.html | 2least
| Trump's rivals decry Muslim registry idea
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<p />
<p>Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called the prospect of a registry "abhorrent." Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said the idea was "unnecessary" and not something Americans would support. And Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who has largely avoided criticizing Trump throughout the 2016 campaign, said, "I'm not a fan of government registries of American citizens."</p>
<p>"The First Amendment protects religious liberty, and I've spent the past several decades defending the religious liberty of every American," Cruz told reporters in Sioux City, Iowa.</p>
<p>The rebukes came after Trump voiced support for a mandatory database for Muslims in the U.S. while campaigning Thursday in Iowa. The real estate mogul was asked by an NBC News reporter about the prospect of a database and whether Muslims would be required to be registered. In a video posted by the network, Trump said, "They have to be."</p>
<p>On Friday, Trump said on Twitter that he didn't suggest creating a database, but instead was answering a question from a reporter. However, he did not disavow the prospect of a registry on social media or at an event Friday morning.</p>
<p>Trump has also voiced support for closing certain mosques as a way to contain the terror threat in the U.S.</p>
<p>His comments followed the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility, elevating fears in the U.S. and prompting calls for new restrictions on refugees fleeing war-torn Syria.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The U.S. House, with a veto-proof majority, passed legislation this week that would practically bar Syrian and Iraqi refugees from the United States. President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the bill.</p>
<p>The bill's chances in the Senate are unclear.</p>
<p>The Republican candidates' unified criticism of Trump was striking. His rivals have vacillated in their handling of other inflammatory comments from him, wary of alienating his supporters while increasingly concerned that he's maintained his grip on the GOP race deep into the fall.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 528 |
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<p>Flickr/eschipul</p>
<p />
<p>After <a href="http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/22/with-mitch-daniels-out-mitt-romney-rises/" type="external">Mitch Daniels</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Mike Huckabee</a> decided against entering the <a href="" type="internal">2012 presidential race</a>, some Republicans continue to hope that another big-name contender—Jeb Bush? New Jersey governor Chris Christie?—will enter the race and liven up a GOP field short on serious challengers. One name <a href="" type="internal">often tossed out</a> is <a href="" type="internal">Texas governor Rick Perry</a>, a red-meat social conservative beloved by the tea party with national star power.</p>
<p>But there’s one problem: Republicans in Perry’s home state <a href="http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/05/24/perry_not_supported_for_president_even_in_texas.html" type="external">wouldn’t even vote for him</a> if he ran for president. That’s the big takeaway from <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-presidential-election/perrys-not-the-texas-frontrunner-uttt-poll-finds/" type="external">a new poll by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune</a>, which found that only 4 percent of Texas GOPers would vote for Perry if he ran. “This is a major question for a guy who’s getting national buzz,” said pollster Daron Shaw. “He hasn’t convinced Texans that he’s a presidential frontrunner.”</p>
<p>The favorite among Texas Republicans, the poll found, is Sarah Palin, who hasn’t announced whether she’s running or not in 2012. Newt Gingrich finishes a close second, with 11 percent, and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and Mike Huckabee take third with 10 percent. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) each claimed 7 percent.</p>
<p /> | Even Texans Don’t Support a Rick Perry Presidential Campaign | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/even-texans-dont-support-rick-perry-presidential-campaign/ | 2011-05-24 | 4left
| Even Texans Don’t Support a Rick Perry Presidential Campaign
<p>Flickr/eschipul</p>
<p />
<p>After <a href="http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/22/with-mitch-daniels-out-mitt-romney-rises/" type="external">Mitch Daniels</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Mike Huckabee</a> decided against entering the <a href="" type="internal">2012 presidential race</a>, some Republicans continue to hope that another big-name contender—Jeb Bush? New Jersey governor Chris Christie?—will enter the race and liven up a GOP field short on serious challengers. One name <a href="" type="internal">often tossed out</a> is <a href="" type="internal">Texas governor Rick Perry</a>, a red-meat social conservative beloved by the tea party with national star power.</p>
<p>But there’s one problem: Republicans in Perry’s home state <a href="http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/05/24/perry_not_supported_for_president_even_in_texas.html" type="external">wouldn’t even vote for him</a> if he ran for president. That’s the big takeaway from <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-presidential-election/perrys-not-the-texas-frontrunner-uttt-poll-finds/" type="external">a new poll by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune</a>, which found that only 4 percent of Texas GOPers would vote for Perry if he ran. “This is a major question for a guy who’s getting national buzz,” said pollster Daron Shaw. “He hasn’t convinced Texans that he’s a presidential frontrunner.”</p>
<p>The favorite among Texas Republicans, the poll found, is Sarah Palin, who hasn’t announced whether she’s running or not in 2012. Newt Gingrich finishes a close second, with 11 percent, and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and Mike Huckabee take third with 10 percent. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) each claimed 7 percent.</p>
<p /> | 529 |
<p>Nearly a million refugees, mostly male, mostly from Middle Eastern and African countries, poured into Germany in 2015. Another 280,000 arrived in 2016.</p>
<p>The influx forever changed the very fabric of Germany. And with the election for chancellor set for less than a month from now — Sept. 24 — things are getting very dicey for incumbent Angela Merkel.</p>
<p>"German Chancellor Angela Merkel was heckled twice on Tuesday by right-wing anti-immigrant protesters as she stubbornly defended her open-door refugee policy, one of the most contested issues in the country’s upcoming federal election," <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/401386-merkel-heckled-refugee-policy/" type="external">RT reported</a>.</p>
<p>Members of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party booed Merkel, the top candidate of the Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU) at an election campaign rally in the town of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.</p>
<p>“Merkel must go away”, “Protect basic law from Merkel” and “I used to be CDU voter, today I want to see Mrs. Merkel in court,” were the welcoming chants from AfD supporters in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, the Leipziger Volkszeitung reported.</p>
<p>The noise and interjections did not stop during her 30-minute speech either, especially when she touched on the subject of refugees.</p>
<p>Bitterfeld-Wolfen, a town with around 40,000 residents, is regarded as a high fortress of AfD voters in Germany. During the 2016 state elections, after nearly 1 million migrants arrived in Germany in 2015, AfD attracted 31.9 percent of the votes in Saxony-Anhalt.</p>
<p>The issue of migration has divided German society for nearly two years now, but it has become especially acute ahead of the federal elections which are scheduled for September 24.</p>
<p>The crowd got pretty boisterous when she defended her open-door policy.</p>
<p>All that whistling on the video was actually people ... whistling, UK's <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/847511/Germany-Angela-Merkel-Brandenburg-election-2017-CDU-SPD-rally-video" type="external">Express</a> newspaper wrote.</p>
<p>A huge part of the 1,500-strong crowd whistled and booed Chancellor Merkel as she attempted to deliver an election campaign speech in Brandenburg City.</p>
<p>Footage shows a large group of people angrily yelling "get out, get out," drowning out Mrs Merkel's voice.</p>
<p>The demonstration was organised by members of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and National Democratic Party (NDP).</p>
<p>Right now, Merkel's party stands at just more than 38% in the polls, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/german-election-polls-odds-tracker-merkel-seeks-fourth-term1/" type="external">The Telegraph</a> reports.</p> | Angela Merkel Heckled Twice In One Day Over Refugee Policy | true | https://dailywire.com/news/20424/angela-merkel-heckled-twice-one-day-over-refugee-joseph-curl | 2017-08-30 | 0right
| Angela Merkel Heckled Twice In One Day Over Refugee Policy
<p>Nearly a million refugees, mostly male, mostly from Middle Eastern and African countries, poured into Germany in 2015. Another 280,000 arrived in 2016.</p>
<p>The influx forever changed the very fabric of Germany. And with the election for chancellor set for less than a month from now — Sept. 24 — things are getting very dicey for incumbent Angela Merkel.</p>
<p>"German Chancellor Angela Merkel was heckled twice on Tuesday by right-wing anti-immigrant protesters as she stubbornly defended her open-door refugee policy, one of the most contested issues in the country’s upcoming federal election," <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/401386-merkel-heckled-refugee-policy/" type="external">RT reported</a>.</p>
<p>Members of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party booed Merkel, the top candidate of the Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU) at an election campaign rally in the town of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.</p>
<p>“Merkel must go away”, “Protect basic law from Merkel” and “I used to be CDU voter, today I want to see Mrs. Merkel in court,” were the welcoming chants from AfD supporters in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, the Leipziger Volkszeitung reported.</p>
<p>The noise and interjections did not stop during her 30-minute speech either, especially when she touched on the subject of refugees.</p>
<p>Bitterfeld-Wolfen, a town with around 40,000 residents, is regarded as a high fortress of AfD voters in Germany. During the 2016 state elections, after nearly 1 million migrants arrived in Germany in 2015, AfD attracted 31.9 percent of the votes in Saxony-Anhalt.</p>
<p>The issue of migration has divided German society for nearly two years now, but it has become especially acute ahead of the federal elections which are scheduled for September 24.</p>
<p>The crowd got pretty boisterous when she defended her open-door policy.</p>
<p>All that whistling on the video was actually people ... whistling, UK's <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/847511/Germany-Angela-Merkel-Brandenburg-election-2017-CDU-SPD-rally-video" type="external">Express</a> newspaper wrote.</p>
<p>A huge part of the 1,500-strong crowd whistled and booed Chancellor Merkel as she attempted to deliver an election campaign speech in Brandenburg City.</p>
<p>Footage shows a large group of people angrily yelling "get out, get out," drowning out Mrs Merkel's voice.</p>
<p>The demonstration was organised by members of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and National Democratic Party (NDP).</p>
<p>Right now, Merkel's party stands at just more than 38% in the polls, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/german-election-polls-odds-tracker-merkel-seeks-fourth-term1/" type="external">The Telegraph</a> reports.</p> | 530 |
<p />
<p />
<p>Capt. Derrick W. Dew, commander, 202nd Military Police Company, currently assigned to 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, interacts with young residents of the “Old Corps” area of Kandahar City June 8, during a ribbon cutting ceremony for a new soccer field there. The new field was one of many projects headed by TF Raider and their Afghan National Security Forces partners in their joint-reconstruction efforts to improve quality of life, safety and security for residents of Kandahar City. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/5836828568/in/photostream" type="external">Photo</a> via US&#160;Army.</p>
<p /> | We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for June 20, 2011 | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/were-still-war-photo-day-june-20-2011/ | 2011-06-20 | 4left
| We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for June 20, 2011
<p />
<p />
<p>Capt. Derrick W. Dew, commander, 202nd Military Police Company, currently assigned to 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, interacts with young residents of the “Old Corps” area of Kandahar City June 8, during a ribbon cutting ceremony for a new soccer field there. The new field was one of many projects headed by TF Raider and their Afghan National Security Forces partners in their joint-reconstruction efforts to improve quality of life, safety and security for residents of Kandahar City. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/5836828568/in/photostream" type="external">Photo</a> via US&#160;Army.</p>
<p /> | 531 |
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<p>Trader Jarret Johnson follows stock prices at the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)</p>
<p>NEW YORK - U.S. stocks made their biggest gain in more than a month on Friday as oil prices surged, lifting energy stocks. Tech stocks also climbed as Apple jumped the most since August.</p>
<p>Energy companies soared after the price of U.S. crude jumped 9 percent. Oil prices reached their lowest level in 12 years earlier this week, but they jumped the last two days.</p>
<p>The gain Friday, combined with a smaller increase the day before, gave the market its first weekly advance after three weeks of declines. It's been a dismal start to the year so far, and on Wednesday the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled as much as 565 points before recouping some of its loss.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Much of the volatility has been driven by wild swings in the price of crude oil, which many investors see as a barometer for how well the global economy is doing. A sharp drop in oil prices over the last year and a half has decimated profits at oil companies, and many expect the damage to continue as global production of oil far outstrips demand.</p>
<p>As for market turbulence, many expect more of that, too.</p>
<p>Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Wells Capital Management, said he thinks the S&amp;P 500 will slide to around 1,800 before a real recovery comes. That's below even the darkest moments from Wednesday's midday swoon.</p>
<p>"It's going to continue to be a struggle," he said. "Everyone will be convinced we're heading for recession, everyone will be convinced we're in a bear market."</p>
<p>On Friday the Dow Jones industrial average rose 210.83 points, or 1.3 percent, to 16,093.51. The Standard &amp; Poor's 500 index had its best day since early December, gaining 37.91 points, or 2 percent, to 1,906.90. The Nasdaq composite index made its biggest gain since September, adding 119.12 points, or 2.7 percent, to 4,591.18.</p>
<p>For the week, the Dow rose 0.7 percent, the S&amp;P 500 climbed 2 percent and the Nasdaq increased 2.3 percent.</p>
<p>European markets also rose Friday on hopes for more economic stimulus from the region's central bank. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 index had its best day in four months as investors hoped the Bank of Japan will also step in.</p>
<p>In energy trading, U.S. crude rose $2.66 to $32.19 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oils, rose $2.93, or 10 percent, to $32.18 a barrel in London. U.S. oil climbed 21 percent over the last two days and it has recovered about half its losses from earlier in the year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Among energy stocks, pipeline operator Kinder Morgan rose $1.46, or 10.5 percent, to $15.34 after it jumped 16 percent Thursday. Pipeline company Williams Cos. added $3.70, or 23.1 percent, to $19.74. Devon Energy gained $1.45, or 6 percent, to $25.63.</p>
<p>Goldman Sachs analyst Jeffrey Currie said energy prices have fallen so far that the industry is making real cuts in production. "We are now at a price level that is creating real fundamental change," he said.</p>
<p>Apple, which has lost about a quarter of its value in the last six months, rose $5.12, or 5.3 percent, to $101.42. Microsoft gained $1.81, or 4 percent, to $52.29. Facebook added $3.78, or 4 percent.</p>
<p>France's CAC 40 added 3.1 percent and Germany's DAX rose 2 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 climbed 2.2 percent.</p>
<p>Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose 5.9 percent. Earlier this week the index entered a bear market, meaning it was down 20 percent from a recent peak. South Korea's Kospi gained 2.1 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 2.9 percent.</p>
<p>Telecommunications and utilities stocks also rose and turned positive for the year. They're both up 1 percent while the other eight industrial sectors in the S&amp;P 500 are much lower in 2016. Last year the S&amp;P 500 utility index fell 8 percent and telecom stocks fell 2 percent.</p>
<p>Paulsen, of Wells Capital Management, said investors turn to utilities and telecom stocks when the market gets rough. Companies in those industries pay relatively large dividends, which means their prices are more stable and the stocks behave almost like bonds.</p>
<p>"They are just the most conservative sector of the stock market," he said.</p>
<p>American Express gave a negative outlook for 2016 and 2017. The company expects its earnings per share to fall this year even though it's selling credit card accounts tied a co-branded credit card it offers with Costco. That relationship is ending.</p>
<p>Amex fell $7.58, or 12.1 percent, to $55.06, its biggest loss in almost seven years. American Express is a Dow component, and that loss caused the Dow to lag the other major U.S. indexes.</p>
<p>Gold and copper producer Freeport-McMoRan tumbled 39 cents, or 9.1 percent, to $3.94. Its shares have dropped 42 percent in 2016 after huge plunges the previous two years. The company has struggled as metals prices have fallen, and its decision a few years ago to invest in oil and gas came shortly before those prices also plunged.</p>
<p>In other energy trading, wholesale gasoline added 5.3 cents, or 5.1 percent, to $1.084 a gallon. Heating oil picked up 9.8 cents, or 10.9 percent, to 99.6 cents a gallon. Natural gas inched up to $2.139 per 1,000 cubic feet.</p>
<p>Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.05 percent from 2.03 percent.</p>
<p>The price of gold fell $1.90 to $1,096.30 an ounce and silver fell 3.7 cents to $14.06 an ounce. Copper rose 0.6 cents to $2.003 a pound.</p>
<p>The dollar rose to 118.78 yen from 117.50 on Thursday. The euro weakened on the prospect of further ECB stimulus. It fell to $1.0791 from $1.0875.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Energy stocks lead a broad rally as the price of oil soars | false | https://abqjournal.com/710520/energy-stocks-lead-and-early-rally-as-price-of-crude-surges.html | 2016-01-22 | 2least
| Energy stocks lead a broad rally as the price of oil soars
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Trader Jarret Johnson follows stock prices at the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)</p>
<p>NEW YORK - U.S. stocks made their biggest gain in more than a month on Friday as oil prices surged, lifting energy stocks. Tech stocks also climbed as Apple jumped the most since August.</p>
<p>Energy companies soared after the price of U.S. crude jumped 9 percent. Oil prices reached their lowest level in 12 years earlier this week, but they jumped the last two days.</p>
<p>The gain Friday, combined with a smaller increase the day before, gave the market its first weekly advance after three weeks of declines. It's been a dismal start to the year so far, and on Wednesday the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled as much as 565 points before recouping some of its loss.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Much of the volatility has been driven by wild swings in the price of crude oil, which many investors see as a barometer for how well the global economy is doing. A sharp drop in oil prices over the last year and a half has decimated profits at oil companies, and many expect the damage to continue as global production of oil far outstrips demand.</p>
<p>As for market turbulence, many expect more of that, too.</p>
<p>Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Wells Capital Management, said he thinks the S&amp;P 500 will slide to around 1,800 before a real recovery comes. That's below even the darkest moments from Wednesday's midday swoon.</p>
<p>"It's going to continue to be a struggle," he said. "Everyone will be convinced we're heading for recession, everyone will be convinced we're in a bear market."</p>
<p>On Friday the Dow Jones industrial average rose 210.83 points, or 1.3 percent, to 16,093.51. The Standard &amp; Poor's 500 index had its best day since early December, gaining 37.91 points, or 2 percent, to 1,906.90. The Nasdaq composite index made its biggest gain since September, adding 119.12 points, or 2.7 percent, to 4,591.18.</p>
<p>For the week, the Dow rose 0.7 percent, the S&amp;P 500 climbed 2 percent and the Nasdaq increased 2.3 percent.</p>
<p>European markets also rose Friday on hopes for more economic stimulus from the region's central bank. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 index had its best day in four months as investors hoped the Bank of Japan will also step in.</p>
<p>In energy trading, U.S. crude rose $2.66 to $32.19 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oils, rose $2.93, or 10 percent, to $32.18 a barrel in London. U.S. oil climbed 21 percent over the last two days and it has recovered about half its losses from earlier in the year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Among energy stocks, pipeline operator Kinder Morgan rose $1.46, or 10.5 percent, to $15.34 after it jumped 16 percent Thursday. Pipeline company Williams Cos. added $3.70, or 23.1 percent, to $19.74. Devon Energy gained $1.45, or 6 percent, to $25.63.</p>
<p>Goldman Sachs analyst Jeffrey Currie said energy prices have fallen so far that the industry is making real cuts in production. "We are now at a price level that is creating real fundamental change," he said.</p>
<p>Apple, which has lost about a quarter of its value in the last six months, rose $5.12, or 5.3 percent, to $101.42. Microsoft gained $1.81, or 4 percent, to $52.29. Facebook added $3.78, or 4 percent.</p>
<p>France's CAC 40 added 3.1 percent and Germany's DAX rose 2 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 climbed 2.2 percent.</p>
<p>Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose 5.9 percent. Earlier this week the index entered a bear market, meaning it was down 20 percent from a recent peak. South Korea's Kospi gained 2.1 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 2.9 percent.</p>
<p>Telecommunications and utilities stocks also rose and turned positive for the year. They're both up 1 percent while the other eight industrial sectors in the S&amp;P 500 are much lower in 2016. Last year the S&amp;P 500 utility index fell 8 percent and telecom stocks fell 2 percent.</p>
<p>Paulsen, of Wells Capital Management, said investors turn to utilities and telecom stocks when the market gets rough. Companies in those industries pay relatively large dividends, which means their prices are more stable and the stocks behave almost like bonds.</p>
<p>"They are just the most conservative sector of the stock market," he said.</p>
<p>American Express gave a negative outlook for 2016 and 2017. The company expects its earnings per share to fall this year even though it's selling credit card accounts tied a co-branded credit card it offers with Costco. That relationship is ending.</p>
<p>Amex fell $7.58, or 12.1 percent, to $55.06, its biggest loss in almost seven years. American Express is a Dow component, and that loss caused the Dow to lag the other major U.S. indexes.</p>
<p>Gold and copper producer Freeport-McMoRan tumbled 39 cents, or 9.1 percent, to $3.94. Its shares have dropped 42 percent in 2016 after huge plunges the previous two years. The company has struggled as metals prices have fallen, and its decision a few years ago to invest in oil and gas came shortly before those prices also plunged.</p>
<p>In other energy trading, wholesale gasoline added 5.3 cents, or 5.1 percent, to $1.084 a gallon. Heating oil picked up 9.8 cents, or 10.9 percent, to 99.6 cents a gallon. Natural gas inched up to $2.139 per 1,000 cubic feet.</p>
<p>Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.05 percent from 2.03 percent.</p>
<p>The price of gold fell $1.90 to $1,096.30 an ounce and silver fell 3.7 cents to $14.06 an ounce. Copper rose 0.6 cents to $2.003 a pound.</p>
<p>The dollar rose to 118.78 yen from 117.50 on Thursday. The euro weakened on the prospect of further ECB stimulus. It fell to $1.0791 from $1.0875.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 532 |
<p>Does even the occasional hamburger spell doom for meat enthusiasts? The connection may not be quite that clear, but a new wide-ranging study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine makes the case that carnivores might want to seriously scale back their intake of red meat or sub in poultry or fish for the sake of their life span. This is the sound of the beef lobby mooing. –KA</p>
<p>Los Angeles Times:</p>
<p>Eating red meat — any amount and any type — appears to significantly increase the risk of premature death, according to a long-range study that examined the eating habits and health of more than 110,000 adults for more than 20 years.</p>
<p>For instance, adding just one 3-ounce serving of unprocessed red meat — picture a piece of steak no bigger than a deck of cards — to one’s daily diet was associated with a 13% greater chance of dying during the course of the study.</p>
<p />
<p>Even worse, adding an extra daily serving of processed red meat, such as a hot dog or two slices of bacon, was linked to a 20% higher risk of death during the study.</p>
<p>“Any red meat you eat contributes to the risk,” said An Pan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study, published online Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-red-meat-20120313,0,565423.story" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Red Meat Takes Another Hit in Health Study | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/red-meat-takes-another-hit-in-health-study/ | 2012-03-13 | 4left
| Red Meat Takes Another Hit in Health Study
<p>Does even the occasional hamburger spell doom for meat enthusiasts? The connection may not be quite that clear, but a new wide-ranging study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine makes the case that carnivores might want to seriously scale back their intake of red meat or sub in poultry or fish for the sake of their life span. This is the sound of the beef lobby mooing. –KA</p>
<p>Los Angeles Times:</p>
<p>Eating red meat — any amount and any type — appears to significantly increase the risk of premature death, according to a long-range study that examined the eating habits and health of more than 110,000 adults for more than 20 years.</p>
<p>For instance, adding just one 3-ounce serving of unprocessed red meat — picture a piece of steak no bigger than a deck of cards — to one’s daily diet was associated with a 13% greater chance of dying during the course of the study.</p>
<p />
<p>Even worse, adding an extra daily serving of processed red meat, such as a hot dog or two slices of bacon, was linked to a 20% higher risk of death during the study.</p>
<p>“Any red meat you eat contributes to the risk,” said An Pan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study, published online Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-red-meat-20120313,0,565423.story" type="external">Read more</a></p> | 533 |
<p>The Volatility and Tactical Opportunity portfolio aims to benefit from the up and down swings of market volatility. &#160;Volatility, as measured by the, tends to be mean reverting over time (when volatility goes down, it will have a tendency to climb higher in the very short term).</p>
<p>When volatility trends higher, the portfolio aims to benefit from potentially lower short term volatility by buying short volatility ETFs such as the VelocityShares Daily Inverse VIX Short Term ETN and ProShares Short VIX Short Term (SVXY). When volatility goes down, there is a tendency for volatility to swing higher, and the portfolio aims to benefit by purchasing long volatility ETFs, such as the ProShares Ultra VIX Short Term Futures.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>2013 has been a robust year for our Volatility and Tactical Opportunity portfolio, as there have been significant moves in both directions for volatility. July was a great month for the portfolio, as volatility began to decrease substantially and the portfolio was nicely positioned to benefit a more tranquil period of volatility; our position in XIV gained substantial ground during the month as a result.</p>
<p>As we head further into the summer, our portfolio will become more active should volatility continue to escalate. &#160;If this happens, the model will see more trading activity, with round-trips involving XIV/SVXY (short volatility) and UVXY (long volatility) as our mean reversion models dictate. &#160;If, instead, volatility stays low, the portfolio will remain in XIV and SVXY positions.</p>
<p>The investments discussed are held in client accounts as of July 31, 2013. These investments may or may not be currently held in client accounts. The reader should not assume that any investments identified were or will be profitable or that any investment recommendations or investment decisions we make in the future will be profitable.</p>
<p>The post Our strategy is ready for more volatile market waters appeared first on Smarter InvestingCovestor Ltd. is a registered investment advisor. Covestor licenses investment strategies from its Model Managers to establish investment models. The commentary here is provided as general and impersonal information and should not be construed as recommendations or advice. Information from Model Managers and third-party sources deemed to be reliable but not guaranteed. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Transaction histories for Covestor models available upon request. Additional important disclosures available at http://site.covestor.com/help/disclosures.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Our strategy is ready for more volatile market waters | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2013/08/08/our-strategy-is-ready-for-more-volatile-market-waters.html | 2016-03-02 | 0right
| Our strategy is ready for more volatile market waters
<p>The Volatility and Tactical Opportunity portfolio aims to benefit from the up and down swings of market volatility. &#160;Volatility, as measured by the, tends to be mean reverting over time (when volatility goes down, it will have a tendency to climb higher in the very short term).</p>
<p>When volatility trends higher, the portfolio aims to benefit from potentially lower short term volatility by buying short volatility ETFs such as the VelocityShares Daily Inverse VIX Short Term ETN and ProShares Short VIX Short Term (SVXY). When volatility goes down, there is a tendency for volatility to swing higher, and the portfolio aims to benefit by purchasing long volatility ETFs, such as the ProShares Ultra VIX Short Term Futures.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>2013 has been a robust year for our Volatility and Tactical Opportunity portfolio, as there have been significant moves in both directions for volatility. July was a great month for the portfolio, as volatility began to decrease substantially and the portfolio was nicely positioned to benefit a more tranquil period of volatility; our position in XIV gained substantial ground during the month as a result.</p>
<p>As we head further into the summer, our portfolio will become more active should volatility continue to escalate. &#160;If this happens, the model will see more trading activity, with round-trips involving XIV/SVXY (short volatility) and UVXY (long volatility) as our mean reversion models dictate. &#160;If, instead, volatility stays low, the portfolio will remain in XIV and SVXY positions.</p>
<p>The investments discussed are held in client accounts as of July 31, 2013. These investments may or may not be currently held in client accounts. The reader should not assume that any investments identified were or will be profitable or that any investment recommendations or investment decisions we make in the future will be profitable.</p>
<p>The post Our strategy is ready for more volatile market waters appeared first on Smarter InvestingCovestor Ltd. is a registered investment advisor. Covestor licenses investment strategies from its Model Managers to establish investment models. The commentary here is provided as general and impersonal information and should not be construed as recommendations or advice. Information from Model Managers and third-party sources deemed to be reliable but not guaranteed. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Transaction histories for Covestor models available upon request. Additional important disclosures available at http://site.covestor.com/help/disclosures.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | 534 |
<a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-sterling-boe-idUKKCN1270TF?il=0" type="external">investigate the causes behind</a> the pound’s (GBP/USD) sharp fall. Sterling plunged 6% in two minutes during overnight&#160;trading in Asia, falling from $1.26 to $1.18 against the US dollar–
<a href="" type="internal">its lowest level in 31 years</a>. Share on
<a href="" type="internal">Facebook</a>
<a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a>
<a href="" type="internal">Email</a> | Pound Plunges 6% in 2 Minutes, Bank of England Opens Investigation | false | http://thewhim.com/pound-plunges-6-2-minutes-bank-england-opens-investigation/ | 2016-10-07 | 2least
| Pound Plunges 6% in 2 Minutes, Bank of England Opens Investigation
<a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-sterling-boe-idUKKCN1270TF?il=0" type="external">investigate the causes behind</a> the pound’s (GBP/USD) sharp fall. Sterling plunged 6% in two minutes during overnight&#160;trading in Asia, falling from $1.26 to $1.18 against the US dollar–
<a href="" type="internal">its lowest level in 31 years</a>. Share on
<a href="" type="internal">Facebook</a>
<a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a>
<a href="" type="internal">Email</a> | 535 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://zumapress.com"&gt;Emily Rose Bennett&lt;/a&gt;/ZUMA Press</p>
<p>This fall, restrictive new voting laws in <a href="http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/2012_summary_of_voting_law_changes/" type="external">more than a dozen states</a> could keep millions of people from exercising their constitutional right to vote. ID and birth certificate requirements, restrictions on early voting, and shutdowns on election day registration <a href="http://www.fairelectionsnetwork.com/attacks-voting-rights" type="external">happen to affect</a> non-rich, non-white, non-middle-aged, non-male voters most. This flurry of regulatory activity could confound Jane and John Q. Public: how are citizens supposed to know whether they need an ID, license plate number, proof of insurance, blood sample and baptism certificate in order to cast their vote? The answer might be in the interwebs.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.lawyerscommittee.org/" type="external">Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law</a> has partnered with a bunch of <a href="http://www.naleo.org/" type="external">other</a> <a href="http://www.rockthevote.org/" type="external">voting</a> <a href="http://neworganizing.com" type="external">rights</a> <a href="http://verifiedvoting.org/" type="external">groups</a> to launch a free downloadable “Election Protection” app that will allow voters to verify their registration status, fill out a voter registration form, look up their polling place, and access info on key rules and dates tailored to their state. Users are also prompted to call Election Protection’s hotline to alert the organization to election day abnormalities or concerns.</p>
<p />
<p>You might be thinking: Mother Jones writer, you are a privileged white girl, oblivious to the fact that poor people don’t have fancyphones! <a href="" type="internal">Actually</a>, about <a href="http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/smartphones-account-for-half-of-all-mobile-phones-dominate-new-phone-purchases-in-the-us" type="external">half of cell phone users</a> in the US have smartphones, and a 2011 <a href="http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Smartphones/Section-1/Overview-of-smartphone-adoption.aspx" type="external">Pew study</a> found that blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to use their phones for “non-voice” applications. Election Protection is also helpful not just for the poor, but for the scatter-brained, the nomadic, and those who don’t have the time to take a day off and parse all the new rules.</p>
<p>Since the app launched on August 9, it hasn’t gotten much press. So I asked Eric Marshall, legal mobilization manager at the Lawyers Committee, how they and their partners plan to get it out into people’s hands. He said they’ll do online ads and a social media blitz, but mostly he emphasized “shoe leather”: getting partner groups active on civil rights, voter engagement, youth, labor, environmental, and faith issues to spread the message.</p>
<p />
<p>Good old-fashioned word-of-mouth is especially key for the old folks, Marshall says. “I download it and I check my info, and then there’s no reason I can’t then go to my grandmother and get her info,” he says, “or go to church and say, ‘Hey, do you know your rights on election day? Let’s look up your registration status.'”</p>
<p>Designed by <a href="http://revolutionmessaging.com/" type="external">Revolution Messaging</a>, the app is a mobile-enabled <a href="http://signup.lawyerscommittee.org/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=6386" type="external">webpage</a> for now, and can be downloaded to any smartphone, but Marshall says they’re working on getting it into the iPhone app store. A Spanish version will be out soon.</p>
<p />
<p>“You look at the landscape this year and all of the restrictive voting changes that have been enacted,” Marshall says. “People are concerned about eligible Americans being able to participate in democracy.”</p>
<p>Not everyone’s concerned. Pennsylvania’s House Majority leader, Republican Mike Turzai, recently <a href="" type="internal">gloated</a> that the state’s new voter ID law “is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”</p>
<p>Well, whoever wins, this corner of the internet will help make sure that everyone gets to vote.</p> | Can an iPhone Keep Election Officials From Blocking Your Vote? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/voter-id-election-protection-smartphone-app/ | 2012-09-01 | 4left
| Can an iPhone Keep Election Officials From Blocking Your Vote?
<p>&lt;a href="http://zumapress.com"&gt;Emily Rose Bennett&lt;/a&gt;/ZUMA Press</p>
<p>This fall, restrictive new voting laws in <a href="http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/2012_summary_of_voting_law_changes/" type="external">more than a dozen states</a> could keep millions of people from exercising their constitutional right to vote. ID and birth certificate requirements, restrictions on early voting, and shutdowns on election day registration <a href="http://www.fairelectionsnetwork.com/attacks-voting-rights" type="external">happen to affect</a> non-rich, non-white, non-middle-aged, non-male voters most. This flurry of regulatory activity could confound Jane and John Q. Public: how are citizens supposed to know whether they need an ID, license plate number, proof of insurance, blood sample and baptism certificate in order to cast their vote? The answer might be in the interwebs.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.lawyerscommittee.org/" type="external">Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law</a> has partnered with a bunch of <a href="http://www.naleo.org/" type="external">other</a> <a href="http://www.rockthevote.org/" type="external">voting</a> <a href="http://neworganizing.com" type="external">rights</a> <a href="http://verifiedvoting.org/" type="external">groups</a> to launch a free downloadable “Election Protection” app that will allow voters to verify their registration status, fill out a voter registration form, look up their polling place, and access info on key rules and dates tailored to their state. Users are also prompted to call Election Protection’s hotline to alert the organization to election day abnormalities or concerns.</p>
<p />
<p>You might be thinking: Mother Jones writer, you are a privileged white girl, oblivious to the fact that poor people don’t have fancyphones! <a href="" type="internal">Actually</a>, about <a href="http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/smartphones-account-for-half-of-all-mobile-phones-dominate-new-phone-purchases-in-the-us" type="external">half of cell phone users</a> in the US have smartphones, and a 2011 <a href="http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Smartphones/Section-1/Overview-of-smartphone-adoption.aspx" type="external">Pew study</a> found that blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to use their phones for “non-voice” applications. Election Protection is also helpful not just for the poor, but for the scatter-brained, the nomadic, and those who don’t have the time to take a day off and parse all the new rules.</p>
<p>Since the app launched on August 9, it hasn’t gotten much press. So I asked Eric Marshall, legal mobilization manager at the Lawyers Committee, how they and their partners plan to get it out into people’s hands. He said they’ll do online ads and a social media blitz, but mostly he emphasized “shoe leather”: getting partner groups active on civil rights, voter engagement, youth, labor, environmental, and faith issues to spread the message.</p>
<p />
<p>Good old-fashioned word-of-mouth is especially key for the old folks, Marshall says. “I download it and I check my info, and then there’s no reason I can’t then go to my grandmother and get her info,” he says, “or go to church and say, ‘Hey, do you know your rights on election day? Let’s look up your registration status.'”</p>
<p>Designed by <a href="http://revolutionmessaging.com/" type="external">Revolution Messaging</a>, the app is a mobile-enabled <a href="http://signup.lawyerscommittee.org/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=6386" type="external">webpage</a> for now, and can be downloaded to any smartphone, but Marshall says they’re working on getting it into the iPhone app store. A Spanish version will be out soon.</p>
<p />
<p>“You look at the landscape this year and all of the restrictive voting changes that have been enacted,” Marshall says. “People are concerned about eligible Americans being able to participate in democracy.”</p>
<p>Not everyone’s concerned. Pennsylvania’s House Majority leader, Republican Mike Turzai, recently <a href="" type="internal">gloated</a> that the state’s new voter ID law “is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”</p>
<p>Well, whoever wins, this corner of the internet will help make sure that everyone gets to vote.</p> | 536 |
<p>The Lott Carey Global Christian Missional Community has agreed to collaborate with a national faith-based initiative to empower communities and families by liberating them from consumer debt.</p>
<p>The predominantly black Baptist organization announced a new partnership with <a href="http://mydfree.org/" type="external">dfree</a>&#160;— a trademarked initiative founded by a New Jersey pastor who in 2003 devised the strategy as a way to raise money to pay off the church’s debt —&#160;during Lott Carey’s 119th&#160;annual session Aug. 15-19 in downtown Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Rather than asking cash-strapped parishioners to dig deeper into their pockets, <a href="http://www.fbcsomerset.com/about/pastor_soaries.php" type="external">Pastor DeForest B. Soaries Jr.</a> set out to help members of First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, N.J., fix their own finances so they would be in a better position to give more to their church.</p>
<p>In 2005 Soaries offered his model for a “dfree lifestyle” —&#160;living without debt, deficits or delinquencies —&#160;to churches, credit unions and colleges and universities across America. The program was featured in the third installment of CNN’s Black in America documentary “Almighty Debt,” which aired Oct. 21, 2010. The following year Soaries <a href="http://www.blackenterprise.com/money/eliminate-billion-dollar-debt-campaign/" type="external">launched</a> The Billion Dollar Challenge, a national initiative with the objective of leading families to pay down one billion dollars in consumer debt.</p>
<p>“Consumer debt grips millions of people with plastic shackles every bit as powerful as the iron chains that once bound slaves,” Soaries wrote in his 2011 book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dfree-Breaking-Free-Financial-Slavery/dp/0310333148" type="external">dfree: Breaking Free from Financial Slavery</a>.</p>
<p>Acknowledging that some might find the analogy an overstatement or even offensive, Soaries insisted “that enslavement is the only adequate word to express the dire, life-draining, debilitating condition in which we find ourselves today.”</p>
<p>“Consumer debt enslaves millions of people in our country with debilitating chains that only seem to grow tighter each month as bills increase and income decreases,” the pastor wrote. “We’ve shackled ourselves with fear, stress and shame by spending far more than we’re taking in or saving. However, the time has come to emancipate ourselves.”</p>
<p>The new collaboration with dfree® Ministries will provide discounts on products to Lott Carey network churches to promote eliminating debt.</p>
<p>David Goatley</p>
<p>“We’ve joined&#160;dfree®&#160;because its goal of financial freedom fits well with our mission and because it provides faith-based, practical methods that are transforming lives,” David Emmanuel Goatley, Lott Carey’s executive secretary-treasurer, said in a news release. “Financial freedom is a foundational block for empowering families and communities. This is long overdue.”</p>
<p>Themed Missions Matters for Justice, Lott Carey’s 119th&#160;annual session drew more than 2,500 members to the Philadelphia Downtown Marriott. The session opened with 700 missionaries attending a prayer breakfast. Afterward more than 400 fanned out across Philadelphia for projects including preparing food for terminally ill homebound people, community gardening, serving in food pantries and meal distribution centers, and serving food to homeless residents.</p>
<p>Lott Carey’s board of directors affirmed progress reports concerning a national partnership for disaster services with the American Red Cross and a doctor of ministry in global leadership program partnership with the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology.</p>
<p>Other events included meetings of Lott Carey’s Pastoral Excellence Network with Black Lives Matter leaders and organizers and with Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross.</p>
<p>Founded in 1897 by African-American Baptists committed to foreign missionary work on the African continent, the Lott Carey Global Christian Missional Community today helps coordinate the global mission work of the nation’s major African-American Baptist denominations and works with other Christian partners around the world.</p>
<p>The group draws its name from <a href="http://lottcarey.org/about-us/history/" type="external">Lott Carey</a>, a man born into slavery in Virginia who purchased his freedom in 1813 and led the first Baptist missionaries from the United States to go to Africa in 1821.</p>
<p>Pastor Alyn E. Waller of Philadelphia’s <a href="http://www.enontab.org/about/our-senior-pastor" type="external">Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church</a> is the group’s current president.</p> | Lott Carey tackles consumer debt | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/lott-carey-tackles-consumer-debt/ | 3left-center
| Lott Carey tackles consumer debt
<p>The Lott Carey Global Christian Missional Community has agreed to collaborate with a national faith-based initiative to empower communities and families by liberating them from consumer debt.</p>
<p>The predominantly black Baptist organization announced a new partnership with <a href="http://mydfree.org/" type="external">dfree</a>&#160;— a trademarked initiative founded by a New Jersey pastor who in 2003 devised the strategy as a way to raise money to pay off the church’s debt —&#160;during Lott Carey’s 119th&#160;annual session Aug. 15-19 in downtown Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Rather than asking cash-strapped parishioners to dig deeper into their pockets, <a href="http://www.fbcsomerset.com/about/pastor_soaries.php" type="external">Pastor DeForest B. Soaries Jr.</a> set out to help members of First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, N.J., fix their own finances so they would be in a better position to give more to their church.</p>
<p>In 2005 Soaries offered his model for a “dfree lifestyle” —&#160;living without debt, deficits or delinquencies —&#160;to churches, credit unions and colleges and universities across America. The program was featured in the third installment of CNN’s Black in America documentary “Almighty Debt,” which aired Oct. 21, 2010. The following year Soaries <a href="http://www.blackenterprise.com/money/eliminate-billion-dollar-debt-campaign/" type="external">launched</a> The Billion Dollar Challenge, a national initiative with the objective of leading families to pay down one billion dollars in consumer debt.</p>
<p>“Consumer debt grips millions of people with plastic shackles every bit as powerful as the iron chains that once bound slaves,” Soaries wrote in his 2011 book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dfree-Breaking-Free-Financial-Slavery/dp/0310333148" type="external">dfree: Breaking Free from Financial Slavery</a>.</p>
<p>Acknowledging that some might find the analogy an overstatement or even offensive, Soaries insisted “that enslavement is the only adequate word to express the dire, life-draining, debilitating condition in which we find ourselves today.”</p>
<p>“Consumer debt enslaves millions of people in our country with debilitating chains that only seem to grow tighter each month as bills increase and income decreases,” the pastor wrote. “We’ve shackled ourselves with fear, stress and shame by spending far more than we’re taking in or saving. However, the time has come to emancipate ourselves.”</p>
<p>The new collaboration with dfree® Ministries will provide discounts on products to Lott Carey network churches to promote eliminating debt.</p>
<p>David Goatley</p>
<p>“We’ve joined&#160;dfree®&#160;because its goal of financial freedom fits well with our mission and because it provides faith-based, practical methods that are transforming lives,” David Emmanuel Goatley, Lott Carey’s executive secretary-treasurer, said in a news release. “Financial freedom is a foundational block for empowering families and communities. This is long overdue.”</p>
<p>Themed Missions Matters for Justice, Lott Carey’s 119th&#160;annual session drew more than 2,500 members to the Philadelphia Downtown Marriott. The session opened with 700 missionaries attending a prayer breakfast. Afterward more than 400 fanned out across Philadelphia for projects including preparing food for terminally ill homebound people, community gardening, serving in food pantries and meal distribution centers, and serving food to homeless residents.</p>
<p>Lott Carey’s board of directors affirmed progress reports concerning a national partnership for disaster services with the American Red Cross and a doctor of ministry in global leadership program partnership with the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology.</p>
<p>Other events included meetings of Lott Carey’s Pastoral Excellence Network with Black Lives Matter leaders and organizers and with Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross.</p>
<p>Founded in 1897 by African-American Baptists committed to foreign missionary work on the African continent, the Lott Carey Global Christian Missional Community today helps coordinate the global mission work of the nation’s major African-American Baptist denominations and works with other Christian partners around the world.</p>
<p>The group draws its name from <a href="http://lottcarey.org/about-us/history/" type="external">Lott Carey</a>, a man born into slavery in Virginia who purchased his freedom in 1813 and led the first Baptist missionaries from the United States to go to Africa in 1821.</p>
<p>Pastor Alyn E. Waller of Philadelphia’s <a href="http://www.enontab.org/about/our-senior-pastor" type="external">Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church</a> is the group’s current president.</p> | 537 |
|
<p>KINIHIRA, Rwanda - Make way for chimps in Rwanda.</p>
<p>A new project proposes relocating human families&#160;so a group of chimpanzees will have a forest path to connect them to&#160;other primates.</p>
<p>Environmentalists say the chimps are doomed without the new corridor. But not everyone agrees that saving 20 primates is worth uprooting human lives.</p>
<p>Once widely covered by tropical forest, Rwanda's fertile peaks and valleys have gradually been taken over by farmland. With more than 10 million inhabitants in an area the size of Massachusetts, Rwanda is the most densely populated country in continental Africa and its land is growing ever scarce.</p>
<p>The country's remaining forests are endangered as the consequences of past deforestation have mounted. As a result of reduced tree cover, Rwanda's soil fertility has diminished, its rivers have silted, its hills have become prone to landslides and its biodiversity threatened.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business-tech/110801/7-deadly-stories-the-cost-climate-change-global-economy" type="external">7 Deadly Stories: The cost of global climate change</a></p>
<p>Determined to reverse this tide, Rwanda is fighting back. This February, in what environmental groups have called a developing country "first," Rwanda vowed to achieve country-wide restoration of its soil, water, land and forest resources over the next 25 years. To accomplish this, it's working with communities to change attitudes about sustainable development.</p>
<p>Nowhere are Rwanda's re-forestation efforts displayed better than in Kinihira, a sleepy village that hovers above the puzzle-piece-like inlets of Lake Kivu.</p>
<p>A century ago, this area was home to the 100-plus square mile Gishwati forest, where Batwa pygmy hunter-gatherers, Rwanda's original human inhabitants, coexisted with chimpanzees and other primates.</p>
<p>Since then, Gishwati Forest has been gradually decimated, encroached upon by tea plantations, cattle ranching schemes, resettled refugees, and subsistence farmers with nowhere else to turn for land.</p>
<p>By 2007, Gishwati had shrunk to a trace of its former self, standing at a mere 3.4 square miles and rapidly disappearing. That's when Rwandan President Paul Kagame and American conservationist Ted Townsend, founder of the Iowa-based primate research facility <a href="http://www.greatapetrust.org/" type="external">Great Ape Trust</a>, signed an agreement to create a national conservation park designed to improve local livelihoods while at the same time enhancing biodiversity.</p>
<p>Home to endangered primates and surrounded by vulnerable human populations, Gishwati was a natural choice for the project. In the previous year dozens of locals had been killed by floods and landslides - direct results of deforestation. With land scarce, residents continued to infringe upon the forest.</p>
<p>"When we started working here, there were trails of cows inside the forest, people growing cabbages and cutting down trees for charcoal," said Madeleine Nyiratuza, coordinator of the project, known as the Gishwati Area Conservation Program (GACP). "It was crazy."</p>
<p>As a first step, GACP set out to reduce Gishwati Forest's "hemorrhage," according to Benjamin Beck, director of conservation at Great Ape Trust, which manages the project. It established a research presence in the forest, led by American primatologist Rebecca Chancellor, and hired a force of "eco-guards": unarmed, uniformed officials tasked with identifying illegal or unsustainable forest activities and working with locals to identify alternative means of livelihood. By employing local staff, working with schools, and supporting local artisanal cooperatives, the project began to inject financial benefits into communities while promoting more sustainable attitudes toward the forest.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/news/green/wildlife-news/only-viable-population-rare-gibbons-found-vietnam" type="external">Population of rare gibbons found in Vietnam</a></p>
<p>Three years later, the project has not only put an end to the hemorrhage: through the demarcation of legal boundaries and the annexation of illegally occupied land, Gishwati's protected area has actually increased by 67 percent.</p>
<p>Now, the project is seeking to go further. Gishwati's 20 chimpanzees, which experts believe form the most densely populated chimp community in the world, will eventually be doomed unless they gain access to a larger gene pool. To facilitate this, GACP has proposed the planting of a forest corridor, averaging a width of a quarter mile, which will stretch at least 40 miles to Nyungwe National Park, a forest home to 400 other chimps, which was once connected to Gishwati. Rwanda's government has included the scheme as part of Rwanda's land use master plan that is currently under review by Parliament.</p>
<p>The endeavor is has drawn criticism because it will require the relocation of an unspecified number of human families to government-provided housing. Some charge that uprooting of human lives is a heavy price for saving 20 primates.</p>
<p>To Beck, this reasoning misses the point. By the government's own admission, he says, the subsistence farming practiced in affected areas is unsustainable, as population grows and land is divided among more and more people. As a destination for eco-tourism, the Gishwati conservation center will create jobs to help local youths transition from idleness or unproductive farmwork to the country's nascent services economy.</p>
<p>While most agree this shift toward sustainable livelihoods is necessary, the transition will not come easily. It's a reality on display in Nyarusuku, a hardscrabble settlement a few miles down the dirt road from Kinihira.</p>
<p>Here, in this government-built community, a small group of Batwa pygmies ekes out a meager living performing ritual songs and dances for visitors. Though resettled from Gishwati in the 1970s, these one-time hunter-gatherers remain largely cut off from modern Rwandan society: unkempt, unable to hold formal jobs, and, as their performances glorifying forest life suggest, longing for better days past.</p>
<p>Though just a small percentage of those living near Gishwati, the Batwa's struggles are symbolic of those faced by rural dwellers across much of Africa; confronted with environmental change and forced to embrace the modern world before they're ready.</p>
<p>While it may seem appropriate, in this context, to view man and nature in a constant state of conflict, Benjamin Beck of the Great Ape Trust is quick to emphasize that sacrifices made for nature today are in the interest of man's well being tomorrow. Gishwati Forest's residents, he says, have come to understand this.</p>
<p>"There's this idea that there is an inherent competition between conservation and population. I think we focus too much on the either or. We need to search for novel solutions that provide co-existence."</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost in Rwanada:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/110617/rwandan-drum-maker-maintains-tradition" type="external">Rwanda marches to the beat of an old drum</a></p> | Chimps vs. humans in Rwanda | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-08-11/chimps-vs-humans-rwanda | 2011-08-11 | 3left-center
| Chimps vs. humans in Rwanda
<p>KINIHIRA, Rwanda - Make way for chimps in Rwanda.</p>
<p>A new project proposes relocating human families&#160;so a group of chimpanzees will have a forest path to connect them to&#160;other primates.</p>
<p>Environmentalists say the chimps are doomed without the new corridor. But not everyone agrees that saving 20 primates is worth uprooting human lives.</p>
<p>Once widely covered by tropical forest, Rwanda's fertile peaks and valleys have gradually been taken over by farmland. With more than 10 million inhabitants in an area the size of Massachusetts, Rwanda is the most densely populated country in continental Africa and its land is growing ever scarce.</p>
<p>The country's remaining forests are endangered as the consequences of past deforestation have mounted. As a result of reduced tree cover, Rwanda's soil fertility has diminished, its rivers have silted, its hills have become prone to landslides and its biodiversity threatened.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business-tech/110801/7-deadly-stories-the-cost-climate-change-global-economy" type="external">7 Deadly Stories: The cost of global climate change</a></p>
<p>Determined to reverse this tide, Rwanda is fighting back. This February, in what environmental groups have called a developing country "first," Rwanda vowed to achieve country-wide restoration of its soil, water, land and forest resources over the next 25 years. To accomplish this, it's working with communities to change attitudes about sustainable development.</p>
<p>Nowhere are Rwanda's re-forestation efforts displayed better than in Kinihira, a sleepy village that hovers above the puzzle-piece-like inlets of Lake Kivu.</p>
<p>A century ago, this area was home to the 100-plus square mile Gishwati forest, where Batwa pygmy hunter-gatherers, Rwanda's original human inhabitants, coexisted with chimpanzees and other primates.</p>
<p>Since then, Gishwati Forest has been gradually decimated, encroached upon by tea plantations, cattle ranching schemes, resettled refugees, and subsistence farmers with nowhere else to turn for land.</p>
<p>By 2007, Gishwati had shrunk to a trace of its former self, standing at a mere 3.4 square miles and rapidly disappearing. That's when Rwandan President Paul Kagame and American conservationist Ted Townsend, founder of the Iowa-based primate research facility <a href="http://www.greatapetrust.org/" type="external">Great Ape Trust</a>, signed an agreement to create a national conservation park designed to improve local livelihoods while at the same time enhancing biodiversity.</p>
<p>Home to endangered primates and surrounded by vulnerable human populations, Gishwati was a natural choice for the project. In the previous year dozens of locals had been killed by floods and landslides - direct results of deforestation. With land scarce, residents continued to infringe upon the forest.</p>
<p>"When we started working here, there were trails of cows inside the forest, people growing cabbages and cutting down trees for charcoal," said Madeleine Nyiratuza, coordinator of the project, known as the Gishwati Area Conservation Program (GACP). "It was crazy."</p>
<p>As a first step, GACP set out to reduce Gishwati Forest's "hemorrhage," according to Benjamin Beck, director of conservation at Great Ape Trust, which manages the project. It established a research presence in the forest, led by American primatologist Rebecca Chancellor, and hired a force of "eco-guards": unarmed, uniformed officials tasked with identifying illegal or unsustainable forest activities and working with locals to identify alternative means of livelihood. By employing local staff, working with schools, and supporting local artisanal cooperatives, the project began to inject financial benefits into communities while promoting more sustainable attitudes toward the forest.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/news/green/wildlife-news/only-viable-population-rare-gibbons-found-vietnam" type="external">Population of rare gibbons found in Vietnam</a></p>
<p>Three years later, the project has not only put an end to the hemorrhage: through the demarcation of legal boundaries and the annexation of illegally occupied land, Gishwati's protected area has actually increased by 67 percent.</p>
<p>Now, the project is seeking to go further. Gishwati's 20 chimpanzees, which experts believe form the most densely populated chimp community in the world, will eventually be doomed unless they gain access to a larger gene pool. To facilitate this, GACP has proposed the planting of a forest corridor, averaging a width of a quarter mile, which will stretch at least 40 miles to Nyungwe National Park, a forest home to 400 other chimps, which was once connected to Gishwati. Rwanda's government has included the scheme as part of Rwanda's land use master plan that is currently under review by Parliament.</p>
<p>The endeavor is has drawn criticism because it will require the relocation of an unspecified number of human families to government-provided housing. Some charge that uprooting of human lives is a heavy price for saving 20 primates.</p>
<p>To Beck, this reasoning misses the point. By the government's own admission, he says, the subsistence farming practiced in affected areas is unsustainable, as population grows and land is divided among more and more people. As a destination for eco-tourism, the Gishwati conservation center will create jobs to help local youths transition from idleness or unproductive farmwork to the country's nascent services economy.</p>
<p>While most agree this shift toward sustainable livelihoods is necessary, the transition will not come easily. It's a reality on display in Nyarusuku, a hardscrabble settlement a few miles down the dirt road from Kinihira.</p>
<p>Here, in this government-built community, a small group of Batwa pygmies ekes out a meager living performing ritual songs and dances for visitors. Though resettled from Gishwati in the 1970s, these one-time hunter-gatherers remain largely cut off from modern Rwandan society: unkempt, unable to hold formal jobs, and, as their performances glorifying forest life suggest, longing for better days past.</p>
<p>Though just a small percentage of those living near Gishwati, the Batwa's struggles are symbolic of those faced by rural dwellers across much of Africa; confronted with environmental change and forced to embrace the modern world before they're ready.</p>
<p>While it may seem appropriate, in this context, to view man and nature in a constant state of conflict, Benjamin Beck of the Great Ape Trust is quick to emphasize that sacrifices made for nature today are in the interest of man's well being tomorrow. Gishwati Forest's residents, he says, have come to understand this.</p>
<p>"There's this idea that there is an inherent competition between conservation and population. I think we focus too much on the either or. We need to search for novel solutions that provide co-existence."</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost in Rwanada:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/110617/rwandan-drum-maker-maintains-tradition" type="external">Rwanda marches to the beat of an old drum</a></p> | 538 |
<p />
<p>Vodafone (NASDAQ:VOD) is reportedly weighing a $10 billion cash bid for Kabel Deutschland, Germany’s largest cable operator, and believes its offer and lack of antitrust issues will put the U.K. wireless carrier ahead of Liberty Global (NASDAQ:LBTYA).</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>On Monday, Kabel Deutschland confirmed that Liberty Global made a bid for the company but didn’t disclose any further details.</p>
<p>Reuters said Wednesday that Liberty Global offered nearly $10 billion for Kabel Deutschland, including a share component, while Vodafone was looking to bid at least that much in cash.</p>
<p>According to one source cited by Reuters, Vodafone has notified Kabel Deutschland that it is preparing an improved offer.</p>
<p>Reports last week indicated that Vodafone was already considering a higher bid after its informal proposal was rejected.</p>
<p>The Reuters report added that Liberty Global, which owns Unity Media, the No. 2 German cable company, would be subject to more scrutiny from German regulators. In February, Kabel Deutschland was blocked from taking over smaller cable group Telecolumbus.</p>
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<p>Liberty has already held discussions with the German antitrust office to discuss the deal, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters. The deal could also be referred to the Brussels competition watchdog that reviews large deals with regional implications in the European Union.</p>
<p>Shares of Vodafone fell 1.3% to $28.33 late Wednesday morning. Liberty was up 60 cents at $72.48.</p> | Report: Vodafone Weighing $10B Kabel Bid to Top Liberty | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/06/19/report-vodafone-weighing-10b-kabel-bid-to-top-liberty.html | 2016-01-25 | 0right
| Report: Vodafone Weighing $10B Kabel Bid to Top Liberty
<p />
<p>Vodafone (NASDAQ:VOD) is reportedly weighing a $10 billion cash bid for Kabel Deutschland, Germany’s largest cable operator, and believes its offer and lack of antitrust issues will put the U.K. wireless carrier ahead of Liberty Global (NASDAQ:LBTYA).</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>On Monday, Kabel Deutschland confirmed that Liberty Global made a bid for the company but didn’t disclose any further details.</p>
<p>Reuters said Wednesday that Liberty Global offered nearly $10 billion for Kabel Deutschland, including a share component, while Vodafone was looking to bid at least that much in cash.</p>
<p>According to one source cited by Reuters, Vodafone has notified Kabel Deutschland that it is preparing an improved offer.</p>
<p>Reports last week indicated that Vodafone was already considering a higher bid after its informal proposal was rejected.</p>
<p>The Reuters report added that Liberty Global, which owns Unity Media, the No. 2 German cable company, would be subject to more scrutiny from German regulators. In February, Kabel Deutschland was blocked from taking over smaller cable group Telecolumbus.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Liberty has already held discussions with the German antitrust office to discuss the deal, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters. The deal could also be referred to the Brussels competition watchdog that reviews large deals with regional implications in the European Union.</p>
<p>Shares of Vodafone fell 1.3% to $28.33 late Wednesday morning. Liberty was up 60 cents at $72.48.</p> | 539 |
<p>HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii disaster response officials say they are trying to figure out which cellphones didn’t receive an alert an employee mistakenly sent warning of a missile attack.</p>
<p>Hawaii Emergency Management Agency Operations Chief Victor Gustafson told state lawmakers on Wednesday the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t allow tests of the Wireless Emergency Alert system.</p>
<p>Gustafson says his agency has talked to the FCC about how it could, without sending test alerts, find out why some cellphones didn’t receive the mistaken alert on Jan. 13. He says it’s a work in progress.</p>
<p>State Rep. Andria Tupola asked him whether the state could ask people directly. The Republican representing Nanakuli and Ko Olina says she’ll ask on social media. She says it won’t be a scientific poll but will be a start.</p>
<p>HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii disaster response officials say they are trying to figure out which cellphones didn’t receive an alert an employee mistakenly sent warning of a missile attack.</p>
<p>Hawaii Emergency Management Agency Operations Chief Victor Gustafson told state lawmakers on Wednesday the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t allow tests of the Wireless Emergency Alert system.</p>
<p>Gustafson says his agency has talked to the FCC about how it could, without sending test alerts, find out why some cellphones didn’t receive the mistaken alert on Jan. 13. He says it’s a work in progress.</p>
<p>State Rep. Andria Tupola asked him whether the state could ask people directly. The Republican representing Nanakuli and Ko Olina says she’ll ask on social media. She says it won’t be a scientific poll but will be a start.</p> | Hawaii wants to find out which phones didn’t get false alarm | false | https://apnews.com/6604c9a0b708439e95f18d2e24ac0b02 | 2018-01-24 | 2least
| Hawaii wants to find out which phones didn’t get false alarm
<p>HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii disaster response officials say they are trying to figure out which cellphones didn’t receive an alert an employee mistakenly sent warning of a missile attack.</p>
<p>Hawaii Emergency Management Agency Operations Chief Victor Gustafson told state lawmakers on Wednesday the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t allow tests of the Wireless Emergency Alert system.</p>
<p>Gustafson says his agency has talked to the FCC about how it could, without sending test alerts, find out why some cellphones didn’t receive the mistaken alert on Jan. 13. He says it’s a work in progress.</p>
<p>State Rep. Andria Tupola asked him whether the state could ask people directly. The Republican representing Nanakuli and Ko Olina says she’ll ask on social media. She says it won’t be a scientific poll but will be a start.</p>
<p>HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii disaster response officials say they are trying to figure out which cellphones didn’t receive an alert an employee mistakenly sent warning of a missile attack.</p>
<p>Hawaii Emergency Management Agency Operations Chief Victor Gustafson told state lawmakers on Wednesday the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t allow tests of the Wireless Emergency Alert system.</p>
<p>Gustafson says his agency has talked to the FCC about how it could, without sending test alerts, find out why some cellphones didn’t receive the mistaken alert on Jan. 13. He says it’s a work in progress.</p>
<p>State Rep. Andria Tupola asked him whether the state could ask people directly. The Republican representing Nanakuli and Ko Olina says she’ll ask on social media. She says it won’t be a scientific poll but will be a start.</p> | 540 |
<p>A rally on the stock market fizzled toward the end of trading as the price of oil sank.</p>
<p>Indexes spent most of the day higher on Thursday, but faded in the last two hours as oil turned lower again.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Lower energy prices are a boon to consumers, but they also hurt companies that drill for oil.</p>
<p>Retail stocks rose after the U.S. government reported a pickup in sales last month. Home Depot rose 1.3 percent.</p>
<p>The Dow Jones industrial average rose 63 points, or 0.4 percent, to 17,596. It was up 225 earlier.</p>
<p>The Standard &amp; Poor's 500 rose nine points, or 0.5 percent, to 2,035. The Nasdaq rose 24 points, or 0.5 percent, to 4,708.</p>
<p>Oil fell 99 cents to $59.95 a barrel in New York.</p> | US stock indexes end with modest gains after an early rally is dented by slump in price of oil | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/12/11/us-stock-indexes-end-with-modest-gains-after-early-rally-is-dented-by-slump-in.html | 2016-03-06 | 0right
| US stock indexes end with modest gains after an early rally is dented by slump in price of oil
<p>A rally on the stock market fizzled toward the end of trading as the price of oil sank.</p>
<p>Indexes spent most of the day higher on Thursday, but faded in the last two hours as oil turned lower again.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Lower energy prices are a boon to consumers, but they also hurt companies that drill for oil.</p>
<p>Retail stocks rose after the U.S. government reported a pickup in sales last month. Home Depot rose 1.3 percent.</p>
<p>The Dow Jones industrial average rose 63 points, or 0.4 percent, to 17,596. It was up 225 earlier.</p>
<p>The Standard &amp; Poor's 500 rose nine points, or 0.5 percent, to 2,035. The Nasdaq rose 24 points, or 0.5 percent, to 4,708.</p>
<p>Oil fell 99 cents to $59.95 a barrel in New York.</p> | 541 |
<p>In February, Syreeta posted an awesome cover of Lorde’s “Royals” by Washington DC artist Maimouna Youssef, aka <a href="http://mumufreshness.flavors.me" type="external">Mumu Fresh</a>, titled “ <a href="" type="internal">We’re Already Royals.</a>” Now Mumu Fresh is back with another reimagined cover – this time she’s turned Pharrell’s way too catchy and ubiquitous “Happy” into “Nappy,” an anthem for natural Black hair. Check it out after the jump:</p>
<p />
<p>This track’s off her new mixtape “ <a href="http://maimounayoussef.bandcamp.com/album/the-reintroduction-of-mumu-fresh" type="external">The Reintroduction of Mumu Fresh</a>” which also features “We’re Already Royals” and a track about student loans.</p>
<p>Here’s the rewritten lyrics:</p>
<p>[Verse 1:] It might seem crazy what I’m about to say Love is here, haters take a break I know you’ve seen these curls all in my face I shake my hair in the air like I don’t care baby by the way… 1st chorus Because I’m nappy Clap along if you know that a comb can’t mess with you Cuz I’m nappy Clap along if you know that Africa’s in ya roots Cuz im nappy Clap along if you know that nappiness is the truth Cuz Im Nappy Clap along if you know that nappy’s what youre born to do</p>
<p>[Verse 2:] Here come bad news want me to wear hat, yeah, When I walk my head up and shoulders back, yeah, Well, I should probably warn you that it’s all mine, yeah, No offense to you but im super fly, here’s why</p>
<p>2nd chorus Cuz im Nappy… Clap along if you know that Africa’s in ya roots Cuz Im Nappy Clap along if you feel like Nappiness is the truth Cuz I’m Nappy Clap along if you know that your hair looks good on YOU! Cuz Im Nappy Clap along if you the truth and you don’t need no more proof</p>
<p>[Bridge:]</p>
<p>Bring me down, Can’t nothing, bring me down, my fro is too high, to bring me down Cant no perm, lay this down, Cant nothing Hold me down This love is too strong to bring me down Cant nothing, tame this crown the love is too high, to bring me down</p>
<p>3rd 4th Chorus (DEV DUFF) Because I’m nappy Clap along if you know that a comb can’t mess with you Cuz I’m nappy Clap along if you know that Africa’s in your roots Cuz im nappy Clap along if you feel that nappiness is the truth Cuz Im Nappy Clap along if you know that nappy’s what you’re born to do Cuz im Nappy… Clap along if you know that Africa’s in your roots Cuz Im Nappy Clap along if you feel like Nappiness is the truth Cuz I’m Nappy Clap along if you know that your hair looks good on YOU! Cuz Im Nappy Clap along if you the truth and you don’t need no more proof</p>
<p>credits from&#160; <a href="http://maimounayoussef.bandcamp.com/album/the-reintroduction-of-mumu-fresh" type="external">The Reintroduction of Mumu Fresh</a>, released 13 May 2014 M. Youssef &amp; Sean Glover feat. Dev Duff &amp; Tamika Love Jones</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="https://twitter.com/jostruitt" type="external">Jos Truitt</a> is an Executive Director of Feministing.</p> | Feministing Jamz: Mumu Fresh turns Pharrell’s Happy into an ode to natural hair | true | http://feministing.com/2014/05/14/feministing-jamz-mumu-fresh-turns-pharrells-happy-into-an-ode-to-natural-hair/ | 4left
| Feministing Jamz: Mumu Fresh turns Pharrell’s Happy into an ode to natural hair
<p>In February, Syreeta posted an awesome cover of Lorde’s “Royals” by Washington DC artist Maimouna Youssef, aka <a href="http://mumufreshness.flavors.me" type="external">Mumu Fresh</a>, titled “ <a href="" type="internal">We’re Already Royals.</a>” Now Mumu Fresh is back with another reimagined cover – this time she’s turned Pharrell’s way too catchy and ubiquitous “Happy” into “Nappy,” an anthem for natural Black hair. Check it out after the jump:</p>
<p />
<p>This track’s off her new mixtape “ <a href="http://maimounayoussef.bandcamp.com/album/the-reintroduction-of-mumu-fresh" type="external">The Reintroduction of Mumu Fresh</a>” which also features “We’re Already Royals” and a track about student loans.</p>
<p>Here’s the rewritten lyrics:</p>
<p>[Verse 1:] It might seem crazy what I’m about to say Love is here, haters take a break I know you’ve seen these curls all in my face I shake my hair in the air like I don’t care baby by the way… 1st chorus Because I’m nappy Clap along if you know that a comb can’t mess with you Cuz I’m nappy Clap along if you know that Africa’s in ya roots Cuz im nappy Clap along if you know that nappiness is the truth Cuz Im Nappy Clap along if you know that nappy’s what youre born to do</p>
<p>[Verse 2:] Here come bad news want me to wear hat, yeah, When I walk my head up and shoulders back, yeah, Well, I should probably warn you that it’s all mine, yeah, No offense to you but im super fly, here’s why</p>
<p>2nd chorus Cuz im Nappy… Clap along if you know that Africa’s in ya roots Cuz Im Nappy Clap along if you feel like Nappiness is the truth Cuz I’m Nappy Clap along if you know that your hair looks good on YOU! Cuz Im Nappy Clap along if you the truth and you don’t need no more proof</p>
<p>[Bridge:]</p>
<p>Bring me down, Can’t nothing, bring me down, my fro is too high, to bring me down Cant no perm, lay this down, Cant nothing Hold me down This love is too strong to bring me down Cant nothing, tame this crown the love is too high, to bring me down</p>
<p>3rd 4th Chorus (DEV DUFF) Because I’m nappy Clap along if you know that a comb can’t mess with you Cuz I’m nappy Clap along if you know that Africa’s in your roots Cuz im nappy Clap along if you feel that nappiness is the truth Cuz Im Nappy Clap along if you know that nappy’s what you’re born to do Cuz im Nappy… Clap along if you know that Africa’s in your roots Cuz Im Nappy Clap along if you feel like Nappiness is the truth Cuz I’m Nappy Clap along if you know that your hair looks good on YOU! Cuz Im Nappy Clap along if you the truth and you don’t need no more proof</p>
<p>credits from&#160; <a href="http://maimounayoussef.bandcamp.com/album/the-reintroduction-of-mumu-fresh" type="external">The Reintroduction of Mumu Fresh</a>, released 13 May 2014 M. Youssef &amp; Sean Glover feat. Dev Duff &amp; Tamika Love Jones</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="https://twitter.com/jostruitt" type="external">Jos Truitt</a> is an Executive Director of Feministing.</p> | 542 |
|
<p>Alex Hibbert with Mahershala Ali in ‘Moonlight.’ Hibbert is nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards Sunday night, one of eight nominations the movie received. (Photo by David Bornfriend; courtesy A24)</p>
<p>This year’s Academy Award ceremony will certainly look a lot different than last year’s.</p>
<p>Last year, for the second year in a row, the entire slate of nominees in the four acting categories were white. This year, in a historic first, there are six African-American actors nominated in the four acting categories. Denzel Washington is nominated in the lead actor category for his grand-slam performance in August Wilson’s “Fences.” Ruth Negga is nominated in the lead actress category for her finely nuanced portrayal of reluctant civil rights pioneer Mildred Loving in “Loving.”</p>
<p>Mahershala Ali is nominated in the supporting actor category for his magnificent performance in “Moonlight” as the drug lord who takes the young Chiron under his wing even as he sells crack to Chiron’s mother Paula. Three African-American actresses dominate the supporting actress category: Viola Davis in “Fences,” Naomie Harris as Chiron’s mother in “Moonlight” and Octavia Spencer in the breakout hit and box office champ of the holiday season, “Hidden Figures.”</p>
<p>In addition, Dev Patel, an English actor of Indian descent, is nominated for his performance in “Lion,” a moving movie about an Indian boy who is adopted by an Australian couple after he is separated from his birth family.</p>
<p>Three of those movies also got best picture noms: “Fences,” “Hidden Figures” and “Moonlight.” This is the first time Hollywood has shown such a powerful spotlight on black gay life.</p>
<p>Three of the nominees for documentary feature also focus on the African American experience. The penetrating “13th” by Ava DuVernay (“Selma”) examines the appalling racial disparities in the American judicial system. “O.J.: Made in America” by Ezra Edelman is a 10-hour exploration of the life of celebrity athlete O.J. Simpson. “I Am Not Your Negro,” directed by Raoul Peck, is a searing exploration of race in America through the writings of openly gay black author James Baldwin.</p>
<p>Barry Jenkins, a straight ally, is the first black writer-director to be nominated for best picture, best director and best screenplay for his groundbreaking work on “Moonlight.” Openly gay playwright Terell Alvin McCraney, who wrote the unproduced play the movie is based on, was also nominated by the Academy for his work on the “Moonlight” screenplay.</p>
<p>There are also some other nods to diversity among the Oscar nominees. Maren Ade, who helmed the German comedy “Toni Erdmann,” is the only woman to be recognized for her work as director of a feature film. Hispanic artist and “Hamilton” superstar Lin-Manuel Miranda is nominated for his work on “Moana,” the animated movie about a Polynesian girl who saves her island. (If Miranda wins, he will become the 13th person to score the coveted EGOT, the grand slam of American entertainment prizes: an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.)</p>
<p>Miranda will be competing against openly gay musician Benj Pasek, part of the songwriting team for “La La Land.”</p>
<p>So, while the Academy has made some serious strides in addressing the #OscarSoWhite hashtag, it still has a long way to go in addressing the hashtags #OscarSoMale and #OscarSoStraight and in the inclusion of Hispanic and Asian-American artists.</p>
<p>The big showdown this Sunday will be between “Moonlight” (with eight nominations) and “La La Land” (with 14 nominations, joining “Titanic” and “All About Eve” in a tie for movies with the most Oscar nods). “La La Land” swept the Golden Globes, but it may not do as well at the Oscars where it will not be competing in a separate “Musical or Comedy” category.</p>
<p>The most exciting races are among the crowded fields for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. Perennial nominee Meryl Streep snuck into the Best Actress category for “Florence Foster Jenkins” (presumably on the strength of her Golden Globes acceptance speech), but Taraji P. Henson, Amy Adams and Annette Bening were shut out. I’m rooting for Isabelle Huppert in “Elle,” but the award will probably go to Natalie Portman’s dazzling performance in “Jackie.” Viola Davis will probably win her first Oscar for her heartbreaking work in “Fences,” but any of the other nominees are well-deserving.</p>
<p>Unless there’s a major upset, Mahershala Ali will win for Best Supporting Actor. The Best Actor race is between Denzel Washington and Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea”). I’m rooting for Washington.</p>
<p>As for Best Picture statue, front runners “La La Land” and “Moonlight” will split the vote and “Hidden Figures” will win some well-deserved Oscar gold.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Amy Adams</a> <a href="" type="internal">Annette Bening</a> <a href="" type="internal">August Wilson</a> <a href="" type="internal">Ava Duvernay</a> <a href="" type="internal">Barry Jenkins</a> <a href="" type="internal">Casey Affleck</a> <a href="" type="internal">Denzel Washington</a> <a href="" type="internal">Dev Patel</a> <a href="" type="internal">Elle</a> <a href="" type="internal">Ezra Edelman</a> <a href="" type="internal">Fences</a> <a href="" type="internal">Florence Foster Jenkins</a> <a href="" type="internal">Golden Globes</a> <a href="" type="internal">Hamilton</a> <a href="" type="internal">Hidden Figures</a> <a href="" type="internal">I Am Not Your Negro</a> <a href="" type="internal">Isabelle Huppert</a> <a href="" type="internal">Jackie</a> <a href="" type="internal">James Baldwin</a> <a href="" type="internal">La La Land</a> <a href="" type="internal">Lin-Manuel Miranda</a> <a href="" type="internal">Lion</a> <a href="" type="internal">Loving</a> <a href="" type="internal">Mahershala Ali</a> <a href="" type="internal">Manchester by The Sea</a> <a href="" type="internal">Maren Ade</a> <a href="" type="internal">Meryl Streep</a> <a href="" type="internal">Mildred Loving</a> <a href="" type="internal">Moana</a> <a href="" type="internal">Moonlight</a> <a href="" type="internal">Naomie Harris</a> <a href="" type="internal">Natalie Portman</a> <a href="" type="internal">O.J.: Made in America</a> <a href="" type="internal">Octavia Spencer</a> <a href="" type="internal">Raoul Peck</a> <a href="" type="internal">Ruth Negga</a> <a href="" type="internal">Taraji P. Henson</a> <a href="" type="internal">Terell Alvin McCraney</a> <a href="" type="internal">Toni Erdmann</a> <a href="" type="internal">Viola Davis</a></p> | #OscarsLessWhite | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2017/02/23/oscarslesswhite/ | 3left-center
| #OscarsLessWhite
<p>Alex Hibbert with Mahershala Ali in ‘Moonlight.’ Hibbert is nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards Sunday night, one of eight nominations the movie received. (Photo by David Bornfriend; courtesy A24)</p>
<p>This year’s Academy Award ceremony will certainly look a lot different than last year’s.</p>
<p>Last year, for the second year in a row, the entire slate of nominees in the four acting categories were white. This year, in a historic first, there are six African-American actors nominated in the four acting categories. Denzel Washington is nominated in the lead actor category for his grand-slam performance in August Wilson’s “Fences.” Ruth Negga is nominated in the lead actress category for her finely nuanced portrayal of reluctant civil rights pioneer Mildred Loving in “Loving.”</p>
<p>Mahershala Ali is nominated in the supporting actor category for his magnificent performance in “Moonlight” as the drug lord who takes the young Chiron under his wing even as he sells crack to Chiron’s mother Paula. Three African-American actresses dominate the supporting actress category: Viola Davis in “Fences,” Naomie Harris as Chiron’s mother in “Moonlight” and Octavia Spencer in the breakout hit and box office champ of the holiday season, “Hidden Figures.”</p>
<p>In addition, Dev Patel, an English actor of Indian descent, is nominated for his performance in “Lion,” a moving movie about an Indian boy who is adopted by an Australian couple after he is separated from his birth family.</p>
<p>Three of those movies also got best picture noms: “Fences,” “Hidden Figures” and “Moonlight.” This is the first time Hollywood has shown such a powerful spotlight on black gay life.</p>
<p>Three of the nominees for documentary feature also focus on the African American experience. The penetrating “13th” by Ava DuVernay (“Selma”) examines the appalling racial disparities in the American judicial system. “O.J.: Made in America” by Ezra Edelman is a 10-hour exploration of the life of celebrity athlete O.J. Simpson. “I Am Not Your Negro,” directed by Raoul Peck, is a searing exploration of race in America through the writings of openly gay black author James Baldwin.</p>
<p>Barry Jenkins, a straight ally, is the first black writer-director to be nominated for best picture, best director and best screenplay for his groundbreaking work on “Moonlight.” Openly gay playwright Terell Alvin McCraney, who wrote the unproduced play the movie is based on, was also nominated by the Academy for his work on the “Moonlight” screenplay.</p>
<p>There are also some other nods to diversity among the Oscar nominees. Maren Ade, who helmed the German comedy “Toni Erdmann,” is the only woman to be recognized for her work as director of a feature film. Hispanic artist and “Hamilton” superstar Lin-Manuel Miranda is nominated for his work on “Moana,” the animated movie about a Polynesian girl who saves her island. (If Miranda wins, he will become the 13th person to score the coveted EGOT, the grand slam of American entertainment prizes: an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.)</p>
<p>Miranda will be competing against openly gay musician Benj Pasek, part of the songwriting team for “La La Land.”</p>
<p>So, while the Academy has made some serious strides in addressing the #OscarSoWhite hashtag, it still has a long way to go in addressing the hashtags #OscarSoMale and #OscarSoStraight and in the inclusion of Hispanic and Asian-American artists.</p>
<p>The big showdown this Sunday will be between “Moonlight” (with eight nominations) and “La La Land” (with 14 nominations, joining “Titanic” and “All About Eve” in a tie for movies with the most Oscar nods). “La La Land” swept the Golden Globes, but it may not do as well at the Oscars where it will not be competing in a separate “Musical or Comedy” category.</p>
<p>The most exciting races are among the crowded fields for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. Perennial nominee Meryl Streep snuck into the Best Actress category for “Florence Foster Jenkins” (presumably on the strength of her Golden Globes acceptance speech), but Taraji P. Henson, Amy Adams and Annette Bening were shut out. I’m rooting for Isabelle Huppert in “Elle,” but the award will probably go to Natalie Portman’s dazzling performance in “Jackie.” Viola Davis will probably win her first Oscar for her heartbreaking work in “Fences,” but any of the other nominees are well-deserving.</p>
<p>Unless there’s a major upset, Mahershala Ali will win for Best Supporting Actor. The Best Actor race is between Denzel Washington and Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea”). I’m rooting for Washington.</p>
<p>As for Best Picture statue, front runners “La La Land” and “Moonlight” will split the vote and “Hidden Figures” will win some well-deserved Oscar gold.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Amy Adams</a> <a href="" type="internal">Annette Bening</a> <a href="" type="internal">August Wilson</a> <a href="" type="internal">Ava Duvernay</a> <a href="" type="internal">Barry Jenkins</a> <a href="" type="internal">Casey Affleck</a> <a href="" type="internal">Denzel Washington</a> <a href="" type="internal">Dev Patel</a> <a href="" type="internal">Elle</a> <a href="" type="internal">Ezra Edelman</a> <a href="" type="internal">Fences</a> <a href="" type="internal">Florence Foster Jenkins</a> <a href="" type="internal">Golden Globes</a> <a href="" type="internal">Hamilton</a> <a href="" type="internal">Hidden Figures</a> <a href="" type="internal">I Am Not Your Negro</a> <a href="" type="internal">Isabelle Huppert</a> <a href="" type="internal">Jackie</a> <a href="" type="internal">James Baldwin</a> <a href="" type="internal">La La Land</a> <a href="" type="internal">Lin-Manuel Miranda</a> <a href="" type="internal">Lion</a> <a href="" type="internal">Loving</a> <a href="" type="internal">Mahershala Ali</a> <a href="" type="internal">Manchester by The Sea</a> <a href="" type="internal">Maren Ade</a> <a href="" type="internal">Meryl Streep</a> <a href="" type="internal">Mildred Loving</a> <a href="" type="internal">Moana</a> <a href="" type="internal">Moonlight</a> <a href="" type="internal">Naomie Harris</a> <a href="" type="internal">Natalie Portman</a> <a href="" type="internal">O.J.: Made in America</a> <a href="" type="internal">Octavia Spencer</a> <a href="" type="internal">Raoul Peck</a> <a href="" type="internal">Ruth Negga</a> <a href="" type="internal">Taraji P. Henson</a> <a href="" type="internal">Terell Alvin McCraney</a> <a href="" type="internal">Toni Erdmann</a> <a href="" type="internal">Viola Davis</a></p> | 543 |
|
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is trying to shore up faltering confidence in forensic science and how its experts describe their findings in court, a push that comes months after similar efforts dating to the Obama administration were suspended.</p>
<p>The department said Monday it is reviving work on federal standards for forensic expert testimony, an effort initiated following revelations in 2015 that FBI experts had overstated the strength of evidence involving microscopic hair analysis in hundreds of cases dating back decades.</p>
<p>Longstanding concerns remain about the reliability of certain forensics evidence in criminal cases across the country, as research increasingly shows that techniques such as comparisons of hair found at crime scenes, handwriting analyses, bite-mark evidence and certain ballistics tests are scientifically flawed.</p>
<p>Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said he is forming a “forensic science working group” whose top missions will be setting uniform standards for how experts testify about such evidence and creating a program to monitor the accuracy of forensic testimony. It will also conduct a broad look at the personnel and equipment needs of the nation’s overburdened crime labs, among other aims. He made the announcement during a private gathering of forensics professionals in Atlanta.</p>
<p>“We must use forensic analysis carefully, but we must continue to use it,” he said, according to prepared remarks. “We should not exclude reliable forensic analysis — or any reliable expert testimony — simply because it is based on human judgment.”</p>
<p>The working group takes the place of an Obama-era commission of independent scientists that aimed to improve the reliability of forensic science and advise the attorney general on the use of scientific evidence in the criminal justice process.</p>
<p>Attorney General Jeff Sessions allowed the National Commission on Forensic Science to expire in April, raising concerns among defense attorneys and other advocates about the future of the Justice Department’s work in that arena. They believed the commission and its array of voices offered a better chance for an independent look at questionable techniques that have long been used in American courtrooms than would an internal Justice Department committee.</p>
<p>Peter Neufeld, a former member of the national commission and a co-founder of the Innocence Project, praised the effort to set guidelines for forensic testimony but said keeping the working group within the Justice Department is misguided.</p>
<p>“What is most unfortunate is that they want to make the entire effort to improve forensic science an in-house working group, as opposed to an independent, transparent and science-driven, proactive entity,” he said. “It misses the point that forensic science is not simply about public safety, it’s about achieving justice.”</p>
<p>Rosenstein said the working group would consider the more than 250 comments and suggestions the department received in response to the commission’s disbanding.</p>
<p>The new group will be led by Ted Hunt, a longtime prosecutor from Missouri whose online biography says he has worked on more than 100 felony trials, most of which have involved DNA or other forensic evidence. He was also involved with the commission.</p>
<p>A 2015 Justice Department review of lab examiners’ testimony found errors relating to hair analysis in at least 90 percent of trial transcripts and covered a period before 2000. The FBI says it has improved its practices since the late 1990s. But following the discovery of flawed forensics, the department last year issued draft standards for examining and reporting forensic evidence in court.</p>
<p>The draft guidance covered seven forensic science disciplines, including drug and chemical analysis, body fluid testing, latent fingerprints and toxicology. And it was slated to apply to employees at the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.</p>
<p>Officials received public comment on the drafts, but the new administration halted work on them so Rosenstein could weigh in on the best course of action. A wider review that sought to determine whether other scientific disciplines have been tainted by flawed testimony was also suspended ahead of the new administration. It was not immediately clear whether that will resume.</p>
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is trying to shore up faltering confidence in forensic science and how its experts describe their findings in court, a push that comes months after similar efforts dating to the Obama administration were suspended.</p>
<p>The department said Monday it is reviving work on federal standards for forensic expert testimony, an effort initiated following revelations in 2015 that FBI experts had overstated the strength of evidence involving microscopic hair analysis in hundreds of cases dating back decades.</p>
<p>Longstanding concerns remain about the reliability of certain forensics evidence in criminal cases across the country, as research increasingly shows that techniques such as comparisons of hair found at crime scenes, handwriting analyses, bite-mark evidence and certain ballistics tests are scientifically flawed.</p>
<p>Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said he is forming a “forensic science working group” whose top missions will be setting uniform standards for how experts testify about such evidence and creating a program to monitor the accuracy of forensic testimony. It will also conduct a broad look at the personnel and equipment needs of the nation’s overburdened crime labs, among other aims. He made the announcement during a private gathering of forensics professionals in Atlanta.</p>
<p>“We must use forensic analysis carefully, but we must continue to use it,” he said, according to prepared remarks. “We should not exclude reliable forensic analysis — or any reliable expert testimony — simply because it is based on human judgment.”</p>
<p>The working group takes the place of an Obama-era commission of independent scientists that aimed to improve the reliability of forensic science and advise the attorney general on the use of scientific evidence in the criminal justice process.</p>
<p>Attorney General Jeff Sessions allowed the National Commission on Forensic Science to expire in April, raising concerns among defense attorneys and other advocates about the future of the Justice Department’s work in that arena. They believed the commission and its array of voices offered a better chance for an independent look at questionable techniques that have long been used in American courtrooms than would an internal Justice Department committee.</p>
<p>Peter Neufeld, a former member of the national commission and a co-founder of the Innocence Project, praised the effort to set guidelines for forensic testimony but said keeping the working group within the Justice Department is misguided.</p>
<p>“What is most unfortunate is that they want to make the entire effort to improve forensic science an in-house working group, as opposed to an independent, transparent and science-driven, proactive entity,” he said. “It misses the point that forensic science is not simply about public safety, it’s about achieving justice.”</p>
<p>Rosenstein said the working group would consider the more than 250 comments and suggestions the department received in response to the commission’s disbanding.</p>
<p>The new group will be led by Ted Hunt, a longtime prosecutor from Missouri whose online biography says he has worked on more than 100 felony trials, most of which have involved DNA or other forensic evidence. He was also involved with the commission.</p>
<p>A 2015 Justice Department review of lab examiners’ testimony found errors relating to hair analysis in at least 90 percent of trial transcripts and covered a period before 2000. The FBI says it has improved its practices since the late 1990s. But following the discovery of flawed forensics, the department last year issued draft standards for examining and reporting forensic evidence in court.</p>
<p>The draft guidance covered seven forensic science disciplines, including drug and chemical analysis, body fluid testing, latent fingerprints and toxicology. And it was slated to apply to employees at the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.</p>
<p>Officials received public comment on the drafts, but the new administration halted work on them so Rosenstein could weigh in on the best course of action. A wider review that sought to determine whether other scientific disciplines have been tainted by flawed testimony was also suspended ahead of the new administration. It was not immediately clear whether that will resume.</p> | Justice Dept. tries to shore up forensic science, testimony | false | https://apnews.com/ef513b48286345c9b0a210afd1a37fe1 | 2017-08-07 | 2least
| Justice Dept. tries to shore up forensic science, testimony
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is trying to shore up faltering confidence in forensic science and how its experts describe their findings in court, a push that comes months after similar efforts dating to the Obama administration were suspended.</p>
<p>The department said Monday it is reviving work on federal standards for forensic expert testimony, an effort initiated following revelations in 2015 that FBI experts had overstated the strength of evidence involving microscopic hair analysis in hundreds of cases dating back decades.</p>
<p>Longstanding concerns remain about the reliability of certain forensics evidence in criminal cases across the country, as research increasingly shows that techniques such as comparisons of hair found at crime scenes, handwriting analyses, bite-mark evidence and certain ballistics tests are scientifically flawed.</p>
<p>Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said he is forming a “forensic science working group” whose top missions will be setting uniform standards for how experts testify about such evidence and creating a program to monitor the accuracy of forensic testimony. It will also conduct a broad look at the personnel and equipment needs of the nation’s overburdened crime labs, among other aims. He made the announcement during a private gathering of forensics professionals in Atlanta.</p>
<p>“We must use forensic analysis carefully, but we must continue to use it,” he said, according to prepared remarks. “We should not exclude reliable forensic analysis — or any reliable expert testimony — simply because it is based on human judgment.”</p>
<p>The working group takes the place of an Obama-era commission of independent scientists that aimed to improve the reliability of forensic science and advise the attorney general on the use of scientific evidence in the criminal justice process.</p>
<p>Attorney General Jeff Sessions allowed the National Commission on Forensic Science to expire in April, raising concerns among defense attorneys and other advocates about the future of the Justice Department’s work in that arena. They believed the commission and its array of voices offered a better chance for an independent look at questionable techniques that have long been used in American courtrooms than would an internal Justice Department committee.</p>
<p>Peter Neufeld, a former member of the national commission and a co-founder of the Innocence Project, praised the effort to set guidelines for forensic testimony but said keeping the working group within the Justice Department is misguided.</p>
<p>“What is most unfortunate is that they want to make the entire effort to improve forensic science an in-house working group, as opposed to an independent, transparent and science-driven, proactive entity,” he said. “It misses the point that forensic science is not simply about public safety, it’s about achieving justice.”</p>
<p>Rosenstein said the working group would consider the more than 250 comments and suggestions the department received in response to the commission’s disbanding.</p>
<p>The new group will be led by Ted Hunt, a longtime prosecutor from Missouri whose online biography says he has worked on more than 100 felony trials, most of which have involved DNA or other forensic evidence. He was also involved with the commission.</p>
<p>A 2015 Justice Department review of lab examiners’ testimony found errors relating to hair analysis in at least 90 percent of trial transcripts and covered a period before 2000. The FBI says it has improved its practices since the late 1990s. But following the discovery of flawed forensics, the department last year issued draft standards for examining and reporting forensic evidence in court.</p>
<p>The draft guidance covered seven forensic science disciplines, including drug and chemical analysis, body fluid testing, latent fingerprints and toxicology. And it was slated to apply to employees at the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.</p>
<p>Officials received public comment on the drafts, but the new administration halted work on them so Rosenstein could weigh in on the best course of action. A wider review that sought to determine whether other scientific disciplines have been tainted by flawed testimony was also suspended ahead of the new administration. It was not immediately clear whether that will resume.</p>
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is trying to shore up faltering confidence in forensic science and how its experts describe their findings in court, a push that comes months after similar efforts dating to the Obama administration were suspended.</p>
<p>The department said Monday it is reviving work on federal standards for forensic expert testimony, an effort initiated following revelations in 2015 that FBI experts had overstated the strength of evidence involving microscopic hair analysis in hundreds of cases dating back decades.</p>
<p>Longstanding concerns remain about the reliability of certain forensics evidence in criminal cases across the country, as research increasingly shows that techniques such as comparisons of hair found at crime scenes, handwriting analyses, bite-mark evidence and certain ballistics tests are scientifically flawed.</p>
<p>Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said he is forming a “forensic science working group” whose top missions will be setting uniform standards for how experts testify about such evidence and creating a program to monitor the accuracy of forensic testimony. It will also conduct a broad look at the personnel and equipment needs of the nation’s overburdened crime labs, among other aims. He made the announcement during a private gathering of forensics professionals in Atlanta.</p>
<p>“We must use forensic analysis carefully, but we must continue to use it,” he said, according to prepared remarks. “We should not exclude reliable forensic analysis — or any reliable expert testimony — simply because it is based on human judgment.”</p>
<p>The working group takes the place of an Obama-era commission of independent scientists that aimed to improve the reliability of forensic science and advise the attorney general on the use of scientific evidence in the criminal justice process.</p>
<p>Attorney General Jeff Sessions allowed the National Commission on Forensic Science to expire in April, raising concerns among defense attorneys and other advocates about the future of the Justice Department’s work in that arena. They believed the commission and its array of voices offered a better chance for an independent look at questionable techniques that have long been used in American courtrooms than would an internal Justice Department committee.</p>
<p>Peter Neufeld, a former member of the national commission and a co-founder of the Innocence Project, praised the effort to set guidelines for forensic testimony but said keeping the working group within the Justice Department is misguided.</p>
<p>“What is most unfortunate is that they want to make the entire effort to improve forensic science an in-house working group, as opposed to an independent, transparent and science-driven, proactive entity,” he said. “It misses the point that forensic science is not simply about public safety, it’s about achieving justice.”</p>
<p>Rosenstein said the working group would consider the more than 250 comments and suggestions the department received in response to the commission’s disbanding.</p>
<p>The new group will be led by Ted Hunt, a longtime prosecutor from Missouri whose online biography says he has worked on more than 100 felony trials, most of which have involved DNA or other forensic evidence. He was also involved with the commission.</p>
<p>A 2015 Justice Department review of lab examiners’ testimony found errors relating to hair analysis in at least 90 percent of trial transcripts and covered a period before 2000. The FBI says it has improved its practices since the late 1990s. But following the discovery of flawed forensics, the department last year issued draft standards for examining and reporting forensic evidence in court.</p>
<p>The draft guidance covered seven forensic science disciplines, including drug and chemical analysis, body fluid testing, latent fingerprints and toxicology. And it was slated to apply to employees at the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.</p>
<p>Officials received public comment on the drafts, but the new administration halted work on them so Rosenstein could weigh in on the best course of action. A wider review that sought to determine whether other scientific disciplines have been tainted by flawed testimony was also suspended ahead of the new administration. It was not immediately clear whether that will resume.</p> | 544 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Nelson Franklin, left, and Melissa Ordway star in the film “Ghost Phone: Phone Calls from the Dead.” The director of the film is giving away five acres in Taos to one person who buys a ticket to the film.</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Jeffrey F. Jackson was on a mission to finish his film. Four years later, he’s ready to release it to the world.</p>
<p>“This has really been an incredibly long time coming,” he says. “It’s been a complicated process and we’re finally done with it.”</p>
<p>Jackson used to be involved with the defunct Taos Talking Film Festival, which gave a land grant prize to the winner of the festival.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>When the festival was running, the filmmaker with the top film was given five acres of land in Taos. Winners included Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s film school chair Chris Eyre for his film “Smoke Signals” and Gary Walkow. Walkow was the first land-grant winner and is the writer of “Ghost Phone: Phone Calls from the Dead.”</p>
<p>The film follows William Pierce, played by Nelson Franklin, who has a direct hotline to the afterworld: his dead fiancée’s cellphone. Here’s the problem – the dead only talk to him.</p>
<p>In this dark romantic comedy, Pierce straddles this world and the next, jumping through hurdles to appease those who have crossed over, in an attempt to exonerate himself from a murder charge, prove his sanity and find closure with his fiancée. Yes, she’s dead, but she’ll go to any lengths to make their relationship work, including asking Will to do the unthinkable: join her on the other side.</p>
<p>“It’s been a thrill to work on this project,” Jackson says. “We have a lot of incredible talent in the cast.”</p>
<p>Starring alongside Franklin is Melissa Ordway, Alex Kingston and Katie Lowes.</p>
<p>Franklin is currently in the CBS show, “The Millers,” while Ordway is a veteran of the soap opera “Young and the Restless.” Kingston was on “ER” for numerous seasons and Lowes is currently appearing in ABC’s “Scandal.”</p>
<p>While the movie was filmed in Los Angeles, the entire post-production process took place in Taos at Taos Land and Film Company.</p>
<p>Jackson says the entire cast has experience, yet it’s difficult to find some footing because the project is still an independent film.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>This is why Jackson has come up with a plan.</p>
<p>From left, Emile Hirsch, who plays Clyde Barrow, and Lane Garrison, who plays Buck Barrow star in the miniseries, “Bonnie &amp; Clyde.” (Courtesy of A&amp;E/Adam Taylor)</p>
<p>He’s released the film into Mitchell Theatres in northern New Mexico, Colorado and Oklahoma. The local theaters are Dreamcatcher 10 in Española, Starlight 8 in Los Lunas and Storyteller Cinema 7 in Taos. To get some people in the seats, he is going to have one lucky winner get five acres of land in Taos.</p>
<p>“This is beginning of a plan to resurrect the Taos Talking Film Festival,” he says. “We’re making the land prize the star of this show. It’s what helped the film festival become a coveted festival back in the day.”</p>
<p>Jackson says the contest is simple, buy a ticket to see “Ghost Phone” at a participating theater from Dec. 6-19 and hold on to your ticket stub. On Dec. 23, the winner will be announced.</p>
<p>“We’ve had to think outside of the box on this one and I think people will enjoy this film,” he says. “It’s important for us to give this a try and see what happens.”</p>
<p>Star-studded ‘Bonnie &amp; Clyde’ : Former Santa Fe resident Emile Hirsch is getting some big time on the TV screen today and Monday. Hirsch stars in the TV miniseries “Bonnie and Clyde,” which airs on Lifetime, A&amp;E and History channels beginning at 7 tonight and then at 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 9. Also starring with Hirsch is actor Lane Garrison, who plays Clyde’s brother, Buck Barrow. To read more on Garrison and his role in the miniseries, visit <a href="" type="internal">ABQjournal.com/reelnm</a>.</p>
<p>LANSDALE: Filmed “Christmas with the Dead”</p>
<p>Grab a book, see a movie: Author Joe R. Lansdale will be reading and signing at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13 at op.cit. books, 500 Montezuma in Santa Fe. The accomplished writer will then head to the Jean Cocteau Cinema for a screening of his film, “Christmas with the Dead.” For more on Lansdale, visit <a href="" type="internal">ABQjournal.com/reelnm</a>.</p>
<p>SEND ME YOUR TIPS: If you know of a movie filming in the state, or are curious about one, email <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>. Follow me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/agomezArt" type="external">@agomezART</a>.</p>
<p /> | ‘Ghost Phone’ moviegoers can become land owners | false | https://abqjournal.com/316163/ghost-phone-is-ticket-to-taos-land.html | 2least
| ‘Ghost Phone’ moviegoers can become land owners
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Nelson Franklin, left, and Melissa Ordway star in the film “Ghost Phone: Phone Calls from the Dead.” The director of the film is giving away five acres in Taos to one person who buys a ticket to the film.</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Jeffrey F. Jackson was on a mission to finish his film. Four years later, he’s ready to release it to the world.</p>
<p>“This has really been an incredibly long time coming,” he says. “It’s been a complicated process and we’re finally done with it.”</p>
<p>Jackson used to be involved with the defunct Taos Talking Film Festival, which gave a land grant prize to the winner of the festival.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>When the festival was running, the filmmaker with the top film was given five acres of land in Taos. Winners included Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s film school chair Chris Eyre for his film “Smoke Signals” and Gary Walkow. Walkow was the first land-grant winner and is the writer of “Ghost Phone: Phone Calls from the Dead.”</p>
<p>The film follows William Pierce, played by Nelson Franklin, who has a direct hotline to the afterworld: his dead fiancée’s cellphone. Here’s the problem – the dead only talk to him.</p>
<p>In this dark romantic comedy, Pierce straddles this world and the next, jumping through hurdles to appease those who have crossed over, in an attempt to exonerate himself from a murder charge, prove his sanity and find closure with his fiancée. Yes, she’s dead, but she’ll go to any lengths to make their relationship work, including asking Will to do the unthinkable: join her on the other side.</p>
<p>“It’s been a thrill to work on this project,” Jackson says. “We have a lot of incredible talent in the cast.”</p>
<p>Starring alongside Franklin is Melissa Ordway, Alex Kingston and Katie Lowes.</p>
<p>Franklin is currently in the CBS show, “The Millers,” while Ordway is a veteran of the soap opera “Young and the Restless.” Kingston was on “ER” for numerous seasons and Lowes is currently appearing in ABC’s “Scandal.”</p>
<p>While the movie was filmed in Los Angeles, the entire post-production process took place in Taos at Taos Land and Film Company.</p>
<p>Jackson says the entire cast has experience, yet it’s difficult to find some footing because the project is still an independent film.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>This is why Jackson has come up with a plan.</p>
<p>From left, Emile Hirsch, who plays Clyde Barrow, and Lane Garrison, who plays Buck Barrow star in the miniseries, “Bonnie &amp; Clyde.” (Courtesy of A&amp;E/Adam Taylor)</p>
<p>He’s released the film into Mitchell Theatres in northern New Mexico, Colorado and Oklahoma. The local theaters are Dreamcatcher 10 in Española, Starlight 8 in Los Lunas and Storyteller Cinema 7 in Taos. To get some people in the seats, he is going to have one lucky winner get five acres of land in Taos.</p>
<p>“This is beginning of a plan to resurrect the Taos Talking Film Festival,” he says. “We’re making the land prize the star of this show. It’s what helped the film festival become a coveted festival back in the day.”</p>
<p>Jackson says the contest is simple, buy a ticket to see “Ghost Phone” at a participating theater from Dec. 6-19 and hold on to your ticket stub. On Dec. 23, the winner will be announced.</p>
<p>“We’ve had to think outside of the box on this one and I think people will enjoy this film,” he says. “It’s important for us to give this a try and see what happens.”</p>
<p>Star-studded ‘Bonnie &amp; Clyde’ : Former Santa Fe resident Emile Hirsch is getting some big time on the TV screen today and Monday. Hirsch stars in the TV miniseries “Bonnie and Clyde,” which airs on Lifetime, A&amp;E and History channels beginning at 7 tonight and then at 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 9. Also starring with Hirsch is actor Lane Garrison, who plays Clyde’s brother, Buck Barrow. To read more on Garrison and his role in the miniseries, visit <a href="" type="internal">ABQjournal.com/reelnm</a>.</p>
<p>LANSDALE: Filmed “Christmas with the Dead”</p>
<p>Grab a book, see a movie: Author Joe R. Lansdale will be reading and signing at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13 at op.cit. books, 500 Montezuma in Santa Fe. The accomplished writer will then head to the Jean Cocteau Cinema for a screening of his film, “Christmas with the Dead.” For more on Lansdale, visit <a href="" type="internal">ABQjournal.com/reelnm</a>.</p>
<p>SEND ME YOUR TIPS: If you know of a movie filming in the state, or are curious about one, email <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>. Follow me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/agomezArt" type="external">@agomezART</a>.</p>
<p /> | 545 |
|
<p>Image from New York Times video of mourners at the Place de la Republique in Paris.</p>
<p>At the time of the attacks in Paris, FAIR’s website led with a piece by Ben Norton ( <a href="" type="internal">11/13/15</a>) about US reporting on the ISIS bombing in Beirut—noting references to the civilian neighborhood targeted by the bombing as a Hezbollah “stronghold” (MSNBC, <a href="https://twitter.com/mcurryfelidae07/status/665184002727387136" type="external">11/13/15</a>), “bastion” (Reuters, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/13/us-syria-crisis-hezbollah-blast-idUSKCN0T121P20151113" type="external">11/12/15</a>) or “area” (NPR, <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/12/455784294/more-than-30-reported-killed-in-beirut-bombing-of-hezbollah-area" type="external">11/12/15</a>). Given this framing—and the generally limited amount of coverage granted to the Lebanese victims—it’s unsurprising that the Beirut terror failed to provoke the same sorrow, horror and identification among US audiences that the Paris massacres did.</p>
<p>It feels callous to question the allocation of outrage; empathy is in such short supply in this world that one hesitates to question it when it emerges. But as a long-time citizen of New York City, I’m all too aware of the weaponization of grief. The outpouring of no-context, ahistorical sympathy after 9/11 helped pave the way for a violent reaction that killed in Iraq alone roughly <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001533" type="external">150 times as many people</a> as died in Lower Manhattan&#160; that day—an opportunistic catastrophe that did more to mock than avenge those deaths.</p>
<p>Just as the question of Al-Qaeda’s motives in 2001 provoked more self-congratulation than serious inquiry (Extra! Update, <a href="" type="internal">10/01</a>), coverage of Paris in 2015 tends to skirt over political realities. Thus the New York Times ( <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/world/europe/paris-terror-attack.html" type="external">11/13/15</a>) could report: “A stunned and confused French capital was again left to wonder: Why us? Once again?” The obvious answer was alluded to obliquely by a soccer stadium spectator: “With all the strikes in Syria, we’re not safe anymore.”</p>
<p>Readers were presumed to know this referred to the French bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria, which began in September, following aerial attacks against ISIS’s positions in Iraq that started last year (CNN, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/27/middleeast/syria-france-isis-bombing/" type="external">9/27/15</a>). Just last week, France joined in intensified strikes against ISIS-controlled oil fields in Syria (New York Times, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/us/politics/us-steps-up-its-attacks-on-isis-controlled-oil-fields-in-syria.html" type="external">11/12/15</a>). By last summer, Western airstrikes against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria had reportedly killed at least 459 civilians, including more than 100 children (Guardian, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/03/us-led-air-strikes-on-isis-targets-killed-more-than-450-civilians-report" type="external">8/3/15</a>).</p>
<p>Nor does the piece asking “why us?” mention that France has been “the most prominent backer of Syria’s armed opposition” (Guardian, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/07/france-funding-syrian-rebels" type="external">12/7/12</a>), giving funds to rebels trying to overthrow the Damascus government as early as 2012. When ISIS took advantage of the Syrian civil war to occupy large portions of the country, France doubled down by sending weapons directly to&#160; insurgents, with President François Hollande saying that “we should not stop the support that we have given to these rebels who are the only ones to take part in the democratic process” just because such support had helped the apocalyptic ISIS movement to thrive (AFP, <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20140821-france-arms-syria-rebels-hollande" type="external">8/21/14</a>).</p>
<p>Photo accompanying New York Times article about French President François Hollande describing the Paris attacks as an “act of war.”</p>
<p>None of this background was&#160; explained when the New York Times ( <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/live/paris-attacks-live-updates/french-leader-calls-attacks-an-act-of-war-and-says-isis-to-blame/" type="external">11/14/15</a>) reported Hollande’s assertion that the attacks in Paris were “an act of war,” as though France hadn’t long been making war on ISIS, and repeated without context his claim (using an Arabic acronym for ISIS) that “France, because it was foully, disgracefully and violently attacked, will be unforgiving with the barbarians from Daesh.”</p>
<p>Noting that France’s enthusiasm for military intervention in the Middle East long predated the Paris attacks puts one at risk of being mistaken for an apologist for ISIS war crimes. Indeed, one suspects that fear of such misidentification leads journalists to downplay or omit French violence in describing the context of the attacks. Such willful avoidance of history helps perpetuate the illusion that Western violence is the solution to ISIS’s terror—rather than one of its main causes.</p>
<p>Jim Naureckas is the editor of <a href="" type="internal">FAIR.org</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Context-Free Coverage of Terror Helps Perpetuate Its Causes | true | http://fair.org/home/context-free-coverage-of-terror-helps-perpetuate-its-causes/ | 2015-11-16 | 4left
| Context-Free Coverage of Terror Helps Perpetuate Its Causes
<p>Image from New York Times video of mourners at the Place de la Republique in Paris.</p>
<p>At the time of the attacks in Paris, FAIR’s website led with a piece by Ben Norton ( <a href="" type="internal">11/13/15</a>) about US reporting on the ISIS bombing in Beirut—noting references to the civilian neighborhood targeted by the bombing as a Hezbollah “stronghold” (MSNBC, <a href="https://twitter.com/mcurryfelidae07/status/665184002727387136" type="external">11/13/15</a>), “bastion” (Reuters, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/13/us-syria-crisis-hezbollah-blast-idUSKCN0T121P20151113" type="external">11/12/15</a>) or “area” (NPR, <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/12/455784294/more-than-30-reported-killed-in-beirut-bombing-of-hezbollah-area" type="external">11/12/15</a>). Given this framing—and the generally limited amount of coverage granted to the Lebanese victims—it’s unsurprising that the Beirut terror failed to provoke the same sorrow, horror and identification among US audiences that the Paris massacres did.</p>
<p>It feels callous to question the allocation of outrage; empathy is in such short supply in this world that one hesitates to question it when it emerges. But as a long-time citizen of New York City, I’m all too aware of the weaponization of grief. The outpouring of no-context, ahistorical sympathy after 9/11 helped pave the way for a violent reaction that killed in Iraq alone roughly <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001533" type="external">150 times as many people</a> as died in Lower Manhattan&#160; that day—an opportunistic catastrophe that did more to mock than avenge those deaths.</p>
<p>Just as the question of Al-Qaeda’s motives in 2001 provoked more self-congratulation than serious inquiry (Extra! Update, <a href="" type="internal">10/01</a>), coverage of Paris in 2015 tends to skirt over political realities. Thus the New York Times ( <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/world/europe/paris-terror-attack.html" type="external">11/13/15</a>) could report: “A stunned and confused French capital was again left to wonder: Why us? Once again?” The obvious answer was alluded to obliquely by a soccer stadium spectator: “With all the strikes in Syria, we’re not safe anymore.”</p>
<p>Readers were presumed to know this referred to the French bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria, which began in September, following aerial attacks against ISIS’s positions in Iraq that started last year (CNN, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/27/middleeast/syria-france-isis-bombing/" type="external">9/27/15</a>). Just last week, France joined in intensified strikes against ISIS-controlled oil fields in Syria (New York Times, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/us/politics/us-steps-up-its-attacks-on-isis-controlled-oil-fields-in-syria.html" type="external">11/12/15</a>). By last summer, Western airstrikes against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria had reportedly killed at least 459 civilians, including more than 100 children (Guardian, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/03/us-led-air-strikes-on-isis-targets-killed-more-than-450-civilians-report" type="external">8/3/15</a>).</p>
<p>Nor does the piece asking “why us?” mention that France has been “the most prominent backer of Syria’s armed opposition” (Guardian, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/07/france-funding-syrian-rebels" type="external">12/7/12</a>), giving funds to rebels trying to overthrow the Damascus government as early as 2012. When ISIS took advantage of the Syrian civil war to occupy large portions of the country, France doubled down by sending weapons directly to&#160; insurgents, with President François Hollande saying that “we should not stop the support that we have given to these rebels who are the only ones to take part in the democratic process” just because such support had helped the apocalyptic ISIS movement to thrive (AFP, <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20140821-france-arms-syria-rebels-hollande" type="external">8/21/14</a>).</p>
<p>Photo accompanying New York Times article about French President François Hollande describing the Paris attacks as an “act of war.”</p>
<p>None of this background was&#160; explained when the New York Times ( <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/live/paris-attacks-live-updates/french-leader-calls-attacks-an-act-of-war-and-says-isis-to-blame/" type="external">11/14/15</a>) reported Hollande’s assertion that the attacks in Paris were “an act of war,” as though France hadn’t long been making war on ISIS, and repeated without context his claim (using an Arabic acronym for ISIS) that “France, because it was foully, disgracefully and violently attacked, will be unforgiving with the barbarians from Daesh.”</p>
<p>Noting that France’s enthusiasm for military intervention in the Middle East long predated the Paris attacks puts one at risk of being mistaken for an apologist for ISIS war crimes. Indeed, one suspects that fear of such misidentification leads journalists to downplay or omit French violence in describing the context of the attacks. Such willful avoidance of history helps perpetuate the illusion that Western violence is the solution to ISIS’s terror—rather than one of its main causes.</p>
<p>Jim Naureckas is the editor of <a href="" type="internal">FAIR.org</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 546 |
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<p />
<p>So, how’s it going for you? Women often set resolutions in the New Year, but by the end of January realize they’ve been too hard on themselves. They find it difficult to live up to their list and give up.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>If that’s happening to you, try something different. Inauguration means to start, to commence, to kick off … so be kind and gentle to yourself and begin again!</p>
<p>Instead of trying to live up to a list of resolutions, set an intention, a theme for the year. And let that guide you.</p>
<p>This kind of thinking can motivate you to accomplish your heart’s desire, but allows you to feel free and flexible. I encourage my clients to do this and I see great results. So, if you haven’t set resolutions or find your list overwhelming, try your own personal inauguration!</p>
<p>Find some time to get quiet, surround yourself with things of beauty and tune into your inner guidance. Then, think about this past year…what worked? What surprised you? What didn’t work and needs changing? It’s amazing what these three questions will reveal.</p>
<p>Next, think about the feeling and intention you want to create in 2013. Keep it simple, but authentic. I’ve had clients come up with words or phrases like “explorer,” “risk-taker,” “healthy living,” “writing my truth,” “listen to the music of life,” “stand tall” and “prosperity.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Let it come to you naturally…let your inner voice set your intention for this year. Then, write this down. Add beautiful and motivating pictures to express the words. Post it. Look at it throughout the year. Find music that communicates your theme and put it at the top of your playlist. And because inaugurations are associated with ceremony – celebrate in some personal way!</p>
<p>As the year moves along, your goals will change and your tactics may vary. But, your intention, your theme will remain the same. This word or phrase will guide you when you need to make a choice. It will help you maintain momentum. And, it will help you express your authentic self.</p>
<p>Try it. Look within to find your focus. And let your intentions be your guide.</p>
<p>Joy Silha is a Martha Beck-certified coach who assists in life and career development, and offers leadership coaching programs with horses. Find her at <a href="http://awakenyourinnercowgirl.com" type="external">awakenyourinnercowgirl.com</a>.</p>
<p>Joy would love to take your questions. Comment below or send her an email at [email protected].</p> | Begin Again? Advice from life coach Joy Silha | false | https://abqjournal.com/510843/begin-again-advice-from-life-coach-joy-silha.html | 2least
| Begin Again? Advice from life coach Joy Silha
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>So, how’s it going for you? Women often set resolutions in the New Year, but by the end of January realize they’ve been too hard on themselves. They find it difficult to live up to their list and give up.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>If that’s happening to you, try something different. Inauguration means to start, to commence, to kick off … so be kind and gentle to yourself and begin again!</p>
<p>Instead of trying to live up to a list of resolutions, set an intention, a theme for the year. And let that guide you.</p>
<p>This kind of thinking can motivate you to accomplish your heart’s desire, but allows you to feel free and flexible. I encourage my clients to do this and I see great results. So, if you haven’t set resolutions or find your list overwhelming, try your own personal inauguration!</p>
<p>Find some time to get quiet, surround yourself with things of beauty and tune into your inner guidance. Then, think about this past year…what worked? What surprised you? What didn’t work and needs changing? It’s amazing what these three questions will reveal.</p>
<p>Next, think about the feeling and intention you want to create in 2013. Keep it simple, but authentic. I’ve had clients come up with words or phrases like “explorer,” “risk-taker,” “healthy living,” “writing my truth,” “listen to the music of life,” “stand tall” and “prosperity.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Let it come to you naturally…let your inner voice set your intention for this year. Then, write this down. Add beautiful and motivating pictures to express the words. Post it. Look at it throughout the year. Find music that communicates your theme and put it at the top of your playlist. And because inaugurations are associated with ceremony – celebrate in some personal way!</p>
<p>As the year moves along, your goals will change and your tactics may vary. But, your intention, your theme will remain the same. This word or phrase will guide you when you need to make a choice. It will help you maintain momentum. And, it will help you express your authentic self.</p>
<p>Try it. Look within to find your focus. And let your intentions be your guide.</p>
<p>Joy Silha is a Martha Beck-certified coach who assists in life and career development, and offers leadership coaching programs with horses. Find her at <a href="http://awakenyourinnercowgirl.com" type="external">awakenyourinnercowgirl.com</a>.</p>
<p>Joy would love to take your questions. Comment below or send her an email at [email protected].</p> | 547 |
|
<p />
<p>Americans spend a colossal amount of money betting on the lottery, even when the chances of winning have always been near-impossible. In fact last year alone, lottery sales raked in a massive total of $68 billion, according to the latest <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA&amp;list=PLmKbqjSZR8TZa7wyVoVq2XMHxxWREyiFc" type="external">Last Week Tonight</a>.</p>
<p>“That’s more than Americans spent last year on movie tickets, music, porn, the NFL, Major League Baseball, and video games combined,” John Oliver explained. “Which means Americans basically spent more on the lottery than they spent on America.”</p>
<p>It becomes even more bizarre when you understand it’s our states governments profiting from the giant business, which targets lower-income families who have historically spent more on <a href="" type="internal">tickets than the wealthy.</a></p>
<p>One of the frighteningly successful ways governments accomplish this is by creating ads that essentially mask the lottery as some kind of mutual fund or “charitable investment.” Watch below:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | Watch John Oliver Explain How the Government Seduces Americans to Spend Huge on the Lottery | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2014/11/john-oliver-lottery-government/ | 2014-11-10 | 4left
| Watch John Oliver Explain How the Government Seduces Americans to Spend Huge on the Lottery
<p />
<p>Americans spend a colossal amount of money betting on the lottery, even when the chances of winning have always been near-impossible. In fact last year alone, lottery sales raked in a massive total of $68 billion, according to the latest <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA&amp;list=PLmKbqjSZR8TZa7wyVoVq2XMHxxWREyiFc" type="external">Last Week Tonight</a>.</p>
<p>“That’s more than Americans spent last year on movie tickets, music, porn, the NFL, Major League Baseball, and video games combined,” John Oliver explained. “Which means Americans basically spent more on the lottery than they spent on America.”</p>
<p>It becomes even more bizarre when you understand it’s our states governments profiting from the giant business, which targets lower-income families who have historically spent more on <a href="" type="internal">tickets than the wealthy.</a></p>
<p>One of the frighteningly successful ways governments accomplish this is by creating ads that essentially mask the lottery as some kind of mutual fund or “charitable investment.” Watch below:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | 548 |
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<p />
<p>The award-winning writer and cookbook editor, who was a judge for two seasons on Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters,” promised in his last New York Times Magazine column this weekend that a “dream project” was afoot, and now we know what he was referring to.</p>
<p>“My highest calling as a writer is to talk to people,” Lam said in an interview with The Washington Post. He said he most values being entrusted with people’s stories to share, and, “I feel like this is such a direct way to that.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Lam has been a contributor and guest host on “The Splendid Table” since 2010. His first show in his permanent role airs March 10, though he will continue to split hosting duties with Kasper through the end of the year. The program airs on more than 400 public radio stations, as well as streaming online and through podcast apps.</p>
<p>Sally Swift, the program’s co-creator and managing producer, said Kasper’s transition away from the show has been in the works for a number of years. “She’s really retiring,” Swift said. “People need to stop working. We just don’t think about that.”</p>
<p>In a statement, Rossetto Kasper said, “The tough part of knowing you want to launch a new life is figuring out the ideal person to take over your chair. In the first five minutes of talking with Francis, I was a fan.”</p>
<p>Swift said the decision to bring Lam on full-time was “unanimous.” “We all weighed in, and we all agreed,” she said. Lam “loves to talk to people and he’s quite curious,”two characteristics he shares with Kasper, Swift said.</p>
<p>Lam, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, is well known for his writing about immigrant cooking, both of his family and others. Immigrant stories are “definitely very important to me,” but the bigger message that Lam says he hopes to convey in his new job is that everyone has a unique story worth sharing, with commonalities that can help bring people together.</p>
<p>Swift said she expects some elements of “The Splendid Table” to stay the same, but “I would hope that there would be changes.”</p>
<p>For his part, “I don’t have any specific plans or format changes that we’re trying to announce,” Lam said. “I feel honored to be asked to fill the role that Lynne started and has performed so wonderfully for well over 20 years.”</p>
<p>“What we’re going to do with it is going to be an evolution,” he said. “It will all be very organic.”</p>
<p>Lam expects to carry on the program’s time-honored mix of how to’s, insight into various cultures and cuisines and an examination of what food in our society means, especially as it moves closer to the center of contemporary pop culture. He said it was hard to imagine two decades ago what an entire hour-long food program would be about, but now the topic is front and center.</p>
<p>“Food touches everything that we want to talk about,” he said. “Food touches every issue in our culture.”</p> | ‘The Splendid Table’ radio show announces a new host: Francis Lam | false | https://abqjournal.com/944636/the-splendid-table-radio-show-announces-a-new-host-francis-lam.html | 2017-02-07 | 2least
| ‘The Splendid Table’ radio show announces a new host: Francis Lam
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The award-winning writer and cookbook editor, who was a judge for two seasons on Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters,” promised in his last New York Times Magazine column this weekend that a “dream project” was afoot, and now we know what he was referring to.</p>
<p>“My highest calling as a writer is to talk to people,” Lam said in an interview with The Washington Post. He said he most values being entrusted with people’s stories to share, and, “I feel like this is such a direct way to that.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Lam has been a contributor and guest host on “The Splendid Table” since 2010. His first show in his permanent role airs March 10, though he will continue to split hosting duties with Kasper through the end of the year. The program airs on more than 400 public radio stations, as well as streaming online and through podcast apps.</p>
<p>Sally Swift, the program’s co-creator and managing producer, said Kasper’s transition away from the show has been in the works for a number of years. “She’s really retiring,” Swift said. “People need to stop working. We just don’t think about that.”</p>
<p>In a statement, Rossetto Kasper said, “The tough part of knowing you want to launch a new life is figuring out the ideal person to take over your chair. In the first five minutes of talking with Francis, I was a fan.”</p>
<p>Swift said the decision to bring Lam on full-time was “unanimous.” “We all weighed in, and we all agreed,” she said. Lam “loves to talk to people and he’s quite curious,”two characteristics he shares with Kasper, Swift said.</p>
<p>Lam, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, is well known for his writing about immigrant cooking, both of his family and others. Immigrant stories are “definitely very important to me,” but the bigger message that Lam says he hopes to convey in his new job is that everyone has a unique story worth sharing, with commonalities that can help bring people together.</p>
<p>Swift said she expects some elements of “The Splendid Table” to stay the same, but “I would hope that there would be changes.”</p>
<p>For his part, “I don’t have any specific plans or format changes that we’re trying to announce,” Lam said. “I feel honored to be asked to fill the role that Lynne started and has performed so wonderfully for well over 20 years.”</p>
<p>“What we’re going to do with it is going to be an evolution,” he said. “It will all be very organic.”</p>
<p>Lam expects to carry on the program’s time-honored mix of how to’s, insight into various cultures and cuisines and an examination of what food in our society means, especially as it moves closer to the center of contemporary pop culture. He said it was hard to imagine two decades ago what an entire hour-long food program would be about, but now the topic is front and center.</p>
<p>“Food touches everything that we want to talk about,” he said. “Food touches every issue in our culture.”</p> | 549 |
<p>Oil futures extended Tuesday's decline in early Asian trading Wednesday amid a broader risk-off move in markets as tensions between the U.S. and North Korea build anew.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, crude is also facing concerns that global supplies aren't falling as much as hoped.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A major worry is US crude inventories, which have steadily dropped from record highs the past few months, could be about to start rising again with the summer driving season coming to an end, said Vivek Dhar, a commodities strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.</p>
<p>While the American Petroleum Institute industry group late Tuesday said U.S. commercial crude supplies fell 7.8 million barrels last week by its count, gasoline stockpiles rose. If confirmed by the official Energy Information Administration data released later Wednesday, it would mean a 6th-straight weekly drop in U.S. oil inventories.</p>
<p>On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in September was recently down 0.4% at $48.97 a barrel in the Globex electronic session. October Brent crude on London's ICE Futures eased 0.5% to $51.87.</p>
<p>Refined products were seeing bigger declines. Nymex September diesel was recently down 0.8% at $1.6169 a gallon, reformulated gasoline blendstock slid 1.2% to $1.6007 and August ICE gasoil was off 1% at $478.50 per metric ton.</p>
<p>Beyond the API data, also weighing on the market is broader selling in risk assets as the U.S. and North Korea have ratcheted up their war of words in recent hours--pressuring assets like stock but boosting gold prices.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>That adds to pressure from this year's faster-than-expected acceleration in U.S. oil production--which has been a challenge for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Together with a handful of non-cartel producers, the non-US suppliers have been sidelining some output since January, with mixed effect.</p>
<p>OPEC this week reiterated the pact will remain in force until March while some who haven't fully complied to their production caps as yet reiterated their support and commitment to the 24-nation accord. But the question remains whether OPEC's cuts are helping U.S. shale producers. Some market watchers say given the increasing efficiency among those players, price advantages caused by the output caps have emboldened U.S. producers to boost production.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Tuesday reports "suggesting Saudi Arabia was supplying lower volumes of crude than requested to its Asian customers did little to appease these concerns," said ANZ Research.</p>
<p>But the EIA has also noted that the increase in active oil rigs last month was the lease since the government started its own count in June 2016. Furthermore, some U.S. exploration and production companies recently announced less investment spending for the rest of 2017, "suggesting the current rate of U.S. oil production growth could slow," the agency added.</p>
<p>Write to Jenny W. Hsu at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 08, 2017 22:13 ET (02:13 GMT)</p> | Oil, Products Fall Amid Supply, Geopolitical Worries | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/08/oil-products-fall-amid-supply-geopolitical-worries.html | 2017-08-08 | 0right
| Oil, Products Fall Amid Supply, Geopolitical Worries
<p>Oil futures extended Tuesday's decline in early Asian trading Wednesday amid a broader risk-off move in markets as tensions between the U.S. and North Korea build anew.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, crude is also facing concerns that global supplies aren't falling as much as hoped.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A major worry is US crude inventories, which have steadily dropped from record highs the past few months, could be about to start rising again with the summer driving season coming to an end, said Vivek Dhar, a commodities strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.</p>
<p>While the American Petroleum Institute industry group late Tuesday said U.S. commercial crude supplies fell 7.8 million barrels last week by its count, gasoline stockpiles rose. If confirmed by the official Energy Information Administration data released later Wednesday, it would mean a 6th-straight weekly drop in U.S. oil inventories.</p>
<p>On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in September was recently down 0.4% at $48.97 a barrel in the Globex electronic session. October Brent crude on London's ICE Futures eased 0.5% to $51.87.</p>
<p>Refined products were seeing bigger declines. Nymex September diesel was recently down 0.8% at $1.6169 a gallon, reformulated gasoline blendstock slid 1.2% to $1.6007 and August ICE gasoil was off 1% at $478.50 per metric ton.</p>
<p>Beyond the API data, also weighing on the market is broader selling in risk assets as the U.S. and North Korea have ratcheted up their war of words in recent hours--pressuring assets like stock but boosting gold prices.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>That adds to pressure from this year's faster-than-expected acceleration in U.S. oil production--which has been a challenge for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Together with a handful of non-cartel producers, the non-US suppliers have been sidelining some output since January, with mixed effect.</p>
<p>OPEC this week reiterated the pact will remain in force until March while some who haven't fully complied to their production caps as yet reiterated their support and commitment to the 24-nation accord. But the question remains whether OPEC's cuts are helping U.S. shale producers. Some market watchers say given the increasing efficiency among those players, price advantages caused by the output caps have emboldened U.S. producers to boost production.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Tuesday reports "suggesting Saudi Arabia was supplying lower volumes of crude than requested to its Asian customers did little to appease these concerns," said ANZ Research.</p>
<p>But the EIA has also noted that the increase in active oil rigs last month was the lease since the government started its own count in June 2016. Furthermore, some U.S. exploration and production companies recently announced less investment spending for the rest of 2017, "suggesting the current rate of U.S. oil production growth could slow," the agency added.</p>
<p>Write to Jenny W. Hsu at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 08, 2017 22:13 ET (02:13 GMT)</p> | 550 |
<p>“The media has become the opposition to Trump,” said Ken Kurson, former editor of the New York Observer.</p>
<p>The Democrats have become like totally irrelevant,” added Kurson, describing left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlets as having usurped the Democrat Party’s role as opposition to the Trump administration.</p>
<p>Kurson made his comments during a Sunday-aired discussion panel on CNN’s <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1707/16/rs.01.html" type="external">Reliable Sources</a> with Brian Stelter.</p>
<p>"A lot of journalists are against lying, against deceit," alleged Stelter, framing CNN and similarly left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlets as politically balanced, non-partisan, and operating in good faith.</p>
<p>Watch Kurson's exchange with Stelter below.</p>
<p>Partial transcript below (emphases added).</p>
<p>STELTER: Ken, do you agree or disagree? The White House briefings, are they a waste of time?</p>
<p>KURSON: I think they are a waste of time because they're so canned.</p>
<p>I think that it's — the reporters come — I really believe that ...</p>
<p>STELTER: Do you think that is the fault of the Trump White House? If they're not answering questions, that's not the reporters' fault.</p>
<p>KURSON: Right. So, the idea here is that the media has become the opposition to Trump.</p>
<p>I mean, they're — just listening to intro to this show ...</p>
<p>STELTER: That's your idea.</p>
<p>KURSON: Just listening to the intro to this show, listening to Fareed's show before it, it's that — it's no longer that the Republicans' point of view holds forth and the Democrats hold them accountable, and the media covers it.</p>
<p>It's that the president and the White House put forth their point of view, the media argues with them, and the Democrats have become like totally irrelevant to the discussion. It's a stunning thing to watch unfold during this presidency. And I don't know if ...</p>
<p>(CROSSTALK)</p>
<p>STELTER: It's about the irrelevancy of the Democratic Party?</p>
<p>KURSON: Totally, the way that the press has assigned itself the chore of undoing the results of this election, which they simply don't accept.</p>
<p>STELTER: Who do you think has assigned themselves that?</p>
<p>There's not some secret cabal of people in the journalism world.</p>
<p>KURSON: Did you read "The New York Times" editorial page at all this week? Do you see even David Brooks, the faux conservative they've got in there, says, I brought somebody without a high school — with only a high school diploma to work, and, insensitively, she couldn't pronounce the sandwiches.</p>
<p>(CROSSTALK)</p>
<p>STELTER: It was a stupid column. What does that have to do with the president's lies and misstatements?</p>
<p>KURSON: OK. Gail Collins — Gail Collins says, let's rate how bad all of the president's children are.</p>
<p>One of the president's children is 11. These are the people we're rating for how bad they are? It is a ludicrous thing.</p>
<p>STELTER: These are people paid to have opinions, just like Eric Bolling or someone at FOX.</p>
<p>KURSON: You're talking about a newspaper that holds itself out as the most dignified place for American thought in journalism today.</p>
<p>And this is what they put forth. It's unprecedented. Whether you agree with it or disagree with the point of view, I'm saying that there's something in the air right now that makes these personal attacks, these relentless, ongoing attacks palatable to the American people.</p>
<p>And I think the shame of it is, we no longer have even a two-party system, which many think is too few. We have a one-party system, and the media is the other party.</p>
<p>STELTER: You're talking about editorial people, though, people that write opinion columnists for a living. "The New York Times"' reporting staff has been breaking stories left and right, holding Trump accountable. You think that's the opposition?</p>
<p>KURSON: I think that they've been breaking stories like crazy, "The Washington Post" as well.</p>
<p>STELTER: Yes.</p>
<p>KURSON: And "The Wall Street Journal" got into the mix in a big way a couple weeks ago with some important stories.</p>
<p>And I think that's a critical function of journalism. But I think that the way — you know, during these breaks, when I watch you go on Twitter ...</p>
<p>STELTER: Yes.</p>
<p>KURSON: ... the way journalists reward each other for stabbing and needling, there's a new system of reward that is out there for journalists that has very little to do with policy and very little to do with advancing this country.</p>
<p>STELTER: When the president says things that are untrue, should we sit here and ignore it?</p>
<p>KURSON: No. You should report it. You should hold him accountable.</p>
<p>STELTER: Then ...</p>
<p>(LAUGHTER)</p>
<p>STELTER: ... where do you go from that to the media is the opposition?</p>
<p>KURSON: Because when I look at the tone and the way these attacks are launched — and I cited a couple examples for you — and or the way that whenever there's need for the appearance of balance, NPR will hire some conservative who hates the president, or "The New York Times" will go get Bret Stephens, whose main contribution is that he hates the president.</p>
<p>Whenever there's a need for the appearance of fairness, there's no real effort to — you know, where are the pro-Trump journalists in the mainstream media? They don't exist, because the entire mainstream media is against Trump. And that is, I think, is not just bad for American policy. I think it's bad for journalism.</p>
<p>STELTER: I think a lot of journalists are against lying, against deceit. That's where we are right now.</p>
<p>KURSON: I'm against lying, against deceit. I think that the function of the journalists the hold the administration accountable is a critical function enshrined in the — in our Bill of Rights.</p>
<p>But when you have a system where the most outrageous attack is what is rewarded with likes on Facebook and followings on Twitter, you are setting yourself up.</p>
<p>STELTER: Those are opinion columns.</p>
<p>KURSON: No, it's not just opinion columns.</p>
<p>STELTER: They're opinion columns.</p>
<p>KURSON: It is reporters.</p>
<p>STELTER: OK.</p>
<p>KURSON: And they audition for each other and they audition for popularity.</p>
<p>Rush Limbaugh recently described the Democrat Party as an extension of the left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media, as opposed to framing news media outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post as arms of the Democrat Party.</p>
<p>Despite his role as CNN’s premier news media reporter, Stelter regularly denies the existence of widespread left-wing and partisan Democrat biases across the news media landscape, including at CNN. He presents himself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media figure. CNN describes itself as “The Most Trusted Name In News” in presenting itself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media outlet.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | Kurson: Media Runs The Democrats | true | https://dailywire.com/news/18636/kurson-media-runs-democrats-robert-kraychik | 2017-07-16 | 0right
| Kurson: Media Runs The Democrats
<p>“The media has become the opposition to Trump,” said Ken Kurson, former editor of the New York Observer.</p>
<p>The Democrats have become like totally irrelevant,” added Kurson, describing left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlets as having usurped the Democrat Party’s role as opposition to the Trump administration.</p>
<p>Kurson made his comments during a Sunday-aired discussion panel on CNN’s <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1707/16/rs.01.html" type="external">Reliable Sources</a> with Brian Stelter.</p>
<p>"A lot of journalists are against lying, against deceit," alleged Stelter, framing CNN and similarly left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlets as politically balanced, non-partisan, and operating in good faith.</p>
<p>Watch Kurson's exchange with Stelter below.</p>
<p>Partial transcript below (emphases added).</p>
<p>STELTER: Ken, do you agree or disagree? The White House briefings, are they a waste of time?</p>
<p>KURSON: I think they are a waste of time because they're so canned.</p>
<p>I think that it's — the reporters come — I really believe that ...</p>
<p>STELTER: Do you think that is the fault of the Trump White House? If they're not answering questions, that's not the reporters' fault.</p>
<p>KURSON: Right. So, the idea here is that the media has become the opposition to Trump.</p>
<p>I mean, they're — just listening to intro to this show ...</p>
<p>STELTER: That's your idea.</p>
<p>KURSON: Just listening to the intro to this show, listening to Fareed's show before it, it's that — it's no longer that the Republicans' point of view holds forth and the Democrats hold them accountable, and the media covers it.</p>
<p>It's that the president and the White House put forth their point of view, the media argues with them, and the Democrats have become like totally irrelevant to the discussion. It's a stunning thing to watch unfold during this presidency. And I don't know if ...</p>
<p>(CROSSTALK)</p>
<p>STELTER: It's about the irrelevancy of the Democratic Party?</p>
<p>KURSON: Totally, the way that the press has assigned itself the chore of undoing the results of this election, which they simply don't accept.</p>
<p>STELTER: Who do you think has assigned themselves that?</p>
<p>There's not some secret cabal of people in the journalism world.</p>
<p>KURSON: Did you read "The New York Times" editorial page at all this week? Do you see even David Brooks, the faux conservative they've got in there, says, I brought somebody without a high school — with only a high school diploma to work, and, insensitively, she couldn't pronounce the sandwiches.</p>
<p>(CROSSTALK)</p>
<p>STELTER: It was a stupid column. What does that have to do with the president's lies and misstatements?</p>
<p>KURSON: OK. Gail Collins — Gail Collins says, let's rate how bad all of the president's children are.</p>
<p>One of the president's children is 11. These are the people we're rating for how bad they are? It is a ludicrous thing.</p>
<p>STELTER: These are people paid to have opinions, just like Eric Bolling or someone at FOX.</p>
<p>KURSON: You're talking about a newspaper that holds itself out as the most dignified place for American thought in journalism today.</p>
<p>And this is what they put forth. It's unprecedented. Whether you agree with it or disagree with the point of view, I'm saying that there's something in the air right now that makes these personal attacks, these relentless, ongoing attacks palatable to the American people.</p>
<p>And I think the shame of it is, we no longer have even a two-party system, which many think is too few. We have a one-party system, and the media is the other party.</p>
<p>STELTER: You're talking about editorial people, though, people that write opinion columnists for a living. "The New York Times"' reporting staff has been breaking stories left and right, holding Trump accountable. You think that's the opposition?</p>
<p>KURSON: I think that they've been breaking stories like crazy, "The Washington Post" as well.</p>
<p>STELTER: Yes.</p>
<p>KURSON: And "The Wall Street Journal" got into the mix in a big way a couple weeks ago with some important stories.</p>
<p>And I think that's a critical function of journalism. But I think that the way — you know, during these breaks, when I watch you go on Twitter ...</p>
<p>STELTER: Yes.</p>
<p>KURSON: ... the way journalists reward each other for stabbing and needling, there's a new system of reward that is out there for journalists that has very little to do with policy and very little to do with advancing this country.</p>
<p>STELTER: When the president says things that are untrue, should we sit here and ignore it?</p>
<p>KURSON: No. You should report it. You should hold him accountable.</p>
<p>STELTER: Then ...</p>
<p>(LAUGHTER)</p>
<p>STELTER: ... where do you go from that to the media is the opposition?</p>
<p>KURSON: Because when I look at the tone and the way these attacks are launched — and I cited a couple examples for you — and or the way that whenever there's need for the appearance of balance, NPR will hire some conservative who hates the president, or "The New York Times" will go get Bret Stephens, whose main contribution is that he hates the president.</p>
<p>Whenever there's a need for the appearance of fairness, there's no real effort to — you know, where are the pro-Trump journalists in the mainstream media? They don't exist, because the entire mainstream media is against Trump. And that is, I think, is not just bad for American policy. I think it's bad for journalism.</p>
<p>STELTER: I think a lot of journalists are against lying, against deceit. That's where we are right now.</p>
<p>KURSON: I'm against lying, against deceit. I think that the function of the journalists the hold the administration accountable is a critical function enshrined in the — in our Bill of Rights.</p>
<p>But when you have a system where the most outrageous attack is what is rewarded with likes on Facebook and followings on Twitter, you are setting yourself up.</p>
<p>STELTER: Those are opinion columns.</p>
<p>KURSON: No, it's not just opinion columns.</p>
<p>STELTER: They're opinion columns.</p>
<p>KURSON: It is reporters.</p>
<p>STELTER: OK.</p>
<p>KURSON: And they audition for each other and they audition for popularity.</p>
<p>Rush Limbaugh recently described the Democrat Party as an extension of the left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media, as opposed to framing news media outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post as arms of the Democrat Party.</p>
<p>Despite his role as CNN’s premier news media reporter, Stelter regularly denies the existence of widespread left-wing and partisan Democrat biases across the news media landscape, including at CNN. He presents himself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media figure. CNN describes itself as “The Most Trusted Name In News” in presenting itself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media outlet.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | 551 |
<p>This story was originally covered by PRI's Here and Now. For more, listen to the audio above.</p>
<p>The real price of wheat has steadily declined over the past 100 years or so. In 2005, however, the price of wheat started going up. Way up. The price doubled for kind of wheat called hard red spring, which is used to make much of the world's bread. Then it doubled again. Eventually, the price of food got so high that food riots broke out in 30 countries. Some 49 million Americans weren't getting enough to eat and 1 in 5 children were going to soup kitchens for meals.</p>
<p>The reason why people couldn't get enough to eat can be traced back to decisions made by banks like Goldman Sachs, reporter Frederick Kaufman told PRI's Here and Now. In a "bizarre, strange and subversive" financial move, which <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2010/07/0083022" type="external">Kaufman detailed in Harper's magazine</a>, Goldman Sachs did their best to divorce wheat from the actual product and turn it into a virtual investment.</p>
<p>In 1991, the bank created the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index for trading commodities like wheat, corn, oil, metals and livestock. According to Kaufman, this index allowed them to treat "these commodities, not like what they were – in other words, real things which real people uses for in order to feed people – but just looking at it as pure, mathematical formulation of money."</p>
<p>As money started pouring into the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index, other banks like JP Morgan started creating their own equivalent indexes. Speculators, who once played a key roll in keeping the price of wheat stable, started to artificially raise the price of the commodity. Kaufman reports, "They completely forgot that what they were messing with was real."</p>
<p>The irony was that the wheat crop in 2008 was "the greatest the world has ever seen," according to Kaufman, and the prices should have been low. But the speculators were busy driving up the price on the market.</p>
<p>"Real wheat had been completely divorced from virtual wheat," Kaufman reports. "And Goldman and the bankers were making unbelievable sums of money on virtual wheat, while actual people could not afford the real wheat."</p>
<p>Goldman Sachs has responded directly to Kaufman, <a href="http://www2.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/on-the-issues/viewpoint/viewpoint-articles/letter-harpers.html" type="external">denying all charges</a> and writing, "the author spun a tale that had scant regard for reality." The bank also accuses the magazine of exploiting the plight of millions of people "as a pretext to launch unsubstantiated attacks against the financial industry."</p>
<p>Rather than cracking down on speculators, Kaufman suggests that the United States should set up a grain reserve that could regulate prices more effectively. That way, the government could release more grain when prices get too high. Unfortunately, according to Kaufman, there has been tremendous resistance to this idea, mostly in the name of free market fundamentalism.</p>
<p>Without some control over the market, Kaufman believes we may continue to see huge spikes in the price of food. People may soon find themselves paying $20 for a pound of hamburger meat, while bankers continue to get rich.</p>
<p>"Here and Now" is an essential midday news magazine for those who want the latest news and expanded conversation on today's hot-button topics: public affairs, foreign policy, science and technology, the arts and more. <a href="http://www.hereandnow.org/" type="external">More "Here and Now"</a></p> | Did Wall Street get rich while starving poor people? | false | https://pri.org/stories/2010-07-13/did-wall-street-get-rich-while-starving-poor-people | 2010-07-13 | 3left-center
| Did Wall Street get rich while starving poor people?
<p>This story was originally covered by PRI's Here and Now. For more, listen to the audio above.</p>
<p>The real price of wheat has steadily declined over the past 100 years or so. In 2005, however, the price of wheat started going up. Way up. The price doubled for kind of wheat called hard red spring, which is used to make much of the world's bread. Then it doubled again. Eventually, the price of food got so high that food riots broke out in 30 countries. Some 49 million Americans weren't getting enough to eat and 1 in 5 children were going to soup kitchens for meals.</p>
<p>The reason why people couldn't get enough to eat can be traced back to decisions made by banks like Goldman Sachs, reporter Frederick Kaufman told PRI's Here and Now. In a "bizarre, strange and subversive" financial move, which <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2010/07/0083022" type="external">Kaufman detailed in Harper's magazine</a>, Goldman Sachs did their best to divorce wheat from the actual product and turn it into a virtual investment.</p>
<p>In 1991, the bank created the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index for trading commodities like wheat, corn, oil, metals and livestock. According to Kaufman, this index allowed them to treat "these commodities, not like what they were – in other words, real things which real people uses for in order to feed people – but just looking at it as pure, mathematical formulation of money."</p>
<p>As money started pouring into the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index, other banks like JP Morgan started creating their own equivalent indexes. Speculators, who once played a key roll in keeping the price of wheat stable, started to artificially raise the price of the commodity. Kaufman reports, "They completely forgot that what they were messing with was real."</p>
<p>The irony was that the wheat crop in 2008 was "the greatest the world has ever seen," according to Kaufman, and the prices should have been low. But the speculators were busy driving up the price on the market.</p>
<p>"Real wheat had been completely divorced from virtual wheat," Kaufman reports. "And Goldman and the bankers were making unbelievable sums of money on virtual wheat, while actual people could not afford the real wheat."</p>
<p>Goldman Sachs has responded directly to Kaufman, <a href="http://www2.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/on-the-issues/viewpoint/viewpoint-articles/letter-harpers.html" type="external">denying all charges</a> and writing, "the author spun a tale that had scant regard for reality." The bank also accuses the magazine of exploiting the plight of millions of people "as a pretext to launch unsubstantiated attacks against the financial industry."</p>
<p>Rather than cracking down on speculators, Kaufman suggests that the United States should set up a grain reserve that could regulate prices more effectively. That way, the government could release more grain when prices get too high. Unfortunately, according to Kaufman, there has been tremendous resistance to this idea, mostly in the name of free market fundamentalism.</p>
<p>Without some control over the market, Kaufman believes we may continue to see huge spikes in the price of food. People may soon find themselves paying $20 for a pound of hamburger meat, while bankers continue to get rich.</p>
<p>"Here and Now" is an essential midday news magazine for those who want the latest news and expanded conversation on today's hot-button topics: public affairs, foreign policy, science and technology, the arts and more. <a href="http://www.hereandnow.org/" type="external">More "Here and Now"</a></p> | 552 |
<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-commitment-reducing-violent-crime-stemming-illegal-immigration" type="external">statement</a> released on 3 August. “The PSP program was announced in June and is a training and technical assistance program designed to enhance the capacity of local jurisdictions to address violent crime in their communities,” the statement said. The statement named the following four
<a href="https://cis.org/Map-Sanctuary-Cities-Counties-and-States" type="external">cities</a> who expressed interest in the PSP program, noting that letters were sent to each city stating that they would be required to answer questions aimed at determining whether they were “sanctuary cities” before eligibility for participating int he PSP could be determined: Albuquerque, New Mexico Baltimore, Maryland San Bernardino, California Stockton, California
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/25/politics/sanctuary-cities-explained/index.html" type="external">CNN Politics</a> defines “sanctuary cities” as “
<a href="https://cis.org/Map-Sanctuary-Cities-Counties-and-States" type="external">jurisdictions</a> that have policies in place designed to limit cooperation with or involvement in federal immigration enforcement actions. Cities, counties and some states have a range of informal policies as well as actual laws that qualify as ‘sanctuary’ positions.” The PSP program began in June in 12 locations, and the DOJ may expand the training and assistance program to other jurisdictions within the year, according to Sessions’ statement. The
<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-sessions-announces-creation-national-public-safety-partnership-combat" type="external">original 12 locations</a> included: Birmingham, Alabama; Indianapolis, Indiana; Memphis, Tennessee; Toledo, Ohio; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Buffalo, New York; Cincinnati, Ohio; Houston, Texas; Jackson, Tennessee; Kansas City, Missouri; Lansing, Michigan; Springfield, Illinois The
<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/986411/download" type="external">letters</a> sent to the four new cities that expressed interested in joining the PSP program contained the following language pertaining to selection for participation: Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry denied that Albuquerque is a “sanctuary city,” and said that the city has been trying to cooperate with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since he took office in 2009, despite a decrease in ICE staffing levels, according to
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/justice-dept-threatens-anti-crime-aid-sanctuary-cities-49009382" type="external">ABC News</a>. “If your agency has questions or concerns with our (Bernalillo) County jails, I would refer you to their leadership,” Berry reportedly wrote in a reply letter to Sessions. Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said in a statement
<a href="https://twitter.com/BaltimorePolice/status/893184970386280448" type="external">tweeted</a> on 3 August:
<a href="https://www.aclu-nm.org/en/press-releases/aclu-new-mexico-condemns-jeff-sessions-bullying-tactics" type="external">Peter Simonson</a>, executive director of New Mexico’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), office said on 3 August: Stockton Police Chief Eric Jones told
<a href="http://www.abc10.com/news/local/stockton-police-chief-reacts-to-department-of-justice-letter-regarding-crime-fighting-program/461782249" type="external">ABC News</a> that he continues to stand by his department’s decision not to “stop, detain or question anyone based solely on actual or suspected immigration status,” with exceptions, but that the questions in the letter do not pertain to his role in immigration enforcement. Jones added: Jones said he hopes to participate in the PSP program will answer the questions in the letter. San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said that San Bernardino “is not a sanctuary city” in a
<a href="https://www.ci.san-bernardino.ca.us/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=3009&amp;TargetID=6" type="external">statement</a> released on 3 August: Share on
<a href="" type="internal">Facebook</a>
<a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a>
<a href="" type="internal">Email</a> | Administration to Deny Four Cities Crime Fighting Assistance Unless “Sanctuary City” Policies Abandoned | false | http://thewhim.com/administration-deny-four-cities-crime-fighting-assistance-unless-sanctuary-city-policies-abandoned/ | 2017-08-09 | 2least
| Administration to Deny Four Cities Crime Fighting Assistance Unless “Sanctuary City” Policies Abandoned
<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-commitment-reducing-violent-crime-stemming-illegal-immigration" type="external">statement</a> released on 3 August. “The PSP program was announced in June and is a training and technical assistance program designed to enhance the capacity of local jurisdictions to address violent crime in their communities,” the statement said. The statement named the following four
<a href="https://cis.org/Map-Sanctuary-Cities-Counties-and-States" type="external">cities</a> who expressed interest in the PSP program, noting that letters were sent to each city stating that they would be required to answer questions aimed at determining whether they were “sanctuary cities” before eligibility for participating int he PSP could be determined: Albuquerque, New Mexico Baltimore, Maryland San Bernardino, California Stockton, California
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/25/politics/sanctuary-cities-explained/index.html" type="external">CNN Politics</a> defines “sanctuary cities” as “
<a href="https://cis.org/Map-Sanctuary-Cities-Counties-and-States" type="external">jurisdictions</a> that have policies in place designed to limit cooperation with or involvement in federal immigration enforcement actions. Cities, counties and some states have a range of informal policies as well as actual laws that qualify as ‘sanctuary’ positions.” The PSP program began in June in 12 locations, and the DOJ may expand the training and assistance program to other jurisdictions within the year, according to Sessions’ statement. The
<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-sessions-announces-creation-national-public-safety-partnership-combat" type="external">original 12 locations</a> included: Birmingham, Alabama; Indianapolis, Indiana; Memphis, Tennessee; Toledo, Ohio; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Buffalo, New York; Cincinnati, Ohio; Houston, Texas; Jackson, Tennessee; Kansas City, Missouri; Lansing, Michigan; Springfield, Illinois The
<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/986411/download" type="external">letters</a> sent to the four new cities that expressed interested in joining the PSP program contained the following language pertaining to selection for participation: Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry denied that Albuquerque is a “sanctuary city,” and said that the city has been trying to cooperate with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since he took office in 2009, despite a decrease in ICE staffing levels, according to
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/justice-dept-threatens-anti-crime-aid-sanctuary-cities-49009382" type="external">ABC News</a>. “If your agency has questions or concerns with our (Bernalillo) County jails, I would refer you to their leadership,” Berry reportedly wrote in a reply letter to Sessions. Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said in a statement
<a href="https://twitter.com/BaltimorePolice/status/893184970386280448" type="external">tweeted</a> on 3 August:
<a href="https://www.aclu-nm.org/en/press-releases/aclu-new-mexico-condemns-jeff-sessions-bullying-tactics" type="external">Peter Simonson</a>, executive director of New Mexico’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), office said on 3 August: Stockton Police Chief Eric Jones told
<a href="http://www.abc10.com/news/local/stockton-police-chief-reacts-to-department-of-justice-letter-regarding-crime-fighting-program/461782249" type="external">ABC News</a> that he continues to stand by his department’s decision not to “stop, detain or question anyone based solely on actual or suspected immigration status,” with exceptions, but that the questions in the letter do not pertain to his role in immigration enforcement. Jones added: Jones said he hopes to participate in the PSP program will answer the questions in the letter. San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said that San Bernardino “is not a sanctuary city” in a
<a href="https://www.ci.san-bernardino.ca.us/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=3009&amp;TargetID=6" type="external">statement</a> released on 3 August: Share on
<a href="" type="internal">Facebook</a>
<a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a>
<a href="" type="internal">Email</a> | 553 |
<p>The Federal Reserve’s doors have been open for “business” for one hundred years. In explaining the creation of this money-making machine (pun intended – the Fed <a href="http://mises.org/daily/6376/Who-Benefits-From-the-Fed" type="external">remits nearly $100 bn</a>. in profits each year to Congress) most people fall into one of two camps.</p>
<p>Those inclined to view the Fed as a helpful institution, fostering financial stability in a world of error-prone capitalists, explain the creation of the Fed as a natural and healthy outgrowth of the troubled National Banking System. How helpful the Fed has been is questionable at best, and in a recent book edited by Joe Salerno and me – <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Fed-One-Hundred-Critical/dp/331906214X/?tag=misesinsti-20" type="external">The Fed at One Hundred</a> – various contributors outline many (though by no means all) of the Fed’s shortcomings over the past century.</p>
<p>Others, mostly those with a skeptical view of the Fed, treat its creation as an exercise in secretive government meddling (as in G. Edward Griffin’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal/dp/0912986212/?tag=misesinsti-20" type="external">The Creature from Jekyll Island</a>) or crony capitalism run amok (as in Murray Rothbard’s <a href="http://mises.org/library/case-against-fed-0" type="external">The Case Against the Fed</a>).</p>
<p>In my own chapter in The Fed at One Hundred I find sympathies with both groups (you can download the chapter pdf <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/u2sbk3npqsvosw7/2014.%20A%20prehistory%20of%20the%20fed%20-%20download%20copy.pdf?dl=0" type="external">here</a>). The actual creation of the Fed is a tragically beautiful case study in closed-door Congressional deals and big banking’s ultimate victory over the American public. Neither of these facts emerged from nowhere, however. The fateful events that transpired in 1910 on Jekyll Island were the evolutionary outcome of over fifty years of government meddling in money. As such, the Fed is a natural (though terribly unfortunate) outgrowth of an ever more flawed and repressive monetary system.</p>
<p><a href="http://mises.org/library/birth-monster" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Federal Reserve: The Birth of the Monster | true | http://rinf.com/alt-news/money/federal-reserve-birth-monster/ | 2014-12-01 | 4left
| Federal Reserve: The Birth of the Monster
<p>The Federal Reserve’s doors have been open for “business” for one hundred years. In explaining the creation of this money-making machine (pun intended – the Fed <a href="http://mises.org/daily/6376/Who-Benefits-From-the-Fed" type="external">remits nearly $100 bn</a>. in profits each year to Congress) most people fall into one of two camps.</p>
<p>Those inclined to view the Fed as a helpful institution, fostering financial stability in a world of error-prone capitalists, explain the creation of the Fed as a natural and healthy outgrowth of the troubled National Banking System. How helpful the Fed has been is questionable at best, and in a recent book edited by Joe Salerno and me – <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Fed-One-Hundred-Critical/dp/331906214X/?tag=misesinsti-20" type="external">The Fed at One Hundred</a> – various contributors outline many (though by no means all) of the Fed’s shortcomings over the past century.</p>
<p>Others, mostly those with a skeptical view of the Fed, treat its creation as an exercise in secretive government meddling (as in G. Edward Griffin’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal/dp/0912986212/?tag=misesinsti-20" type="external">The Creature from Jekyll Island</a>) or crony capitalism run amok (as in Murray Rothbard’s <a href="http://mises.org/library/case-against-fed-0" type="external">The Case Against the Fed</a>).</p>
<p>In my own chapter in The Fed at One Hundred I find sympathies with both groups (you can download the chapter pdf <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/u2sbk3npqsvosw7/2014.%20A%20prehistory%20of%20the%20fed%20-%20download%20copy.pdf?dl=0" type="external">here</a>). The actual creation of the Fed is a tragically beautiful case study in closed-door Congressional deals and big banking’s ultimate victory over the American public. Neither of these facts emerged from nowhere, however. The fateful events that transpired in 1910 on Jekyll Island were the evolutionary outcome of over fifty years of government meddling in money. As such, the Fed is a natural (though terribly unfortunate) outgrowth of an ever more flawed and repressive monetary system.</p>
<p><a href="http://mises.org/library/birth-monster" type="external">Read more</a></p> | 554 |
<p />
<p>Microsoft Corp. launched a new workplace collaboration service, dubbed Microsoft Teams, that weaves in various pieces of its Office productivity software franchise to compete with Slack Technologies Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The new service, introduced at an event Wednesday in New York City, offers workers something of a real-time social network in the office, a way to communicate in groups, in addition to email threads and face-to-face conversations. Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said the service offers to workers many advances, but noted "what is still scarce is human attention and time."</p>
<p>Microsoft Teams, like Slack, offers workers the ability to digitally chat with colleagues and allows workplace teams to search through such conversations, if they are kept public, to follow progress of a project.</p>
<p>Microsoft also has woven some of its Office applications into the service, including its Skype videoconferencing service, so colleagues can include voice and video meetings. And users can share Word or Excel documents through the service.</p>
<p>Microsoft said Teams is available in a "customer preview" Wednesday and will become generally available in the first quarter of 2017.</p>
<p>Slack took out a full-page ad in the New York Times on Wednesday welcoming Microsoft to the market and offering suggestions for how to succeed, including focusing on craftsmanship and openness.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>"We're glad you're going to be helping us define this new product category. We admire many of your achievements and know you'll be a worthy competitor," the Slack ad reads.</p>
<p>The new service isn't Microsoft's first stab at social networking for workers. Four years ago, Microsoft bought Yammer Inc., which preceded Slack in the workplace networking space, for $1.2 billion. Yammer, though, has stagnated at Microsoft, even as Slack grew to nearly 6 million weekly active users.</p>
<p>By Jay Greene</p> | Microsoft Launches 'Teams' to Compete With Slack | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/11/02/microsoft-launches-teams-to-compete-with-slack.html | 2016-11-02 | 0right
| Microsoft Launches 'Teams' to Compete With Slack
<p />
<p>Microsoft Corp. launched a new workplace collaboration service, dubbed Microsoft Teams, that weaves in various pieces of its Office productivity software franchise to compete with Slack Technologies Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The new service, introduced at an event Wednesday in New York City, offers workers something of a real-time social network in the office, a way to communicate in groups, in addition to email threads and face-to-face conversations. Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said the service offers to workers many advances, but noted "what is still scarce is human attention and time."</p>
<p>Microsoft Teams, like Slack, offers workers the ability to digitally chat with colleagues and allows workplace teams to search through such conversations, if they are kept public, to follow progress of a project.</p>
<p>Microsoft also has woven some of its Office applications into the service, including its Skype videoconferencing service, so colleagues can include voice and video meetings. And users can share Word or Excel documents through the service.</p>
<p>Microsoft said Teams is available in a "customer preview" Wednesday and will become generally available in the first quarter of 2017.</p>
<p>Slack took out a full-page ad in the New York Times on Wednesday welcoming Microsoft to the market and offering suggestions for how to succeed, including focusing on craftsmanship and openness.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>"We're glad you're going to be helping us define this new product category. We admire many of your achievements and know you'll be a worthy competitor," the Slack ad reads.</p>
<p>The new service isn't Microsoft's first stab at social networking for workers. Four years ago, Microsoft bought Yammer Inc., which preceded Slack in the workplace networking space, for $1.2 billion. Yammer, though, has stagnated at Microsoft, even as Slack grew to nearly 6 million weekly active users.</p>
<p>By Jay Greene</p> | 555 |
<p>Who would you be more likely to ask for investing advice: Donald Trump or Oprah Winfrey?</p>
<p><a href="https://sqy7rm.media.zestyio.com/Acorns2017_MoneyMattersReport.pdf" type="external">In a new survey</a>, more Americans between the ages of 18 and 44 chose Oprah over the president. Oprah was chosen by 32 percent and Trump by 15 percent.</p>
<p>Of the five choices given to the survey respondents, Warren Buffet topped the list at 44 percent.</p>
<p>Jay-Z scored 5 percent and Sheryl Sandberg was the choice of 4 percent.</p>
<p>The poll was conducted by SurveyMonkey for <a href="https://www.acorns.com/" type="external">Acorns</a>, an app that invests “spare change” from credit card purchases. More than 3,000 were polled.</p> | And the survey says: More Americans would take investing advice from Oprah than Trump | false | https://circa.com/story/2018/01/23/whoa/and-the-survey-says-more-americans-would-take-investing-advice-from-oprah-than-trump | 2018-01-24 | 1right-center
| And the survey says: More Americans would take investing advice from Oprah than Trump
<p>Who would you be more likely to ask for investing advice: Donald Trump or Oprah Winfrey?</p>
<p><a href="https://sqy7rm.media.zestyio.com/Acorns2017_MoneyMattersReport.pdf" type="external">In a new survey</a>, more Americans between the ages of 18 and 44 chose Oprah over the president. Oprah was chosen by 32 percent and Trump by 15 percent.</p>
<p>Of the five choices given to the survey respondents, Warren Buffet topped the list at 44 percent.</p>
<p>Jay-Z scored 5 percent and Sheryl Sandberg was the choice of 4 percent.</p>
<p>The poll was conducted by SurveyMonkey for <a href="https://www.acorns.com/" type="external">Acorns</a>, an app that invests “spare change” from credit card purchases. More than 3,000 were polled.</p> | 556 |
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<p>WASHINGTON — Nearly two years ago, novice presidential candidate Donald Trump was booed by a group of influential Jewish Republicans when he punted a question about whether he backed Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to take that position, capping a steady, if unlikely, evolution for a billionaire who had no experience dealing with the perilous politics of the Mideast when he first launched his presidential bid.</p>
<p>The decision reflects the influence of powerful allies in Trump’s inner circle, including Vice President Mike Pence and Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, men determined to coach Trump on the issue and its importance to conservative Jews and evangelical Christians. It comes despite widespread criticism from allies in the Middle East and Europe, and concerns from some members of his own Cabinet.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Today we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” Trump said from the White House. “This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It’s something that has to be done.”</p>
<p>It is not something any other president has followed through on, despite similar campaign promises.</p>
<p>Trump was drawn to the idea of breaking with that presidential precedent, seeing the chance to issue an order that both his predecessor Barack Obama, a frequent Trump target, and previous Republican presidents were reluctant to issue, according to two advisers familiar with the president’s thinking.</p>
<p>Administration officials are braced for blowback but insisted the move would not upend efforts to forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But Trump’s gambit appeared to be driven less by diplomatic strategy and more by the president’s wishes to fulfill a campaign promise that was hard to imagine two years ago.</p>
<p>Appearing before a forum organized by the Republican Jewish Coalition, an influential lobbying group largely funded by Adelson, Trump was asked a delicate, but predictable, diplomatic question: Did he believe Jerusalem was the undivided capital of Israel?</p>
<p>The presidential candidate, who prided himself on candor and straight talk, dodged.</p>
<p>“You know what I want to do? I want to wait until I meet with Bibi,” Trump said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A smattering of boos erupted from the audience.</p>
<p>But as Trump’s candidacy took off, he began courting pro-Israel American Jews and evangelical Christians. Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate, consistently raised the topic in nearly all of his phone calls and meetings with the president, according to a person with knowledge of the Trump team’s thinking.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In 2016, Trump indeed vowed to recognize Israel’s claim to Jerusalem and to move the American embassy there from Tel Aviv, aligning himself with most mainstream Republican presidential hopefuls.</p>
<p>Other influential voices urged Trump to follow through on that promise in the final months of the campaign and after the election, including Pence. The person familiar with the Trump team’s thinking also called David Friedman, who worked as a lawyer for Trump before becoming U.S. ambassador to Israel, an “unsung hero” in keeping the process on track.</p>
<p>During the presidential transition, Trump and his advisers discussed making an announcement on Jerusalem and the status of the U.S. Embassy on Inauguration Day or shortly thereafter. One option Trump advisers discussed was converting the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem into an embassy and having Friedman work from that post, while keeping the bulk of U.S. officials in the much larger facility in Tel Aviv, according to aides.</p>
<p>But the Trump team backed down amid intense pressure from the State Department and Pentagon, where career officials raised alarms about the prospect that it would inflame the Middle East, according to a person familiar with the discussions. In subsequent months, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis continued to urge caution, according to U.S. officials.</p>
<p>The officials, Trump aides and the person familiar with the team’s thinking all insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the internal deliberations.</p>
<p>Aides said the issue never fell off the president’s radar. Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist, repeatedly counseled the president to take the step as a means of holding to his campaign promise and energizing evangelical voters. Conservative faith leaders, like Faith &amp; Freedom founder Ralph Reed, also pushed the cause to senior aides.</p>
<p>Wednesday’s announcement was praised by those who have been advocating for White House action.</p>
<p>“This sends a clear message, a very important message, that we will not allow threats of terrorism to determine policy. It’s not just words this time,” said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America.</p>
<p>Trump’s decision was immediately denounced by Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, who said in a televised statement that the U.S. move “is a declaration of withdrawal from the role it has played in the peace process.”</p>
<p>Trump officials recognized the risks to the peace process, but have made a deliberate calculation that the outrage will blow over and the impact will be limited.</p>
<p>The U.S. officials most heavily engaged in the discussion are Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and special envoy Jason Greenblatt, who has made multiple trips to the region.</p>
<p>Both Kushner and Greenblatt supported the president’s decision even though they anticipated it would upset the Arab world, according to a White House official. But because the men had already not anticipated presenting a plan until sometime next year, they believe the anger over Jerusalem could subside before negotiations begin, the official said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Lemire reported from New York.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Lemire on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com///twitter.com/JPaceDC" type="external">http://twitter.com///twitter.com/JPaceDC</a></p> | On Jerusalem, Trump’s view molded by powerful allies | false | https://abqjournal.com/1102973/on-jerusalem-trumps-view-molded-by-powerful-allies.html | 2017-12-06 | 2least
| On Jerusalem, Trump’s view molded by powerful allies
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>WASHINGTON — Nearly two years ago, novice presidential candidate Donald Trump was booed by a group of influential Jewish Republicans when he punted a question about whether he backed Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to take that position, capping a steady, if unlikely, evolution for a billionaire who had no experience dealing with the perilous politics of the Mideast when he first launched his presidential bid.</p>
<p>The decision reflects the influence of powerful allies in Trump’s inner circle, including Vice President Mike Pence and Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, men determined to coach Trump on the issue and its importance to conservative Jews and evangelical Christians. It comes despite widespread criticism from allies in the Middle East and Europe, and concerns from some members of his own Cabinet.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Today we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” Trump said from the White House. “This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It’s something that has to be done.”</p>
<p>It is not something any other president has followed through on, despite similar campaign promises.</p>
<p>Trump was drawn to the idea of breaking with that presidential precedent, seeing the chance to issue an order that both his predecessor Barack Obama, a frequent Trump target, and previous Republican presidents were reluctant to issue, according to two advisers familiar with the president’s thinking.</p>
<p>Administration officials are braced for blowback but insisted the move would not upend efforts to forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But Trump’s gambit appeared to be driven less by diplomatic strategy and more by the president’s wishes to fulfill a campaign promise that was hard to imagine two years ago.</p>
<p>Appearing before a forum organized by the Republican Jewish Coalition, an influential lobbying group largely funded by Adelson, Trump was asked a delicate, but predictable, diplomatic question: Did he believe Jerusalem was the undivided capital of Israel?</p>
<p>The presidential candidate, who prided himself on candor and straight talk, dodged.</p>
<p>“You know what I want to do? I want to wait until I meet with Bibi,” Trump said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A smattering of boos erupted from the audience.</p>
<p>But as Trump’s candidacy took off, he began courting pro-Israel American Jews and evangelical Christians. Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate, consistently raised the topic in nearly all of his phone calls and meetings with the president, according to a person with knowledge of the Trump team’s thinking.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In 2016, Trump indeed vowed to recognize Israel’s claim to Jerusalem and to move the American embassy there from Tel Aviv, aligning himself with most mainstream Republican presidential hopefuls.</p>
<p>Other influential voices urged Trump to follow through on that promise in the final months of the campaign and after the election, including Pence. The person familiar with the Trump team’s thinking also called David Friedman, who worked as a lawyer for Trump before becoming U.S. ambassador to Israel, an “unsung hero” in keeping the process on track.</p>
<p>During the presidential transition, Trump and his advisers discussed making an announcement on Jerusalem and the status of the U.S. Embassy on Inauguration Day or shortly thereafter. One option Trump advisers discussed was converting the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem into an embassy and having Friedman work from that post, while keeping the bulk of U.S. officials in the much larger facility in Tel Aviv, according to aides.</p>
<p>But the Trump team backed down amid intense pressure from the State Department and Pentagon, where career officials raised alarms about the prospect that it would inflame the Middle East, according to a person familiar with the discussions. In subsequent months, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis continued to urge caution, according to U.S. officials.</p>
<p>The officials, Trump aides and the person familiar with the team’s thinking all insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the internal deliberations.</p>
<p>Aides said the issue never fell off the president’s radar. Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist, repeatedly counseled the president to take the step as a means of holding to his campaign promise and energizing evangelical voters. Conservative faith leaders, like Faith &amp; Freedom founder Ralph Reed, also pushed the cause to senior aides.</p>
<p>Wednesday’s announcement was praised by those who have been advocating for White House action.</p>
<p>“This sends a clear message, a very important message, that we will not allow threats of terrorism to determine policy. It’s not just words this time,” said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America.</p>
<p>Trump’s decision was immediately denounced by Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, who said in a televised statement that the U.S. move “is a declaration of withdrawal from the role it has played in the peace process.”</p>
<p>Trump officials recognized the risks to the peace process, but have made a deliberate calculation that the outrage will blow over and the impact will be limited.</p>
<p>The U.S. officials most heavily engaged in the discussion are Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and special envoy Jason Greenblatt, who has made multiple trips to the region.</p>
<p>Both Kushner and Greenblatt supported the president’s decision even though they anticipated it would upset the Arab world, according to a White House official. But because the men had already not anticipated presenting a plan until sometime next year, they believe the anger over Jerusalem could subside before negotiations begin, the official said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Lemire reported from New York.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Lemire on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com///twitter.com/JPaceDC" type="external">http://twitter.com///twitter.com/JPaceDC</a></p> | 557 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>A massive year-end spending bill released Tuesday doesn’t allow schools to opt out of healthier school meal standards championed by first lady Michelle Obama, as House Republicans had sought. But it would ease standards that require more whole grains in school foods.</p>
<p>The bill also would put off rules to make school meals less salty, suspending lower sodium standards that were supposed to go into effect in 2017.</p>
<p>Some school nutrition directors have lobbied for a break from the standards, which have been phased in since 2012, saying the rules have proven to be costly and restrictive. Some kids don’t like the meals, either. House Republicans have said the rules are an overreach, and have fought to ease them.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>As the debate escalated this summer, Michelle Obama said she would fight “to the bitter end” to make sure kids have good nutrition in schools. The White House did not have immediate comment on the language in the spending bill.</p>
<p>Many schools have complained that the whole grain standards are a challenge, especially when preparing popular pastas, biscuits and tortillas. Food service companies don’t have as many options in the whole wheat varieties, and preparation can be more difficult, especially with some whole wheat pastas that can be mushy and hard to cook.</p>
<p>The spending bill, expected to become law before the end of the year, would allow schools that can demonstrate they have had difficulty finding and affording acceptable whole grain products like pastas and breads to be exempted from 2014 standards requiring all grain products to be mostly whole grain. Those schools would still have to abide by previous guidelines that half of their grain products be mostly whole grain.</p>
<p>The final language is a compromise between the House’s attempt to allow schools to opt out of the standards for a year and a Senate provision that called for more study on the whole grains issue.</p>
<p>The changes for sodium standards are far off. The 2012 standards already lowered salt levels in school meals, with even lower sodium levels set to start in two years. The bill says the government cannot require the 2017 levels “until the latest scientific research establishes the reduction is beneficial for children.”</p>
<p>In a statement after the bill was released, Alabama Rep. Robert Aderholt, the Republican chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees agriculture issues, said the whole grains waiver is “the best bill we that are going to get” with Democrats still controlling the Senate. He expressed optimism that the GOP may get more of what it wants when the party controls both chambers next year.</p>
<p>While many schools have implemented the new standards successfully, others have said they’re not working. Schools have long been required to follow government nutrition rules if they accept federal reimbursements for free and reduced-price meals for low-income students, but the 2012 standards were much stricter than earlier standards.</p>
<p>The congressional changes have been pushed by the School Nutrition Association, a group that represents both school nutrition directors and the food companies that produce many of the school foods. While the group was looking for deeper rollbacks than included in the spending bill, the whole grain and sodium standards were among its main concerns. The organization’s CEO, Patricia Montague, issued a statement late Tuesday saying the group “strongly supports” the language.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Agriculture Department has already shown some flexibility on the whole grain issue. It said earlier this year that schools can put off for two years the requirement that all pastas in schools be mostly whole grain if they can demonstrate that they have had “significant challenges” in preparing the pasta.</p>
<p>Advocates for the healthier meal standards predict there will be fewer problems over time as kids get used to the new foods and the food industry creates tastier and more numerous products that follow the standards.</p>
<p>American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown said the changes in the spending bill could harm kids’ health, even if the bill doesn’t dismantle the school meals program.</p>
<p>“If Congress hits the pause button now on the sodium reduction, it’s possible that more children could develop high blood pressure and be at risk for heart disease or stroke before they even become adults,” Brown said in a statement.</p>
<p>The year-end spending bill won’t be the last time Congress takes on the school meal standards, as the overall law governing child nutrition policy, including school lunches, expires next year. Both the House and the new Republican Senate are expected to consider changes to the meal standards as part of legislation renewing the law.</p>
<p>On other food issues, the spending bill would allow fresh white potatoes to be part of the federal Women, Infants and Children nutrition program. The Agriculture Department doesn’t currently allow them, even though it allows other fruits and vegetables, because it says people already eat enough white potatoes. The program serves low-income children and pregnant and nursing mothers.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/MCJalonick" type="external">http://twitter.com/MCJalonick</a></p> | Congress relaxes whole grain standards for schools | false | https://abqjournal.com/508113/congress-relaxes-whole-grain-standards-for-schools.html | 2least
| Congress relaxes whole grain standards for schools
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>A massive year-end spending bill released Tuesday doesn’t allow schools to opt out of healthier school meal standards championed by first lady Michelle Obama, as House Republicans had sought. But it would ease standards that require more whole grains in school foods.</p>
<p>The bill also would put off rules to make school meals less salty, suspending lower sodium standards that were supposed to go into effect in 2017.</p>
<p>Some school nutrition directors have lobbied for a break from the standards, which have been phased in since 2012, saying the rules have proven to be costly and restrictive. Some kids don’t like the meals, either. House Republicans have said the rules are an overreach, and have fought to ease them.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>As the debate escalated this summer, Michelle Obama said she would fight “to the bitter end” to make sure kids have good nutrition in schools. The White House did not have immediate comment on the language in the spending bill.</p>
<p>Many schools have complained that the whole grain standards are a challenge, especially when preparing popular pastas, biscuits and tortillas. Food service companies don’t have as many options in the whole wheat varieties, and preparation can be more difficult, especially with some whole wheat pastas that can be mushy and hard to cook.</p>
<p>The spending bill, expected to become law before the end of the year, would allow schools that can demonstrate they have had difficulty finding and affording acceptable whole grain products like pastas and breads to be exempted from 2014 standards requiring all grain products to be mostly whole grain. Those schools would still have to abide by previous guidelines that half of their grain products be mostly whole grain.</p>
<p>The final language is a compromise between the House’s attempt to allow schools to opt out of the standards for a year and a Senate provision that called for more study on the whole grains issue.</p>
<p>The changes for sodium standards are far off. The 2012 standards already lowered salt levels in school meals, with even lower sodium levels set to start in two years. The bill says the government cannot require the 2017 levels “until the latest scientific research establishes the reduction is beneficial for children.”</p>
<p>In a statement after the bill was released, Alabama Rep. Robert Aderholt, the Republican chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees agriculture issues, said the whole grains waiver is “the best bill we that are going to get” with Democrats still controlling the Senate. He expressed optimism that the GOP may get more of what it wants when the party controls both chambers next year.</p>
<p>While many schools have implemented the new standards successfully, others have said they’re not working. Schools have long been required to follow government nutrition rules if they accept federal reimbursements for free and reduced-price meals for low-income students, but the 2012 standards were much stricter than earlier standards.</p>
<p>The congressional changes have been pushed by the School Nutrition Association, a group that represents both school nutrition directors and the food companies that produce many of the school foods. While the group was looking for deeper rollbacks than included in the spending bill, the whole grain and sodium standards were among its main concerns. The organization’s CEO, Patricia Montague, issued a statement late Tuesday saying the group “strongly supports” the language.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Agriculture Department has already shown some flexibility on the whole grain issue. It said earlier this year that schools can put off for two years the requirement that all pastas in schools be mostly whole grain if they can demonstrate that they have had “significant challenges” in preparing the pasta.</p>
<p>Advocates for the healthier meal standards predict there will be fewer problems over time as kids get used to the new foods and the food industry creates tastier and more numerous products that follow the standards.</p>
<p>American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown said the changes in the spending bill could harm kids’ health, even if the bill doesn’t dismantle the school meals program.</p>
<p>“If Congress hits the pause button now on the sodium reduction, it’s possible that more children could develop high blood pressure and be at risk for heart disease or stroke before they even become adults,” Brown said in a statement.</p>
<p>The year-end spending bill won’t be the last time Congress takes on the school meal standards, as the overall law governing child nutrition policy, including school lunches, expires next year. Both the House and the new Republican Senate are expected to consider changes to the meal standards as part of legislation renewing the law.</p>
<p>On other food issues, the spending bill would allow fresh white potatoes to be part of the federal Women, Infants and Children nutrition program. The Agriculture Department doesn’t currently allow them, even though it allows other fruits and vegetables, because it says people already eat enough white potatoes. The program serves low-income children and pregnant and nursing mothers.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/MCJalonick" type="external">http://twitter.com/MCJalonick</a></p> | 558 |
|
<p />
<p>Money conversations aren’t the most romantic, but they are vital to long-term relationship success.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>“Money problems are very pervasive and it is a tension-filled topic for couples,” says Terri Oerbuch, relationship expert and author of 5 Simple Steps to Take Your Marriage from Good to Great.</p>
<p>A recent survey from Fidelity Investments shows couples admit to arguing “frequently” or “occasionally” over money. What’s more, of those bickering couples, 38% say they don’t resolve the issues in a mutually-agreeable manner.</p>
<p>Oerbuch says talking about money is still considered taboo because parents don’t discuss financial planning, salaries and budgeting with their kids, so we grow up without the models and vocabulary to approach the topic.</p>
<p>In fact, she says people are more likely to talk about sex then money. “When couples, girlfriends or a group of guys get together, they are more likely to approach the topic of sex than they are about money. That is the reason couples have the notion that money causes problems.”</p>
<p>To help spur a financial conversation, experts suggest asking the following questions:</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Question No.1: What Does Money Mean to You? Oerbuch suggests individuals ask themselves this question first to identify their relationship with money. “What did it represent when growing up? Was it a status thing? Comfort? Security?” She says how our parents budgeted and talked about money impacts how we handle our finances as an adult.</p>
<p>Once each person determines their money priorities, it’s easier to create a financial plan that takes into account both perspectives. “Knowing the other person’s general philosophies and whether they are a spendthrift or more frugal is important; you don’t necessarily have to match, but you need to know where the other is coming from,” says Mark VandeVelde, certified financial planner and wealth partner at Hefty Wealth Partners.</p>
<p>Question No.2: When Should We Discuss Money? Talking about money in a neutral setting makes the conversation more productive and less likely to lead to a fight.</p>
<p>“Most of the time, couples only address money issues when a credit card bill is overdue, &#160;someone lost their job or blew the budget, which is just asking for a fight,” says Oerbuch.</p>
<p>She recommends couples discuss their finances every three months in a neutral setting.</p>
<p>Question No.3: How Will We Make Financial Decisions? It’s common for one person to take the lead in managing the finances, but that doesn’t mean the other person should remain completely out of the loop.</p>
<p>“It should never be 100% one-sided with who is charge,” says VandeVelde. “Not only can that lead to resentment, it can also lead to major problems if something were to happen to the spouse controlling the money.”</p>
<p>According to Fidelity, more than one-third of Americans do not know where important financial and legal documents are stored.</p>
<p>Oerbuch says some couples set “spending thresholds” that determine when the other person needs to give approval before making a purchase. &#160;“You need to have the notion of when the other person should be consulted when making a purchase.”</p>
<p>Having a threshold can help reduce blown budgets and hurt feelings. “Whether it’s your daily Starbucks habit or a brand-new TV set, you need to know if you have to call the other person to make sure it’s a joint decision.”</p>
<p>Question No.4: What are Your Long-Term Goals?&#160;</p>
<p>VandeVelde stresses that a couple doesn’t have to have the same goals, but everyone needs to be aware of their partner’s wishes to form a financial plan.</p>
<p>According to the Fidelity survey, 4 in 10 working couples disagree on the lifestyle they expect in retirement, which can make creating a savings plan difficult.</p>
<p>“As long as you understand the goals and are OK with not being on the same page you can create the right plan, whether it’s keeping money separate, creating two accounts or keeping all the money together, the key is to understand everyone’s end goal.”</p>
<p>Lauren Brouhard, senior vice president, marketing strategy and business management at Fidelity, says 50% of couples don’t have the same top financial concern. “If the topic becomes too heated, bring in a third party to help take the emotion out.”</p>
<p>VandeVelde advises new couples ask about the other’s desire to have kids or own a home. “If they aren’t on the same page it’s hard to create a long-term savings plan that is going to work.”</p>
<p>Question No. 6: How Much Debt Do You Have? &#160;In the era of record student loan debt levels and mounting outstanding credit card bills, VandeVelde says it’s important to have a grasp on the other person’s debt situation.</p>
<p>“Ask about any debt and their repayment plan. Knowing this early in a relationship can avoid &#160;any surprises later.”</p>
<p>Question No.6: Is this Argument Really About Money?&#160; Sometimes financial conflicts really have nothing to do with money, Oerbuch says.</p>
<p>“Money is tangible and easy to transfer to others issues. Sometimes what you are arguing about really has nothing to do with money and it’s important to take a step back and realize that there is a deeper issue here.”</p> | 6 Money Questions Every Couple Needs to Ask Now | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/02/14/6-money-questions-every-couple-needs-to-ask-now.html | 2016-03-06 | 0right
| 6 Money Questions Every Couple Needs to Ask Now
<p />
<p>Money conversations aren’t the most romantic, but they are vital to long-term relationship success.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>“Money problems are very pervasive and it is a tension-filled topic for couples,” says Terri Oerbuch, relationship expert and author of 5 Simple Steps to Take Your Marriage from Good to Great.</p>
<p>A recent survey from Fidelity Investments shows couples admit to arguing “frequently” or “occasionally” over money. What’s more, of those bickering couples, 38% say they don’t resolve the issues in a mutually-agreeable manner.</p>
<p>Oerbuch says talking about money is still considered taboo because parents don’t discuss financial planning, salaries and budgeting with their kids, so we grow up without the models and vocabulary to approach the topic.</p>
<p>In fact, she says people are more likely to talk about sex then money. “When couples, girlfriends or a group of guys get together, they are more likely to approach the topic of sex than they are about money. That is the reason couples have the notion that money causes problems.”</p>
<p>To help spur a financial conversation, experts suggest asking the following questions:</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Question No.1: What Does Money Mean to You? Oerbuch suggests individuals ask themselves this question first to identify their relationship with money. “What did it represent when growing up? Was it a status thing? Comfort? Security?” She says how our parents budgeted and talked about money impacts how we handle our finances as an adult.</p>
<p>Once each person determines their money priorities, it’s easier to create a financial plan that takes into account both perspectives. “Knowing the other person’s general philosophies and whether they are a spendthrift or more frugal is important; you don’t necessarily have to match, but you need to know where the other is coming from,” says Mark VandeVelde, certified financial planner and wealth partner at Hefty Wealth Partners.</p>
<p>Question No.2: When Should We Discuss Money? Talking about money in a neutral setting makes the conversation more productive and less likely to lead to a fight.</p>
<p>“Most of the time, couples only address money issues when a credit card bill is overdue, &#160;someone lost their job or blew the budget, which is just asking for a fight,” says Oerbuch.</p>
<p>She recommends couples discuss their finances every three months in a neutral setting.</p>
<p>Question No.3: How Will We Make Financial Decisions? It’s common for one person to take the lead in managing the finances, but that doesn’t mean the other person should remain completely out of the loop.</p>
<p>“It should never be 100% one-sided with who is charge,” says VandeVelde. “Not only can that lead to resentment, it can also lead to major problems if something were to happen to the spouse controlling the money.”</p>
<p>According to Fidelity, more than one-third of Americans do not know where important financial and legal documents are stored.</p>
<p>Oerbuch says some couples set “spending thresholds” that determine when the other person needs to give approval before making a purchase. &#160;“You need to have the notion of when the other person should be consulted when making a purchase.”</p>
<p>Having a threshold can help reduce blown budgets and hurt feelings. “Whether it’s your daily Starbucks habit or a brand-new TV set, you need to know if you have to call the other person to make sure it’s a joint decision.”</p>
<p>Question No.4: What are Your Long-Term Goals?&#160;</p>
<p>VandeVelde stresses that a couple doesn’t have to have the same goals, but everyone needs to be aware of their partner’s wishes to form a financial plan.</p>
<p>According to the Fidelity survey, 4 in 10 working couples disagree on the lifestyle they expect in retirement, which can make creating a savings plan difficult.</p>
<p>“As long as you understand the goals and are OK with not being on the same page you can create the right plan, whether it’s keeping money separate, creating two accounts or keeping all the money together, the key is to understand everyone’s end goal.”</p>
<p>Lauren Brouhard, senior vice president, marketing strategy and business management at Fidelity, says 50% of couples don’t have the same top financial concern. “If the topic becomes too heated, bring in a third party to help take the emotion out.”</p>
<p>VandeVelde advises new couples ask about the other’s desire to have kids or own a home. “If they aren’t on the same page it’s hard to create a long-term savings plan that is going to work.”</p>
<p>Question No. 6: How Much Debt Do You Have? &#160;In the era of record student loan debt levels and mounting outstanding credit card bills, VandeVelde says it’s important to have a grasp on the other person’s debt situation.</p>
<p>“Ask about any debt and their repayment plan. Knowing this early in a relationship can avoid &#160;any surprises later.”</p>
<p>Question No.6: Is this Argument Really About Money?&#160; Sometimes financial conflicts really have nothing to do with money, Oerbuch says.</p>
<p>“Money is tangible and easy to transfer to others issues. Sometimes what you are arguing about really has nothing to do with money and it’s important to take a step back and realize that there is a deeper issue here.”</p> | 559 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>It was after 9 p.m. and the sky was dark, the waters darker, and the police had urged people not to do things like this. But Murray, 45, was determined to rescue people tonight; determined to heed the calls coming in over the ad hoc walkie-talkie system that volunteers like him were using to help the people he knew were stranded out there in the darkness. And he had just driven three hours from New Caney. He wasn’t going home empty-handed.</p>
<p>“I gotta go to 61st Street to get a woman and a dog,” he said, stepping out of the airboat and staring at the armed men.</p>
<p>Murray, a small-town church pastor and businessman by day, is among the hundreds or even thousands of ordinary Texans who have been transformed overnight – with the force of a flood, the blessing of some boats and no small dose of courage – into men with a higher purpose.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>And so it was that on Wednesday night, after two days of rescuing flood victims in the small towns north of Houston where he lives, and after driving three hours east in pursuit of the moving storm and more rescues, Murray and his friends wound up in this devastated town on the Louisiana border, face to face with other ordinary men like them who also came to help.</p>
<p>Murray, an imposing man clad in camouflage rain boots, didn’t like the fact that the men had guns, especially not with fears of possible looting coming in over the radio. “What are you doing?” he said, scowling at the men, who approached slowly under the orange glow of a street lamp. “You’re going to scare people.”</p>
<p>As they drew closer, the rifle-bearers turned out to be in their teens or early 20s, one wearing a Batman T-shirt and another a shirt that said “USA Proud.” They brought the guns for protection, they said mysteriously, because people are robbing people.</p>
<p>“We got reports that there were 60 people over here robbing people,” Murray responded. “I said, ‘I don’t care.’ ” There were people who needed rescuing, he added, and he had heard over the radio that there were 10 children nearby in need of an evacuation, as well as a woman and her dog.</p>
<p>A couple of other volunteer rescuers – Brian Jamar, who runs an air conditioning company, and Josh Franqus, who works in septics – had by that point wandered over, too: They had responded to the same call. But they had been searching the area for hours and couldn’t find any kids in need of rescue.</p>
<p>“I’m pretty sure it was a bogus call,” Jamar, 29, said.</p>
<p>Murray persuaded a few of the others to join him and his friend for one last search anyway, and soon they were speeding off on another man’s truck toward the address other volunteers had given them.</p>
<p>They get an adrenaline-pumping thrill from these rescue calls, relayed over a phone app called Zello that enables ordinary people to play the role of emergency first responders, using words like “roger” and “copy that” as they report on rescues needed or undertaken.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Kristy Davis, a special agent with the Texas Department of Public Safety who works in the cluster of towns north of Houston where Murray lives, credited the volunteers in that area with rescuing at least 500 people in three days this week.</p>
<p>At improvised “staging grounds” in other neighborhoods around Houston, volunteers and sheriff’s deputies have met and traded information. At one gas station in Cypress, where the Harris County Sheriff’s Department showed up Tuesday to register volunteers and their boats, several dozen eager would-be helpers packed into the parking lot with everything from deep-water fishing boats to sea kayaks and water skis in tow.</p>
<p>“The response was overwhelming,” said Sarah Malkowsky, a spokeswoman for the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, who said hundreds more turned up at a department training facility where they registered more people. “The hardest part was each one having to wait their turn. Some weren’t given an assignment right away and they left to find [rescue] work through their own means.”</p>
<p>Some even showed up without boats. “Anyone need an extra hand for their boat?” one man called out at the gas station as a sheriff’s deputy took down volunteer information.</p>
<p>And all over Houston and nearby towns, trucks with boats have become a common sight, often driving directly toward the rising floodwater, as Murray, his friends and a snaking line of nearly a hundred other such volunteers did Wednesday night en route from Houston to the Louisiana border. Even as local police have issued stern warnings that residents who ignore mandatory evacuation orders will not be rescued, these men might show up anyway.</p>
<p>The outpouring of help has yielded no small degree of chaos in its own right. “It’s like when a shelter asks for supplies and the next thing you know, you’ve got a million bottles of water you don’t know what to do with. With the volunteers, we were inundated,” Davis said.</p>
<p>“It’s helpful,” she added. “But there are people who are doing it who have never been trained, and their boats are overturning and we have to rescue them.”</p>
<p>The emergence of free-for-all amateur walkie-talkie networks has also given way to a flood of false claims and rumors, some the results of mass confusion and poor coordination among volunteers, and others the products of pranksters.</p>
<p>The day before he headed to Port Arthur, Murray and a couple dozen of his congregants who had gathered at the church to assist with rescues had been listening intently to all the walkie-talkie chatter and doing their best to respond.</p>
<p>There were urgent calls for rescues at a hotel and apartment complex in Katy, west of Houston, where the water was rising fast. There were warnings of an imminent explosion at a chemical plant in Conroe. And there was the never-ending stream of individual messages: the woman whose mother desperately needed blood pressure medication; the child and his family allegedly trapped on a rooftop; the old man in the attic; the woman who hadn’t been heard from in days.</p>
<p>“Hi, ma’am? Yes, our rescuers are out in the area. Is there any way you could get ahold of your mother?” a teen church volunteer in a pink shirt said into the phone at one point, as another woman scribbled addresses and updates on a whiteboard. “Our guys are circling around; they can’t find the house,” the teen pleaded. “We need her to come outside or something so they can figure out where she’s at.”</p>
<p>Murray, whose own home had flooded, and whose wife and three children were waiting out the flood at a friend’s house on higher ground, was running on three hours of sleep. But he felt pride and purpose in coordinating such a mission. By Wednesday, he estimated that he had helped more than 30 people get to safety.</p>
<p>“This is the community,” he said, as he surveyed the parking lot of his small church, where he and his congregation had successfully created a launching point for area rescuers. There were fishing and leisure boats, airboats,water scooters and johnboats. In his church lobby, a mass of strangers in camouflage and waders stood around chomping on ham sandwiches, airing the odor of damp feet as they changed into dry, donated socks, and turning to Murray for orders.</p>
<p>“Is there anywhere we can go right now?” a man in beige waders asked, as Murray directed his own voice to the airwaves: “Does anyone need boats in New Caney?”</p>
<p>But not all the rescues were successful: There were dozens of times that the rescuers showed up – sometimes braving treacherous currents and unpredictable water levels – to find no victims in need of help.</p>
<p>“It’s so busy that people are reaching them and no one is ever getting on there and saying, ‘We got them,’ ” Murray said at one point. “It’s emotional. You’ve got pandemonium.”</p>
<p>Other times, the help that was “needed” turned out to be less urgent: a cat in an empty house or a man who probably could have walked to safety in ankle-deep water. And then there were the more curious cases of those who didn’t want to be rescued at all, such as the drunk woman in the flooded home who tried to fight off the men responding to the rescue request made by her concerned daughter, or the old man in the attic who didn’t want to leave without his 17 dogs.</p>
<p>(That one prompted Murray to get on the phone: “Either my guys get you, or the constables are going to come in and get you,” he warned. “My guys put their lives at risk to come in and get you, brother, and we need you to come out of there.”)</p>
<p>In the darkness of Wednesday night, after chasing a storm that had moved east, three hours from his home, Murray was facing the real possibility that there would be no successful rescue here to feel good about.</p>
<p>There were some horses on a traffic median, and some dogs on a balcony, but the 10 children for whom the anonymous dispatchers had pleaded were nowhere to be found. If they existed at all, they probably had been rescued hours before.</p>
<p>“Man, I am so sick of people not being there,” he exclaimed.</p>
<p>But there was one rescue: A 22-year-old in plaid pajama bottoms who had been stranded at a friend’s house. “We need to get this man to the hospital,” Murray announced as he powered up the airboat’s roaring propeller, the young man climbing aboard.</p>
<p>It turned out the man, a college student who gave his name as Robert, was fine. His friend’s house, though isolated by nearby floodwaters, was never damaged. But his mother, who works at the hospital, wanted him home, he said. “I guess my mom was worried and asked them to get me,” he said sheepishly.</p>
<p>Motoring back down the dark expanse of water, past the submerged cars, the airboat’s exhaust pipe suddenly snapped, as did the rudder. The boat briefly lost control, nearly hitting a mailbox and a car.</p>
<p>The water was shallow enough, so the men walked the rest of the way to dry pavement; Robert in his pajamas, the murky water up to his calves.</p>
<p>After depositing their rescue at the hospital, Murray and his friends conceded that he would be their only one in Port Arthur. The boat was inoperable, and one of the men had to get to his job working on refrigeration trucks back in New Caney the next morning.</p>
<p>There were still calls coming in over the walkie-talkie, and still more potential rescues out there in the darkness that Murray wished he could get to.</p>
<p>“It sucks to come all this way,” he said. “But at least we got one person. So we didn’t come out here for nothing.”</p>
<p>That near miss with the mailbox out in the water was pretty crazy, too, his friend John Peters added.</p>
<p>“Did you see me slide all the way over to the bridge to get out of the way?” Murray responded, as the men started laughing. They had to admit, this work was also kind of fun.</p> | On dark, watery streets, an adrenaline-driven mission to rescue the stranded | false | https://abqjournal.com/1056885/on-dark-watery-streets-an-adrenaline-driven-mission-to-rescue-the-stranded.html | 2017-09-01 | 2least
| On dark, watery streets, an adrenaline-driven mission to rescue the stranded
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>It was after 9 p.m. and the sky was dark, the waters darker, and the police had urged people not to do things like this. But Murray, 45, was determined to rescue people tonight; determined to heed the calls coming in over the ad hoc walkie-talkie system that volunteers like him were using to help the people he knew were stranded out there in the darkness. And he had just driven three hours from New Caney. He wasn’t going home empty-handed.</p>
<p>“I gotta go to 61st Street to get a woman and a dog,” he said, stepping out of the airboat and staring at the armed men.</p>
<p>Murray, a small-town church pastor and businessman by day, is among the hundreds or even thousands of ordinary Texans who have been transformed overnight – with the force of a flood, the blessing of some boats and no small dose of courage – into men with a higher purpose.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>And so it was that on Wednesday night, after two days of rescuing flood victims in the small towns north of Houston where he lives, and after driving three hours east in pursuit of the moving storm and more rescues, Murray and his friends wound up in this devastated town on the Louisiana border, face to face with other ordinary men like them who also came to help.</p>
<p>Murray, an imposing man clad in camouflage rain boots, didn’t like the fact that the men had guns, especially not with fears of possible looting coming in over the radio. “What are you doing?” he said, scowling at the men, who approached slowly under the orange glow of a street lamp. “You’re going to scare people.”</p>
<p>As they drew closer, the rifle-bearers turned out to be in their teens or early 20s, one wearing a Batman T-shirt and another a shirt that said “USA Proud.” They brought the guns for protection, they said mysteriously, because people are robbing people.</p>
<p>“We got reports that there were 60 people over here robbing people,” Murray responded. “I said, ‘I don’t care.’ ” There were people who needed rescuing, he added, and he had heard over the radio that there were 10 children nearby in need of an evacuation, as well as a woman and her dog.</p>
<p>A couple of other volunteer rescuers – Brian Jamar, who runs an air conditioning company, and Josh Franqus, who works in septics – had by that point wandered over, too: They had responded to the same call. But they had been searching the area for hours and couldn’t find any kids in need of rescue.</p>
<p>“I’m pretty sure it was a bogus call,” Jamar, 29, said.</p>
<p>Murray persuaded a few of the others to join him and his friend for one last search anyway, and soon they were speeding off on another man’s truck toward the address other volunteers had given them.</p>
<p>They get an adrenaline-pumping thrill from these rescue calls, relayed over a phone app called Zello that enables ordinary people to play the role of emergency first responders, using words like “roger” and “copy that” as they report on rescues needed or undertaken.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Kristy Davis, a special agent with the Texas Department of Public Safety who works in the cluster of towns north of Houston where Murray lives, credited the volunteers in that area with rescuing at least 500 people in three days this week.</p>
<p>At improvised “staging grounds” in other neighborhoods around Houston, volunteers and sheriff’s deputies have met and traded information. At one gas station in Cypress, where the Harris County Sheriff’s Department showed up Tuesday to register volunteers and their boats, several dozen eager would-be helpers packed into the parking lot with everything from deep-water fishing boats to sea kayaks and water skis in tow.</p>
<p>“The response was overwhelming,” said Sarah Malkowsky, a spokeswoman for the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, who said hundreds more turned up at a department training facility where they registered more people. “The hardest part was each one having to wait their turn. Some weren’t given an assignment right away and they left to find [rescue] work through their own means.”</p>
<p>Some even showed up without boats. “Anyone need an extra hand for their boat?” one man called out at the gas station as a sheriff’s deputy took down volunteer information.</p>
<p>And all over Houston and nearby towns, trucks with boats have become a common sight, often driving directly toward the rising floodwater, as Murray, his friends and a snaking line of nearly a hundred other such volunteers did Wednesday night en route from Houston to the Louisiana border. Even as local police have issued stern warnings that residents who ignore mandatory evacuation orders will not be rescued, these men might show up anyway.</p>
<p>The outpouring of help has yielded no small degree of chaos in its own right. “It’s like when a shelter asks for supplies and the next thing you know, you’ve got a million bottles of water you don’t know what to do with. With the volunteers, we were inundated,” Davis said.</p>
<p>“It’s helpful,” she added. “But there are people who are doing it who have never been trained, and their boats are overturning and we have to rescue them.”</p>
<p>The emergence of free-for-all amateur walkie-talkie networks has also given way to a flood of false claims and rumors, some the results of mass confusion and poor coordination among volunteers, and others the products of pranksters.</p>
<p>The day before he headed to Port Arthur, Murray and a couple dozen of his congregants who had gathered at the church to assist with rescues had been listening intently to all the walkie-talkie chatter and doing their best to respond.</p>
<p>There were urgent calls for rescues at a hotel and apartment complex in Katy, west of Houston, where the water was rising fast. There were warnings of an imminent explosion at a chemical plant in Conroe. And there was the never-ending stream of individual messages: the woman whose mother desperately needed blood pressure medication; the child and his family allegedly trapped on a rooftop; the old man in the attic; the woman who hadn’t been heard from in days.</p>
<p>“Hi, ma’am? Yes, our rescuers are out in the area. Is there any way you could get ahold of your mother?” a teen church volunteer in a pink shirt said into the phone at one point, as another woman scribbled addresses and updates on a whiteboard. “Our guys are circling around; they can’t find the house,” the teen pleaded. “We need her to come outside or something so they can figure out where she’s at.”</p>
<p>Murray, whose own home had flooded, and whose wife and three children were waiting out the flood at a friend’s house on higher ground, was running on three hours of sleep. But he felt pride and purpose in coordinating such a mission. By Wednesday, he estimated that he had helped more than 30 people get to safety.</p>
<p>“This is the community,” he said, as he surveyed the parking lot of his small church, where he and his congregation had successfully created a launching point for area rescuers. There were fishing and leisure boats, airboats,water scooters and johnboats. In his church lobby, a mass of strangers in camouflage and waders stood around chomping on ham sandwiches, airing the odor of damp feet as they changed into dry, donated socks, and turning to Murray for orders.</p>
<p>“Is there anywhere we can go right now?” a man in beige waders asked, as Murray directed his own voice to the airwaves: “Does anyone need boats in New Caney?”</p>
<p>But not all the rescues were successful: There were dozens of times that the rescuers showed up – sometimes braving treacherous currents and unpredictable water levels – to find no victims in need of help.</p>
<p>“It’s so busy that people are reaching them and no one is ever getting on there and saying, ‘We got them,’ ” Murray said at one point. “It’s emotional. You’ve got pandemonium.”</p>
<p>Other times, the help that was “needed” turned out to be less urgent: a cat in an empty house or a man who probably could have walked to safety in ankle-deep water. And then there were the more curious cases of those who didn’t want to be rescued at all, such as the drunk woman in the flooded home who tried to fight off the men responding to the rescue request made by her concerned daughter, or the old man in the attic who didn’t want to leave without his 17 dogs.</p>
<p>(That one prompted Murray to get on the phone: “Either my guys get you, or the constables are going to come in and get you,” he warned. “My guys put their lives at risk to come in and get you, brother, and we need you to come out of there.”)</p>
<p>In the darkness of Wednesday night, after chasing a storm that had moved east, three hours from his home, Murray was facing the real possibility that there would be no successful rescue here to feel good about.</p>
<p>There were some horses on a traffic median, and some dogs on a balcony, but the 10 children for whom the anonymous dispatchers had pleaded were nowhere to be found. If they existed at all, they probably had been rescued hours before.</p>
<p>“Man, I am so sick of people not being there,” he exclaimed.</p>
<p>But there was one rescue: A 22-year-old in plaid pajama bottoms who had been stranded at a friend’s house. “We need to get this man to the hospital,” Murray announced as he powered up the airboat’s roaring propeller, the young man climbing aboard.</p>
<p>It turned out the man, a college student who gave his name as Robert, was fine. His friend’s house, though isolated by nearby floodwaters, was never damaged. But his mother, who works at the hospital, wanted him home, he said. “I guess my mom was worried and asked them to get me,” he said sheepishly.</p>
<p>Motoring back down the dark expanse of water, past the submerged cars, the airboat’s exhaust pipe suddenly snapped, as did the rudder. The boat briefly lost control, nearly hitting a mailbox and a car.</p>
<p>The water was shallow enough, so the men walked the rest of the way to dry pavement; Robert in his pajamas, the murky water up to his calves.</p>
<p>After depositing their rescue at the hospital, Murray and his friends conceded that he would be their only one in Port Arthur. The boat was inoperable, and one of the men had to get to his job working on refrigeration trucks back in New Caney the next morning.</p>
<p>There were still calls coming in over the walkie-talkie, and still more potential rescues out there in the darkness that Murray wished he could get to.</p>
<p>“It sucks to come all this way,” he said. “But at least we got one person. So we didn’t come out here for nothing.”</p>
<p>That near miss with the mailbox out in the water was pretty crazy, too, his friend John Peters added.</p>
<p>“Did you see me slide all the way over to the bridge to get out of the way?” Murray responded, as the men started laughing. They had to admit, this work was also kind of fun.</p> | 560 |
<p>“The bulwark against tyranny is the First Amendment," declared Tucker Carlson during an interview on Monday with Alex Jones for Infowars.</p>
<p>Describing the right to keep and bear arms as an emergency measure built into the Constitution by its framers, Carlson implied that the First and Second Amendments were inseparable from one another.</p>
<p>Lamenting the weaker protections for free speech and expression across the Anglosphere and broader Western World, Carlson criticixed the criminalization of "hate speech" in Canada, the UK, Australia, France, and Germany.</p>
<p>“Our closest allies don’t recognize the First Amendment,” said Carlson, adding that the First Amendment’s protections were immutable and “written in stone.”</p>
<p>“Where’s the line? And the line is always in the same place - it’s whatever is unfashionable according to the people in charge,” said Carlson.</p>
<p>The contemporary left, agreed both Carlson and Jones, were largely sympathetic to left-wing proposals to curtail speech across the West. Senate Democrats <a href="https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/the-democrats-escalate-their-war-on-free-speech.php" type="external">voted</a> <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/democrats-move-to-partially-repeal-first-amendment.php" type="external">unanimously</a> to rewrite the First Amendment in September of 2004, seeking to empower Congress to regulate political speech and expression.</p>
<p>On the upcoming non-binding UK referendum over whether to exit or remain within the European Union superstate, Carlson warned against what the unpredictability of loosely defined and unrestrained populism.</p>
<p>The post-WWII international order is collapsing, surmised Carlson, highlighting the upcoming UK referendum over whether or not to withdraw from the EU. He added his sympathies for the Brexit movement. Populism’s rise as a reaction to increasing centralization of political power in Brussels, added Carlson, “can end up in a really, really ugly place.”</p>
<p>Hoping that Donald Trump will select Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as his vice-presidential running mate, Carlson described him as the smartest and most impressive senator.</p>
<p>Trump’s greatest shortcoming, said Carlson, were poor communication skills when examining issues in depth.</p>
<p>“He’s not a good explainer, sometimes. He doesn’t get deep into why he believes what he believes,” said Carlson.</p>
<p>Watch the full interview below.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | Tucker Carlson: 1st Amendment Is 'Bulwark Against Tyranny' | true | https://dailywire.com/news/6354/tucker-carlson-1st-amendment-bulwark-against-robert-kraychik | 2016-06-06 | 0right
| Tucker Carlson: 1st Amendment Is 'Bulwark Against Tyranny'
<p>“The bulwark against tyranny is the First Amendment," declared Tucker Carlson during an interview on Monday with Alex Jones for Infowars.</p>
<p>Describing the right to keep and bear arms as an emergency measure built into the Constitution by its framers, Carlson implied that the First and Second Amendments were inseparable from one another.</p>
<p>Lamenting the weaker protections for free speech and expression across the Anglosphere and broader Western World, Carlson criticixed the criminalization of "hate speech" in Canada, the UK, Australia, France, and Germany.</p>
<p>“Our closest allies don’t recognize the First Amendment,” said Carlson, adding that the First Amendment’s protections were immutable and “written in stone.”</p>
<p>“Where’s the line? And the line is always in the same place - it’s whatever is unfashionable according to the people in charge,” said Carlson.</p>
<p>The contemporary left, agreed both Carlson and Jones, were largely sympathetic to left-wing proposals to curtail speech across the West. Senate Democrats <a href="https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/the-democrats-escalate-their-war-on-free-speech.php" type="external">voted</a> <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/democrats-move-to-partially-repeal-first-amendment.php" type="external">unanimously</a> to rewrite the First Amendment in September of 2004, seeking to empower Congress to regulate political speech and expression.</p>
<p>On the upcoming non-binding UK referendum over whether to exit or remain within the European Union superstate, Carlson warned against what the unpredictability of loosely defined and unrestrained populism.</p>
<p>The post-WWII international order is collapsing, surmised Carlson, highlighting the upcoming UK referendum over whether or not to withdraw from the EU. He added his sympathies for the Brexit movement. Populism’s rise as a reaction to increasing centralization of political power in Brussels, added Carlson, “can end up in a really, really ugly place.”</p>
<p>Hoping that Donald Trump will select Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as his vice-presidential running mate, Carlson described him as the smartest and most impressive senator.</p>
<p>Trump’s greatest shortcoming, said Carlson, were poor communication skills when examining issues in depth.</p>
<p>“He’s not a good explainer, sometimes. He doesn’t get deep into why he believes what he believes,” said Carlson.</p>
<p>Watch the full interview below.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | 561 |
<p>Variety has learned that German actor <a href="http://variety.com/t/chris-veres/" type="external">Chris Veres</a> has landed a role as a series regular on the Cold War series “Deutschland ’86.”</p>
<p>“Deutschland ’86” picks up the three years after the events of the Peabody Award-winning show “Deutschland ’83,”&#160;with East German agent Martin Rauch (Jonas Nay) on the front line of the battle between the Ronald Reagan led West and the Soviet Union before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Veres will play Tim, an American G.I.&#160;based in West Berlin who is gay but closeted. He works alongside Alex Edel (Ludwig Trepte), his friend who is openly gay.&#160; will appear in seven or eight episodes with series option for subsequent seasons.</p>
<p>German production company UFA is hoping to capitalize on the success of “Deutschland ’83,” which also won an International Emmy and sold to over 200 territories, and expand the market for German film and television productions to an international scale. “Deutschland ’86” is currently filming its 10-episode season in Germany and South Africa and will conclude filming in December. Amazon has distribution rights for Germany, and Sundance TV will distribute the “Deutschland ’86” in the U.S. “Deutschland ’83” aired on Sundance in the U.S.</p>
<p /> | Chris Veres Lands Series Regular Role on ‘Deutschland 86’ (EXCLUSIVE) | false | https://newsline.com/chris-veres-lands-series-regular-role-on-deutschland-86-exclusive/ | 2017-11-10 | 1right-center
| Chris Veres Lands Series Regular Role on ‘Deutschland 86’ (EXCLUSIVE)
<p>Variety has learned that German actor <a href="http://variety.com/t/chris-veres/" type="external">Chris Veres</a> has landed a role as a series regular on the Cold War series “Deutschland ’86.”</p>
<p>“Deutschland ’86” picks up the three years after the events of the Peabody Award-winning show “Deutschland ’83,”&#160;with East German agent Martin Rauch (Jonas Nay) on the front line of the battle between the Ronald Reagan led West and the Soviet Union before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Veres will play Tim, an American G.I.&#160;based in West Berlin who is gay but closeted. He works alongside Alex Edel (Ludwig Trepte), his friend who is openly gay.&#160; will appear in seven or eight episodes with series option for subsequent seasons.</p>
<p>German production company UFA is hoping to capitalize on the success of “Deutschland ’83,” which also won an International Emmy and sold to over 200 territories, and expand the market for German film and television productions to an international scale. “Deutschland ’86” is currently filming its 10-episode season in Germany and South Africa and will conclude filming in December. Amazon has distribution rights for Germany, and Sundance TV will distribute the “Deutschland ’86” in the U.S. “Deutschland ’83” aired on Sundance in the U.S.</p>
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<p>Anna Tatishvili returns a shot against Tornado Alicia Black during their match Thursday at the Coleman Vision tourney. (Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>Albuquerque is beginning to look a bit like a home away from home for Anna Tatishvili.</p>
<p>The Tbilisi, Georgia, born tennis star defeated 16-year-old rising star Tornado Alicia Black 6-2, 6-3 on Thursday at the Coleman Vision Tennis Championship, easily advancing to today’s quarterfinals.</p>
<p>Now, a return to the Top 100 of the world rankings (she was No. 104 entering this event) appears imminent for the 24-year-old who has made a habit of making deep tournament runs at Albuquerque’s annual $75,000 USTA Pro Circuit event.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>As of Thursday, Tatishvili had compiled 21 wins at the Coleman Vision, going 16-6 in singles play and 5-6 in doubles matches in this, her seventh time playing in the event.</p>
<p>“It’s a great tournament to get (ranking) points, a nice organization and it’s just a real nice tournament to come to,” Tatishvili said.</p>
<p>And it doesn’t hurt that she and her father, who doubles as her coach, have some extra motivation to visit each September.</p>
<p>“We have very good friends from Georgia, they live (in Albuquerque), so every time we come here, we stay with them,” Tatishvili said. “I think one of the reasons we keep coming here is because of our friends.”</p>
<p>But as at home as Tatishvili feels on the courts of the Tanoan Country Club each September, she’s ready for one small change to her annual visit.</p>
<p>After losing in the singles title match in each of her last two visits (2011 and 2013) and two other times in the semifinals (2008 and 2010), she’s hoping this year as the tournament’s No. 1 seed she can break through and claim her first Coleman Vision title, which would be her 11th singles title as a pro.</p>
<p>“I hope – fingers crossed,” she said Thursday. “Third time is the lucky one. You know what they say.”</p>
<p>It’s hard to bet against her. While she says she hasn’t been at her best in her two wins so far this week – Thursday against Black and Tuesday over Great Britain’s Tara Moore (7-5, 6-2) – she hasn’t dropped a set in the singles main draw (she and partner Eva Hrdinova were eliminated from the doubles draw Wednesday).</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Here, it’s always tough to play because of the high altitude. You have to adjust to it and I think I’ve done that,” Tatishvili said. “I think these last two matches, I haven’t played my best tennis, but I played smart.”</p>
<p>Tornado Alicia Black chases a shot during her match Thursday against Anna Tatishvili at the Coleman Vision tourney. (Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>In today’s quarterfinals, Tatishvili will try to continue her run against Julia Boserup, a 6-2, 6-2 winner over Melanie Oudin on Thursday.</p>
<p>END OF RUN: Tatishvili’s straight sets win over Black marked the end of the line in the Coleman Vision for the three rising teen stars who make up the USTA Junior Fed Cup team.</p>
<p>The trio of Black and 15-year-olds CiCi Bellis and Sofia Kenin, as well as members of the boys USTA Junior Davis Cup team, came to Albuquerque this week to get in some high-altitude training before heading to Mexico next week to compete at the Fed Cup and Davis Cup finals.</p>
<p>While Bellis and Kenin lost in the qualifying draw of the tournament, Black won four matches before her impressive run ended Thursday.</p>
<p>“I feel like I’ve been playing real good lately,” said Black, who fared well over the summer at the U.S. Open. “And I’m real happy about the experience here, too. I just got to play someone who is ranked 104, so that’s a great experience for me.”</p>
<p>The Fed Cup and Davis Cup teams aren’t done in Albuquerque just yet, though. They will play an exhibition with UNM’s men’s and women’s teams at 4 p.m. today at UNM’s McKinnon Family Tennis Stadium.</p>
<p>VAIDISOVA: The comeback will continue for Nicole Vaidisova, just not in Albuquerque.</p>
<p>The former world-ranked No. 7 player, who chose the Coleman Vision to make her return to professional tennis after 4½ years away from the game, lost to the tournament’s No. 3 seed, Johanna Konta, on Thursday (1-6, 6-1, 6-4).</p>
<p />
<p /> | No. 1 seed Tatishvili makes herself at home at Coleman Vision | false | https://abqjournal.com/464656/no-1-seed-tatishvili-beats-black.html | 2least
| No. 1 seed Tatishvili makes herself at home at Coleman Vision
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<p>Anna Tatishvili returns a shot against Tornado Alicia Black during their match Thursday at the Coleman Vision tourney. (Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>Albuquerque is beginning to look a bit like a home away from home for Anna Tatishvili.</p>
<p>The Tbilisi, Georgia, born tennis star defeated 16-year-old rising star Tornado Alicia Black 6-2, 6-3 on Thursday at the Coleman Vision Tennis Championship, easily advancing to today’s quarterfinals.</p>
<p>Now, a return to the Top 100 of the world rankings (she was No. 104 entering this event) appears imminent for the 24-year-old who has made a habit of making deep tournament runs at Albuquerque’s annual $75,000 USTA Pro Circuit event.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>As of Thursday, Tatishvili had compiled 21 wins at the Coleman Vision, going 16-6 in singles play and 5-6 in doubles matches in this, her seventh time playing in the event.</p>
<p>“It’s a great tournament to get (ranking) points, a nice organization and it’s just a real nice tournament to come to,” Tatishvili said.</p>
<p>And it doesn’t hurt that she and her father, who doubles as her coach, have some extra motivation to visit each September.</p>
<p>“We have very good friends from Georgia, they live (in Albuquerque), so every time we come here, we stay with them,” Tatishvili said. “I think one of the reasons we keep coming here is because of our friends.”</p>
<p>But as at home as Tatishvili feels on the courts of the Tanoan Country Club each September, she’s ready for one small change to her annual visit.</p>
<p>After losing in the singles title match in each of her last two visits (2011 and 2013) and two other times in the semifinals (2008 and 2010), she’s hoping this year as the tournament’s No. 1 seed she can break through and claim her first Coleman Vision title, which would be her 11th singles title as a pro.</p>
<p>“I hope – fingers crossed,” she said Thursday. “Third time is the lucky one. You know what they say.”</p>
<p>It’s hard to bet against her. While she says she hasn’t been at her best in her two wins so far this week – Thursday against Black and Tuesday over Great Britain’s Tara Moore (7-5, 6-2) – she hasn’t dropped a set in the singles main draw (she and partner Eva Hrdinova were eliminated from the doubles draw Wednesday).</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Here, it’s always tough to play because of the high altitude. You have to adjust to it and I think I’ve done that,” Tatishvili said. “I think these last two matches, I haven’t played my best tennis, but I played smart.”</p>
<p>Tornado Alicia Black chases a shot during her match Thursday against Anna Tatishvili at the Coleman Vision tourney. (Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>In today’s quarterfinals, Tatishvili will try to continue her run against Julia Boserup, a 6-2, 6-2 winner over Melanie Oudin on Thursday.</p>
<p>END OF RUN: Tatishvili’s straight sets win over Black marked the end of the line in the Coleman Vision for the three rising teen stars who make up the USTA Junior Fed Cup team.</p>
<p>The trio of Black and 15-year-olds CiCi Bellis and Sofia Kenin, as well as members of the boys USTA Junior Davis Cup team, came to Albuquerque this week to get in some high-altitude training before heading to Mexico next week to compete at the Fed Cup and Davis Cup finals.</p>
<p>While Bellis and Kenin lost in the qualifying draw of the tournament, Black won four matches before her impressive run ended Thursday.</p>
<p>“I feel like I’ve been playing real good lately,” said Black, who fared well over the summer at the U.S. Open. “And I’m real happy about the experience here, too. I just got to play someone who is ranked 104, so that’s a great experience for me.”</p>
<p>The Fed Cup and Davis Cup teams aren’t done in Albuquerque just yet, though. They will play an exhibition with UNM’s men’s and women’s teams at 4 p.m. today at UNM’s McKinnon Family Tennis Stadium.</p>
<p>VAIDISOVA: The comeback will continue for Nicole Vaidisova, just not in Albuquerque.</p>
<p>The former world-ranked No. 7 player, who chose the Coleman Vision to make her return to professional tennis after 4½ years away from the game, lost to the tournament’s No. 3 seed, Johanna Konta, on Thursday (1-6, 6-1, 6-4).</p>
<p />
<p /> | 563 |
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<p>U.S. Senator <a href="" type="internal">Al Franken</a> asked software maker Carrier IQ to respond to claims by an independent security researcher that its products collect and transmit potentially sensitive data about millions of mobile phone users.</p>
<p>Carrier IQ makes software that companies including AT&amp;T Inc and <a href="" type="internal">Sprint Nextel</a> install in mobile devices. It runs in the background, transmitting data that the software maker says its customers use to better understand their devices and networks, which allows them to improve their service.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Hacking expert Trevor Eckhart last month began publishing research on its functionality, saying it tracks user locations, and this week released a 17-minute YouTube video showing it collect data from an HTC smartphone. A firestorm of criticism has erupted in online forums and on <a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a>, where users complained that the software was violating their privacy.</p>
<p>The video shows a piece of software tracking Eckhart as he turns his phone on and off, punches numbers to make a call and records text message in plain text.</p>
<p>``The revelation that the locations and other sensitive data of millions of Americans are being secretly recorded and possibly transmitted is deeply troubling,'' Franken said in a statement. ``Carrier IQ has a lot of questions to answer.''</p>
<p>In his letter, he asked the company for details on the types of data its software collects and what it does with that information.</p>
<p>AT&amp;T and Sprint Nextel both said they use the software in their devices to collect information that helps them improve network and service performance.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>``We do use carrier IQ, but we do not and cannot look at the contents of messages, etc., as some have speculated,'' said Sprint spokeswoman Stephanie Vinge-Walsh.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for <a href="" type="internal">Verizon Wireless</a> said that her company did not currently use the software but was not sure if the company had previously been a customer.</p>
<p>Apple Inc said that some devices, including iPhones, that run on its iOS 4 operating system use the Carrier IQ software, but that it does not work with the newer iOS 5.</p> | Senator Demands Privacy Info From Software Firm | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/12/01/senator-demands-privacy-info-from-software-firm.html | 2016-03-04 | 0right
| Senator Demands Privacy Info From Software Firm
<p>U.S. Senator <a href="" type="internal">Al Franken</a> asked software maker Carrier IQ to respond to claims by an independent security researcher that its products collect and transmit potentially sensitive data about millions of mobile phone users.</p>
<p>Carrier IQ makes software that companies including AT&amp;T Inc and <a href="" type="internal">Sprint Nextel</a> install in mobile devices. It runs in the background, transmitting data that the software maker says its customers use to better understand their devices and networks, which allows them to improve their service.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Hacking expert Trevor Eckhart last month began publishing research on its functionality, saying it tracks user locations, and this week released a 17-minute YouTube video showing it collect data from an HTC smartphone. A firestorm of criticism has erupted in online forums and on <a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a>, where users complained that the software was violating their privacy.</p>
<p>The video shows a piece of software tracking Eckhart as he turns his phone on and off, punches numbers to make a call and records text message in plain text.</p>
<p>``The revelation that the locations and other sensitive data of millions of Americans are being secretly recorded and possibly transmitted is deeply troubling,'' Franken said in a statement. ``Carrier IQ has a lot of questions to answer.''</p>
<p>In his letter, he asked the company for details on the types of data its software collects and what it does with that information.</p>
<p>AT&amp;T and Sprint Nextel both said they use the software in their devices to collect information that helps them improve network and service performance.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>``We do use carrier IQ, but we do not and cannot look at the contents of messages, etc., as some have speculated,'' said Sprint spokeswoman Stephanie Vinge-Walsh.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for <a href="" type="internal">Verizon Wireless</a> said that her company did not currently use the software but was not sure if the company had previously been a customer.</p>
<p>Apple Inc said that some devices, including iPhones, that run on its iOS 4 operating system use the Carrier IQ software, but that it does not work with the newer iOS 5.</p> | 564 |
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<p />
<p>The size and scope of the VLA radio astronomy observatory shown in this aerial photo.</p>
<p>At least that’s the case at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio astronomy observatory ( <a href="http://public.nrao.edu/tours/visitvla" type="external">public.nrao.edu/tours/visitvla</a>), about 50 miles west of Socorro. The VLA is a part of the National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory, with several locations scattered around North and South America.</p>
<p>A fixture on the Plains of San Augustin since its construction in the 1970s and dedication in 1980, the VLA underwent a decadelong refurbishment that was finished in 2012.</p>
<p>Mounted on rails, the 27 individual, 82-foot-diameter radio telescopes are laid out in an extensive Y formation, with each axis stretching more than 13 miles long.</p>
<p>The massive scope of the project – made famous for its prominent appearance in the Jodie Foster film “Contact” – rises above the plains in a jaw-dropping testament to the power of science.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The array has been used to peer at black holes, to measure the rotating discs of dense gases surrounding newly formed stars and to spy on complex gas motions in the Milky Way’s heart.</p>
<p>Astronomer John Briggs sits in the research library portion of the Astronomical Lyceum, a Magdalena museum dedicated to the science and technology of astronomy.</p>
<p>And just recently, scientists announced that “images” captured in 2014 and 2015 appear to show planet-like bodies barreling through dust along their orbits around a relatively nearby star.</p>
<p>What’s particularly neat about all this cool stuff being done in New Mexico is it’s also a place the public is welcome to visit, said Dave Finley, VLA public information officer.</p>
<p>“What really draws people is the iconic nature of the site,” he said. “Twenty-seven dishes, each 82 feet wide, and it’s been in a lot of movies. It’s in probably every astronomy textbook in the world. It’s been in many newspapers and magazines.</p>
<p>It’s the science fiction melding into science fact.</p>
<p>“People have heard of it,” Finley said. “It’s probably the most famous radio telescope. We get people from all over the world come and see it. It’s one of the places on the forefront of science.”</p>
<p>Although there are guided tours on the first Saturday of every month, a self-guided walking tour is open year-round except for Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Year’s Day, he said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The best place to start, Finley said, is at the visitor center, with a new 24-minute video narrated by Foster that explains the role the VLA plays in pushing the boundaries of research.</p>
<p>“We’re making new discoveries every day in advancing the frontiers of human knowledge,” Finley said.</p>
<p>The center also showcases and explains the technology behind the VLA and describes in detail the accomplishments of the site.</p>
<p>The walking tour is an easy stroll that includes a close-up view of one of the antennas, with new signs describing in depth not only the VLA but also the surrounding landscape.</p>
<p>“You can also go up on the control building’s highest point and look out at the center of the array, where it comes together, and take photos,” Finley said. “You can also see where one of the scenes for ‘Contact’ was shot. That’s a great photo op.”</p>
<p>The nearby village of Magdalena also is becoming an astronomy beacon of sorts, with a growing stargazing community and the informal but entertaining Astronomical Lyceum, which pays homage to the history of astronomy, said astronomer John Briggs.</p>
<p>The Lyceum is home to numerous historical telescopes, like the one used by famed astronomer Lewis Rutherfurd in the 1870s.</p>
<p>“In the 1870s, he was regarded as one of the greatest lunar and solar photographers in the world,” Briggs said. “The large Rutherfurd telescope is like what you would imagine Jules Verne would have looked at to look at the moon.”</p>
<p>In addition, he said, “there are many other instruments in the collection by famous and artistic American telescope makers. It’s surprising to many people how artistic these scientific instruments are.”</p>
<p>Housed in an old school gymnasium, “It’s all very informal,” Briggs said, adding that the Lyceum is opened by appointment and that interested parties should email beforehand to arrange entry. But it’s well-worth the effort.</p>
<p>“We get a lot of donations. Sometimes it may only be a lens, but it was by somebody famous, an early lens maker. It can be a very cool thing to talk about and share. We have astronomical spectrascopes and cameras and all kinds of things related to the history of astronomy.”</p>
<p>The array of equipment related to the science is quite amazing, he said.</p>
<p>“Most astronomers, and especially amateur astronomers, love the hardware aspects of the science,” Briggs said. “The telescopes and related equipment are very interesting. So to folks with this interest, the Lyceum collection seems to blow people’s minds.”</p>
<p /> | Very Large Array – always looking up | false | https://abqjournal.com/906299/icon.html | 2least
| Very Large Array – always looking up
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<p />
<p>The size and scope of the VLA radio astronomy observatory shown in this aerial photo.</p>
<p>At least that’s the case at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio astronomy observatory ( <a href="http://public.nrao.edu/tours/visitvla" type="external">public.nrao.edu/tours/visitvla</a>), about 50 miles west of Socorro. The VLA is a part of the National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory, with several locations scattered around North and South America.</p>
<p>A fixture on the Plains of San Augustin since its construction in the 1970s and dedication in 1980, the VLA underwent a decadelong refurbishment that was finished in 2012.</p>
<p>Mounted on rails, the 27 individual, 82-foot-diameter radio telescopes are laid out in an extensive Y formation, with each axis stretching more than 13 miles long.</p>
<p>The massive scope of the project – made famous for its prominent appearance in the Jodie Foster film “Contact” – rises above the plains in a jaw-dropping testament to the power of science.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The array has been used to peer at black holes, to measure the rotating discs of dense gases surrounding newly formed stars and to spy on complex gas motions in the Milky Way’s heart.</p>
<p>Astronomer John Briggs sits in the research library portion of the Astronomical Lyceum, a Magdalena museum dedicated to the science and technology of astronomy.</p>
<p>And just recently, scientists announced that “images” captured in 2014 and 2015 appear to show planet-like bodies barreling through dust along their orbits around a relatively nearby star.</p>
<p>What’s particularly neat about all this cool stuff being done in New Mexico is it’s also a place the public is welcome to visit, said Dave Finley, VLA public information officer.</p>
<p>“What really draws people is the iconic nature of the site,” he said. “Twenty-seven dishes, each 82 feet wide, and it’s been in a lot of movies. It’s in probably every astronomy textbook in the world. It’s been in many newspapers and magazines.</p>
<p>It’s the science fiction melding into science fact.</p>
<p>“People have heard of it,” Finley said. “It’s probably the most famous radio telescope. We get people from all over the world come and see it. It’s one of the places on the forefront of science.”</p>
<p>Although there are guided tours on the first Saturday of every month, a self-guided walking tour is open year-round except for Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Year’s Day, he said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The best place to start, Finley said, is at the visitor center, with a new 24-minute video narrated by Foster that explains the role the VLA plays in pushing the boundaries of research.</p>
<p>“We’re making new discoveries every day in advancing the frontiers of human knowledge,” Finley said.</p>
<p>The center also showcases and explains the technology behind the VLA and describes in detail the accomplishments of the site.</p>
<p>The walking tour is an easy stroll that includes a close-up view of one of the antennas, with new signs describing in depth not only the VLA but also the surrounding landscape.</p>
<p>“You can also go up on the control building’s highest point and look out at the center of the array, where it comes together, and take photos,” Finley said. “You can also see where one of the scenes for ‘Contact’ was shot. That’s a great photo op.”</p>
<p>The nearby village of Magdalena also is becoming an astronomy beacon of sorts, with a growing stargazing community and the informal but entertaining Astronomical Lyceum, which pays homage to the history of astronomy, said astronomer John Briggs.</p>
<p>The Lyceum is home to numerous historical telescopes, like the one used by famed astronomer Lewis Rutherfurd in the 1870s.</p>
<p>“In the 1870s, he was regarded as one of the greatest lunar and solar photographers in the world,” Briggs said. “The large Rutherfurd telescope is like what you would imagine Jules Verne would have looked at to look at the moon.”</p>
<p>In addition, he said, “there are many other instruments in the collection by famous and artistic American telescope makers. It’s surprising to many people how artistic these scientific instruments are.”</p>
<p>Housed in an old school gymnasium, “It’s all very informal,” Briggs said, adding that the Lyceum is opened by appointment and that interested parties should email beforehand to arrange entry. But it’s well-worth the effort.</p>
<p>“We get a lot of donations. Sometimes it may only be a lens, but it was by somebody famous, an early lens maker. It can be a very cool thing to talk about and share. We have astronomical spectrascopes and cameras and all kinds of things related to the history of astronomy.”</p>
<p>The array of equipment related to the science is quite amazing, he said.</p>
<p>“Most astronomers, and especially amateur astronomers, love the hardware aspects of the science,” Briggs said. “The telescopes and related equipment are very interesting. So to folks with this interest, the Lyceum collection seems to blow people’s minds.”</p>
<p /> | 565 |
|
<p />
<p>Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE: RDS-B) has an enticing 6.7% yield, more than enough to lure in dividend investors. There are some very good things going on at the oil and natural gas giant, too. But before you buy, you have to step back and look at the big picture. If you don't, you could end up owning something you didn't expect. Here are three terrible reasons to buy Royal Dutch Shell.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>OK, let's be honest, the big yield is a great reason to buy Shell. But not without putting it into context. For example, Shell hasn't increased its dividend in three years. In fact, in an effort to protect cash flow, the company is offering a scrip dividend, which pays shareholders in stock so it doesn't have to pay in cash.</p>
<p>Image source: Royal Dutch Shell plc.</p>
<p>This relates back to the steep decline in oil prices in mid-2014, but the roughly $50 billion acquisition of BG Group last year is another important factor. That move increased the company's long-term debt by more than 50% between year-end 2015 and year-end 2016. Shell is now planning on selling $30 billion worth of assets to get its balance sheet back in order.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In other words, Shell has a big yield, but there are risks you have to understand before you jump aboard. I believe it will be able to hold the line on the dividend, but until the balance sheet is in better shape, dividend increases, at least material ones, are probably on hold.</p>
<p>Another thing you have to understand about Shell is that it's not your typical oil major... at least not after the BG acquisition. That's not to suggest that oil isn't important to Shell; it's still a major part of the business and an important growth engine for the company. But BG was a natural gas-focused company and a big reason Shell bought it was to make a strategic shift toward that fuel. And, to be honest, Shell was already among the largest players in the natural gas space, notably including liquified natural gas (which is how the fuel is transported when pipelines aren't an option).</p>
<p>The BG acquisition made Shell an even bigger player in natural gas. Image source: Royal Dutch Shell plc.</p>
<p>This is a long-term shift toward a fuel that is expected to foster the transition from carbon fuels to clean power, like solar and wind. Strategically, it's a solid decision and helps to underpin the company's growth plans, but you can't buy Shell thinking that it's just an oil company. Because it's increasingly looking like a natural gas company, too.</p>
<p>Despite a long and successful operating history, Shell is a commodity company. That said, oil prices have bounced back from their early 2016 lows, which may lead some investors to call an all-clear. After all, if the pickup in drilling in the United States is any indication, things are looking up for energy companies. Some perspective is needed.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/indicators/brent_crude_oil_spot_price" type="external">Brent Crude Oil Spot Price</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, while oil prices have come off their lows, they remain far below the highs reached in 2014. And natural gas continues to trade at a relatively low price, historically speaking. That means there's not going to be a return to the salad days anytime soon. And the U.S. oil and gas activity could actually be part of the problem, as production here is flexible enough to ramp up and down quickly. Which is why U.S. onshore activity is expected to restrain energy prices. A new normal with lower energy prices is more likely than a steady rise at this point, limiting upside in Shell's earnings.</p>
<p>There are a lot of good reasons to like Shell, including its push toward natural gas and debt repayment efforts. However, you have to understand the impact of these moves, as well as the bigger picture for the energy industry, where $100-per-barrel oil prices appear to be a thing of the past for now. As long as you have the bigger picture in focus, Shell is a solid option for dividend investors.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Royal Dutch Shell (B Shares)When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=1c804861-a0f1-4bcd-8bed-44ed92bd516e&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 Royal Dutch Shell (B Shares) 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=1c804861-a0f1-4bcd-8bed-44ed92bd516e&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/ReubenGBrewer/info.aspx" type="external">Reuben Brewer 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;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 3 Terrible Reasons to Buy Royal Dutch Shell plc and Its Fat Dividend Yield | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/29/3-terrible-reasons-to-buy-royal-dutch-shell-plc-and-its-fat-dividend-yield.html | 2017-03-29 | 0right
| 3 Terrible Reasons to Buy Royal Dutch Shell plc and Its Fat Dividend Yield
<p />
<p>Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE: RDS-B) has an enticing 6.7% yield, more than enough to lure in dividend investors. There are some very good things going on at the oil and natural gas giant, too. But before you buy, you have to step back and look at the big picture. If you don't, you could end up owning something you didn't expect. Here are three terrible reasons to buy Royal Dutch Shell.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>OK, let's be honest, the big yield is a great reason to buy Shell. But not without putting it into context. For example, Shell hasn't increased its dividend in three years. In fact, in an effort to protect cash flow, the company is offering a scrip dividend, which pays shareholders in stock so it doesn't have to pay in cash.</p>
<p>Image source: Royal Dutch Shell plc.</p>
<p>This relates back to the steep decline in oil prices in mid-2014, but the roughly $50 billion acquisition of BG Group last year is another important factor. That move increased the company's long-term debt by more than 50% between year-end 2015 and year-end 2016. Shell is now planning on selling $30 billion worth of assets to get its balance sheet back in order.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In other words, Shell has a big yield, but there are risks you have to understand before you jump aboard. I believe it will be able to hold the line on the dividend, but until the balance sheet is in better shape, dividend increases, at least material ones, are probably on hold.</p>
<p>Another thing you have to understand about Shell is that it's not your typical oil major... at least not after the BG acquisition. That's not to suggest that oil isn't important to Shell; it's still a major part of the business and an important growth engine for the company. But BG was a natural gas-focused company and a big reason Shell bought it was to make a strategic shift toward that fuel. And, to be honest, Shell was already among the largest players in the natural gas space, notably including liquified natural gas (which is how the fuel is transported when pipelines aren't an option).</p>
<p>The BG acquisition made Shell an even bigger player in natural gas. Image source: Royal Dutch Shell plc.</p>
<p>This is a long-term shift toward a fuel that is expected to foster the transition from carbon fuels to clean power, like solar and wind. Strategically, it's a solid decision and helps to underpin the company's growth plans, but you can't buy Shell thinking that it's just an oil company. Because it's increasingly looking like a natural gas company, too.</p>
<p>Despite a long and successful operating history, Shell is a commodity company. That said, oil prices have bounced back from their early 2016 lows, which may lead some investors to call an all-clear. After all, if the pickup in drilling in the United States is any indication, things are looking up for energy companies. Some perspective is needed.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/indicators/brent_crude_oil_spot_price" type="external">Brent Crude Oil Spot Price</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, while oil prices have come off their lows, they remain far below the highs reached in 2014. And natural gas continues to trade at a relatively low price, historically speaking. That means there's not going to be a return to the salad days anytime soon. And the U.S. oil and gas activity could actually be part of the problem, as production here is flexible enough to ramp up and down quickly. Which is why U.S. onshore activity is expected to restrain energy prices. A new normal with lower energy prices is more likely than a steady rise at this point, limiting upside in Shell's earnings.</p>
<p>There are a lot of good reasons to like Shell, including its push toward natural gas and debt repayment efforts. However, you have to understand the impact of these moves, as well as the bigger picture for the energy industry, where $100-per-barrel oil prices appear to be a thing of the past for now. As long as you have the bigger picture in focus, Shell is a solid option for dividend investors.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Royal Dutch Shell (B Shares)When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=1c804861-a0f1-4bcd-8bed-44ed92bd516e&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 Royal Dutch Shell (B Shares) 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=1c804861-a0f1-4bcd-8bed-44ed92bd516e&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/ReubenGBrewer/info.aspx" type="external">Reuben Brewer 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;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 566 |
<p>Bill Richardson / AP</p>
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">CJ Ciaramella</a> January 6, 2013 4:59 am</p>
<p>The U.S. Export-Import Bank recently steered hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loans to Spanish green energy conglomerate Abengoa, which happens to share an advisory board member with the bank.</p>
<p>The Ex-Im Bank <a href="http://www.exim.gov/newsandevents/releases/2012/ex-im-bank-authorizes-150-million-in-export-financing-for-energy-projects-in-latin-america.cfm" type="external">approved</a> a&#160;$78.6 million direct loan to Spain-based Abengoa in December. It also approved a $73.6 million direct loan to a wind farm in Uruguay, which is owned by Abengoa.</p>
<p>Former Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson sits on both the Abengoa International Advisory Board and is <a href="http://www.exim.gov/about/whoweare/leadership/advisory-committee.cfm" type="external">currently listed</a> on the Ex-Im bank’s website as a member of the advisory committee that helps guide bank policy.</p>
<p>Richardson was not listed in the Ex-Im Bank’s November <a href="http://www.exim.gov/newsandevents/releases/2012/Ex-Im-Bank-Announces-FY2013-Advisory-Committee-Members.cfm" type="external">announcement</a> of its 2013 Advisory Board members.</p>
<p>"Mr. Richardson had no role or communication with anyone in the Bank regarding that transaction," said a spokesman for the Ex-Im Bank. "His appointment to the Advisory Board was made public only after he had been fully vetted by the Bank, which occurred after the initial press release was issued."</p>
<p>It is unclear, though, if Richardson joined the Ex-Im Bank’s advisory board before or after the decision to extend the loan was made. The Ex-Im Bank did not immediately respond to a follow-up inquiry.</p>
<p>Critics of the Ex-Im Bank say the connection between Richardson, Abengoa, and the bank is another instance of "corporate welfare" at the bank.</p>
<p>"The Export-Import Bank is nothing more than a massive, taxpayer-backed fund for corporate welfare, so a story like this comes at no surprise to us or to anyone who has pushed for the bank to be shut down," said Club for Growth spokesman Barney Keller.</p>
<p>The Club for Growth is one of several small-government groups that opposed the reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank last year. The reauthorization bill raised the limit on the total financing the bank can guarantee borrowers from $100&#160;billion to $140&#160;billion.</p>
<p>The groups, along with several conservative members of Congress, oppose the bank on the grounds that it favors large, politically connected companies and distorts markets.</p>
<p>However, supporters of the bank say it encourages U.S. exports and supports American jobs.</p>
<p>The Ex-Im Bank, which extends taxpayer-backed loans to foreign buyers of U.S. exports, estimates approximately 510 American jobs will be supported by the Abengoa transactions.</p>
<p>"These two transactions demonstrate the strength of American energy technology&#160;and highlight the importance of this growing sector," Ex-Im Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg said in a statement.&#160;"In order for the U.S. to compete globally, our companies must continue to produce cutting-edge energy technology. President Obama set an ambitious goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years, and these types of projects will help us meet that goal in 2015."</p>
<p>As previously reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Abengoa has garnered a wealth of federal subsidies and preferential treatment from the Obama administration, such as <a href="" type="internal">fast-tracked leasing</a> from the Interior Department for its solar farms and <a href="" type="internal">loans</a> worth $2.78 billion from the Energy and Treasury Department.</p>
<p>The jobs created from these loans were projected to create 195 permanent jobs at a rate of more than $14 million per job.</p>
<p>Abengoa’s American green energy projects—Solana, Movjave Solar, and Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass of Kansas LLC—all had <a href="http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/FINAL-DOE-Loan-Guarantees-Report.pdf" type="external">low credit ratings</a> but were still approved for significant DOE loans.</p>
<p>Solana’s Fitch credit rating was BB+ in 2010 when the company received&#160; <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20026491-54.html" type="external">$1.45 billion</a>&#160;from the DOE for a solar thermal plant. Mojave Solar’s rating was BB when the company received&#160; <a href="https://lpo.energy.gov/?projects=abengoa-solar-inc-mojave-solar" type="external">$1.2 billion</a>&#160;in September 2011. Bioenergy Biomass was rated CCC when it received a $132.4 million loan in August 2010.</p>
<p>Some of Richardson's largest campaign contributors received during his term as governor of New Mexico&#160;lucrative regulatory exemptions and preferences that aided their companies, leading to allegations of cronyism and corruption.</p>
<p>"State regulatory changes helped transform a small company owned by a pair of Richardson administration insiders into the biggest ‘cradle to grave’ oil field waste disposal company in the Oil Patch of southeast New Mexico," the Albuquerque Journal <a href="http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/17235023state10-17-10.htm" type="external">reported</a> in 2010.</p>
<p>Prior to his election as governor, Richardson served as secretary of the Department of Energy.</p>
<p>Update Jan. 6, 4:41 p.m.:&#160;</p>
<p>"As stated previously, Richardson had no communication or role with anyone at the bank regarding this transaction," an Ex-Im Bank spokesman said. "The bank has financed several Abengoa projects over the last few years and the details of this transaction were finalized prior to Richardson joining the advisory board."</p>
<p>Richardson is also connected to Diane Farrell, a former Ex-Im Bank director. Richardson <a href="http://www.westportnow.com/index.php?/v2_5/comments/5575/" type="external">headlined</a> a fundraiser for Farrell's 2004 congressional campaign that was expected to bring in $300,000. She <a href="http://www.exim.gov/newsandevents/boardmeetings/board/boardmeeting-agenda.cfm?pageID=3663" type="external">voted</a> to approve a final commitment on an $83 million loan to Abengoa for a plant in Mexico while still a director in 2011.</p>
<p>The Inter-American Development Bank also <a href="http://www.windpowerintelligence.com/article/MEwqOsyRUs/2012/12/06/uruguay_iadb_grants_over_us40_million_to_spanish_group/" type="external">awarded</a> Abengoa a $41 million loan in December for its wind project in Uruguay. Richardson <a href="http://www.iadb.org/en/about-us/juscelino-award/juscelino-kubitschek-selection-committee,3050.html" type="external">serves</a> on a selection committee for an annual award given out by the bank.</p>
<p>This is not the first time Richardson has faced accusations of conflicts of interest. He was <a href="http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2012/06/30/news/shedding-new-light-on-old-scandal.html" type="external">accused</a> of being involved in another pay-to-play scandal involving a New Mexico state grant to CDR Financial Products. Richardson previously <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/27/doj-drops-investigation-of-richardson/" type="external">was investigated</a> for pay-to-play in 2009 before the Justice Department dropped the investigation.</p> | Ex-Im Bank Funds Green Jobs Overseas | true | http://freebeacon.com/ex-im-bank-funds-green-jobs-overseas/ | 2013-01-06 | 0right
| Ex-Im Bank Funds Green Jobs Overseas
<p>Bill Richardson / AP</p>
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">CJ Ciaramella</a> January 6, 2013 4:59 am</p>
<p>The U.S. Export-Import Bank recently steered hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loans to Spanish green energy conglomerate Abengoa, which happens to share an advisory board member with the bank.</p>
<p>The Ex-Im Bank <a href="http://www.exim.gov/newsandevents/releases/2012/ex-im-bank-authorizes-150-million-in-export-financing-for-energy-projects-in-latin-america.cfm" type="external">approved</a> a&#160;$78.6 million direct loan to Spain-based Abengoa in December. It also approved a $73.6 million direct loan to a wind farm in Uruguay, which is owned by Abengoa.</p>
<p>Former Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson sits on both the Abengoa International Advisory Board and is <a href="http://www.exim.gov/about/whoweare/leadership/advisory-committee.cfm" type="external">currently listed</a> on the Ex-Im bank’s website as a member of the advisory committee that helps guide bank policy.</p>
<p>Richardson was not listed in the Ex-Im Bank’s November <a href="http://www.exim.gov/newsandevents/releases/2012/Ex-Im-Bank-Announces-FY2013-Advisory-Committee-Members.cfm" type="external">announcement</a> of its 2013 Advisory Board members.</p>
<p>"Mr. Richardson had no role or communication with anyone in the Bank regarding that transaction," said a spokesman for the Ex-Im Bank. "His appointment to the Advisory Board was made public only after he had been fully vetted by the Bank, which occurred after the initial press release was issued."</p>
<p>It is unclear, though, if Richardson joined the Ex-Im Bank’s advisory board before or after the decision to extend the loan was made. The Ex-Im Bank did not immediately respond to a follow-up inquiry.</p>
<p>Critics of the Ex-Im Bank say the connection between Richardson, Abengoa, and the bank is another instance of "corporate welfare" at the bank.</p>
<p>"The Export-Import Bank is nothing more than a massive, taxpayer-backed fund for corporate welfare, so a story like this comes at no surprise to us or to anyone who has pushed for the bank to be shut down," said Club for Growth spokesman Barney Keller.</p>
<p>The Club for Growth is one of several small-government groups that opposed the reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank last year. The reauthorization bill raised the limit on the total financing the bank can guarantee borrowers from $100&#160;billion to $140&#160;billion.</p>
<p>The groups, along with several conservative members of Congress, oppose the bank on the grounds that it favors large, politically connected companies and distorts markets.</p>
<p>However, supporters of the bank say it encourages U.S. exports and supports American jobs.</p>
<p>The Ex-Im Bank, which extends taxpayer-backed loans to foreign buyers of U.S. exports, estimates approximately 510 American jobs will be supported by the Abengoa transactions.</p>
<p>"These two transactions demonstrate the strength of American energy technology&#160;and highlight the importance of this growing sector," Ex-Im Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg said in a statement.&#160;"In order for the U.S. to compete globally, our companies must continue to produce cutting-edge energy technology. President Obama set an ambitious goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years, and these types of projects will help us meet that goal in 2015."</p>
<p>As previously reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Abengoa has garnered a wealth of federal subsidies and preferential treatment from the Obama administration, such as <a href="" type="internal">fast-tracked leasing</a> from the Interior Department for its solar farms and <a href="" type="internal">loans</a> worth $2.78 billion from the Energy and Treasury Department.</p>
<p>The jobs created from these loans were projected to create 195 permanent jobs at a rate of more than $14 million per job.</p>
<p>Abengoa’s American green energy projects—Solana, Movjave Solar, and Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass of Kansas LLC—all had <a href="http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/FINAL-DOE-Loan-Guarantees-Report.pdf" type="external">low credit ratings</a> but were still approved for significant DOE loans.</p>
<p>Solana’s Fitch credit rating was BB+ in 2010 when the company received&#160; <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20026491-54.html" type="external">$1.45 billion</a>&#160;from the DOE for a solar thermal plant. Mojave Solar’s rating was BB when the company received&#160; <a href="https://lpo.energy.gov/?projects=abengoa-solar-inc-mojave-solar" type="external">$1.2 billion</a>&#160;in September 2011. Bioenergy Biomass was rated CCC when it received a $132.4 million loan in August 2010.</p>
<p>Some of Richardson's largest campaign contributors received during his term as governor of New Mexico&#160;lucrative regulatory exemptions and preferences that aided their companies, leading to allegations of cronyism and corruption.</p>
<p>"State regulatory changes helped transform a small company owned by a pair of Richardson administration insiders into the biggest ‘cradle to grave’ oil field waste disposal company in the Oil Patch of southeast New Mexico," the Albuquerque Journal <a href="http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/17235023state10-17-10.htm" type="external">reported</a> in 2010.</p>
<p>Prior to his election as governor, Richardson served as secretary of the Department of Energy.</p>
<p>Update Jan. 6, 4:41 p.m.:&#160;</p>
<p>"As stated previously, Richardson had no communication or role with anyone at the bank regarding this transaction," an Ex-Im Bank spokesman said. "The bank has financed several Abengoa projects over the last few years and the details of this transaction were finalized prior to Richardson joining the advisory board."</p>
<p>Richardson is also connected to Diane Farrell, a former Ex-Im Bank director. Richardson <a href="http://www.westportnow.com/index.php?/v2_5/comments/5575/" type="external">headlined</a> a fundraiser for Farrell's 2004 congressional campaign that was expected to bring in $300,000. She <a href="http://www.exim.gov/newsandevents/boardmeetings/board/boardmeeting-agenda.cfm?pageID=3663" type="external">voted</a> to approve a final commitment on an $83 million loan to Abengoa for a plant in Mexico while still a director in 2011.</p>
<p>The Inter-American Development Bank also <a href="http://www.windpowerintelligence.com/article/MEwqOsyRUs/2012/12/06/uruguay_iadb_grants_over_us40_million_to_spanish_group/" type="external">awarded</a> Abengoa a $41 million loan in December for its wind project in Uruguay. Richardson <a href="http://www.iadb.org/en/about-us/juscelino-award/juscelino-kubitschek-selection-committee,3050.html" type="external">serves</a> on a selection committee for an annual award given out by the bank.</p>
<p>This is not the first time Richardson has faced accusations of conflicts of interest. He was <a href="http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2012/06/30/news/shedding-new-light-on-old-scandal.html" type="external">accused</a> of being involved in another pay-to-play scandal involving a New Mexico state grant to CDR Financial Products. Richardson previously <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/27/doj-drops-investigation-of-richardson/" type="external">was investigated</a> for pay-to-play in 2009 before the Justice Department dropped the investigation.</p> | 567 |
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<p>Image source: Getty Images</p>
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<p>If one of your resolutions for 2016 was to be a better investor and outperform the stock market, it's likely you fell short of expectations. Last year, the S&amp;P 500 provided investors a 12% return, with a significant percentage of gains coming after the Nov. 8 presidential election. However, a report from investing-based social media network Openfolio found the average investor significantly underperformed the broader markets, achieving only a 5% gain.</p>
<p>Here at The Motley Fool, we have a mission to help investors find stocks that will help them beat the market -- because if you can't, you're better off in index funds. With that in mind, we asked seven Motley Fool contributors for their best stock recommendation -- not just to get your portfolio in shape for the upcoming year, but for the next decade. Their picks are First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR), Concho Resources (NYSE: CXO), Under Armour (NYSE: UA) (NYSE: UAA)Mastercard (NYSE: MA)General Electric (NYSE: GE),Boston Beer Company (NYSE: SAM), and Chart Industries (NASDAQ: GTLS). They explain the rationales below:</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFUltraLong/info.aspx" type="external">Sean Williams Opens a New Window.</a> (First Solar): Patient investors who have time on their side would be wise to not overlook solar panel manufacturer First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR), though it had an abysmal 2016.</p>
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<p>The solar industry tends to benefit when crude oil and natural gas prices are high, because it provides a sense of urgency for utilities, businesses, and consumers to switch to solar. However, lower fossil fuel prices in recent years have reduced that urgency and hampered demand. By a similar token, Donald Trump's winning the presidency was viewed as a negative for the renewable energy industry. Trump has plans to promote domestic oil and gas production, which is naturally viewed as a knock against alternative energy.</p>
<p>Despite these concerns, First Solar looks poised for a strong rebound in 2017 and beyond. To begin with, it has the strongest balance sheet of all publicly traded solar companies. It's on track to end the year with roughly $1.4 billion in net cash, which would represent about 40% of its current market value, while most of its peers are buried under mountains of debt. The greater flexibility that provides First Solar will allow it to better adapt to changing market conditions and survive downtrends.</p>
<p>Though the company's recently announced restructuring -- which will cost around $600 million at the midpoint and see a quarter of its workforce laid off -- wasn't well-received by Wall Street, the actual details behind its plans make perfect sense. Its choice to abandon its Series 5 products before their rollout -- they wouldn't have made much sense given falling photovoltaic pricing -- means the company can go all-in on its more cost-efficient Series 6 products. Analysts estimate that costs to produce the Series 6 products could be about 40% lower, meaning better margins for First Solar. The Series 6 products won't deploy until 2018, meaning investors will have to be a bit patient to reap the rewards of First Solar's more efficient technology, but those investors who buy in ahead of the curve are liable to be the ones netting the best returns.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFmd19/info.aspx" type="external">Matt DiLallo Opens a New Window.</a> (Concho Resources): Concho Resourcesjust might be the best-kept secret in the oil market. The oil and gas producer controls a vast land position inTexas and New Mexico's <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/16/the-5-companies-dominating-the-permian-basin.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Permian Basin Opens a New Window.</a>, which is one of the top oil plays in the world. In fact, Concho estimates that there are 5 billion barrels of oil equivalent resource potential underneath its acreage position. That resource base could fuel decades of growth for investors.</p>
<p>In fact, over just the next three years, Concho Resources expects to deliver 20% compound annual production growth while living within cash flow at current oil prices. While oil prices are volatile, it is confident in its ability to hit that growth target because it has chosen to lock in a significant portion of cash flow over the next two years with commodity price hedges, which will protect it against another oil price plunge. Meanwhile, if prices rise sharply, the company has the balance sheet strength and resource position to ramp up production and capture that upside.</p>
<p>Concho Resources is about to embark on a lucrative long-term expansion as it exploits the tremendous resource position it built up over the past few years. It's a ride that investors will not want to miss.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFTypeoh/info.aspx" type="external">Brian Feroldi Opens a New Window.</a>(Under Armour): It is not often that investors can buy a founder-led business that holds massive long-term growth potential at a bargain price, but I think that's exactly the opportunity they have today with Under Armour.</p>
<p>Shares of the fast-growing apparel and footwear company have been under pressure for months after management took a hatchet to their long-term earnings guidance. They had previously told investors that the company would produce $800 million of operating income by 2018, but dialed back on that target because they've chosen to invest more in the business. The company believes that its investments will lead to substantial growth over the long term, but they warned that it would cause their short-term margins to remain under pressure.</p>
<p>Traders didn't take the news well. The company's shares have fallen by nearly a third over the last six months. That has pulled the <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/using-the-price-to-sales-ratio-to-value-stocks.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">price-to-sales ratio Opens a New Window.</a> of its class A shares below that of its key rival,Nike.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/UA/ps_ratio" type="external">UA PS Ratio (TTM)</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>I can't help but feel that the relentless selling pressure is overdone. After all, Under Armour has put up 26 quarters in a row of 20%-plus revenue growth, which is an especially impressively accomplishment when you remember that its recent results were impacted by bankruptcy of The Sports Authority.Looking ahead, the company'sinvestments in footwear, <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/14/3-areas-of-under-armours-earnings-that-still-look.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">digital fitness Opens a New Window.</a>, and its international business should help the trend to continue.</p>
<p>If you are a long-term believer in this company's management team -- <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/25/time-to-get-greedy-with-under-armour.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">as I am Opens a New Window.</a> -- then I think right now is a terrific time to consider joining me as a shareholder.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/Nehams/info.aspx" type="external">Neha Chamaria Opens a New Window.</a>(Mastercard):As long-term investors, you want to own durable businesses with a wide economic moat, solid track record, and significant growth potential. Credit card behemoth Mastercard fits the bill. First things first: Check out the growth in Mastercard's revenue, net income, and free cash flow in the past decade. I've shown it next to rival Visa's (NYSE: V) statistics to give you a better idea.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/MA/free_cash_flow_ttm" type="external">MA Free Cash Flow (TTM)</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts</a></p>
<p>That steady FCF growth particularly stands out, as FCF matters the most when it comes to shareholder returns. Mastercard doesn't disappoint: It has earned returns well above40% on invested capital as well as equity since 2012, and has raised its dividend every year since. Let's not forget the $4 billion share buyback authorization that the company announced last month.</p>
<p>As one of the world's leading payment-processing companies, Mastercard is staring at a massive opportunity: the ongoing shift from cash to plastic. According to Mastercard's financial arm, a staggering 85%of all transactions across the globe are still made in cash, and therein lies Mastercard's growth potential. India's recent demonetization drive, followed by an aggressive "go digital" campaign, is a fine example, one that the company is rightfully exploiting.</p>
<p>Despite a strong run in 2016, Mastercard is cheaper than Visa at 29 times trailing earnings. That's still a bargain for long-term investors given Mastercard's growth catalysts.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFJCar/info.aspx" type="external">Jamal Carnette, CFA Opens a New Window.</a>: (General Electric). General Electric has always been plagued by investor misperceptions. Under prior CEO Jack Welch, shares rallied 4,000%. However, Welch's tenure was marked by mission creep as the industrial giant ventured into real estate, media, and financial services. After the Great Recession hit in late 2007, many long-term investors were surprised to find out that General Electric was classified as a "too big to fail" financial institution.</p>
<p>Current CEO Jeff Immelt has reoriented General Electric back to its manufacturing roots. In the short run, the company could benefit from President-elect Donald Trump's infrastructure spending plans. But even if Trump's proposals never come to fruition -- and there's considerable opposition to his plans even among his own party -- General Electric unveiled its future this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.</p>
<p>For the past few years, General Electric has been showcasing its contributions to the consumer Internet of Things with connected appliances like refrigerators and stoves at the tech-focused trade show. A bigger opportunity for GE is in the industrial Internet of Things -- bringing connectivity and data analysis to industrial applications like electrical grids and water utilities. A 2011 white paper from the company says the Industrial Internet could benefit 46% of the global economy, a figure in excess of $32 trillion.</p>
<p>General Electric will be a major player in the industrial IoT as a traditional manufacturer and as the company behind the leading operating system of the industrial internet, Predix. The tremendous opportunity of the industrial IoT is why long-term investors would be wise to add the stock to their portfolios.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSymington/info.aspx" type="external">Steve Symington Opens a New Window.</a> (Boston Beer Company): Boston Beer stock had a rough 2016, falling nearly 16% as it lost market share in each of the past four quarters. Competition is bearing down as larger brewers muscle their way into the craft category, and as smaller brewers continue to expand regional distribution. And the craft-brewing industry overall has suffered decelerating growth in recent quarters.</p>
<p>However, shareholders of the leading American craft brewer have also enjoyed a modest rebound since late October, when the company's third-quarter 2016 report revealed <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/10/23/boston-beer-bubbles-up-despite-another-painful-qua.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">signs of progress Opens a New Window.</a>. Boston Beer founder and Chairman Jim Koch noted the company is finally at the "end of a long phase of constantly increasing shelf space," which means retailers are opting to "remove some of the confusion from the category" by reducing the number of SKUs in the beer aisle. As a result, Koch says, more established names like Boston Beer should be poised to benefit.</p>
<p>In the meantime -- and given its long runway for growth with less than 2% of the U.S. beer market -- Boston Beer continues to take an admirable long-term view.</p>
<p>"We remain prepared to forsake short-term earnings, as we invest to return to long-term profitable growth," said CEO Martin Roper, "commensurate with the opportunities and the increased competition that we see."</p>
<p>I don't know about you, but as a long-term investor Boston Beer is exactly the kind of company I want to see in my portfolio.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFVelvetHammer/info.aspx" type="external">Jason Opens a New Window.</a> <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFVelvetHammer/info.aspx" type="external">Hall Opens a New Window.</a>(Chart Industries, Inc.): If you're looking for a successful long-term investment, Warren Buffett's advice to find a "great business trading at a reasonable price" is a far better strategy than a "fair business at a great price." And whileChart Industries isn't trading at the fire-sale prices it was available for about a year ago, it's still relatively cheap, based on how much it has traded for in the past.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/GTLS/ev_ebitda" type="external">GTLS EV to EBITDA (TTM)</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts</a></p>
<p>Furthermore, it is a great business, with more than a century of success in the gas-processing equipment business (though it only recently became a standalone, publicly traded company).</p>
<p>And while the company's exposure to the oil and gas industry has caused it to struggle a bit over the past couple of years -- and even led to it reporting GAAP losses in recent quarters -- its cash flows have remained steadily positive while management worked to reduce overhead and better position the business to ride out the downturn in the oil and gas industry.</p>
<p>But while the cyclical energy downturn has been painful, Chart is positioned to emerge from it even stronger. The company launched a service-and-support operation over the past year that has already started generating steady, recurring cash flow. This should reduce cyclical impacts in the future, while also providing a new source of long-term profits. And while the company did shutter some facilities and lay off employees, management prioritized retaining key engineering and customer-support personnel, making sure Chart was well-positioned to handle the expected influx of new orders when the energy cycle returns to growth.</p>
<p>Bottom line: Don't let the irrational exuberance of a few years ago mask the quality nature of Chart's business. Now's a great time to buy this company for the long term.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than General Electric When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=840a8d16-ab91-4d9c-80bc-54e8424af42a&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 General Electric 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=840a8d16-ab91-4d9c-80bc-54e8424af42a&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of January 4, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFTypeoh/info.aspx" type="external">Brian Feroldi</a> owns shares of Boston Beer, Mastercard, Nike, Under Armour (A Shares), Under Armour (C Shares), and Visa. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFJCar/info.aspx" type="external">Jamal Carnette</a> owns shares of General Electric. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/elihpaudio/info.aspx" type="external">Jason Hall Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Chart Industries, Mastercard, Under Armour (A Shares), and Under Armour (C Shares). <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFmd19/info.aspx" type="external">Matt DiLallo</a> owns shares of Chart Industries, Mastercard, Under Armour (A Shares), Under Armour (C Shares), and Visa. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFmd19/info.aspx" type="external">Matt DiLallo</a> has the following options: long January 2018 $45 calls on Nike and short April 2017 $55 calls on Nike. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/Nehams/info.aspx" type="external">Neha Chamaria</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFUltraLong/info.aspx" type="external">Sean Williams</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSymington/info.aspx" type="external">Steve Symington</a> owns shares of Under Armour (A Shares) and Under Armour (C Shares). The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Boston Beer, Chart Industries, Mastercard, Nike, Under Armour (A Shares), Under Armour (C Shares), and Visa. The Motley Fool owns shares of General Electric. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 7 Top Stocks Long-Term Investors Should Buy Next | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/01/15/7-top-stocks-long-term-investors-should-buy-next.html | 2017-01-15 | 0right
| 7 Top Stocks Long-Term Investors Should Buy Next
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<p>Image source: Getty Images</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>If one of your resolutions for 2016 was to be a better investor and outperform the stock market, it's likely you fell short of expectations. Last year, the S&amp;P 500 provided investors a 12% return, with a significant percentage of gains coming after the Nov. 8 presidential election. However, a report from investing-based social media network Openfolio found the average investor significantly underperformed the broader markets, achieving only a 5% gain.</p>
<p>Here at The Motley Fool, we have a mission to help investors find stocks that will help them beat the market -- because if you can't, you're better off in index funds. With that in mind, we asked seven Motley Fool contributors for their best stock recommendation -- not just to get your portfolio in shape for the upcoming year, but for the next decade. Their picks are First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR), Concho Resources (NYSE: CXO), Under Armour (NYSE: UA) (NYSE: UAA)Mastercard (NYSE: MA)General Electric (NYSE: GE),Boston Beer Company (NYSE: SAM), and Chart Industries (NASDAQ: GTLS). They explain the rationales below:</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFUltraLong/info.aspx" type="external">Sean Williams Opens a New Window.</a> (First Solar): Patient investors who have time on their side would be wise to not overlook solar panel manufacturer First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR), though it had an abysmal 2016.</p>
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<p>The solar industry tends to benefit when crude oil and natural gas prices are high, because it provides a sense of urgency for utilities, businesses, and consumers to switch to solar. However, lower fossil fuel prices in recent years have reduced that urgency and hampered demand. By a similar token, Donald Trump's winning the presidency was viewed as a negative for the renewable energy industry. Trump has plans to promote domestic oil and gas production, which is naturally viewed as a knock against alternative energy.</p>
<p>Despite these concerns, First Solar looks poised for a strong rebound in 2017 and beyond. To begin with, it has the strongest balance sheet of all publicly traded solar companies. It's on track to end the year with roughly $1.4 billion in net cash, which would represent about 40% of its current market value, while most of its peers are buried under mountains of debt. The greater flexibility that provides First Solar will allow it to better adapt to changing market conditions and survive downtrends.</p>
<p>Though the company's recently announced restructuring -- which will cost around $600 million at the midpoint and see a quarter of its workforce laid off -- wasn't well-received by Wall Street, the actual details behind its plans make perfect sense. Its choice to abandon its Series 5 products before their rollout -- they wouldn't have made much sense given falling photovoltaic pricing -- means the company can go all-in on its more cost-efficient Series 6 products. Analysts estimate that costs to produce the Series 6 products could be about 40% lower, meaning better margins for First Solar. The Series 6 products won't deploy until 2018, meaning investors will have to be a bit patient to reap the rewards of First Solar's more efficient technology, but those investors who buy in ahead of the curve are liable to be the ones netting the best returns.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFmd19/info.aspx" type="external">Matt DiLallo Opens a New Window.</a> (Concho Resources): Concho Resourcesjust might be the best-kept secret in the oil market. The oil and gas producer controls a vast land position inTexas and New Mexico's <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/16/the-5-companies-dominating-the-permian-basin.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Permian Basin Opens a New Window.</a>, which is one of the top oil plays in the world. In fact, Concho estimates that there are 5 billion barrels of oil equivalent resource potential underneath its acreage position. That resource base could fuel decades of growth for investors.</p>
<p>In fact, over just the next three years, Concho Resources expects to deliver 20% compound annual production growth while living within cash flow at current oil prices. While oil prices are volatile, it is confident in its ability to hit that growth target because it has chosen to lock in a significant portion of cash flow over the next two years with commodity price hedges, which will protect it against another oil price plunge. Meanwhile, if prices rise sharply, the company has the balance sheet strength and resource position to ramp up production and capture that upside.</p>
<p>Concho Resources is about to embark on a lucrative long-term expansion as it exploits the tremendous resource position it built up over the past few years. It's a ride that investors will not want to miss.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFTypeoh/info.aspx" type="external">Brian Feroldi Opens a New Window.</a>(Under Armour): It is not often that investors can buy a founder-led business that holds massive long-term growth potential at a bargain price, but I think that's exactly the opportunity they have today with Under Armour.</p>
<p>Shares of the fast-growing apparel and footwear company have been under pressure for months after management took a hatchet to their long-term earnings guidance. They had previously told investors that the company would produce $800 million of operating income by 2018, but dialed back on that target because they've chosen to invest more in the business. The company believes that its investments will lead to substantial growth over the long term, but they warned that it would cause their short-term margins to remain under pressure.</p>
<p>Traders didn't take the news well. The company's shares have fallen by nearly a third over the last six months. That has pulled the <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/using-the-price-to-sales-ratio-to-value-stocks.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">price-to-sales ratio Opens a New Window.</a> of its class A shares below that of its key rival,Nike.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/UA/ps_ratio" type="external">UA PS Ratio (TTM)</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>I can't help but feel that the relentless selling pressure is overdone. After all, Under Armour has put up 26 quarters in a row of 20%-plus revenue growth, which is an especially impressively accomplishment when you remember that its recent results were impacted by bankruptcy of The Sports Authority.Looking ahead, the company'sinvestments in footwear, <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/14/3-areas-of-under-armours-earnings-that-still-look.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">digital fitness Opens a New Window.</a>, and its international business should help the trend to continue.</p>
<p>If you are a long-term believer in this company's management team -- <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/25/time-to-get-greedy-with-under-armour.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">as I am Opens a New Window.</a> -- then I think right now is a terrific time to consider joining me as a shareholder.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/Nehams/info.aspx" type="external">Neha Chamaria Opens a New Window.</a>(Mastercard):As long-term investors, you want to own durable businesses with a wide economic moat, solid track record, and significant growth potential. Credit card behemoth Mastercard fits the bill. First things first: Check out the growth in Mastercard's revenue, net income, and free cash flow in the past decade. I've shown it next to rival Visa's (NYSE: V) statistics to give you a better idea.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/MA/free_cash_flow_ttm" type="external">MA Free Cash Flow (TTM)</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts</a></p>
<p>That steady FCF growth particularly stands out, as FCF matters the most when it comes to shareholder returns. Mastercard doesn't disappoint: It has earned returns well above40% on invested capital as well as equity since 2012, and has raised its dividend every year since. Let's not forget the $4 billion share buyback authorization that the company announced last month.</p>
<p>As one of the world's leading payment-processing companies, Mastercard is staring at a massive opportunity: the ongoing shift from cash to plastic. According to Mastercard's financial arm, a staggering 85%of all transactions across the globe are still made in cash, and therein lies Mastercard's growth potential. India's recent demonetization drive, followed by an aggressive "go digital" campaign, is a fine example, one that the company is rightfully exploiting.</p>
<p>Despite a strong run in 2016, Mastercard is cheaper than Visa at 29 times trailing earnings. That's still a bargain for long-term investors given Mastercard's growth catalysts.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFJCar/info.aspx" type="external">Jamal Carnette, CFA Opens a New Window.</a>: (General Electric). General Electric has always been plagued by investor misperceptions. Under prior CEO Jack Welch, shares rallied 4,000%. However, Welch's tenure was marked by mission creep as the industrial giant ventured into real estate, media, and financial services. After the Great Recession hit in late 2007, many long-term investors were surprised to find out that General Electric was classified as a "too big to fail" financial institution.</p>
<p>Current CEO Jeff Immelt has reoriented General Electric back to its manufacturing roots. In the short run, the company could benefit from President-elect Donald Trump's infrastructure spending plans. But even if Trump's proposals never come to fruition -- and there's considerable opposition to his plans even among his own party -- General Electric unveiled its future this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.</p>
<p>For the past few years, General Electric has been showcasing its contributions to the consumer Internet of Things with connected appliances like refrigerators and stoves at the tech-focused trade show. A bigger opportunity for GE is in the industrial Internet of Things -- bringing connectivity and data analysis to industrial applications like electrical grids and water utilities. A 2011 white paper from the company says the Industrial Internet could benefit 46% of the global economy, a figure in excess of $32 trillion.</p>
<p>General Electric will be a major player in the industrial IoT as a traditional manufacturer and as the company behind the leading operating system of the industrial internet, Predix. The tremendous opportunity of the industrial IoT is why long-term investors would be wise to add the stock to their portfolios.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSymington/info.aspx" type="external">Steve Symington Opens a New Window.</a> (Boston Beer Company): Boston Beer stock had a rough 2016, falling nearly 16% as it lost market share in each of the past four quarters. Competition is bearing down as larger brewers muscle their way into the craft category, and as smaller brewers continue to expand regional distribution. And the craft-brewing industry overall has suffered decelerating growth in recent quarters.</p>
<p>However, shareholders of the leading American craft brewer have also enjoyed a modest rebound since late October, when the company's third-quarter 2016 report revealed <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/10/23/boston-beer-bubbles-up-despite-another-painful-qua.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">signs of progress Opens a New Window.</a>. Boston Beer founder and Chairman Jim Koch noted the company is finally at the "end of a long phase of constantly increasing shelf space," which means retailers are opting to "remove some of the confusion from the category" by reducing the number of SKUs in the beer aisle. As a result, Koch says, more established names like Boston Beer should be poised to benefit.</p>
<p>In the meantime -- and given its long runway for growth with less than 2% of the U.S. beer market -- Boston Beer continues to take an admirable long-term view.</p>
<p>"We remain prepared to forsake short-term earnings, as we invest to return to long-term profitable growth," said CEO Martin Roper, "commensurate with the opportunities and the increased competition that we see."</p>
<p>I don't know about you, but as a long-term investor Boston Beer is exactly the kind of company I want to see in my portfolio.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFVelvetHammer/info.aspx" type="external">Jason Opens a New Window.</a> <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFVelvetHammer/info.aspx" type="external">Hall Opens a New Window.</a>(Chart Industries, Inc.): If you're looking for a successful long-term investment, Warren Buffett's advice to find a "great business trading at a reasonable price" is a far better strategy than a "fair business at a great price." And whileChart Industries isn't trading at the fire-sale prices it was available for about a year ago, it's still relatively cheap, based on how much it has traded for in the past.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/GTLS/ev_ebitda" type="external">GTLS EV to EBITDA (TTM)</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts</a></p>
<p>Furthermore, it is a great business, with more than a century of success in the gas-processing equipment business (though it only recently became a standalone, publicly traded company).</p>
<p>And while the company's exposure to the oil and gas industry has caused it to struggle a bit over the past couple of years -- and even led to it reporting GAAP losses in recent quarters -- its cash flows have remained steadily positive while management worked to reduce overhead and better position the business to ride out the downturn in the oil and gas industry.</p>
<p>But while the cyclical energy downturn has been painful, Chart is positioned to emerge from it even stronger. The company launched a service-and-support operation over the past year that has already started generating steady, recurring cash flow. This should reduce cyclical impacts in the future, while also providing a new source of long-term profits. And while the company did shutter some facilities and lay off employees, management prioritized retaining key engineering and customer-support personnel, making sure Chart was well-positioned to handle the expected influx of new orders when the energy cycle returns to growth.</p>
<p>Bottom line: Don't let the irrational exuberance of a few years ago mask the quality nature of Chart's business. Now's a great time to buy this company for the long term.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than General Electric When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=840a8d16-ab91-4d9c-80bc-54e8424af42a&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 General Electric 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=840a8d16-ab91-4d9c-80bc-54e8424af42a&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of January 4, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFTypeoh/info.aspx" type="external">Brian Feroldi</a> owns shares of Boston Beer, Mastercard, Nike, Under Armour (A Shares), Under Armour (C Shares), and Visa. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFJCar/info.aspx" type="external">Jamal Carnette</a> owns shares of General Electric. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/elihpaudio/info.aspx" type="external">Jason Hall Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Chart Industries, Mastercard, Under Armour (A Shares), and Under Armour (C Shares). <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFmd19/info.aspx" type="external">Matt DiLallo</a> owns shares of Chart Industries, Mastercard, Under Armour (A Shares), Under Armour (C Shares), and Visa. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFmd19/info.aspx" type="external">Matt DiLallo</a> has the following options: long January 2018 $45 calls on Nike and short April 2017 $55 calls on Nike. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/Nehams/info.aspx" type="external">Neha Chamaria</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFUltraLong/info.aspx" type="external">Sean Williams</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSymington/info.aspx" type="external">Steve Symington</a> owns shares of Under Armour (A Shares) and Under Armour (C Shares). The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Boston Beer, Chart Industries, Mastercard, Nike, Under Armour (A Shares), Under Armour (C Shares), and Visa. The Motley Fool owns shares of General Electric. 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> | 568 |
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<p>Over the past month, Teamsters in five cities refused work in solidarity with locked-out sanitation workers in Evansville, Indiana. The Evansville labor dispute is the second in three months to feature sympathy strikes against Republic Services. This rare tactic represents a major escalation in the Teamsters' struggle with the company, and it's poised to intensify this week.</p>
<p>As I <a href="" type="internal">reported</a> for Working In These Times, Republic Services/ Allied Waste, the second-largest solid waste company in the United States, locked 79 workers out of their jobs six weeks ago. (Under U.S. labor law, when union contracts expire, companies can lock workers out, and either shut down production or bring in replacement workers to do their jobs.) Republic told workers they’d be locked out unless they accepted a “last, best and final“ offer that would eliminate their pensions and replace them with 401(k)s.&#160;</p>
<p>Teamsters Local 215 refused the offer, and Republic followed through on the threat. While Republic is only locking workers out in Evansville, the union says the company is proposing to get out of the pension fund in several cities where contracts have expired.</p>
<p>On May 24, locked-out Republic workers traveled to Urbana, Illinois, and started picketing a local Republic facility. In solidarity, members of Teamsters Local 26 refused to work. On May 30, Republic workers in Wayne, Michigan did the same, as did their counterparts in Richmond, California on June 1. Three days later, members of three Teamsters locals in Milpitas, California – some employed by Republic, some hired by other companies to make deliveries to Republic – followed suit. So did members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Ironworkers union hired to build a recycling facility there. On June 8, another 300 Teamsters in Long Beach, California did their own one-day sympathy strike.</p>
<p>A Teamsters source who requested anonymity said he expected the conflict to expand further this week, including "escalations with workers who have expired contracts and a strong possibility of those pickets being extended to other locations."</p>
<p>Maurice Thomas, a Republic diesel mechanic and Teamsters shop steward, says 90% of his co-workers in Long Beach participated in the one-day work stoppage. Despite favorable contract language, Thomas says it wasn’t easy: Management “did everything they could to prevent us from doing it.”</p>
<p>According to Thomas, Republic posted a notice saying that anyone who missed work on Friday would be required to work on Saturday – normally a day off - instead. When workers struck on Friday and didn’t come to work on Saturday, Republic said they would be disciplined. But Thomas saus that the number of workers involved, the contract language, and the pushback from rank-and-file leaders on the property forced management to back down.</p>
<p>Thomas says he welcomed the chance to support co-workers in Evansville because “ultimately, the management is going to back each other up from city to city. We have to be one union, one contrat. If we stick to that, we can have just as much power as corporate America.” Thomas was also glad to send a message to local management, whom he accused of forcing drivers to work unsafe levels of overtime.</p>
<p>Chuck Whobrey, the president of Local 215, says that for the 79 workers in Evansville, facing “the monster of a company, it can be a pretty lonely feeling. And so whenever they’ve extended the picket lines, it has really had a huge impact” on workers to see support from “people they don’t even know. Anytime you can get through to people that they’re in something bigger than themselves, it really does inspire them.”</p>
<p>As for management, Whobrey says, “I wouldn’t say they’re more dug in, but I think that they’re following whatever plan of action they had from Day 1 of negotiations.”</p>
<p>The Teamsters have also reached out to Republic’s shareholders, contrasting the cost of pension payments with a promised death benefit for Republic’s CEO, which they say is worth $23 million. Last month the union protested outside a shareholder meeting and introduced a shareholder resolution that would have given shareholders a vote on death benefits; it failed with 41% of the vote.</p>
<p>Republic did not respond to a request for comment, but in interviews last month, local general manager Mark McKune described the lockout as a&#160; <a href="http://www.14news.com/story/18168968/allied-waste-services" type="external">response</a>&#160;to “threats of war” from the union, and the proposal to replace pensions as&#160; <a href="http://www.courierpress.com/news/2012/may/07/allied-waste-says-lockout-planned-tuesday/" type="external">motivated</a>&#160;by concerns over the pension fund’s solvency.</p>
<p>The Sympathy Strike Strategy</p>
<p>Before the National Labor Relations Act established legal collective bargaining rights within discrete bargaining units, and the Taft-Hartley Amendments banned many solidarity actions, strikes would commonly spread from one group of workers to other worksites in the industry, or to other workers in the supply chain. Today, such solidarity strikes are rare.</p>
<p>The Teamsters’ ability to pull them off rests in part on a “conscience clause” in some of their contracts, which specifies that workers can’t be required to work if it means crossing a picket line. (Other workers who had expired contracts have participated in solidarity strikes this year, and thus weren’t prohibited from striking.) Wherever other Teamsters – even a single one – set up a picket line, workers with a conscience clause have the right the forfeit pay and refuse work.</p>
<p>In March, union officials in Mobile, Alabama, credited such solidarity strikes with a big role in the contract they won at Republic. As I&#160; <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/154765/rare_rolling_sympathy_strike_beats_garbage_company_that_tries_to_trash_its_promise/" type="external">reported</a>&#160;for Alternet, workers in Mobile struck for eight days after alleging that Republic was attempting to back out of already agreed-upon provisions in tentative contract agreements. During that strike, workers in three other cities refused work for days at a time.&#160;</p>
<p>“I think it’s awesome,” Mobile striker Michael McLean said during the strike. “It shows that the brotherhood is strong, wherever you’re at.”</p>
<p>Reviving the Strike&#160;author and In These Times contributor Joe Burns observed at the time that “The Teamsters are relatively rare within the labor movement” because their contracts protect “the ability to honor picket lines.” Burns, a negotiator for the Association of Flight Attendants, said that while there are “plenty of examples within the Teamsters of conservative trade union officials choosing not to honor picket lines,” overall the Teamsters “still have that culture of solidarity within their union that’s been lost by a lot of unions” barred from such actions.</p>
<p>But there are limits to the tactic. While Mobile workers told me during their strike that they’d welcome the chance to show reciprocal solidarity, their contract has no conscience clause, and so they’d be bound by the “No strike” clause of their current contract even if Evansville workers showed up to picket.&#160;</p>
<p>“We’ve brought it up,” in negotiations, says Levon “Rooster” Lindsey, a business representative for Mobile-based Teamsters Local 991. "The company’s never even offered to accept that language. But it’s something, looking forward, that we’re looking to get.” Lindsey was interviewed while in Evansville, where he was meeting with locked-out workers to share stories from the Mobile victory.</p>
<p>Barred from striking, workers in Mobile and elsewhere have taken less disruptive acts of solidarity, including wearing stickers that say “Stop Trashing Our Contract.” Lindsey says Mobile workers may do informational pickets at the Mobile facility, in which union members show up early before their shift and demonstrate outside the plant during non-work time.&#160;</p>
<p>“The core of the Teamsters is a pension plan,” says Lindsey.&#160; “We must fight and we must win.”</p>
<p>Whobrey says that representatives from several Teamsters locals that deal with Republic met on Wednesday to discuss further steps to press the company to end the lockout. Thomas says he’s talked to workers in Gardenia, California, who are “waiting their turn” to mount a work stoppage as well. Meanwhile, Thomas says, co-workers have told him they were energized by the one-day strike: “They said that we should do it once a month.”</p> | Teamsters Punish Lockout With Rolling Sympathy Strikes | true | http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13387/republic_teamsters_evansville_sympathy_strike_lockout_allied_waste/ | 2012-06-18 | 4left
| Teamsters Punish Lockout With Rolling Sympathy Strikes
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<p>Over the past month, Teamsters in five cities refused work in solidarity with locked-out sanitation workers in Evansville, Indiana. The Evansville labor dispute is the second in three months to feature sympathy strikes against Republic Services. This rare tactic represents a major escalation in the Teamsters' struggle with the company, and it's poised to intensify this week.</p>
<p>As I <a href="" type="internal">reported</a> for Working In These Times, Republic Services/ Allied Waste, the second-largest solid waste company in the United States, locked 79 workers out of their jobs six weeks ago. (Under U.S. labor law, when union contracts expire, companies can lock workers out, and either shut down production or bring in replacement workers to do their jobs.) Republic told workers they’d be locked out unless they accepted a “last, best and final“ offer that would eliminate their pensions and replace them with 401(k)s.&#160;</p>
<p>Teamsters Local 215 refused the offer, and Republic followed through on the threat. While Republic is only locking workers out in Evansville, the union says the company is proposing to get out of the pension fund in several cities where contracts have expired.</p>
<p>On May 24, locked-out Republic workers traveled to Urbana, Illinois, and started picketing a local Republic facility. In solidarity, members of Teamsters Local 26 refused to work. On May 30, Republic workers in Wayne, Michigan did the same, as did their counterparts in Richmond, California on June 1. Three days later, members of three Teamsters locals in Milpitas, California – some employed by Republic, some hired by other companies to make deliveries to Republic – followed suit. So did members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Ironworkers union hired to build a recycling facility there. On June 8, another 300 Teamsters in Long Beach, California did their own one-day sympathy strike.</p>
<p>A Teamsters source who requested anonymity said he expected the conflict to expand further this week, including "escalations with workers who have expired contracts and a strong possibility of those pickets being extended to other locations."</p>
<p>Maurice Thomas, a Republic diesel mechanic and Teamsters shop steward, says 90% of his co-workers in Long Beach participated in the one-day work stoppage. Despite favorable contract language, Thomas says it wasn’t easy: Management “did everything they could to prevent us from doing it.”</p>
<p>According to Thomas, Republic posted a notice saying that anyone who missed work on Friday would be required to work on Saturday – normally a day off - instead. When workers struck on Friday and didn’t come to work on Saturday, Republic said they would be disciplined. But Thomas saus that the number of workers involved, the contract language, and the pushback from rank-and-file leaders on the property forced management to back down.</p>
<p>Thomas says he welcomed the chance to support co-workers in Evansville because “ultimately, the management is going to back each other up from city to city. We have to be one union, one contrat. If we stick to that, we can have just as much power as corporate America.” Thomas was also glad to send a message to local management, whom he accused of forcing drivers to work unsafe levels of overtime.</p>
<p>Chuck Whobrey, the president of Local 215, says that for the 79 workers in Evansville, facing “the monster of a company, it can be a pretty lonely feeling. And so whenever they’ve extended the picket lines, it has really had a huge impact” on workers to see support from “people they don’t even know. Anytime you can get through to people that they’re in something bigger than themselves, it really does inspire them.”</p>
<p>As for management, Whobrey says, “I wouldn’t say they’re more dug in, but I think that they’re following whatever plan of action they had from Day 1 of negotiations.”</p>
<p>The Teamsters have also reached out to Republic’s shareholders, contrasting the cost of pension payments with a promised death benefit for Republic’s CEO, which they say is worth $23 million. Last month the union protested outside a shareholder meeting and introduced a shareholder resolution that would have given shareholders a vote on death benefits; it failed with 41% of the vote.</p>
<p>Republic did not respond to a request for comment, but in interviews last month, local general manager Mark McKune described the lockout as a&#160; <a href="http://www.14news.com/story/18168968/allied-waste-services" type="external">response</a>&#160;to “threats of war” from the union, and the proposal to replace pensions as&#160; <a href="http://www.courierpress.com/news/2012/may/07/allied-waste-says-lockout-planned-tuesday/" type="external">motivated</a>&#160;by concerns over the pension fund’s solvency.</p>
<p>The Sympathy Strike Strategy</p>
<p>Before the National Labor Relations Act established legal collective bargaining rights within discrete bargaining units, and the Taft-Hartley Amendments banned many solidarity actions, strikes would commonly spread from one group of workers to other worksites in the industry, or to other workers in the supply chain. Today, such solidarity strikes are rare.</p>
<p>The Teamsters’ ability to pull them off rests in part on a “conscience clause” in some of their contracts, which specifies that workers can’t be required to work if it means crossing a picket line. (Other workers who had expired contracts have participated in solidarity strikes this year, and thus weren’t prohibited from striking.) Wherever other Teamsters – even a single one – set up a picket line, workers with a conscience clause have the right the forfeit pay and refuse work.</p>
<p>In March, union officials in Mobile, Alabama, credited such solidarity strikes with a big role in the contract they won at Republic. As I&#160; <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/154765/rare_rolling_sympathy_strike_beats_garbage_company_that_tries_to_trash_its_promise/" type="external">reported</a>&#160;for Alternet, workers in Mobile struck for eight days after alleging that Republic was attempting to back out of already agreed-upon provisions in tentative contract agreements. During that strike, workers in three other cities refused work for days at a time.&#160;</p>
<p>“I think it’s awesome,” Mobile striker Michael McLean said during the strike. “It shows that the brotherhood is strong, wherever you’re at.”</p>
<p>Reviving the Strike&#160;author and In These Times contributor Joe Burns observed at the time that “The Teamsters are relatively rare within the labor movement” because their contracts protect “the ability to honor picket lines.” Burns, a negotiator for the Association of Flight Attendants, said that while there are “plenty of examples within the Teamsters of conservative trade union officials choosing not to honor picket lines,” overall the Teamsters “still have that culture of solidarity within their union that’s been lost by a lot of unions” barred from such actions.</p>
<p>But there are limits to the tactic. While Mobile workers told me during their strike that they’d welcome the chance to show reciprocal solidarity, their contract has no conscience clause, and so they’d be bound by the “No strike” clause of their current contract even if Evansville workers showed up to picket.&#160;</p>
<p>“We’ve brought it up,” in negotiations, says Levon “Rooster” Lindsey, a business representative for Mobile-based Teamsters Local 991. "The company’s never even offered to accept that language. But it’s something, looking forward, that we’re looking to get.” Lindsey was interviewed while in Evansville, where he was meeting with locked-out workers to share stories from the Mobile victory.</p>
<p>Barred from striking, workers in Mobile and elsewhere have taken less disruptive acts of solidarity, including wearing stickers that say “Stop Trashing Our Contract.” Lindsey says Mobile workers may do informational pickets at the Mobile facility, in which union members show up early before their shift and demonstrate outside the plant during non-work time.&#160;</p>
<p>“The core of the Teamsters is a pension plan,” says Lindsey.&#160; “We must fight and we must win.”</p>
<p>Whobrey says that representatives from several Teamsters locals that deal with Republic met on Wednesday to discuss further steps to press the company to end the lockout. Thomas says he’s talked to workers in Gardenia, California, who are “waiting their turn” to mount a work stoppage as well. Meanwhile, Thomas says, co-workers have told him they were energized by the one-day strike: “They said that we should do it once a month.”</p> | 569 |
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<p>New Mexico Department of Transportation is proposing to reconstruction a section of N.M. 556/Roy Avenue that crosses the Rail Runner trans and Edith Boulevard in northern Bernalillo County.</p>
<p>The project includes replacing outdated bridges over the rail tracks on Edith.</p>
<p>DOT representatives will hold an informational meeting to discuss the project at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 29 in the Alameda Elementary School Cafeteria, 412 Alameda Blvd. NW at 4th St. in Albuquerque</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | DOT will offer information on Roy/Edith projects | false | https://abqjournal.com/285833/dot-will-offer-information-on-royedith-projects.html | 2least
| DOT will offer information on Roy/Edith projects
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<p>New Mexico Department of Transportation is proposing to reconstruction a section of N.M. 556/Roy Avenue that crosses the Rail Runner trans and Edith Boulevard in northern Bernalillo County.</p>
<p>The project includes replacing outdated bridges over the rail tracks on Edith.</p>
<p>DOT representatives will hold an informational meeting to discuss the project at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 29 in the Alameda Elementary School Cafeteria, 412 Alameda Blvd. NW at 4th St. in Albuquerque</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 570 |
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<p>In Cameroon, many mothers <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5107360.stm" type="external">pound and "iron" flat</a> the breasts of their daughters with heated bananas or coconut shells, hoping to discourage the sexual advances of males who see developed breasts as indicators of sexual maturity.</p>
<p>BBC:</p>
<p>A nationwide campaign is under way in Cameroon to discourage the widespread practice of "breast ironing".</p>
<p>This involves pounding and massaging the developing breasts of young girls with hot objects to try to make them disappear.</p>
<p />
<p>Statistics show that 26% of Cameroonian girls at puberty undergo it, as many mothers believe it protects their daughters from the sexual advances of boys and men who think children are ripe for sex once their breasts begin to grow.</p>
<p>The most widely used instrument to flatten the breasts is a wooden pestle, used for pounding tubers in the kitchen. Heated bananas and coconut shells are also used.</p>
<p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5107360.stm" type="external">Link</a></p> | Cameroon Girls Battle 'Breast Ironing' | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/cameroon-girls-battle-breast-ironing/ | 2006-06-24 | 4left
| Cameroon Girls Battle 'Breast Ironing'
<p>In Cameroon, many mothers <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5107360.stm" type="external">pound and "iron" flat</a> the breasts of their daughters with heated bananas or coconut shells, hoping to discourage the sexual advances of males who see developed breasts as indicators of sexual maturity.</p>
<p>BBC:</p>
<p>A nationwide campaign is under way in Cameroon to discourage the widespread practice of "breast ironing".</p>
<p>This involves pounding and massaging the developing breasts of young girls with hot objects to try to make them disappear.</p>
<p />
<p>Statistics show that 26% of Cameroonian girls at puberty undergo it, as many mothers believe it protects their daughters from the sexual advances of boys and men who think children are ripe for sex once their breasts begin to grow.</p>
<p>The most widely used instrument to flatten the breasts is a wooden pestle, used for pounding tubers in the kitchen. Heated bananas and coconut shells are also used.</p>
<p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5107360.stm" type="external">Link</a></p> | 571 |
<p>Obama shakes hands with supporters following a speech on immigration reform in 2011. &lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/5740839189/sizes/m/in/photostream/" target="_blank"&gt;Flickr/White House&lt;/a&gt;</p>
<p />
<p>It was President Obama’s turn to address the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials on Friday, the day after <a href="" type="internal">Mitt Romney spoke to the same group</a>. Obama&#160;emphasized his commitment to passing the DREAM Act and comprehensive immigration reform. He reminded the audience that he <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-06-28-immigration-roll-call_N.htm" type="external">voted for President George W. Bush’s immigration reform bill as a senator</a>, and that the bill had been scuttled by immigration restrictionists from Bush’s own party.</p>
<p>The president’s reception at NALEO was very warm—he drew several standing ovations. His defense of his&#160; <a href="" type="internal">decision to exempt DREAM Act-eligible unauthorized immigrants from deportation</a>&#160;was well-received. “They are Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way but on paper—and all they want is to go to college and give back to the country they love,” Obama said. “Lifting the shadow of deportation and giving them a reason to hope was the right thing to do.”</p>
<p>Obama didn’t mention Romney&#160;by name, but he did refer to his rival’s pledge to veto the DREAM Act.&#160;“Your speaker from yesterday has a different view,” Obama said. “In his speech, he said that when he makes a promise to you, he’ll keep it. Well, he has promised to veto the DREAM Act, and we should take him at his word.”</p>
<p>The president also directly blamed Republican partisanship for the collapse of immigration reform efforts. Here’s the key section of his speech:</p>
<p>In the face of a Congress that refuses to do anything on immigration, I’ve said that I’ll take action wherever I can. My Administration has been doing what we can without help in Congress for more than three years. And last week, we took another step. On Friday, we announced that we’re lifting the shadow of deportation from deserving young people who were brought to this country as children. We should have passed the DREAM Act a long time ago. It was written by members of both parties. But when it came up for a vote two years ago, Republicans in Congress got together and blocked it. The bill hadn’t really changed. The need definitely hadn’t changed. The only thing that had changed, apparently, was politics.</p>
<p>This is not an entirely accurate portrayal of events. Republicans did band together to block the DREAM Act, including several former co-sponsors of previous versions of the bill. But they were joined by skittish centrist Democrats. The final vote was 55 to 41, with five Senate Democrats joining the opposition. Had Obama delivered the votes of his own party, the DREAM Act would have passed. And if Republicans who previously supported the legislation hadn’t decided it was terrible after Obama supported it, it would have passed.&#160;</p>
<p>The president has a big advantage over Romney with Latinos, but his task is arguably harder. With little progress on reform but a verbal commitment to policies Latino voters prefer, Obama has to seriously energize Latino voters to have a chance at retaining the Oval Office. Romney, on the other hand, doesn’t have to win a majority of the Latino vote—he just has to convince enough of them he wouldn’t be that bad.&#160;</p>
<p /> | Obama Immigration Speech: Latinos Should Blame Republicans for Blocking Immigration Reform | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/obama-immigration-speech-naleo/ | 2012-06-22 | 4left
| Obama Immigration Speech: Latinos Should Blame Republicans for Blocking Immigration Reform
<p>Obama shakes hands with supporters following a speech on immigration reform in 2011. &lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/5740839189/sizes/m/in/photostream/" target="_blank"&gt;Flickr/White House&lt;/a&gt;</p>
<p />
<p>It was President Obama’s turn to address the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials on Friday, the day after <a href="" type="internal">Mitt Romney spoke to the same group</a>. Obama&#160;emphasized his commitment to passing the DREAM Act and comprehensive immigration reform. He reminded the audience that he <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-06-28-immigration-roll-call_N.htm" type="external">voted for President George W. Bush’s immigration reform bill as a senator</a>, and that the bill had been scuttled by immigration restrictionists from Bush’s own party.</p>
<p>The president’s reception at NALEO was very warm—he drew several standing ovations. His defense of his&#160; <a href="" type="internal">decision to exempt DREAM Act-eligible unauthorized immigrants from deportation</a>&#160;was well-received. “They are Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way but on paper—and all they want is to go to college and give back to the country they love,” Obama said. “Lifting the shadow of deportation and giving them a reason to hope was the right thing to do.”</p>
<p>Obama didn’t mention Romney&#160;by name, but he did refer to his rival’s pledge to veto the DREAM Act.&#160;“Your speaker from yesterday has a different view,” Obama said. “In his speech, he said that when he makes a promise to you, he’ll keep it. Well, he has promised to veto the DREAM Act, and we should take him at his word.”</p>
<p>The president also directly blamed Republican partisanship for the collapse of immigration reform efforts. Here’s the key section of his speech:</p>
<p>In the face of a Congress that refuses to do anything on immigration, I’ve said that I’ll take action wherever I can. My Administration has been doing what we can without help in Congress for more than three years. And last week, we took another step. On Friday, we announced that we’re lifting the shadow of deportation from deserving young people who were brought to this country as children. We should have passed the DREAM Act a long time ago. It was written by members of both parties. But when it came up for a vote two years ago, Republicans in Congress got together and blocked it. The bill hadn’t really changed. The need definitely hadn’t changed. The only thing that had changed, apparently, was politics.</p>
<p>This is not an entirely accurate portrayal of events. Republicans did band together to block the DREAM Act, including several former co-sponsors of previous versions of the bill. But they were joined by skittish centrist Democrats. The final vote was 55 to 41, with five Senate Democrats joining the opposition. Had Obama delivered the votes of his own party, the DREAM Act would have passed. And if Republicans who previously supported the legislation hadn’t decided it was terrible after Obama supported it, it would have passed.&#160;</p>
<p>The president has a big advantage over Romney with Latinos, but his task is arguably harder. With little progress on reform but a verbal commitment to policies Latino voters prefer, Obama has to seriously energize Latino voters to have a chance at retaining the Oval Office. Romney, on the other hand, doesn’t have to win a majority of the Latino vote—he just has to convince enough of them he wouldn’t be that bad.&#160;</p>
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<p />
<p>Trump’s move has been widely criticized as threatening the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. But if states follow through, more Americans could get coverage.</p>
<p>“I think it gives us a chance,” said Kansas state Rep. Susan Concannon, a moderate Republican who pushed unsuccessfully for Medicaid expansion last year in her state.</p>
<p>In Utah, the office of Republican Gov. Gary Herbert said the Trump administration’s willingness to approve work requirements is one of several concessions the state would demand to cover more poor residents through Medicaid.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Is it a big deal?” said Herbert spokesman Paul Edwards. “Yeah, I think it’s a big deal.”</p>
<p>Utah state Rep. Robert Spendlove, a Republican working on legislation to partially expand Medicaid, said the Trump administration has sent a positive sign. “I have a lot of confidence that they will be willing to work with us and approve this,” Spendlove said.</p>
<p>There’s already an economic argument for states to expand Medicaid, since it translates to billions of federal dollars for hospitals and medical service providers. But Republican Mike Leavitt, a former U.S. health secretary and Utah governor, said the ability to impose work requirements adds an ideological motivator.</p>
<p>“Republicans want Medicaid to help people who are doing their best to become self-sufficient but need temporary help to get there,” said Leavitt, who now heads a health care consulting firm.</p>
<p>Medicaid is a federal-state collaboration originally meant for poor families and severely disabled people. Over the years, it’s grown to become the largest government health insurance program, now covering 1 in 5 people. Overall, Americans have a favorable view of the program, and oppose funding cuts.</p>
<p>Under former President Barack Obama’s health law, states got the option of expanding Medicaid to cover more low-income adults. Thirty-two states and Washington, D.C., expanded, adding about 11 million beneficiaries.</p>
<p>But 18 mostly conservative states are still holding out. They include population centers such as Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia — where newly installed Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam has vowed to cajole a closely divided legislature into expanding Medicaid.</p>
<p>For the first time in the program’s half-century, the Trump administration recently announced it will approve state proposals requiring “able-bodied adults” to work, study, or perform some kind of service. Officials promptly signed off on Kentucky’s work requirement plan.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“There are both political and legal challenges, but as long as it is optional for states, and appropriately thoughtful and nuanced … this can definitely work,” said Matt Salo, executive director of the nonpartisan National Association of Medicaid Directors. “It could possibly mean the difference between some of the non-expansion states embracing the expansion, or at least ensuring that some of the expansion states maintain political support for the program.”</p>
<p>His organization, which represents state officials, does not have a consensus on work requirements.</p>
<p>Another carrot for reluctant states is the repeal of the health law’s requirement that most people carry health insurance. Congressional Republicans repealed the “individual mandate” in the tax bill, and President Donald Trump signed it into law. For states, it means that fewer residents may sign up for expanded Medicaid, trimming potential costs. Although states pay no more than 10 percent, that’s still a significant impact on their budgets, which generally must be balanced each year.</p>
<p>Advocates for low-income people say such arguments for work requirements are misguided. They contend Medicaid is a health care program and such requirements run contrary to its legally established purpose.</p>
<p>“I don’t see this as necessarily creating the opportunity for states to expand or stay in the expansion,” said Judy Solomon of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which advocates for the poor. “I think what is really important to point out is how this undermines the expansion.”</p>
<p>Nonetheless polls show strong support for requiring “able-bodied” adults on Medicaid to work, said Robert Blendon of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Most of those adults already do.</p>
<p>“People are much more sympathetic to the idea of helping low-income people who work,” said Blendon, who tracks opinion trends on health care.</p>
<p>While the Trump administration’s actions have shifted the politics of Medicaid expansion, Missouri Hospital Association president Herb Kuhn said he doesn’t see opposition in his state crumbling quickly. His group was unable to convince lawmakers, even though hospitals that would benefit from expansion are major employers in local communities.</p>
<p>“It’s not a slam dunk, but I think there is a fair conversation,” said Kuhn. “In states that were already leaning in for expansion, this might be something that helps re-energize the conversation.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, and Michelle L. Price in Salt Lake City, Utah, contributed to this report.</p> | Trump’s move may nudge holdout GOP states to expand Medicaid | false | https://abqjournal.com/1123287/trumps-move-may-nudge-holdout-gop-states-to-expand-medicaid.html | 2018-01-23 | 2least
| Trump’s move may nudge holdout GOP states to expand Medicaid
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<p />
<p>Trump’s move has been widely criticized as threatening the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. But if states follow through, more Americans could get coverage.</p>
<p>“I think it gives us a chance,” said Kansas state Rep. Susan Concannon, a moderate Republican who pushed unsuccessfully for Medicaid expansion last year in her state.</p>
<p>In Utah, the office of Republican Gov. Gary Herbert said the Trump administration’s willingness to approve work requirements is one of several concessions the state would demand to cover more poor residents through Medicaid.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Is it a big deal?” said Herbert spokesman Paul Edwards. “Yeah, I think it’s a big deal.”</p>
<p>Utah state Rep. Robert Spendlove, a Republican working on legislation to partially expand Medicaid, said the Trump administration has sent a positive sign. “I have a lot of confidence that they will be willing to work with us and approve this,” Spendlove said.</p>
<p>There’s already an economic argument for states to expand Medicaid, since it translates to billions of federal dollars for hospitals and medical service providers. But Republican Mike Leavitt, a former U.S. health secretary and Utah governor, said the ability to impose work requirements adds an ideological motivator.</p>
<p>“Republicans want Medicaid to help people who are doing their best to become self-sufficient but need temporary help to get there,” said Leavitt, who now heads a health care consulting firm.</p>
<p>Medicaid is a federal-state collaboration originally meant for poor families and severely disabled people. Over the years, it’s grown to become the largest government health insurance program, now covering 1 in 5 people. Overall, Americans have a favorable view of the program, and oppose funding cuts.</p>
<p>Under former President Barack Obama’s health law, states got the option of expanding Medicaid to cover more low-income adults. Thirty-two states and Washington, D.C., expanded, adding about 11 million beneficiaries.</p>
<p>But 18 mostly conservative states are still holding out. They include population centers such as Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia — where newly installed Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam has vowed to cajole a closely divided legislature into expanding Medicaid.</p>
<p>For the first time in the program’s half-century, the Trump administration recently announced it will approve state proposals requiring “able-bodied adults” to work, study, or perform some kind of service. Officials promptly signed off on Kentucky’s work requirement plan.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“There are both political and legal challenges, but as long as it is optional for states, and appropriately thoughtful and nuanced … this can definitely work,” said Matt Salo, executive director of the nonpartisan National Association of Medicaid Directors. “It could possibly mean the difference between some of the non-expansion states embracing the expansion, or at least ensuring that some of the expansion states maintain political support for the program.”</p>
<p>His organization, which represents state officials, does not have a consensus on work requirements.</p>
<p>Another carrot for reluctant states is the repeal of the health law’s requirement that most people carry health insurance. Congressional Republicans repealed the “individual mandate” in the tax bill, and President Donald Trump signed it into law. For states, it means that fewer residents may sign up for expanded Medicaid, trimming potential costs. Although states pay no more than 10 percent, that’s still a significant impact on their budgets, which generally must be balanced each year.</p>
<p>Advocates for low-income people say such arguments for work requirements are misguided. They contend Medicaid is a health care program and such requirements run contrary to its legally established purpose.</p>
<p>“I don’t see this as necessarily creating the opportunity for states to expand or stay in the expansion,” said Judy Solomon of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which advocates for the poor. “I think what is really important to point out is how this undermines the expansion.”</p>
<p>Nonetheless polls show strong support for requiring “able-bodied” adults on Medicaid to work, said Robert Blendon of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Most of those adults already do.</p>
<p>“People are much more sympathetic to the idea of helping low-income people who work,” said Blendon, who tracks opinion trends on health care.</p>
<p>While the Trump administration’s actions have shifted the politics of Medicaid expansion, Missouri Hospital Association president Herb Kuhn said he doesn’t see opposition in his state crumbling quickly. His group was unable to convince lawmakers, even though hospitals that would benefit from expansion are major employers in local communities.</p>
<p>“It’s not a slam dunk, but I think there is a fair conversation,” said Kuhn. “In states that were already leaning in for expansion, this might be something that helps re-energize the conversation.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, and Michelle L. Price in Salt Lake City, Utah, contributed to this report.</p> | 573 |
<p />
<p>$5,000 might not seem like enough to invest in the stock market. However, $5,000 put in the right stock could blossom to more than $1 million over a few decades. Let's take a closer look at three of the most well-known examples from the tech industry -- Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), and Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO).</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Apple went public in 1980 at$22 per share. $5,000 would have been enough to buy 227 shares. After four splits, you would now own 12,712 shares, which would be worth roughly $1.3 million. Moreover, that position would be paying out nearly $29,000 in dividends per year.</p>
<p>Apple's early years, which mainly relied on Apple II and Mac sales, were rocky. Co-founder Steve Jobs left his own company after a dispute with the board in 1985, and its products were subsequently crushed by Microsoft's rapidly growing market share across IBMPC clones.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Apple's growth didn't get back on track until an older and wiser Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. With a renewed focus on sleek hardware and end-to-end control of its ecosystem, Jobs' Apple launched the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad -- all hit products which redefined their respective industries. Between 1997 and 2011 -- the year Jobs resigned and passed away -- Apple's annual revenue rose from$7.1 billion to$108.2 billion. That figure hit $215.6 billion infiscal 2016.</p>
<p>Microsoft went public for$21 per share in 1986. $5,000 would be enough to buy 238 shares. After nine splits, you would own 34,272 shares, which would be worth $1.99 million. You would also be earning over $53,000 in dividends per year.</p>
<p>Microsoft's core business was built on providing an easy-to-use OS for IBM-compatible PC clones throughout the 1980s and 1990s. That product, Windows, quickly became a unifying OS for the fragmented hardware market, and gave Microsoft a firm foundation to launch additional products like Office and Internet Explorer. Between 1997 and 2007, the year the first iPhone was introduced, Microsoft's annual revenue rose from$8.7 billion to$51.1 billion.</p>
<p>However, Microsoft missed the crucial technological shift toward mobile devices, where it fell woefully behind Apple and Google. The fragmentation of the Windows and Office markets, caused by users who didn't upgrade their "good enough" software, then throttled the tech giant's top line growth. Today's Microsoft is still struggling to grow its top line, but its aggressive shift toward mobile-first, cloud-first solutions with the universal Windows Store, Azure, Cortana, and Bing are gradually getting the company back on track.</p>
<p>Image source: Microsoft.</p>
<p>Cisco went public for $18 per share in1990. You could have bought 277 shares, which would have been split9 times into 79,776 shares. That position would be worth nearly $2.5 million today, and be paying out $83,000 in annual dividends.</p>
<p>Cisco was a darling of the dot-com boom, surging to a split-adjusted $79 per share in March 2000. Investors, seemingly enamored with the notion that the networking company's routers and switches would link up everything in the world, bid the stock's P/E ratio up to over 200 by the end of 2000.</p>
<p>That ratio proved unsustainable for Cisco, which only grew its net income by35% in 2000, and the stock plunged to about $12 the following year. Since then, Cisco has evolved into a mature tech stock which is owned for income instead of explosive growth. With its core markets routers and switch markets being heavily commoditized, Cisco has pivoted toward higher-growth markets like cybersecurity, service provider video, and collaboration solutions in recent years.</p>
<p>Past performance never guarantees future returns, but the growth stories of Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco show just how much patience pays off. If you had sold these stocks after they doubled or tripled, you would have missed out on the massive gains that came decades later. Therefore, never underestimate the potential of a seemingly small $5,000 investment to eventually make you a millionaire.</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=2668&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><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSunLion/info.aspx" type="external">Leo Sun Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Cisco Systems. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of Microsoft and has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Cisco Systems. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 3 Tech Stocks That Turned $5,000 Into Over $1,000,000 | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/12/3-tech-stocks-that-turned-5000-into-over-1000000.html | 2016-11-12 | 0right
| 3 Tech Stocks That Turned $5,000 Into Over $1,000,000
<p />
<p>$5,000 might not seem like enough to invest in the stock market. However, $5,000 put in the right stock could blossom to more than $1 million over a few decades. Let's take a closer look at three of the most well-known examples from the tech industry -- Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), and Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO).</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Apple went public in 1980 at$22 per share. $5,000 would have been enough to buy 227 shares. After four splits, you would now own 12,712 shares, which would be worth roughly $1.3 million. Moreover, that position would be paying out nearly $29,000 in dividends per year.</p>
<p>Apple's early years, which mainly relied on Apple II and Mac sales, were rocky. Co-founder Steve Jobs left his own company after a dispute with the board in 1985, and its products were subsequently crushed by Microsoft's rapidly growing market share across IBMPC clones.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Apple's growth didn't get back on track until an older and wiser Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. With a renewed focus on sleek hardware and end-to-end control of its ecosystem, Jobs' Apple launched the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad -- all hit products which redefined their respective industries. Between 1997 and 2011 -- the year Jobs resigned and passed away -- Apple's annual revenue rose from$7.1 billion to$108.2 billion. That figure hit $215.6 billion infiscal 2016.</p>
<p>Microsoft went public for$21 per share in 1986. $5,000 would be enough to buy 238 shares. After nine splits, you would own 34,272 shares, which would be worth $1.99 million. You would also be earning over $53,000 in dividends per year.</p>
<p>Microsoft's core business was built on providing an easy-to-use OS for IBM-compatible PC clones throughout the 1980s and 1990s. That product, Windows, quickly became a unifying OS for the fragmented hardware market, and gave Microsoft a firm foundation to launch additional products like Office and Internet Explorer. Between 1997 and 2007, the year the first iPhone was introduced, Microsoft's annual revenue rose from$8.7 billion to$51.1 billion.</p>
<p>However, Microsoft missed the crucial technological shift toward mobile devices, where it fell woefully behind Apple and Google. The fragmentation of the Windows and Office markets, caused by users who didn't upgrade their "good enough" software, then throttled the tech giant's top line growth. Today's Microsoft is still struggling to grow its top line, but its aggressive shift toward mobile-first, cloud-first solutions with the universal Windows Store, Azure, Cortana, and Bing are gradually getting the company back on track.</p>
<p>Image source: Microsoft.</p>
<p>Cisco went public for $18 per share in1990. You could have bought 277 shares, which would have been split9 times into 79,776 shares. That position would be worth nearly $2.5 million today, and be paying out $83,000 in annual dividends.</p>
<p>Cisco was a darling of the dot-com boom, surging to a split-adjusted $79 per share in March 2000. Investors, seemingly enamored with the notion that the networking company's routers and switches would link up everything in the world, bid the stock's P/E ratio up to over 200 by the end of 2000.</p>
<p>That ratio proved unsustainable for Cisco, which only grew its net income by35% in 2000, and the stock plunged to about $12 the following year. Since then, Cisco has evolved into a mature tech stock which is owned for income instead of explosive growth. With its core markets routers and switch markets being heavily commoditized, Cisco has pivoted toward higher-growth markets like cybersecurity, service provider video, and collaboration solutions in recent years.</p>
<p>Past performance never guarantees future returns, but the growth stories of Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco show just how much patience pays off. If you had sold these stocks after they doubled or tripled, you would have missed out on the massive gains that came decades later. Therefore, never underestimate the potential of a seemingly small $5,000 investment to eventually make you a millionaire.</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=2668&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><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSunLion/info.aspx" type="external">Leo Sun Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Cisco Systems. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of Microsoft and has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Cisco Systems. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=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> | 574 |
<p>The Federal Reserve releases May industrial production figures Monday at 9:15 a.m. Eastern.</p>
<p>HIGHER OUTPUT: Economists forecast that industrial production rose 0.3 percent in May, after falling 0.3 percent in April, according to a survey by FactSet.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The increase would end two consecutive monthly declines. Cheaper oil prices over the past 10 months have cut into oil and gas drilling, as the cost of petroleum per barrel has nearly halved to $60 a barrel. Production in the mining sector — which includes oil wells — slipped 0.8 percent in April, the fourth straight decline.</p>
<p>The more important manufacturing sector was unchanged in April, after increasing 0.3 percent in March. Factory output has increased 2.3 percent in the past 12 months.</p>
<p>FACTORY REBOUNDS: Manufacturing has struggled since November, hurt by the cold weather, the stronger dollar and higher oil prices reducing equipment orders. But there are signs of a factory comeback that could help propel stronger growth through the rest of 2015.</p>
<p>U.S. manufacturing growth improved in May for the first time in six months, according to the Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers. Its index of manufacturing activity rose to 52.8 last month from 51.5 in April. That's the highest reading since February. Any reading above 50 signals expansion.</p>
<p>More people are also buying autos. Cars and trucks sold last month at an annual pace of 17.8 million — the fastest monthly rate since 2005, according to industry analyst Autodata Corp. The greater demand could keep assembly lines humming at auto plants.</p>
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<p>Several economists see stronger growth in the second quarter of the year, after the economy shrank at annual pace of 0.7 percent during the first three months.</p>
<p>Private forecaster Macroeconomic Advisers says that economic growth is tracking at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the second quarter. The Atlanta branch of the Federal Reserve estimates that growth is running at 1.9 percent in the second quarter.</p> | US industrial production likely improved in May as manufacturing sector strengthens | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/06/15/us-industrial-production-likely-improved-in-may-as-manufacturing-sector.html | 2016-03-05 | 0right
| US industrial production likely improved in May as manufacturing sector strengthens
<p>The Federal Reserve releases May industrial production figures Monday at 9:15 a.m. Eastern.</p>
<p>HIGHER OUTPUT: Economists forecast that industrial production rose 0.3 percent in May, after falling 0.3 percent in April, according to a survey by FactSet.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The increase would end two consecutive monthly declines. Cheaper oil prices over the past 10 months have cut into oil and gas drilling, as the cost of petroleum per barrel has nearly halved to $60 a barrel. Production in the mining sector — which includes oil wells — slipped 0.8 percent in April, the fourth straight decline.</p>
<p>The more important manufacturing sector was unchanged in April, after increasing 0.3 percent in March. Factory output has increased 2.3 percent in the past 12 months.</p>
<p>FACTORY REBOUNDS: Manufacturing has struggled since November, hurt by the cold weather, the stronger dollar and higher oil prices reducing equipment orders. But there are signs of a factory comeback that could help propel stronger growth through the rest of 2015.</p>
<p>U.S. manufacturing growth improved in May for the first time in six months, according to the Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers. Its index of manufacturing activity rose to 52.8 last month from 51.5 in April. That's the highest reading since February. Any reading above 50 signals expansion.</p>
<p>More people are also buying autos. Cars and trucks sold last month at an annual pace of 17.8 million — the fastest monthly rate since 2005, according to industry analyst Autodata Corp. The greater demand could keep assembly lines humming at auto plants.</p>
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<p>Several economists see stronger growth in the second quarter of the year, after the economy shrank at annual pace of 0.7 percent during the first three months.</p>
<p>Private forecaster Macroeconomic Advisers says that economic growth is tracking at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the second quarter. The Atlanta branch of the Federal Reserve estimates that growth is running at 1.9 percent in the second quarter.</p> | 575 |
<p>Journal Article - Security Studies</p>
<p />
<p>Liberal theory asserts that the need for cost-effective, technologically advanced weapons requires the United States to acquiesce to increasing defense globalization even as this restrains U.S. power. Realist logic dictates that the United States should resist defense liberalization to retain its self-sufficiency. This is a false choice; the United States encourages defense globalization in order to extend its international political influence. This paper proposes an alternate theory of technological hegemony that explains the U.S. policy of massive R&amp;D investment in both the late Cold War and the current era of American preponderance. Modern weapons' complexity and economies of scale tend to produce monopolies, and the value chain for the production of these monopolistic goods is dominated by the systems integration techniques of prime contracting firms. In turn these prime contractors remain largely enthralled by U.S. market power. The United States gains international influence by controlling the distribution of these weapons. Put simply, technology with international political effects is likely to have international political origins.</p>
<p /> | United States Hegemony and the New Economics of Defense | false | http://belfercenter.org/publication/united-states-hegemony-and-new-economics-defense | 2018-10-01 | 2least
| United States Hegemony and the New Economics of Defense
<p>Journal Article - Security Studies</p>
<p />
<p>Liberal theory asserts that the need for cost-effective, technologically advanced weapons requires the United States to acquiesce to increasing defense globalization even as this restrains U.S. power. Realist logic dictates that the United States should resist defense liberalization to retain its self-sufficiency. This is a false choice; the United States encourages defense globalization in order to extend its international political influence. This paper proposes an alternate theory of technological hegemony that explains the U.S. policy of massive R&amp;D investment in both the late Cold War and the current era of American preponderance. Modern weapons' complexity and economies of scale tend to produce monopolies, and the value chain for the production of these monopolistic goods is dominated by the systems integration techniques of prime contracting firms. In turn these prime contractors remain largely enthralled by U.S. market power. The United States gains international influence by controlling the distribution of these weapons. Put simply, technology with international political effects is likely to have international political origins.</p>
<p /> | 576 |
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<p>The move to create Europe’s second-largest steel company is an effort to consolidate the industry, which has long struggled with excess capacity and competition, particularly from China.</p>
<p>The two firms signed a memorandum of understanding to form a 50-50 joint venture in a non-cash deal. Negotiations about details are to be concluded in time for a formal signing of the transaction at the beginning of 2018, and the merger of the second- and third-biggest players in Europe will require approval from the companies’ boards and from antitrust authorities.</p>
<p>The proposed merger, the result of talks first disclosed more than a year ago, would produce a company with revenue of about 15 billion euros ($18 billion) per year, shipments worth 21 million tons a year and, at present, some 48,000 employees. The companies expect to save between 400 million euros and 600 million euros ($479 million and $718 million) in costs per year by integrating activities including research and development.</p>
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<p>They say the deal could close in late 2018.</p>
<p>The new entity is to be called Thyssenkrupp Tata Steel and be managed by what Thyssenkrupp called a “lean holding company” based in the Netherlands. Up to 2,000 administrative jobs and up to 2,000 jobs in production will likely be cut, with the impact shared between both sides, Thyssenkrupp said.</p>
<p>“We will not be putting any measures into effect in the joint venture that we would not have had to adopt on our own,” Thyssenkrupp CEO Heinrich Hiesinger said in a statement. “On the contrary: by combining our steel activities, the burdens for each partner are lower than they would have been on a stand-alone basis.”</p>
<p>The combined company will have major hubs in Duisburg, Germany; IJMuiden, the Netherlands; and Port Talbot, Wales.</p>
<p>Shares in Thyssenkrupp AG were up 3.9 percent in Frankfurt while Tata Steel was 1.6 percent higher on the Bombay Stock Exchange.</p>
<p>Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte welcomed the deal, saying on Twitter that it “will strengthen the leading role of Tata Steel IJmuiden as one of the most efficient and sustainable steel mills in the world.”</p>
<p>Officials in Germany, which holds an election on Sunday, responded more cautiously. Labor Minister Andrea Nahles said that sites in Germany must be maintained and compulsory layoffs ruled out, and that “there must not be a merger at any price.”</p>
<p>“It is important that, in the case of a merger, the company headquarters is in Germany” to preserve the current form of employee participation in company decisions, she added.</p>
<p>In Britain, Business Secretary Greg Clark said the announcement was an “important step” for the steel industry. Labor unions welcomed it cautiously.</p>
<p>“As always, the devil will be in the detail and we are seeking further assurances on jobs, investment and future production across the U.K. operations,” said Roy Rickhuss, the general secretary of the Community union.</p> | European steel merger could see 4,000 jobs axed | false | https://abqjournal.com/1066337/european-steel-merger-could-see-4000-jobs-axed.html | 2017-09-20 | 2least
| European steel merger could see 4,000 jobs axed
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<p />
<p>The move to create Europe’s second-largest steel company is an effort to consolidate the industry, which has long struggled with excess capacity and competition, particularly from China.</p>
<p>The two firms signed a memorandum of understanding to form a 50-50 joint venture in a non-cash deal. Negotiations about details are to be concluded in time for a formal signing of the transaction at the beginning of 2018, and the merger of the second- and third-biggest players in Europe will require approval from the companies’ boards and from antitrust authorities.</p>
<p>The proposed merger, the result of talks first disclosed more than a year ago, would produce a company with revenue of about 15 billion euros ($18 billion) per year, shipments worth 21 million tons a year and, at present, some 48,000 employees. The companies expect to save between 400 million euros and 600 million euros ($479 million and $718 million) in costs per year by integrating activities including research and development.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>They say the deal could close in late 2018.</p>
<p>The new entity is to be called Thyssenkrupp Tata Steel and be managed by what Thyssenkrupp called a “lean holding company” based in the Netherlands. Up to 2,000 administrative jobs and up to 2,000 jobs in production will likely be cut, with the impact shared between both sides, Thyssenkrupp said.</p>
<p>“We will not be putting any measures into effect in the joint venture that we would not have had to adopt on our own,” Thyssenkrupp CEO Heinrich Hiesinger said in a statement. “On the contrary: by combining our steel activities, the burdens for each partner are lower than they would have been on a stand-alone basis.”</p>
<p>The combined company will have major hubs in Duisburg, Germany; IJMuiden, the Netherlands; and Port Talbot, Wales.</p>
<p>Shares in Thyssenkrupp AG were up 3.9 percent in Frankfurt while Tata Steel was 1.6 percent higher on the Bombay Stock Exchange.</p>
<p>Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte welcomed the deal, saying on Twitter that it “will strengthen the leading role of Tata Steel IJmuiden as one of the most efficient and sustainable steel mills in the world.”</p>
<p>Officials in Germany, which holds an election on Sunday, responded more cautiously. Labor Minister Andrea Nahles said that sites in Germany must be maintained and compulsory layoffs ruled out, and that “there must not be a merger at any price.”</p>
<p>“It is important that, in the case of a merger, the company headquarters is in Germany” to preserve the current form of employee participation in company decisions, she added.</p>
<p>In Britain, Business Secretary Greg Clark said the announcement was an “important step” for the steel industry. Labor unions welcomed it cautiously.</p>
<p>“As always, the devil will be in the detail and we are seeking further assurances on jobs, investment and future production across the U.K. operations,” said Roy Rickhuss, the general secretary of the Community union.</p> | 577 |
<p>(Reuters) - <a href="" type="internal">SAIC</a> Inc , a provider of technical services to the U.S. Defense and <a href="" type="internal">Homeland Security</a> departments whose results been bruised by contract delays, said its chief executive would retire next year for personal reasons, and its shares fell about 2 percent.</p>
<p>CEO Walt Havenstein, who joined SAIC in September 2009 and previously worked for <a href="" type="internal">BAE Systems</a> Plc , will retire effective June 15, 2012.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The government services contractor said its board would consider internal and external candidates in the search for a successor.</p>
<p>Erik Olbeter, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, said news of the coming departure was likely no surprise given the challenges SAIC faces.</p>
<p>"The firm really needs some changes in their strategy now and with the current CEO now scheduled to stay on for nine months, it makes it difficult for the firm to make any significant strategic directional change," Olbeter said on Monday.</p>
<p>"So as such, it's a funny decision by the board which sort of raises questions as to whether or not SAIC can really change its fortunes over the next nine months."</p>
<p>Results at SAIC have been held back by U.S. government delays in funding contracts and a tougher defense budget outlook. Its shares have fallen to all-time lows. On Monday the shares were 2 percent to $11.57, below a 12-month low of $11.78 on September 30.</p>
<p>In late August, SAIC lowered its outlook for the fiscal year that ends in January, citing continued troubles in converting new contracts into revenue. SAIC gets 97 percent of its revenue from government sources.</p>
<p>The company was also involved in a New York City automation timekeeping project that has been plagued by fraud charges.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | SAIC CEO to retire next year, shares down | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/10/03/saic-ceo-to-retire-next-year-shares-down.html | 2016-01-29 | 0right
| SAIC CEO to retire next year, shares down
<p>(Reuters) - <a href="" type="internal">SAIC</a> Inc , a provider of technical services to the U.S. Defense and <a href="" type="internal">Homeland Security</a> departments whose results been bruised by contract delays, said its chief executive would retire next year for personal reasons, and its shares fell about 2 percent.</p>
<p>CEO Walt Havenstein, who joined SAIC in September 2009 and previously worked for <a href="" type="internal">BAE Systems</a> Plc , will retire effective June 15, 2012.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The government services contractor said its board would consider internal and external candidates in the search for a successor.</p>
<p>Erik Olbeter, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, said news of the coming departure was likely no surprise given the challenges SAIC faces.</p>
<p>"The firm really needs some changes in their strategy now and with the current CEO now scheduled to stay on for nine months, it makes it difficult for the firm to make any significant strategic directional change," Olbeter said on Monday.</p>
<p>"So as such, it's a funny decision by the board which sort of raises questions as to whether or not SAIC can really change its fortunes over the next nine months."</p>
<p>Results at SAIC have been held back by U.S. government delays in funding contracts and a tougher defense budget outlook. Its shares have fallen to all-time lows. On Monday the shares were 2 percent to $11.57, below a 12-month low of $11.78 on September 30.</p>
<p>In late August, SAIC lowered its outlook for the fiscal year that ends in January, citing continued troubles in converting new contracts into revenue. SAIC gets 97 percent of its revenue from government sources.</p>
<p>The company was also involved in a New York City automation timekeeping project that has been plagued by fraud charges.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | 578 |
<p>Michael Greenberger is a professor at theUniversity of Maryland School of Law, where he teaches a course entitled "Futures, Options and Derivatives."Professor Greenberger serves as the Technical Advisor to the United Nations Commission of Experts of the President of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System. He has recently been named to the International Energy Forum’s Independent Expert Group that provided recommendations for reducing energy price volatility to the IEF’s 12th Ministerial Meeting in March 2010. Professor Greenberger was a partner for more than 20 years in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Shea &amp; Gardner, where he served as lead litigation counsel before courts of law nationwide, including the United States Supreme Court.</p>
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<p /> PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Washington. When the debate broke out in 2008 and 2009 about the financial crisis, one of the critical issues was the role of derivatives, the role of commodities trading, and especially the role of what was called excessive speculation. And there's been a lot of debate about just how much does speculation drive up things like food prices, energy prices. Now joining us to talk about that and what public policy might be in people's interest about commodities and such is Michael Greenberger. Michael teaches at the school of law at the University of Maryland. He was previously, between 1997 and '99, director of Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and he worked for Brooksley Born. He is also a technical advisor for many groups and congressmen. Thanks very much for joining us.
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<p />PROF. MICHAEL GREENBERGER, FMR. DIRECTOR, TRADING AND MARKETS DIV., CFTC: Pleasure to be here.
<p />
<p />JAY: So let's just start with that basic question: to what extent does speculation or excessive speculation affect the price of energy and food?
<p />
<p />GREENBERGER: Well, as we sit here today, there's little doubt that excessive speculation, that is, speculation that's unnecessary to the structure of the hedging markets for food and energy, is causing a inflationary bubble. And the American consumer, and, for that matter, consumers worldwide, are paying an unnecessary premium for food and energy, which goes into the pockets of big banks and Wall Street traders and has nothing to do with developing supplies of scarce commodities.
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<p />JAY: Well, before we explore more of what excessive speculation is, what do you consider not excessive speculation?
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<p />GREENBERGER: Well, you have to understand this in a historical context, and it really goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. In the beginning of the 20th century, the only derivative product or futures product that was extant were futures contracts that allowed farmers and consumers of farm products to hedge their pricing exposure. In other words, when a farmer began to plant a seed, he wanted to be guaranteed a certain price when the crops were brought out of the ground. So you could buy what were insurance contracts that gave you a hedge and an insurance for a fair price for the growth of your product. Similarly, those who used those products--for example, bakers and millers--similarly went into those markets to make sure they weren't paying too high a price. And the tension between the consumer and the producer caused the futures markets to be a fair reflection of what supply-demand would designate prices to be. In the beginning of the 20th century, farmers figured out that in the trading venue which was in Chicago at the various futures exchanges, the traders could manipulate the price up and down by overwhelming the market with speculative bets on price direction. And what the farmers determined, and for that matter the bakers and the millers determined, was they couldn't use these markets as insurance contracts, because the speculators were driving the prices in such a fashion that the markets became unusable.
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<p />JAY: Give an example of how that would work. I mean, how does a speculator do that?
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<p />GREENBERGER: Well, a farmer, when they're hedging, is thinking about a fair price to get at the end of the farm season. He needs to interact with the consumer of farm products, who wants a fair price as well. The farmer wants the highest price; the consumer wants the lowest price. And the tension between those traders who are forming these contracts makes the price adhere to supply-demand fundamentals. If speculators get involved, they don't care what a fair price is. If they conspire or work together or flood the market, they can say, okay, let's drive the price way up by bidding the price up irrelevant to any economic needs. In those days also--it's not true today, and I can explain why, but in those days also, they would bid the price down and try and short the market. But they were destroying these markets [that are] for the use of hedging to protect the farmer and the consumer of farm products directly, and the consumer indirectly, who benefited from the tension of this price-development mechanism. In the first piece of legislation Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent to the New Deal Congress was a response to this problem, an answer to the farmers' concerns about speculation. And he and the New Deal Congress, in passing the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, had a simple resolution to this matter, and that was, market by market, limiting the involvement of speculators. To some extent there is good speculation, in that it allows the farmer and the consumer in this market to have liquidity and get in and out of contracts, and the speculator creates that liquidity. But there's a tipping point when there is excessive speculation. Liquidity concerns go out the door, and prices become unmoored from price-demand fundamentals. What Roosevelt and the New Deal Congress said: we're going to put limits on speculation in those markets. And from 1936 to the early '90s, those markets functioned very smoothly. There were price variables, but the price variables dealt with supply-demand. For example, if there was a short supply of wheat, the price would go up.
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<p />JAY: By limits you mean how much any one party could own or control. Is it similar to what's being called position limits now?
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<p />GREENBERGER: Yes. And it's not a party. It's a person who is in the market who has no need to hedge physical supplies that they are growing or buying. It is people who just want to bet, who don't touch the underlying commodity but want to bet on price direction. And historically, from 1936 to 1990, a smoothly functioning market, whether you're talking about wheat or you're talking about crude oil or you're talking about metals, was 70 percent commercial handlers trying to hedge their prices and adhering the price to supply-demand fundamentals, and 30 percent speculators, who are in the market betting on price direction, but are actually helping the market by assisting the producers in creating liquidity in the market.
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<p />JAY: So this, for example, is an airlines that hedges their cost of fuel for the year, versus that someone's just making a bet.
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<p />GREENBERGER: Exactly. Someone wants to bet on the direction--now, fuel--jet fuel is not a commodity, and what the airlines use is crude oil as a derivative. So they've hedged in the crude oil markets. But a speculator would go into the market, say, I don't even know what a barrel of oil looks like, but I want to bet it's going to go up or I want to bet it's going to go down. What happened in the 1990s is, almost under the radar screen, the big Wall Street banks, beginning with Goldman Sachs, created stealth exemptions to these limitations, to allow them to get more heavily involved in the market as speculators, but going under the radar screen. And essentially the principal vehicle these big banks used--and today the two foremost banks are Goldman and Morgan Stanley--is they wanted to offer their customers the ability to bet on the price direction of food and energy. So they would take in--and they do today--take in bets from customers. Just like you go to a horse race and you go to the betting parlor and you say, I want to bet on a certain horse, they invite wealthy investors to come in and bet on the direction of a basket of 25 food and energy commodities. The bettor does--just like you don't own a horse when you go to the horse race, the bettor wouldn't even know what kind of wheat they're betting on, but they're placing money down. You have to be wealthy to do this with Goldman, with Morgan Stanley, to bet, and they can only bet that the direction will go up, the price will go up. Goldman and Morgan Stanley now have to go into the futures market, where there are people who are legitimately hedging their commercial bets. They, from 1990 to the summer of 2008, not even going to the CFTC commission but to the staff, got secret exemptions that allowed them to lay off their risk from their betting parlor by placing offsetting bets in the futures market. Now, if you just follow the thread, Goldman and Morgan Stanley are taking bets from their customers the price will go up; therefore, they will lose if the price goes down. They, like a bookie, don't want to be in that position, 'cause they're--through their analysts, are pumping up the price anyway. So they go into the real futures market, where there are consequences to the transaction, and they bet there that the price will go up, to offset the bet with their customers. They got exemptions from the Franklin Delano Roosevelt position limits. That allowed them to do it. And their theory was, hey, we're hedging just like the airlines are hedging, 'cause we're in the betting business and we're hedging our bets. In the summer of 2008, when oil went to a world record high of $147 a barrel, Democrats in the House of Representatives unearthed all these exemptions and were able to discover that markets that were thought to be 70 percent commercial and 30 percent speculative were then 70 percent speculative and 30 percent commercial. Dodd-Frank has a provision in it that says, essentially, we must go back to the old Roosevelt idea and protect these hedging markets from excessive speculation. That is to say, roughly speaking, 30 percent speculation is okay. We now have in these markets 80 percent speculators, most of whom wouldn't know what a barrel of oil looked like, and only 20 percent commercials who were trying to hedge their bets. As a result of that, and because the betting instruments only allowed you to bet that the direction of the price will go up, we are seeing these bubbles. In 2008, for example, oil went to $147. During the recession, investors pulled their money out. It went back down. In July 2008, it was $147. By December-January, it was down to $33. As the economy started to improve and speculators drove back in, it raced back up to $75 a barrel by the summer of 2009. At that point, the chairman of the CFTC said, hey, we've got to do something about this. That led to legislation where Congress passed a provision that said you've got to keep speculators out of these markets, they are sending false signals, inflating the market unnecessarily, and these markets have no relationship to supply-demand. Unfortunately, in January 2011, the CFTC issued a proposal--which it's not even clear that a majority of commissioners would support in the final text--that basically did not implement what Congress intended, and essentially preserved the status quo ante. What does that mean? We've got oil markets, wheat markets, copper markets, rice, with 80 percent speculation, 20 percent commercial, and the markets are veering willy-nilly. The demonstration is in the most recent meltdown that we've seen in the stock market: the oil market completely followed the Dow Jones going down when there was worry over the S&amp;P downgrade. And now that the stock market's getting footing, crude oil is going back up again. So it is not a supply-demand factor that is governing the price of these products; it is how much money speculators have to put in those markets. And there are dozens of world hunger groups who are at the table right now, saying that in Third World countries people are starving because Wall Street speculators have this little betting parlor going on and are artificially inflating the price of these commodities.
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<p />JAY: Now, we were told that the CFTC is planning to regulate position limits and come up with a number like 10 percent, and they're trying to work at the regulation, but that lobbyists are slowing them down, but that there is some intent to do that. Is that the case?
<p />
<p />GREENBERGER: Well, most progressives groups--and, by the way, Dodd-Frank has caused the CFTC, over a broad range of financial regulation, to deal with 50 different rules that they have to create. Ninety percent of them are very controversial. If they're properly implemented, they undercut the too-big-to-fail banks, who are fighting like crazy to preserve their oligopoly over all markets. This rule on position limits, going back to the Roosevelt idea that speculators should be driven from these markets, is the most controversial. All the rules have had 20,000 comments. Twelve thousand of those comments have been focused on position limits. The big banks, the big hedge funds, the big private equity firms want to have phony regulation here to make it appear that something's being done, but actually preserving the status quo ante. The progressive groups that have testified on this--unions, consumer groups, the ARP, environmental groups, public interest groups--are saying that the proposal is a phony, it doesn't do anything, it's regulation in name only, and want to put out of business the gambling that is going on in these markets. And the damning thing about this is, once you understand this, it is not that hard to--difficult--it is not that difficult to understand how the American consumer is being taken to the cleaners. But so far there's been no effort by any policymaker, whether it's in the executive branch or the legislative branch, to clearly explain to the American people that Wall Street is putting money in its pockets that has nothing to do with developing oil, developing natural gas, developing--producing metals, producing farm products. It's going--it's a betting parlor, and the money is going directly into the pocket of wealthy people. And when the American public is paying $4 a gallon for gasoline, none of that payment really has very much to do with developing new sources of energy and everything to do with putting pockets--money in the pockets of Wall Street.
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<p />JAY: So if you were writing the regulation on position limits, what would it say?
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<p />GREENBERGER: What I would say is anybody who is involved in a betting parlor and, like a bookie, laying off their risk is got to be subject to the very toughest position limits. Right now, the rule, it does exactly what Wall Street wanted. Wall Street said, we're bettors, and we're laying off our risk like a bookie; so therefore we're commercial interests, and we should buy up all the contracts we want. And the proposed rule says, yes, that's right, you guys have at it, and then for everybody else we'll have limits. You've got to knock the bettors, the betting parlors, which are banks, out of this market, make them subject to position limits. If that happens, most economists who've examined this--and many have--will say the price of these commodities will drop substantially.
<p />
<p />JAY: Thanks very much for joining us.
<p />
<p />GREENBERGER: Pleasure to be here.
<p />
<p />JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
<p />
<p />End of Transcript
<p />
<p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. | Secret Exemptions Allowed Speculators to Distort Futures Markets | true | http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D31%26Itemid%3D74%26jumival%3D7174 | 2011-08-29 | 4left
| Secret Exemptions Allowed Speculators to Distort Futures Markets
<p>Michael Greenberger is a professor at theUniversity of Maryland School of Law, where he teaches a course entitled "Futures, Options and Derivatives."Professor Greenberger serves as the Technical Advisor to the United Nations Commission of Experts of the President of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System. He has recently been named to the International Energy Forum’s Independent Expert Group that provided recommendations for reducing energy price volatility to the IEF’s 12th Ministerial Meeting in March 2010. Professor Greenberger was a partner for more than 20 years in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Shea &amp; Gardner, where he served as lead litigation counsel before courts of law nationwide, including the United States Supreme Court.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p /> PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Washington. When the debate broke out in 2008 and 2009 about the financial crisis, one of the critical issues was the role of derivatives, the role of commodities trading, and especially the role of what was called excessive speculation. And there's been a lot of debate about just how much does speculation drive up things like food prices, energy prices. Now joining us to talk about that and what public policy might be in people's interest about commodities and such is Michael Greenberger. Michael teaches at the school of law at the University of Maryland. He was previously, between 1997 and '99, director of Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and he worked for Brooksley Born. He is also a technical advisor for many groups and congressmen. Thanks very much for joining us.
<p />
<p />PROF. MICHAEL GREENBERGER, FMR. DIRECTOR, TRADING AND MARKETS DIV., CFTC: Pleasure to be here.
<p />
<p />JAY: So let's just start with that basic question: to what extent does speculation or excessive speculation affect the price of energy and food?
<p />
<p />GREENBERGER: Well, as we sit here today, there's little doubt that excessive speculation, that is, speculation that's unnecessary to the structure of the hedging markets for food and energy, is causing a inflationary bubble. And the American consumer, and, for that matter, consumers worldwide, are paying an unnecessary premium for food and energy, which goes into the pockets of big banks and Wall Street traders and has nothing to do with developing supplies of scarce commodities.
<p />
<p />JAY: Well, before we explore more of what excessive speculation is, what do you consider not excessive speculation?
<p />
<p />GREENBERGER: Well, you have to understand this in a historical context, and it really goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. In the beginning of the 20th century, the only derivative product or futures product that was extant were futures contracts that allowed farmers and consumers of farm products to hedge their pricing exposure. In other words, when a farmer began to plant a seed, he wanted to be guaranteed a certain price when the crops were brought out of the ground. So you could buy what were insurance contracts that gave you a hedge and an insurance for a fair price for the growth of your product. Similarly, those who used those products--for example, bakers and millers--similarly went into those markets to make sure they weren't paying too high a price. And the tension between the consumer and the producer caused the futures markets to be a fair reflection of what supply-demand would designate prices to be. In the beginning of the 20th century, farmers figured out that in the trading venue which was in Chicago at the various futures exchanges, the traders could manipulate the price up and down by overwhelming the market with speculative bets on price direction. And what the farmers determined, and for that matter the bakers and the millers determined, was they couldn't use these markets as insurance contracts, because the speculators were driving the prices in such a fashion that the markets became unusable.
<p />
<p />JAY: Give an example of how that would work. I mean, how does a speculator do that?
<p />
<p />GREENBERGER: Well, a farmer, when they're hedging, is thinking about a fair price to get at the end of the farm season. He needs to interact with the consumer of farm products, who wants a fair price as well. The farmer wants the highest price; the consumer wants the lowest price. And the tension between those traders who are forming these contracts makes the price adhere to supply-demand fundamentals. If speculators get involved, they don't care what a fair price is. If they conspire or work together or flood the market, they can say, okay, let's drive the price way up by bidding the price up irrelevant to any economic needs. In those days also--it's not true today, and I can explain why, but in those days also, they would bid the price down and try and short the market. But they were destroying these markets [that are] for the use of hedging to protect the farmer and the consumer of farm products directly, and the consumer indirectly, who benefited from the tension of this price-development mechanism. In the first piece of legislation Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent to the New Deal Congress was a response to this problem, an answer to the farmers' concerns about speculation. And he and the New Deal Congress, in passing the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, had a simple resolution to this matter, and that was, market by market, limiting the involvement of speculators. To some extent there is good speculation, in that it allows the farmer and the consumer in this market to have liquidity and get in and out of contracts, and the speculator creates that liquidity. But there's a tipping point when there is excessive speculation. Liquidity concerns go out the door, and prices become unmoored from price-demand fundamentals. What Roosevelt and the New Deal Congress said: we're going to put limits on speculation in those markets. And from 1936 to the early '90s, those markets functioned very smoothly. There were price variables, but the price variables dealt with supply-demand. For example, if there was a short supply of wheat, the price would go up.
<p />
<p />JAY: By limits you mean how much any one party could own or control. Is it similar to what's being called position limits now?
<p />
<p />GREENBERGER: Yes. And it's not a party. It's a person who is in the market who has no need to hedge physical supplies that they are growing or buying. It is people who just want to bet, who don't touch the underlying commodity but want to bet on price direction. And historically, from 1936 to 1990, a smoothly functioning market, whether you're talking about wheat or you're talking about crude oil or you're talking about metals, was 70 percent commercial handlers trying to hedge their prices and adhering the price to supply-demand fundamentals, and 30 percent speculators, who are in the market betting on price direction, but are actually helping the market by assisting the producers in creating liquidity in the market.
<p />
<p />JAY: So this, for example, is an airlines that hedges their cost of fuel for the year, versus that someone's just making a bet.
<p />
<p />GREENBERGER: Exactly. Someone wants to bet on the direction--now, fuel--jet fuel is not a commodity, and what the airlines use is crude oil as a derivative. So they've hedged in the crude oil markets. But a speculator would go into the market, say, I don't even know what a barrel of oil looks like, but I want to bet it's going to go up or I want to bet it's going to go down. What happened in the 1990s is, almost under the radar screen, the big Wall Street banks, beginning with Goldman Sachs, created stealth exemptions to these limitations, to allow them to get more heavily involved in the market as speculators, but going under the radar screen. And essentially the principal vehicle these big banks used--and today the two foremost banks are Goldman and Morgan Stanley--is they wanted to offer their customers the ability to bet on the price direction of food and energy. So they would take in--and they do today--take in bets from customers. Just like you go to a horse race and you go to the betting parlor and you say, I want to bet on a certain horse, they invite wealthy investors to come in and bet on the direction of a basket of 25 food and energy commodities. The bettor does--just like you don't own a horse when you go to the horse race, the bettor wouldn't even know what kind of wheat they're betting on, but they're placing money down. You have to be wealthy to do this with Goldman, with Morgan Stanley, to bet, and they can only bet that the direction will go up, the price will go up. Goldman and Morgan Stanley now have to go into the futures market, where there are people who are legitimately hedging their commercial bets. They, from 1990 to the summer of 2008, not even going to the CFTC commission but to the staff, got secret exemptions that allowed them to lay off their risk from their betting parlor by placing offsetting bets in the futures market. Now, if you just follow the thread, Goldman and Morgan Stanley are taking bets from their customers the price will go up; therefore, they will lose if the price goes down. They, like a bookie, don't want to be in that position, 'cause they're--through their analysts, are pumping up the price anyway. So they go into the real futures market, where there are consequences to the transaction, and they bet there that the price will go up, to offset the bet with their customers. They got exemptions from the Franklin Delano Roosevelt position limits. That allowed them to do it. And their theory was, hey, we're hedging just like the airlines are hedging, 'cause we're in the betting business and we're hedging our bets. In the summer of 2008, when oil went to a world record high of $147 a barrel, Democrats in the House of Representatives unearthed all these exemptions and were able to discover that markets that were thought to be 70 percent commercial and 30 percent speculative were then 70 percent speculative and 30 percent commercial. Dodd-Frank has a provision in it that says, essentially, we must go back to the old Roosevelt idea and protect these hedging markets from excessive speculation. That is to say, roughly speaking, 30 percent speculation is okay. We now have in these markets 80 percent speculators, most of whom wouldn't know what a barrel of oil looked like, and only 20 percent commercials who were trying to hedge their bets. As a result of that, and because the betting instruments only allowed you to bet that the direction of the price will go up, we are seeing these bubbles. In 2008, for example, oil went to $147. During the recession, investors pulled their money out. It went back down. In July 2008, it was $147. By December-January, it was down to $33. As the economy started to improve and speculators drove back in, it raced back up to $75 a barrel by the summer of 2009. At that point, the chairman of the CFTC said, hey, we've got to do something about this. That led to legislation where Congress passed a provision that said you've got to keep speculators out of these markets, they are sending false signals, inflating the market unnecessarily, and these markets have no relationship to supply-demand. Unfortunately, in January 2011, the CFTC issued a proposal--which it's not even clear that a majority of commissioners would support in the final text--that basically did not implement what Congress intended, and essentially preserved the status quo ante. What does that mean? We've got oil markets, wheat markets, copper markets, rice, with 80 percent speculation, 20 percent commercial, and the markets are veering willy-nilly. The demonstration is in the most recent meltdown that we've seen in the stock market: the oil market completely followed the Dow Jones going down when there was worry over the S&amp;P downgrade. And now that the stock market's getting footing, crude oil is going back up again. So it is not a supply-demand factor that is governing the price of these products; it is how much money speculators have to put in those markets. And there are dozens of world hunger groups who are at the table right now, saying that in Third World countries people are starving because Wall Street speculators have this little betting parlor going on and are artificially inflating the price of these commodities.
<p />
<p />JAY: Now, we were told that the CFTC is planning to regulate position limits and come up with a number like 10 percent, and they're trying to work at the regulation, but that lobbyists are slowing them down, but that there is some intent to do that. Is that the case?
<p />
<p />GREENBERGER: Well, most progressives groups--and, by the way, Dodd-Frank has caused the CFTC, over a broad range of financial regulation, to deal with 50 different rules that they have to create. Ninety percent of them are very controversial. If they're properly implemented, they undercut the too-big-to-fail banks, who are fighting like crazy to preserve their oligopoly over all markets. This rule on position limits, going back to the Roosevelt idea that speculators should be driven from these markets, is the most controversial. All the rules have had 20,000 comments. Twelve thousand of those comments have been focused on position limits. The big banks, the big hedge funds, the big private equity firms want to have phony regulation here to make it appear that something's being done, but actually preserving the status quo ante. The progressive groups that have testified on this--unions, consumer groups, the ARP, environmental groups, public interest groups--are saying that the proposal is a phony, it doesn't do anything, it's regulation in name only, and want to put out of business the gambling that is going on in these markets. And the damning thing about this is, once you understand this, it is not that hard to--difficult--it is not that difficult to understand how the American consumer is being taken to the cleaners. But so far there's been no effort by any policymaker, whether it's in the executive branch or the legislative branch, to clearly explain to the American people that Wall Street is putting money in its pockets that has nothing to do with developing oil, developing natural gas, developing--producing metals, producing farm products. It's going--it's a betting parlor, and the money is going directly into the pocket of wealthy people. And when the American public is paying $4 a gallon for gasoline, none of that payment really has very much to do with developing new sources of energy and everything to do with putting pockets--money in the pockets of Wall Street.
<p />
<p />JAY: So if you were writing the regulation on position limits, what would it say?
<p />
<p />GREENBERGER: What I would say is anybody who is involved in a betting parlor and, like a bookie, laying off their risk is got to be subject to the very toughest position limits. Right now, the rule, it does exactly what Wall Street wanted. Wall Street said, we're bettors, and we're laying off our risk like a bookie; so therefore we're commercial interests, and we should buy up all the contracts we want. And the proposed rule says, yes, that's right, you guys have at it, and then for everybody else we'll have limits. You've got to knock the bettors, the betting parlors, which are banks, out of this market, make them subject to position limits. If that happens, most economists who've examined this--and many have--will say the price of these commodities will drop substantially.
<p />
<p />JAY: Thanks very much for joining us.
<p />
<p />GREENBERGER: Pleasure to be here.
<p />
<p />JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
<p />
<p />End of Transcript
<p />
<p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. | 579 |
<p>LOUISVILLE (KY)The Cincinnati EnquirerThe Associated Press</p>
<p />
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<p />
<p />
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<p>LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Settlements have been reached in two more lawsuits alleging sexual abuse and filed against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville.</p>
<p>The settlements were reached through mediation.</p>
<p>The amounts are being kept confidential at the plaintiffs' request, said Brian Reynolds, chancellor and chief administrative officer of the archdiocese.</p>
<p>"We have said all along we would work toward resolution through mediation," Reynolds said.</p>
<p>"I'm pleased for the ability of the litigants to put this part of their life behind them."</p>
<p>Both plaintiffs are prosecution witnesses in criminal indictments against the people they have accused.</p> | Settlements reached in two church cases | false | https://poynter.org/news/settlements-reached-two-church-cases | 2003-03-24 | 2least
| Settlements reached in two church cases
<p>LOUISVILLE (KY)The Cincinnati EnquirerThe Associated Press</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Settlements have been reached in two more lawsuits alleging sexual abuse and filed against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville.</p>
<p>The settlements were reached through mediation.</p>
<p>The amounts are being kept confidential at the plaintiffs' request, said Brian Reynolds, chancellor and chief administrative officer of the archdiocese.</p>
<p>"We have said all along we would work toward resolution through mediation," Reynolds said.</p>
<p>"I'm pleased for the ability of the litigants to put this part of their life behind them."</p>
<p>Both plaintiffs are prosecution witnesses in criminal indictments against the people they have accused.</p> | 580 |
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<p />
<p>It’s opposed by Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, who has tried for five years to persuade the Legislature to end the issuance of those licenses.</p>
<p>The bill passed and headed to the Republican-run House – which wasn’t expected to approve it – with barely more than 24 hours left in the 60-day legislative session.</p>
<p>The sponsors, a Democrat and a Republican, said the legislation acknowledged the reality of an immigrant workforce that needs driver’s licenses and the looming threat that the more stringent identification requirements of the federal REAL ID Act would be enforced.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I had to modify my position,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, who previously supported the governor’s repeal effort, told his colleagues.</p>
<p>“We’ve got to recognize reality and step to the plate and do what’s right,” Smith said.</p>
<p>“These are decisions we are here to make, and it is our time to make them,” said Senate Republican Leader Stuart Ingle of Portales, the other sponsor.</p>
<p>Smith said he fully expected support of the bill to become an issue in the 2016 election. Martinez has hammered legislative candidates who disagree with her on repeal.</p>
<p>Sen. Sander Rue, R-Albuquerque, who voted against the bill, objected that issuing official documents to those who had entered the U.S. illegally “will essentially condone that behavior.”</p>
<p>Also voting against the bill were Republicans Mark Moores of Albuquerque, Craig Brandt of Rio Rancho, Lee Cotter of Las Cruces, and Cliff Pirtle of Roswell. Sen. Carroll Leavell, R-Jal, was absent. The other 11 Republicans and all the Democrats voted for it.</p>
<p>Sen. Bill Payne, R-Albuquerque, said not supporting the bill would be “enshrining the status quo.”</p>
<p>“People might say, ‘I want more.’ Well I do, too. But I don’t have more. … This is the bill we’ve got,” Payne said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Senate Bill 653 would create two tiers: a regular license stamped “Not For Federal Purposes” that would be available to immigrants here illegally and any other New Mexicans who wanted it, and an enhanced, gold-starred license that would comply with the REAL ID Act and require proof of lawful presence.</p>
<p>The Martinez administration has argued the enhanced licenses wouldn’t be REAL ID-compliant because the legislation doesn’t specify all the requirements in federal law for getting those licenses. Smith says that could be done through rule-making; the administration says it can’t but hasn’t said why.</p>
<p>The administration also says the bill doesn’t match the REAL ID law in requirements for proving age.</p>
<p>Asked for comment on the Senate’s passage of the bill, Martinez’s office referred to a statement it issued after the bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.</p>
<p>It said Senate Democrats were “opting for a proposal that already failed the House, isn’t REAL ID-compliant, and would not require secure IDs in New Mexico.”</p>
<p>The House more than a month ago passed, on a 39-29 vote, a bill backed by the governor that would halt the issuance of licenses to immigrants who are in the country illegally. It has been sitting in the Senate Public Affairs Committee.</p>
<p>During that debate, the House rejected an amendment that mirrored the Ingle-Smith bill.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Senate approves two-tier licenses | false | https://abqjournal.com/558245/senate-approves-twotier-licenses.html | 2least
| Senate approves two-tier licenses
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<p />
<p>It’s opposed by Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, who has tried for five years to persuade the Legislature to end the issuance of those licenses.</p>
<p>The bill passed and headed to the Republican-run House – which wasn’t expected to approve it – with barely more than 24 hours left in the 60-day legislative session.</p>
<p>The sponsors, a Democrat and a Republican, said the legislation acknowledged the reality of an immigrant workforce that needs driver’s licenses and the looming threat that the more stringent identification requirements of the federal REAL ID Act would be enforced.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I had to modify my position,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, who previously supported the governor’s repeal effort, told his colleagues.</p>
<p>“We’ve got to recognize reality and step to the plate and do what’s right,” Smith said.</p>
<p>“These are decisions we are here to make, and it is our time to make them,” said Senate Republican Leader Stuart Ingle of Portales, the other sponsor.</p>
<p>Smith said he fully expected support of the bill to become an issue in the 2016 election. Martinez has hammered legislative candidates who disagree with her on repeal.</p>
<p>Sen. Sander Rue, R-Albuquerque, who voted against the bill, objected that issuing official documents to those who had entered the U.S. illegally “will essentially condone that behavior.”</p>
<p>Also voting against the bill were Republicans Mark Moores of Albuquerque, Craig Brandt of Rio Rancho, Lee Cotter of Las Cruces, and Cliff Pirtle of Roswell. Sen. Carroll Leavell, R-Jal, was absent. The other 11 Republicans and all the Democrats voted for it.</p>
<p>Sen. Bill Payne, R-Albuquerque, said not supporting the bill would be “enshrining the status quo.”</p>
<p>“People might say, ‘I want more.’ Well I do, too. But I don’t have more. … This is the bill we’ve got,” Payne said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Senate Bill 653 would create two tiers: a regular license stamped “Not For Federal Purposes” that would be available to immigrants here illegally and any other New Mexicans who wanted it, and an enhanced, gold-starred license that would comply with the REAL ID Act and require proof of lawful presence.</p>
<p>The Martinez administration has argued the enhanced licenses wouldn’t be REAL ID-compliant because the legislation doesn’t specify all the requirements in federal law for getting those licenses. Smith says that could be done through rule-making; the administration says it can’t but hasn’t said why.</p>
<p>The administration also says the bill doesn’t match the REAL ID law in requirements for proving age.</p>
<p>Asked for comment on the Senate’s passage of the bill, Martinez’s office referred to a statement it issued after the bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.</p>
<p>It said Senate Democrats were “opting for a proposal that already failed the House, isn’t REAL ID-compliant, and would not require secure IDs in New Mexico.”</p>
<p>The House more than a month ago passed, on a 39-29 vote, a bill backed by the governor that would halt the issuance of licenses to immigrants who are in the country illegally. It has been sitting in the Senate Public Affairs Committee.</p>
<p>During that debate, the House rejected an amendment that mirrored the Ingle-Smith bill.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 581 |
|
<p />
<p>Devastating knee ligament tears that have sidelined the likes of football stars Tom Brady, Von Miller and countless other professional athletes may soon be significantly easier to repair, thanks to an experimental surgery that has already gained federal clearance for a second clinical trial.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Approximately 70 NFL players are diagnosed each year with a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) – severe injuries that require surgical reconstruction to repair and months of rehab to regain full strength. But <a href="http://www.childrenshospital.org/researchers/martha-murray" type="external">Dr. Martha Murray Opens a New Window.</a> of Boston Children’s Hospital has spent most of the last two decades developing Bridge-Enhanced ACL Repair, or BEAR – an experimental, minimally invasive procedure that early evidence suggests can reduce recovery time and lessen the long-term risk of developing painful arthritis in the knee.</p>
<p>Traditionally, orthopedic surgeons use a tendon graft to reconnect a damaged ACL – an invasive method that also weakens the muscle group from which the tendon was taken. The BEAR surgery, developed in conjunction with Harvard Medical School and the NFL players union-funded Football Players Health Study, uses stitches to repair the ACL and a surgical sponge to bridge the gap in the torn ligament, which can then use the body’s healing processes to naturally regenerate.</p>
<p>“The ACL has a really productive response to injury, in that it does all the right things biologically,” Dr. Murray told FOXBusiness.com. “It makes new cells, it really tries to heal itself, but it can never bridge the gap between the two torn ends of the ligament.</p>
<p>ACL injuries aren’t just a problem for pro athletes. They’re also prevalent throughout the general American population, especially for the physically active. Estimates vary, but anywhere from 250,000 to 400,000 people suffer ACL injuries annually, at a healthcare cost in excess of $2 billion. The cost of an individual procedure fluctuates wildly based on surgeon, facility and whether the patient has insurance.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Murray’s quest to develop a new kind of treatment began when she, as a graduate student in an engineering program, spoke to a friend who had recently torn his ACL. She was stunned to learn that ACL tears required a tendon graft and six months of grueling rehab, with no guarantee of a return to full strength.</p>
<p>“I was like, that’s crazy. Why can’t the thing just heal? Everything else in our body tends to heal. Why does the ACL, even if you sew it back together, why doesn’t it heal? I just got very interested in the issue,” Murray said.</p>
<p>She enrolled in medical school and began to study the ACL’s healing processes. In 2000, she discovered that the problem lay in the fact that fluid in the knee joint dissolved blood from the ligament’s torn ends before they could form a clot and naturally bind together.</p>
<p>Murray spent the next 16 years developing a protein “sponge” that holds the patient’s blood in place, allowing the ligament to heal. Early tests on animal models revealed BEAR subjects had a much lower incidence of knee arthritis compared to those who underwent traditional surgery.</p>
<p>In 2014, the NFLPA, which had been tracking Murray’s progress since the early animal trials, agreed to fund her work as part of a research partnership with Harvard Medical School. Known as the “ <a href="https://footballplayershealth.harvard.edu/" type="external">Football Players Health Study Opens a New Window.</a>,” the Harvard researchers are tasked with finding solutions for common injuries and health issues among NFL players, such as concussions and chronic joint pain.</p>
<p>Murray’s work with BEAR is considered one of three “high reward” pilot studies, according to Sean Sansiveri, the NFLPA’s vice president of business and legal affairs. Sansiveri declined to say how much grant money was being funneled toward Murray’s work, but acknowledged that union officials are “beyond encouraged” by its early results.</p>
<p>“I don’t think the application is limited to the NFL,” Sansiveri told FOXBusiness.com. “I think it has a much broader application amongst other athletes and everyday civilians and the military and beyond. A lot of that would be Martha’s plans and Martha’s decisions, but we would certainly support her in that effort.”</p>
<p>Murray and her team are actively tracking the results of BEAR’s first human trial, which consisted of 10 patients who underwent the new procedure and 10 who underwent traditional ACL reconstruction surgery. As of this week, all trial patients are at least six months removed from surgery, while about half are a year removed.</p>
<p>So far, BEAR patients are back to full strength after about six months, compared to nine to 12 months for a traditional procedure. It’s too soon to say if human patients will show the same reduced incident of knee arthritis as the animal models, but researchers are optimistic.</p>
<p>Based on data gathered at the three- and six-month stages of the first BEAR trial, Murray has already received permission from the Federal Drug Administration to pursue a second, larger study of 100 patients. The trial began on May 1.</p>
<p>Even if all goes well with the new trial, it will likely be several years before BEAR can become a mass-market solution to knee ligament injuries. The FDA will need to see months of positive data from the second trial before it can grant permission for widespread use in hospitals.</p>
<p>“It’s not just for the NFL, but in all sports, women’s soccer players, all the people that are getting these tears,” Murray said. “They’re just devastating on every level. If we can make the treatment and the recovery a little bit easier for people, we’d really like to do that.”</p> | New ACL Procedure A Game Changer For NFL? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/06/14/new-acl-procedure-game-changer-for-nfl.html | 2016-06-15 | 0right
| New ACL Procedure A Game Changer For NFL?
<p />
<p>Devastating knee ligament tears that have sidelined the likes of football stars Tom Brady, Von Miller and countless other professional athletes may soon be significantly easier to repair, thanks to an experimental surgery that has already gained federal clearance for a second clinical trial.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Approximately 70 NFL players are diagnosed each year with a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) – severe injuries that require surgical reconstruction to repair and months of rehab to regain full strength. But <a href="http://www.childrenshospital.org/researchers/martha-murray" type="external">Dr. Martha Murray Opens a New Window.</a> of Boston Children’s Hospital has spent most of the last two decades developing Bridge-Enhanced ACL Repair, or BEAR – an experimental, minimally invasive procedure that early evidence suggests can reduce recovery time and lessen the long-term risk of developing painful arthritis in the knee.</p>
<p>Traditionally, orthopedic surgeons use a tendon graft to reconnect a damaged ACL – an invasive method that also weakens the muscle group from which the tendon was taken. The BEAR surgery, developed in conjunction with Harvard Medical School and the NFL players union-funded Football Players Health Study, uses stitches to repair the ACL and a surgical sponge to bridge the gap in the torn ligament, which can then use the body’s healing processes to naturally regenerate.</p>
<p>“The ACL has a really productive response to injury, in that it does all the right things biologically,” Dr. Murray told FOXBusiness.com. “It makes new cells, it really tries to heal itself, but it can never bridge the gap between the two torn ends of the ligament.</p>
<p>ACL injuries aren’t just a problem for pro athletes. They’re also prevalent throughout the general American population, especially for the physically active. Estimates vary, but anywhere from 250,000 to 400,000 people suffer ACL injuries annually, at a healthcare cost in excess of $2 billion. The cost of an individual procedure fluctuates wildly based on surgeon, facility and whether the patient has insurance.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Murray’s quest to develop a new kind of treatment began when she, as a graduate student in an engineering program, spoke to a friend who had recently torn his ACL. She was stunned to learn that ACL tears required a tendon graft and six months of grueling rehab, with no guarantee of a return to full strength.</p>
<p>“I was like, that’s crazy. Why can’t the thing just heal? Everything else in our body tends to heal. Why does the ACL, even if you sew it back together, why doesn’t it heal? I just got very interested in the issue,” Murray said.</p>
<p>She enrolled in medical school and began to study the ACL’s healing processes. In 2000, she discovered that the problem lay in the fact that fluid in the knee joint dissolved blood from the ligament’s torn ends before they could form a clot and naturally bind together.</p>
<p>Murray spent the next 16 years developing a protein “sponge” that holds the patient’s blood in place, allowing the ligament to heal. Early tests on animal models revealed BEAR subjects had a much lower incidence of knee arthritis compared to those who underwent traditional surgery.</p>
<p>In 2014, the NFLPA, which had been tracking Murray’s progress since the early animal trials, agreed to fund her work as part of a research partnership with Harvard Medical School. Known as the “ <a href="https://footballplayershealth.harvard.edu/" type="external">Football Players Health Study Opens a New Window.</a>,” the Harvard researchers are tasked with finding solutions for common injuries and health issues among NFL players, such as concussions and chronic joint pain.</p>
<p>Murray’s work with BEAR is considered one of three “high reward” pilot studies, according to Sean Sansiveri, the NFLPA’s vice president of business and legal affairs. Sansiveri declined to say how much grant money was being funneled toward Murray’s work, but acknowledged that union officials are “beyond encouraged” by its early results.</p>
<p>“I don’t think the application is limited to the NFL,” Sansiveri told FOXBusiness.com. “I think it has a much broader application amongst other athletes and everyday civilians and the military and beyond. A lot of that would be Martha’s plans and Martha’s decisions, but we would certainly support her in that effort.”</p>
<p>Murray and her team are actively tracking the results of BEAR’s first human trial, which consisted of 10 patients who underwent the new procedure and 10 who underwent traditional ACL reconstruction surgery. As of this week, all trial patients are at least six months removed from surgery, while about half are a year removed.</p>
<p>So far, BEAR patients are back to full strength after about six months, compared to nine to 12 months for a traditional procedure. It’s too soon to say if human patients will show the same reduced incident of knee arthritis as the animal models, but researchers are optimistic.</p>
<p>Based on data gathered at the three- and six-month stages of the first BEAR trial, Murray has already received permission from the Federal Drug Administration to pursue a second, larger study of 100 patients. The trial began on May 1.</p>
<p>Even if all goes well with the new trial, it will likely be several years before BEAR can become a mass-market solution to knee ligament injuries. The FDA will need to see months of positive data from the second trial before it can grant permission for widespread use in hospitals.</p>
<p>“It’s not just for the NFL, but in all sports, women’s soccer players, all the people that are getting these tears,” Murray said. “They’re just devastating on every level. If we can make the treatment and the recovery a little bit easier for people, we’d really like to do that.”</p> | 582 |
<p>The&#160;crisis is developing exactly as expected. The&#160;inability of&#160;the authorities to&#160;cope with the&#160;rising wave of&#160;social problems has naturally spilled into&#160;the political sphere.</p>
<p>At&#160;the same time, the&#160;mechanism of&#160;“managed democracy” has yet again demonstrated all of&#160;its strengths and&#160;weaknesses. The&#160;greatest strength is the&#160;way the&#160;system can rather effectively resist not only widespread social discontent but also the&#160;pressures of&#160;an increasingly disturbing reality. But it cannot withstand those mounting pressures indefinitely — and&#160;therein lies the&#160;main weakness of&#160;the existing order.</p>
<p>The&#160;authorities are able to&#160;pursue their political course and&#160;ignore voter sentiment because they have created a&#160;political system in&#160;which every sanctioned political party is only a&#160;puppet of&#160;the ruling party. Their relationship to&#160;the leadership and&#160;to each other strictly controlled, the&#160;outcome of&#160;elections predetermined and&#160;the distribution of&#160;seats in&#160;the parliament made according to&#160;the needs of&#160;the rulers.</p>
<p>But managed democracy only works well when the&#160;economy is booming. During an&#160;economic crisis, it runs into&#160;trouble. When the&#160;people’s standard of&#160;living falls and&#160;the political elite turn a&#160;deaf ear to&#160;the problem, the&#160;people reach a&#160;point where their greatest frustration is not with the&#160;economic hardships they face but with authorities who prevent them from&#160;effectively voicing their dissatisfaction.</p>
<p>Deprived of&#160;the right to&#160;vote for&#160;the political party of&#160;their choice, elections instead become the&#160;chief means by&#160;which the&#160;people can vent their anger at&#160;the authorities. And&#160;as voter turnout declines, the&#160;number of&#160;people who vote to&#160;spite the&#160;authorities increases sharply.</p>
<p>Intellectuals from&#160;Moscow and&#160;St. Petersburg glued to&#160;Facebook have no idea of&#160;the pressure applied in&#160;recent days to&#160;millions of&#160;provincial civil servants, doctors, teachers, university professors, students and&#160;others.</p>
<p>For&#160;example, bloggers in&#160;Moscow did not receive calls from&#160;their child’s teacher who, in&#160;a state panic, pleads with them to&#160;go and&#160;vote because otherwise the&#160;school is threatened with various forms of&#160;punishment.</p>
<p>They were also not subjected to&#160;a speech from&#160;their bosses saying they would check every name on&#160;the voting list and&#160;would personally deal with anyone whose signature they found missing.</p>
<p>Moscow intellectuals have no idea how much bravery it took to&#160;just not vote on&#160;Sunday.</p>
<p>Few were forced to&#160;vote for&#160;United Russia. That would have been impossible to&#160;enforce in&#160;most cases. Authorities only demanded that everyone go to&#160;the polls and&#160;vote for&#160;whomever they please, promising that they would take care of&#160;the rest.</p>
<p>Those people who called on&#160;their fellow citizens to&#160;come out and&#160;vote only helped perpetuate the&#160;electoral fraud. They signed their names to&#160;the list of&#160;voters, and&#160;now nobody can prove that they did not vote for&#160;the party of&#160;power. They accepted United Russia as the&#160;ruling party, and&#160;they also accepted the&#160;clowns from&#160;the Communist and&#160;Liberal Democratic parties as the&#160;“opposition.”</p>
<p>People who voted in&#160;many towns and&#160;villages essentially betrayed those who made the&#160;brave choice to&#160;stay home or otherwise resist the&#160;coercion from&#160;their employers. They will never learn.</p>
<p>Boris Kagarlitsky&#160;is the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.</p> | Why Managed Democracy Always Fails in a Crisis | true | https://counterpunch.org/2011/12/08/why-managed-democracy-always-fails-in-a-crisis/ | 2011-12-08 | 4left
| Why Managed Democracy Always Fails in a Crisis
<p>The&#160;crisis is developing exactly as expected. The&#160;inability of&#160;the authorities to&#160;cope with the&#160;rising wave of&#160;social problems has naturally spilled into&#160;the political sphere.</p>
<p>At&#160;the same time, the&#160;mechanism of&#160;“managed democracy” has yet again demonstrated all of&#160;its strengths and&#160;weaknesses. The&#160;greatest strength is the&#160;way the&#160;system can rather effectively resist not only widespread social discontent but also the&#160;pressures of&#160;an increasingly disturbing reality. But it cannot withstand those mounting pressures indefinitely — and&#160;therein lies the&#160;main weakness of&#160;the existing order.</p>
<p>The&#160;authorities are able to&#160;pursue their political course and&#160;ignore voter sentiment because they have created a&#160;political system in&#160;which every sanctioned political party is only a&#160;puppet of&#160;the ruling party. Their relationship to&#160;the leadership and&#160;to each other strictly controlled, the&#160;outcome of&#160;elections predetermined and&#160;the distribution of&#160;seats in&#160;the parliament made according to&#160;the needs of&#160;the rulers.</p>
<p>But managed democracy only works well when the&#160;economy is booming. During an&#160;economic crisis, it runs into&#160;trouble. When the&#160;people’s standard of&#160;living falls and&#160;the political elite turn a&#160;deaf ear to&#160;the problem, the&#160;people reach a&#160;point where their greatest frustration is not with the&#160;economic hardships they face but with authorities who prevent them from&#160;effectively voicing their dissatisfaction.</p>
<p>Deprived of&#160;the right to&#160;vote for&#160;the political party of&#160;their choice, elections instead become the&#160;chief means by&#160;which the&#160;people can vent their anger at&#160;the authorities. And&#160;as voter turnout declines, the&#160;number of&#160;people who vote to&#160;spite the&#160;authorities increases sharply.</p>
<p>Intellectuals from&#160;Moscow and&#160;St. Petersburg glued to&#160;Facebook have no idea of&#160;the pressure applied in&#160;recent days to&#160;millions of&#160;provincial civil servants, doctors, teachers, university professors, students and&#160;others.</p>
<p>For&#160;example, bloggers in&#160;Moscow did not receive calls from&#160;their child’s teacher who, in&#160;a state panic, pleads with them to&#160;go and&#160;vote because otherwise the&#160;school is threatened with various forms of&#160;punishment.</p>
<p>They were also not subjected to&#160;a speech from&#160;their bosses saying they would check every name on&#160;the voting list and&#160;would personally deal with anyone whose signature they found missing.</p>
<p>Moscow intellectuals have no idea how much bravery it took to&#160;just not vote on&#160;Sunday.</p>
<p>Few were forced to&#160;vote for&#160;United Russia. That would have been impossible to&#160;enforce in&#160;most cases. Authorities only demanded that everyone go to&#160;the polls and&#160;vote for&#160;whomever they please, promising that they would take care of&#160;the rest.</p>
<p>Those people who called on&#160;their fellow citizens to&#160;come out and&#160;vote only helped perpetuate the&#160;electoral fraud. They signed their names to&#160;the list of&#160;voters, and&#160;now nobody can prove that they did not vote for&#160;the party of&#160;power. They accepted United Russia as the&#160;ruling party, and&#160;they also accepted the&#160;clowns from&#160;the Communist and&#160;Liberal Democratic parties as the&#160;“opposition.”</p>
<p>People who voted in&#160;many towns and&#160;villages essentially betrayed those who made the&#160;brave choice to&#160;stay home or otherwise resist the&#160;coercion from&#160;their employers. They will never learn.</p>
<p>Boris Kagarlitsky&#160;is the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.</p> | 583 |
<p>Yesterday, I <a href="http://powerline.wpengine.com/archives/2013/01/a-very-bad-sign-indeed.php" type="external">fretted</a> that the Republican members of the eight person “Gang” negotiating Senate immigration reform lack the knowledge of (and concern over) detail needed to prevent the Democratic members from outfoxing them on the issue of amnesty. This is a secondary matter, to be sure. The primary concern should be that amnesty is on the table at all, and I will have more to say about this soon, including a few words at the end of this post.</p>
<p>Turning back to the composition of the Gang, though, I should mention Sen. Marco Rubio’s involvement. He is, after all, the key member — as a conservative Hispanic he provides the political “cover” that John McCain and Lindsey Graham cannot.</p>
<p>Rubio has already confessed his lack of expertise on the issue at hand. Yesterday, he said “I am clearly new to this issue in terms of the Senate.” But, he added:</p>
<p>I’m not in terms of my life. I live surrounded by immigrants. My neighbors are immigrants. My family is immigrants. Married into a family of immigrants. I see immigration everyday. I see the good of immigration.</p>
<p>Welcome to policy analysis in the Age of Oprah.</p>
<p>In his self-promo, Rubio scrupulously avoided the phrase “illegal immigration.” But that is the aspect of the immigration issue that amnesty pertains to.</p>
<p>Rubio also showed himself to be the perfect Gang companion for John McCain. The Arizona Senator has built a career around confusing his personal life experiences with policy expertise. McCain was tortured, so he knows that torture doesn’t work. Never mind that the methods and intelligence expertise of the North Vietnamese in the late 1960s bear virtually no resemblance to those employed by the U.S. almost 40 years later. And never mind that, according to McCain’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican convention, the North Vietnamese did, in fact, “break” him.</p>
<p>McCain was caught up in the Keating Five scandal in the 1990s, so he knows that money can corrupt even the most honest and heroic politicians. Therefore, he reckoned he was just the man to work across the aisle to “fix” our campaign finance system through the atrocity that became McCain-Feingold.</p>
<p>Now along comes Marco Rubio. He’s surrounded by immigration and sees that it is good. Somehow, this general insight is supposed to give him the judgment and expertise to write complex legislation dealing with illegal immigration, a phenomenon he is either incapable of distinguishing, as a moral matter, from the legal variety or is unwilling to denounce.</p>
<p>Instead, Rubio instructs us that “we have to deal with the people who are here now in a way that’s responsible but humane.” But he doesn’t explain how granting an eventual path to citizenship for illegal aliens meets this test. The people who are here illegally now already receive at least as many benefits as they deserve, having violated our laws. They have access to employment opportunities and to a vast array of services that they would not enjoy had they followed the law and not entered the U.S. — opportunities and services that are not enjoyed by those attempting to get into this country legally.</p>
<p>If the absence of a path to citizenship makes this deal insufficiently “humane” for illegal immigrants, then the “responsible” solution is for them to return to their country of origin, not for the U.S. to sweeten the deal. Perhaps Rubio’s immersion in the world of immigrants prevents him from understanding this.</p>
<p>Naturally, there is much speculation about whether Rubio’s collusion with the Senate’s most liberal members, and with professional mavericks McCain and Graham, to bring about amnesty will affect his prospects for winning the Republican nomination. It certainly should.</p> | Marco Rubio and policy analysis in the Age of Oprah | true | http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/01/marco-rubio-and-policy-analysis-in-the-age-of-oprah.php | 2013-01-29 | 0right
| Marco Rubio and policy analysis in the Age of Oprah
<p>Yesterday, I <a href="http://powerline.wpengine.com/archives/2013/01/a-very-bad-sign-indeed.php" type="external">fretted</a> that the Republican members of the eight person “Gang” negotiating Senate immigration reform lack the knowledge of (and concern over) detail needed to prevent the Democratic members from outfoxing them on the issue of amnesty. This is a secondary matter, to be sure. The primary concern should be that amnesty is on the table at all, and I will have more to say about this soon, including a few words at the end of this post.</p>
<p>Turning back to the composition of the Gang, though, I should mention Sen. Marco Rubio’s involvement. He is, after all, the key member — as a conservative Hispanic he provides the political “cover” that John McCain and Lindsey Graham cannot.</p>
<p>Rubio has already confessed his lack of expertise on the issue at hand. Yesterday, he said “I am clearly new to this issue in terms of the Senate.” But, he added:</p>
<p>I’m not in terms of my life. I live surrounded by immigrants. My neighbors are immigrants. My family is immigrants. Married into a family of immigrants. I see immigration everyday. I see the good of immigration.</p>
<p>Welcome to policy analysis in the Age of Oprah.</p>
<p>In his self-promo, Rubio scrupulously avoided the phrase “illegal immigration.” But that is the aspect of the immigration issue that amnesty pertains to.</p>
<p>Rubio also showed himself to be the perfect Gang companion for John McCain. The Arizona Senator has built a career around confusing his personal life experiences with policy expertise. McCain was tortured, so he knows that torture doesn’t work. Never mind that the methods and intelligence expertise of the North Vietnamese in the late 1960s bear virtually no resemblance to those employed by the U.S. almost 40 years later. And never mind that, according to McCain’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican convention, the North Vietnamese did, in fact, “break” him.</p>
<p>McCain was caught up in the Keating Five scandal in the 1990s, so he knows that money can corrupt even the most honest and heroic politicians. Therefore, he reckoned he was just the man to work across the aisle to “fix” our campaign finance system through the atrocity that became McCain-Feingold.</p>
<p>Now along comes Marco Rubio. He’s surrounded by immigration and sees that it is good. Somehow, this general insight is supposed to give him the judgment and expertise to write complex legislation dealing with illegal immigration, a phenomenon he is either incapable of distinguishing, as a moral matter, from the legal variety or is unwilling to denounce.</p>
<p>Instead, Rubio instructs us that “we have to deal with the people who are here now in a way that’s responsible but humane.” But he doesn’t explain how granting an eventual path to citizenship for illegal aliens meets this test. The people who are here illegally now already receive at least as many benefits as they deserve, having violated our laws. They have access to employment opportunities and to a vast array of services that they would not enjoy had they followed the law and not entered the U.S. — opportunities and services that are not enjoyed by those attempting to get into this country legally.</p>
<p>If the absence of a path to citizenship makes this deal insufficiently “humane” for illegal immigrants, then the “responsible” solution is for them to return to their country of origin, not for the U.S. to sweeten the deal. Perhaps Rubio’s immersion in the world of immigrants prevents him from understanding this.</p>
<p>Naturally, there is much speculation about whether Rubio’s collusion with the Senate’s most liberal members, and with professional mavericks McCain and Graham, to bring about amnesty will affect his prospects for winning the Republican nomination. It certainly should.</p> | 584 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/3191028700/"&gt;World Economic Forum&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p />
<p>On Wednesday, the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) <a href="http://www.citizensforethics.org/video/news-corp.-should-be-investigated-by-congress-re-phone-hacking-scandal" type="external">upped the ante</a> in the ongoing furor over Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and the widening British phone-hacking scandal. Democratic members of Congress, including West Virginia <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/13/senator-news-corp-probe-hacking-bribery_n_896888.html" type="external">Sen. Jay Rockefeller</a>, have called on various federal agencies to investigate allegations that reporters working for News Corp.’s <a href="http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/" type="external">News of the World</a> may have hacked the voicemail of 9/11 victims and also attempted to bribe a New York City police officer for their phone records. But CREW has suggested that Congress itself should take up the cause and launch hearings on the brewing scandal. CREW’s executive director Melanie Sloan said in a <a href="http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/entry/crew-congress-should-hold-news-corp-hearings-immediately" type="external">statement</a>:</p>
<p>While it is encouraging that Sen. Rockefeller shares CREW’s concern about whether American 9/11 victims had their voicemails hacked, there is no need to cede all investigative authority to the executive branch. Just as the British Parliament has held hearings and heard the testimony of witnesses, Congress has the ability to subpoena News Corp. employees and require them to explain themselves. The idea that News Corp. may have sought to exploit the victims of one of the darkest days in US history for financial gain is grotesque. Even in these hyper-partisan days, Congress should be able to put the privacy of terrorist victims and their families above politics. Mr. Murdoch and his acolytes must be held accountable here as well as in Great Britain.</p>
<p>So far, though, Republicans who control the House don’t seem to be in a big hurry to answer the call. <a href="http://issa.house.gov/" type="external">Rep. Darrell Issa</a> (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has wide-ranging investigative jurisdiction, did not respond to a request for comment. And even the Senate Democrats haven’t yet responded to CREW’s request. But it’s still early, and they may be waiting to see if the Justice Department will act.</p>
<p>Everyone from former New York Attorney General <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2299038/" type="external">Eliot Spitzer</a> to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/07/13/267745/breaking-sen-frank-lautenberg-calls-for-doj-sec-to-investigate-news-corp/" type="external">Sen. Frank Lautenberg</a> (D-N.J.) has suggested that News Corp. could possibly be prosecuted for violating the <a href="http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa/" type="external">Foreign Corrupt Practices Act</a>, which bans American companies from engaging in bribery abroad. News Corp. is incorporated in Delaware and is listed on the NASDAQ, meaning that the US would have jurisdiction to investigate the bribery and hacking charges raised in Great Britain. The Justice Department has increasingly used the FCPA in recent years, stepping up investigations and prosecutions of companies from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21siemens.html" type="external">Siemens</a> to <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/corruption-currents/2011/03/25/malaysia-telcos-ban-alcatel-lucent-from-contract-bidding/" type="external">Alcatel-Lucent</a> to <a href="http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2011/2011-87.htm" type="external">Johnson &amp; Johnson</a>. So News Corp. could be fair game, at least from a legal standpoint.</p>
<p>But it’s a dicey move for the Justice Department to go after a news-gathering organization. Aside from the various free-speech issues involved, prosecuting News Corp., the owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, would be politically perilous for the Obama administration. It may be that the facts in this case are outrageous enough that even the most partisan tea partier could forgive the administration for going after its favorite news source. But the administration does risk the perception that it’s using the British scandal as an excuse for going after a news-media nemesis.</p>
<p>The Justice Department and Congress aren’t the only entities under pressure to take action against News Corp. in light of the tabloid scandal. Earlier this week on an ABC panel discussion, media mogul Steven Brill <a href="http://www.fair.org/blog/" type="external">said</a>:</p>
<p>News Corp has a lot of FCC licenses. There’s still a clause in the federal communications law that requires that you have to be of good character to have such a license…</p>
<p>So here I am reasonably certain that someone, maybe someone from the political left or whoever, is going to make a big deal of whether [News Corp. is] fit to have their FCC licenses under the current management.</p>
<p>Fox haters, though, shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for the FCC to act. Art Brodsky, the communications director for <a href="http://www.publicknowledge.org/" type="external">Public Knowledge</a>, a public-interest group that focuses on technology, says, “Unless something pops up that is relevant to US law, there isn’t any basis for [the FCC] taking action over here.” He notes that the FCC has only revoked a broadcast license once in its entire history, a process that took about a decade. “The FCC does not yank licenses.”</p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="http://transition.fcc.gov/commissioners/genachowski/" type="external">FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski</a> said as much during a news conference this week. “There is obviously a process going on in the UK, and that is not a process we expect to get involved in or interfere with,” he said.</p>
<p>UPDATE: The AP <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015609464_apusphonehackingsept11victims.html#.Th82bWCL9b0.twitter" type="external">reports</a> that the FBI has opened an investigation into allegations that News Corp. tried to hack into the phones of Sept. 11 victims.</p>
<p /> | Investigate Murdoch’s News Corp.? Nah. | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/will-congress-investigate-news-corp/ | 2011-07-14 | 4left
| Investigate Murdoch’s News Corp.? Nah.
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/3191028700/"&gt;World Economic Forum&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p />
<p>On Wednesday, the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) <a href="http://www.citizensforethics.org/video/news-corp.-should-be-investigated-by-congress-re-phone-hacking-scandal" type="external">upped the ante</a> in the ongoing furor over Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and the widening British phone-hacking scandal. Democratic members of Congress, including West Virginia <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/13/senator-news-corp-probe-hacking-bribery_n_896888.html" type="external">Sen. Jay Rockefeller</a>, have called on various federal agencies to investigate allegations that reporters working for News Corp.’s <a href="http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/" type="external">News of the World</a> may have hacked the voicemail of 9/11 victims and also attempted to bribe a New York City police officer for their phone records. But CREW has suggested that Congress itself should take up the cause and launch hearings on the brewing scandal. CREW’s executive director Melanie Sloan said in a <a href="http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/entry/crew-congress-should-hold-news-corp-hearings-immediately" type="external">statement</a>:</p>
<p>While it is encouraging that Sen. Rockefeller shares CREW’s concern about whether American 9/11 victims had their voicemails hacked, there is no need to cede all investigative authority to the executive branch. Just as the British Parliament has held hearings and heard the testimony of witnesses, Congress has the ability to subpoena News Corp. employees and require them to explain themselves. The idea that News Corp. may have sought to exploit the victims of one of the darkest days in US history for financial gain is grotesque. Even in these hyper-partisan days, Congress should be able to put the privacy of terrorist victims and their families above politics. Mr. Murdoch and his acolytes must be held accountable here as well as in Great Britain.</p>
<p>So far, though, Republicans who control the House don’t seem to be in a big hurry to answer the call. <a href="http://issa.house.gov/" type="external">Rep. Darrell Issa</a> (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has wide-ranging investigative jurisdiction, did not respond to a request for comment. And even the Senate Democrats haven’t yet responded to CREW’s request. But it’s still early, and they may be waiting to see if the Justice Department will act.</p>
<p>Everyone from former New York Attorney General <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2299038/" type="external">Eliot Spitzer</a> to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/07/13/267745/breaking-sen-frank-lautenberg-calls-for-doj-sec-to-investigate-news-corp/" type="external">Sen. Frank Lautenberg</a> (D-N.J.) has suggested that News Corp. could possibly be prosecuted for violating the <a href="http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa/" type="external">Foreign Corrupt Practices Act</a>, which bans American companies from engaging in bribery abroad. News Corp. is incorporated in Delaware and is listed on the NASDAQ, meaning that the US would have jurisdiction to investigate the bribery and hacking charges raised in Great Britain. The Justice Department has increasingly used the FCPA in recent years, stepping up investigations and prosecutions of companies from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21siemens.html" type="external">Siemens</a> to <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/corruption-currents/2011/03/25/malaysia-telcos-ban-alcatel-lucent-from-contract-bidding/" type="external">Alcatel-Lucent</a> to <a href="http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2011/2011-87.htm" type="external">Johnson &amp; Johnson</a>. So News Corp. could be fair game, at least from a legal standpoint.</p>
<p>But it’s a dicey move for the Justice Department to go after a news-gathering organization. Aside from the various free-speech issues involved, prosecuting News Corp., the owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, would be politically perilous for the Obama administration. It may be that the facts in this case are outrageous enough that even the most partisan tea partier could forgive the administration for going after its favorite news source. But the administration does risk the perception that it’s using the British scandal as an excuse for going after a news-media nemesis.</p>
<p>The Justice Department and Congress aren’t the only entities under pressure to take action against News Corp. in light of the tabloid scandal. Earlier this week on an ABC panel discussion, media mogul Steven Brill <a href="http://www.fair.org/blog/" type="external">said</a>:</p>
<p>News Corp has a lot of FCC licenses. There’s still a clause in the federal communications law that requires that you have to be of good character to have such a license…</p>
<p>So here I am reasonably certain that someone, maybe someone from the political left or whoever, is going to make a big deal of whether [News Corp. is] fit to have their FCC licenses under the current management.</p>
<p>Fox haters, though, shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for the FCC to act. Art Brodsky, the communications director for <a href="http://www.publicknowledge.org/" type="external">Public Knowledge</a>, a public-interest group that focuses on technology, says, “Unless something pops up that is relevant to US law, there isn’t any basis for [the FCC] taking action over here.” He notes that the FCC has only revoked a broadcast license once in its entire history, a process that took about a decade. “The FCC does not yank licenses.”</p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="http://transition.fcc.gov/commissioners/genachowski/" type="external">FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski</a> said as much during a news conference this week. “There is obviously a process going on in the UK, and that is not a process we expect to get involved in or interfere with,” he said.</p>
<p>UPDATE: The AP <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015609464_apusphonehackingsept11victims.html#.Th82bWCL9b0.twitter" type="external">reports</a> that the FBI has opened an investigation into allegations that News Corp. tried to hack into the phones of Sept. 11 victims.</p>
<p /> | 585 |
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) _ These Wisconsin lotteries were drawn Friday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>5C-9C-10D-8H-9S</p>
<p>(5C, 9C, 10D, 8H, 9S)</p>
<p>SuperCash</p>
<p>19-20-33-34-35-37, Doubler: N</p>
<p>(nineteen, twenty, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-seven; Doubler: N)</p>
<p>Badger 5</p>
<p>01-02-11-16-31</p>
<p>(one, two, eleven, sixteen, thirty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $10,000</p>
<p>Daily Pick 3</p>
<p>2-5-7</p>
<p>(two, five, seven)</p>
<p>Daily Pick 4</p>
<p>2-3-2-2</p>
<p>(two, three, two, two)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>03-17-23-49-66, Mega Ball: 23, Megaplier: 3</p>
<p>(three, seventeen, twenty-three, forty-nine, sixty-six; Mega Ball: twenty-three; Megaplier: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $55 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $78 million</p>
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) _ These Wisconsin lotteries were drawn Friday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>5C-9C-10D-8H-9S</p>
<p>(5C, 9C, 10D, 8H, 9S)</p>
<p>SuperCash</p>
<p>19-20-33-34-35-37, Doubler: N</p>
<p>(nineteen, twenty, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-seven; Doubler: N)</p>
<p>Badger 5</p>
<p>01-02-11-16-31</p>
<p>(one, two, eleven, sixteen, thirty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $10,000</p>
<p>Daily Pick 3</p>
<p>2-5-7</p>
<p>(two, five, seven)</p>
<p>Daily Pick 4</p>
<p>2-3-2-2</p>
<p>(two, three, two, two)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>03-17-23-49-66, Mega Ball: 23, Megaplier: 3</p>
<p>(three, seventeen, twenty-three, forty-nine, sixty-six; Mega Ball: twenty-three; Megaplier: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $55 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $78 million</p> | WI Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/amp/7b612e96d7aa4027a54b3f66c27a7ce8 | 2018-01-20 | 2least
| WI Lottery
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) _ These Wisconsin lotteries were drawn Friday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>5C-9C-10D-8H-9S</p>
<p>(5C, 9C, 10D, 8H, 9S)</p>
<p>SuperCash</p>
<p>19-20-33-34-35-37, Doubler: N</p>
<p>(nineteen, twenty, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-seven; Doubler: N)</p>
<p>Badger 5</p>
<p>01-02-11-16-31</p>
<p>(one, two, eleven, sixteen, thirty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $10,000</p>
<p>Daily Pick 3</p>
<p>2-5-7</p>
<p>(two, five, seven)</p>
<p>Daily Pick 4</p>
<p>2-3-2-2</p>
<p>(two, three, two, two)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>03-17-23-49-66, Mega Ball: 23, Megaplier: 3</p>
<p>(three, seventeen, twenty-three, forty-nine, sixty-six; Mega Ball: twenty-three; Megaplier: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $55 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $78 million</p>
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) _ These Wisconsin lotteries were drawn Friday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>5C-9C-10D-8H-9S</p>
<p>(5C, 9C, 10D, 8H, 9S)</p>
<p>SuperCash</p>
<p>19-20-33-34-35-37, Doubler: N</p>
<p>(nineteen, twenty, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-seven; Doubler: N)</p>
<p>Badger 5</p>
<p>01-02-11-16-31</p>
<p>(one, two, eleven, sixteen, thirty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $10,000</p>
<p>Daily Pick 3</p>
<p>2-5-7</p>
<p>(two, five, seven)</p>
<p>Daily Pick 4</p>
<p>2-3-2-2</p>
<p>(two, three, two, two)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>03-17-23-49-66, Mega Ball: 23, Megaplier: 3</p>
<p>(three, seventeen, twenty-three, forty-nine, sixty-six; Mega Ball: twenty-three; Megaplier: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $55 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $78 million</p> | 586 |
<p>Shutterstock.</p>
<p />
<p>John Kleinheinz, who runs the <a href="http://www.kleinheinz.com/" type="external">hedge fund Kleinheinz Capital Partners</a>, claimed the top spot among April donors to the <a href="" type="internal">pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future</a>, giving $1 million to the group. In a bizarre and colorful twist, Kleinheinz, as <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76549.html#ixzz1vVafaUqq" type="external">Politico reports</a>, was once charged with “criminal mischief” for…driving another man’s car into a pond.</p>
<p>One day in 2006, a photographer named David Irvin was snapping pictures of Kleinheinz and his family at their home. An unhappy Kleinheinz believed Irvin was trespassing on his property while taking the photos—Irvin said he was actually on a nearby country club’s property. After vowing to the call the cops on Irvin, Kleinheinz got into the photographer’s rented Kia SUV, put it in gear, and then ducked out before the car plunged into a nearby pond. The stunt earned Kleinheinz a third-degree felony charge.</p>
<p>Here’s more from <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76549.html#ixzz1vVafaUqq" type="external">Politico</a>:</p>
<p>At the time, Kleinheinz told the [Fort Worth] Star-Telegram that he regretted the incident. “This was not an isolated incident, but it was regrettable,” Kleinheinz said.</p>
<p>Kleinheinz’s $1 million check made him the largest contributor to the super-PAC in April. He was a supporter of both Romney and John McCain’s presidential bids in the 2008 election and has been a long-time supporter of Republican politicians.</p>
<p>Kleinheinz did not respond to a request for comment. And Brittany Gross, a spokesman for Restore our Future also declined to comment. “We don’t comment on specific donors,” Gross said.</p>
<p>Other big donors to Restore Our Future in April included oil production executive and Romney energy adviser Harold Hamm, who gave $985,000, and Bain Capital managing director Stephen Zide, who gave $250,000. In all, Restore Our Future <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/21/us-usa-campaign-money-idUSBRE84H0MN20120521" type="external">raised nearly $4 million</a> last month.</p>
<p /> | Million-Dollar Donor to Romney Super-PAC Once Drove a Car Into a Pond | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/romney-super-pac-donor-car-pond/ | 2012-05-21 | 4left
| Million-Dollar Donor to Romney Super-PAC Once Drove a Car Into a Pond
<p>Shutterstock.</p>
<p />
<p>John Kleinheinz, who runs the <a href="http://www.kleinheinz.com/" type="external">hedge fund Kleinheinz Capital Partners</a>, claimed the top spot among April donors to the <a href="" type="internal">pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future</a>, giving $1 million to the group. In a bizarre and colorful twist, Kleinheinz, as <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76549.html#ixzz1vVafaUqq" type="external">Politico reports</a>, was once charged with “criminal mischief” for…driving another man’s car into a pond.</p>
<p>One day in 2006, a photographer named David Irvin was snapping pictures of Kleinheinz and his family at their home. An unhappy Kleinheinz believed Irvin was trespassing on his property while taking the photos—Irvin said he was actually on a nearby country club’s property. After vowing to the call the cops on Irvin, Kleinheinz got into the photographer’s rented Kia SUV, put it in gear, and then ducked out before the car plunged into a nearby pond. The stunt earned Kleinheinz a third-degree felony charge.</p>
<p>Here’s more from <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76549.html#ixzz1vVafaUqq" type="external">Politico</a>:</p>
<p>At the time, Kleinheinz told the [Fort Worth] Star-Telegram that he regretted the incident. “This was not an isolated incident, but it was regrettable,” Kleinheinz said.</p>
<p>Kleinheinz’s $1 million check made him the largest contributor to the super-PAC in April. He was a supporter of both Romney and John McCain’s presidential bids in the 2008 election and has been a long-time supporter of Republican politicians.</p>
<p>Kleinheinz did not respond to a request for comment. And Brittany Gross, a spokesman for Restore our Future also declined to comment. “We don’t comment on specific donors,” Gross said.</p>
<p>Other big donors to Restore Our Future in April included oil production executive and Romney energy adviser Harold Hamm, who gave $985,000, and Bain Capital managing director Stephen Zide, who gave $250,000. In all, Restore Our Future <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/21/us-usa-campaign-money-idUSBRE84H0MN20120521" type="external">raised nearly $4 million</a> last month.</p>
<p /> | 587 |
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">Washington Free Beacon Staff</a>May 2, 2012 10:52 am</p>
<p>A tax loophole gives billions in tax credits to illegal immigrants,&#160; <a href="" type="external">WTHR reports</a>:</p>
<p>The loophole is called the&#160; <a href="http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=106182,00.html" type="external">Additional Child Tax Credit</a>. It's a fully-refundable credit of up to $1000 per child, and it's meant to help working families who have children living at home.</p>
<p>But 13 Investigates has found many undocumented workers are claiming the tax credit for kids who live in Mexico – lots of kids in Mexico.</p>
<p>"We've seen sometimes 10 or 12 dependents, most times nieces and nephews, on these tax forms," the whistleblower told Eyewitness News. "The more you put on there, the more you get back."</p> | Indiana Illegal Immigrants Receiving Massive Tax Refunds | true | http://freebeacon.com/indiana-illegal-immigrants-receiving-massive-tax-refunds/ | 2012-05-02 | 0right
| Indiana Illegal Immigrants Receiving Massive Tax Refunds
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">Washington Free Beacon Staff</a>May 2, 2012 10:52 am</p>
<p>A tax loophole gives billions in tax credits to illegal immigrants,&#160; <a href="" type="external">WTHR reports</a>:</p>
<p>The loophole is called the&#160; <a href="http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=106182,00.html" type="external">Additional Child Tax Credit</a>. It's a fully-refundable credit of up to $1000 per child, and it's meant to help working families who have children living at home.</p>
<p>But 13 Investigates has found many undocumented workers are claiming the tax credit for kids who live in Mexico – lots of kids in Mexico.</p>
<p>"We've seen sometimes 10 or 12 dependents, most times nieces and nephews, on these tax forms," the whistleblower told Eyewitness News. "The more you put on there, the more you get back."</p> | 588 |
<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - CGIT HOLDING AB (PUBL):</p>
<p>* GETS ORDER WORTH SEK 300,000 Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - A powerful spring storm pummeled the U.S. Midwest and Plains on Saturday with blizzard conditions and high winds, while tornadoes and thunderstorms threatened some of the South.</p> Dark clouds hover above buildings amidst tornadoes in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the U.S., April 10, 2018 in this still image obtained from a social media video. MANDATORY CREDIT. Emmet Finneran/via REUTERS
<p>Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota were under warnings for blizzard-like conditions. The city of St. Paul, Minnesota declared a snow emergency.</p>
<p>Forecasters were expecting more than a foot of snow (30 cm) in parts of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Wind gusts around Duluth, Minnesota had exceeded 50 miles (80 km) per hour, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.</p> Cars are seen on a road during a tornado in Mountainburg, Arkansas, U.S., April 13, 2018 in this picture grab obtained from social media video. Picture taken April 13, 2018. JOSHUA COLEMAN/via REUTERS
<p>“Difficult, dangerous travel conditions expected,” it said on Twitter.</p>
<p>As the storm pushed south into Saturday evening, authorities warned that severe thunderstorms could bring gusting winds, flooding and hail. Severe weather warnings extended from Texas to central Alabama, which was under a tornado watch.</p>
<p>Freezing rain and ice storms were expected to move into northern New England through Monday.</p> Slideshow (2 Images)
<p>National weather forecasters also cautioned that high winds were producing critical fire conditions in the Southern Plains.</p>
<p>On Friday, the system produced 10 reports of tornadoes in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, the weather service said. Four people were injured and 160 buildings damaged in a possible tornado in northwest Arkansas, local media reported.</p>
<p>About 50,000 customers in the Texas and Louisiana were without power on Saturday afternoon, along with an additional 45,000 in Michigan and Wisconsin, the website Poweroutage.us reported.</p>
<p>The airport in Rochester, Minnesota said on Twitter it had canceled all flights until Sunday morning “due to the extreme weather conditions.” Rapidly falling snow also prompted Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to suspend flight operations on Saturday afternoon.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Letitia Stein in Detroit; Editing by Helen Popper and Alistair Bell</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LIMA (Reuters) - The United States urged regional leaders on Saturday to take stronger steps to isolate Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, as it joined a declaration condemning the worsening humanitarian crisis and political repression in the South American nation.</p> Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores attend a rally with supporters in Caracas, Venezuela April 14, 2018. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS
<p>U.S. Vice President Mike Pence told the Summit of the Americas in the Peruvian capital that immediate action was needed as Venezuela gears up for presidential elections on May 20 that have been condemned by many regional leaders as a farce to legitimize Maduro’s rule.</p>
<p>For the first time, the United States backed a statement by heads of state from the Lima Group of nations - established last year to seek a peaceful end to Venezuela’s political turmoil - which called on Maduro to release political prisoners and hold free elections.</p>
<p>Despite an economic collapse that has driven an estimated 3 million people to flee his once-prosperous OPEC nation, Maduro is expected to win next month’s poll.</p>
<p>Venezuela’s two most popular opposition leaders are banned from competing and electoral authorities are stacked with government supporters.</p>
<p>“The United States of America will not stand idly by as Venezuela crumbles,” Pence said in a speech. “Every free nation gathered here must take stronger action to isolate the Maduro regime. We must all stand with our brothers and sisters suffering in Venezuela.”</p> U.S. Vice President Mike Pence participates in the opening session of the Americas Summit in Lima, Peru April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Andres Stapff
<p>The statement by the Lima Group voiced alarm at an exodus of migrants from Venezuela and urged governments to intensify actions aimed at restoring democracy.</p>
<p>Washington has already targeted senior members of Maduro’s administration with sanctions due to accusations of corruption and rights abuses.</p>
<p>Former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson raised the prospect in February that this could be broadened to restrict Venezuela’s exports of crude oil and its imports of U.S. refined products.</p>
<p>Neighboring countries’ frustration with Maduro’s socialist government has been stoked by the arrival of thousands of hungry migrants across the border into Colombia and Brazil every day.</p> CALL FOR HUMANITARIAN AID
<p>The joint statement called on international organizations to offer support to neighboring countries to cope with the arrivals and for Maduro to allow access for humanitarian aid to his nation of 30 million people - something he has refused to do, denying there is a crisis.</p>
<p>“To have in Maduro a leader that will not allow humanitarian aid into his own country as people are starving and people are dying is unconscionable,” Pence said.</p>
<p>Addressing red-shirted supporters at an “anti-imperialist” rally in Caracas, Maduro branded the meeting in Lima as “a complete failure” and said Latin American presidents were wasting their time criticizing him.</p> Slideshow (12 Images)
<p>Maduro was banned from the Lima gathering due to regional censure of his democratic record.</p>
<p>Hosting the summit, Peru has sought the broadest possible support for the document from governments outside the 14-nation Lima Group - which includes regional heavyweights such as Brazil, Mexico and Canada but not the United States.</p>
<p>However, efforts to build momentum behind the statement were hit by the last-minute cancellation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s attendance.</p>
<p>In the end, the statement was signed by 16 nations, fewer than half of the 35 countries that are members of the Organization of American States (OAS).</p>
<p>Previous efforts to build consensus behind strongly worded condemnations of Venezuela at the OAS have run into resistance not just from Caracas’ left-leaning allies such as Cuba and Bolivia, but Caribbean nations that have benefited from Venezuela’s subsidized oil programmers.</p>
<p>The official theme of the Lima summit was the fight against corruption and leaders agreed a statement calling for improvements in transparency of public tenders, more independent and accountable judiciaries and stronger international cooperation on money laundering.</p>
<p>However, the meeting was overshadowed by U.S. air strikes in Syria in retaliation for what Washington said was a chemical weapons attack by President Bashar al-Assad’s government.</p>
<p>While Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau voiced strong support for the air strikes by the United States, France and Britain, several Latin American nations including Brazil, Argentina and Peru expressed caution about the escalating military action.</p>
<p>“There’s deep concern in Brazil with the escalation of military conflict in Syria,” Brazilian President Michel Temer told the summit. “It’s time to find permanent solutions based on international law to a war that has been going for far too long and ended too many lives.”</p>
<p>Reporting By Roberta Rampton, Lisandra Paraguassu and Teresa Cespedes; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Alistair Bell</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Western powers said on Saturday their missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria’s chemical weapons program, but the restrained assault appeared unlikely to halt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s progress in the 7-year-old civil war.</p>
<p>The United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles overnight in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Syria a week ago, targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities, including a research and development center in Damascus’ Barzeh district and two installations near Homs.</p>
<p>The bombing was the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and his superpower ally Russia, but the three countries said the strikes were limited to Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war.</p>
<p>The air attack, denounced by Damascus and its allies as an illegal act of aggression, was unlikely to alter the course of a multisided war that has killed at least half a million people.</p>
<p>U.S. President Donald Trump called the operation a success.</p>
<p>He proclaimed on Twitter: “Mission accomplished,” echoing former President George W. Bush, whose use of the same phrase in 2003 to describe the U.S. invasion of Iraq was widely ridiculed as violence there dragged on for years.</p>
<p>“We believe that by hitting Barzeh in particular we’ve attacked the heart of the Syrian chemicals weapon program,” U.S. Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said at the Pentagon.</p>
<p>However, McKenzie acknowledged elements of the program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-sarin/u-s-official-says-information-points-to-sarin-chlorine-use-in-syria-attack-idUSKBN1HL172" type="external">U.S. official says 'information' points to sarin, chlorine use in Syria attack</a>
<a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-trump/trump-mission-accomplished-on-perfectly-executed-syria-strike-idUSKBN1HL0TW" type="external">Trump: 'mission accomplished' on 'perfectly executed' Syria strike</a>
<a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idlib/france-warns-of-humanitarian-disaster-in-syrian-city-idlib-idUSKBN1HL1C2" type="external">France warns of humanitarian disaster in Syrian city Idlib</a>
<p>The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again, “The United States is locked and loaded.”</p>
<p>The Western countries said the strikes were aimed at preventing more Syrian chemical weapons attacks after a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 killed up to 75 people. They blame Assad’s government for the attack.</p>
<p>In Washington, a senior administration official said on Saturday that “while the available information is much greater on the chlorine use, we do have significant information that also points to sarin use” in the attack.</p>
<p>Speaking at a summit in Peru, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence seemed less sure of the use of sarin, saying that Washington may well determine that it was used along with chlorine.</p> ASSAD ‘RESILIENCE’
<p>Ten hours after the missiles hit, smoke was still rising from the remains of five destroyed buildings of the Syrian Scientific Research Center in Barzeh, where a Syrian employee said medical components were developed.</p>
<p>There were no immediate reports of casualties.</p>
<p>Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombed-out research lab, but also of Assad arriving at work as usual, with the caption “Morning of resilience”.</p>
<p>Late on Saturday Syria time, a large explosion was heard in a Syrian government-controlled area in a rural region south of Aleppo, according to the Britain-based war monitor The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Observatory said the cause of the explosion was unknown, as well as its target.</p>
<p>Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has allowed Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him.</p>
<p>The United States, Britain and France have all participated in the Syrian conflict for years, arming rebels, bombing Islamic State fighters and deploying troops on the ground to fight that group. But they have refrained from targeting Assad’s government, apart from a volley of U.S. missiles last year.</p>
<p>Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power, they held back in the past from striking his government, lacking a wider strategy to defeat him.</p>
<p>Syria and its allies also made clear that they considered the attack a one-off, unlikely to do meaningful harm to Assad.</p>
<p>A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia.</p>
<p>Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the strikes were “unacceptable and lawless.”</p>
<p>Syrian state media called them a “flagrant violation of international law,” while Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called it a crime and the Western leaders criminals.</p>
<p>Russia had promised to respond to any attack on its ally, but the Pentagon said no Russian air defense systems were used. Syria fired 40 unguided surface-to-air missiles - but only after the Western strikes had ended, the Pentagon said.</p>
<p>“We are confident that all of our missiles reached their targets,” McKenzie said.</p>
<p>British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as “limited and targeted,” with no intention of toppling Assad or intervening more widely in the war.</p>
<p>Washington described the strike targets as a center near Damascus for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons; a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs; and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post.</p>
<p>The Pentagon said there had been chemical weapons agents at one of the targets, and that the strikes had significantly crippled Syria’s ability to produce such weapons.</p>
<p>Trump spoke to May and French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss results of the strikes, the leaders’ offices said.</p> A U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer, deployed to Al Udeid Air Base, launches a strike as part of the multinational response to Syria's use of chemical weapons is seen in this image from Al Udeid Air Base, Doha, Qatar released on April 14, 2018. U.S. Air Force/Handout via REUTERS
<p>U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all Security Council members to exercise restraint and avoid escalation in Syria, but said allegations of chemical weapons use demand an investigation.</p> WEAPONS INSPECTIONS
<p>Inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW were due to try to visit Douma on Saturday to inspect the site of the suspected gas attack. Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings.</p>
<p>Russia, whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold War-era hostility, has denied any gas attack took place in Douma and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up anti-Russian hysteria.</p>
<p>The Western countries took precautions to avoid unexpected conflict with Russia. French Defence Minister Florence Parly said Russians was warned beforehand to avert conflict.</p>
<p>Dmitry Belik, a Russian member of parliament who was in Damascus and witnessed the strikes, told Reuters: “The attack was more of a psychological nature rather than practical. Luckily there are no substantial losses or damages.”</p>
<p>In Douma, site of the suspected gas attack, the last buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town, state TV reported. That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta, marking one of the biggest victories for Assad’s government of the war.</p>
<p>The Western assault involved more missiles than a U.S. attack last year but struck targets limited to Syria’s chemical weapons facilities. The U.S. intervention last year had effectively no impact on the war.</p> Slideshow (18 Images)
<p>Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma. Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use, although its use as a weapon is banned. Allegations of Assad’s chlorine use have been frequent during the war although, unlike nerve agents, chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week.</p>
<p>Reporting by Phil Stewart and Tom Perry; additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland, Idrees Ali, Yara Bayoumy, Matt Spetalnick and Joel Schectman in Washington; Michelle Nichols in New York; Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Laila Bassam, Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut; Kinda Makieh in Barzeh; Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London; and Jean-Baptiste Vey, Geert de Clerq and Matthias Blamont in Paris; Polina Ivanova in Moscow; writing by Doina Chiacu; editing by Yara Bayoumy, Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>PARIS (Reuters) - French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned of a humanitarian disaster in the rebel-controlled Syrian city of Idlib, which could be a next target of the Syrian army.</p> FILE PHOTO - People inspect the damage at a site hit by airstrikes in the rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria February 7, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah
<p>The northwestern Idlib region remains the largest populated area of Syria in the hands of insurgents fighting the Damascus government. In recent years, tens of thousands of fighters and civilians have fled there from parts of the country which the army has recaptured with the help of Russia and Iran.</p>
<p>Le Drian said Idlib now has some 2 million inhabitants, including hundreds of thousands of Syrians evacuated from rebel-held cities taken back by the Syrian regime.</p>
<p>“There is a risk of a new humanitarian disaster. Idlib’s fate must be settled by a political process, which includes disarming the militias,” Le Drian said in an interview with French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche.</p>
<p>Some insurgent officials have said they feared an onslaught against Idlib, which a senior Iranian official has indicated could be the next target.</p>
<p>He added that France would also keep a close eye on the situation in northeastern Syria, which was freed from Islamic State with French help.</p>
<p>“Let’s not forget that our principal enemy remains Islamic State, as well as other terrorist groups which are currently regrouping in the east of the country,” Le Drian said.</p>
<p>The insurgents controlling Idlib include both jihadist factions and nationalist FSA rebels. The dominant force there is Hayat Tahrir al Sham, an Islamist alliance spearheaded by the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.</p>
<p>Le Drian also said Russia was denying reality in Syria and that its protection of Bashar al-Assad could not be justified.</p>
<p>“There is a denial of reality, and he have seen this several times. Already in 2013 and then again in 2017 the Russians denied that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons,” he said.</p>
<p>He said that at the time verification mechanisms already put in place by the United Nations had placed responsibility on the regime.</p>
<p>“It is no wonder that Russia voted against the renewal of this mechanism last autumn,” he said, adding that when France proposed last week to put in place a comparable mechanism, Russia had vetoed it.</p>
<p>Reporting by Geert De Clercqd; editing by Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | BRIEF-CGit Holding Gets Order Worth SEK 300,000 'Snow emergency' as powerful spring storm pounds parts of U.S. U.S. urges regional leaders to isolate Venezuela's Maduro U.S. says air strikes cripple Syria chemical weapons program France warns of humanitarian disaster in Syrian city Idlib | false | https://reuters.com/article/brief-cgit-holding-gets-order-worth-sek/brief-cgit-holding-gets-order-worth-sek-300000-idUSFWN1PD0QM | 2018-01-18 | 2least
| BRIEF-CGit Holding Gets Order Worth SEK 300,000 'Snow emergency' as powerful spring storm pounds parts of U.S. U.S. urges regional leaders to isolate Venezuela's Maduro U.S. says air strikes cripple Syria chemical weapons program France warns of humanitarian disaster in Syrian city Idlib
<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - CGIT HOLDING AB (PUBL):</p>
<p>* GETS ORDER WORTH SEK 300,000 Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)</p> Our Standards:
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<p>MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - A powerful spring storm pummeled the U.S. Midwest and Plains on Saturday with blizzard conditions and high winds, while tornadoes and thunderstorms threatened some of the South.</p> Dark clouds hover above buildings amidst tornadoes in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the U.S., April 10, 2018 in this still image obtained from a social media video. MANDATORY CREDIT. Emmet Finneran/via REUTERS
<p>Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota were under warnings for blizzard-like conditions. The city of St. Paul, Minnesota declared a snow emergency.</p>
<p>Forecasters were expecting more than a foot of snow (30 cm) in parts of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Wind gusts around Duluth, Minnesota had exceeded 50 miles (80 km) per hour, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.</p> Cars are seen on a road during a tornado in Mountainburg, Arkansas, U.S., April 13, 2018 in this picture grab obtained from social media video. Picture taken April 13, 2018. JOSHUA COLEMAN/via REUTERS
<p>“Difficult, dangerous travel conditions expected,” it said on Twitter.</p>
<p>As the storm pushed south into Saturday evening, authorities warned that severe thunderstorms could bring gusting winds, flooding and hail. Severe weather warnings extended from Texas to central Alabama, which was under a tornado watch.</p>
<p>Freezing rain and ice storms were expected to move into northern New England through Monday.</p> Slideshow (2 Images)
<p>National weather forecasters also cautioned that high winds were producing critical fire conditions in the Southern Plains.</p>
<p>On Friday, the system produced 10 reports of tornadoes in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, the weather service said. Four people were injured and 160 buildings damaged in a possible tornado in northwest Arkansas, local media reported.</p>
<p>About 50,000 customers in the Texas and Louisiana were without power on Saturday afternoon, along with an additional 45,000 in Michigan and Wisconsin, the website Poweroutage.us reported.</p>
<p>The airport in Rochester, Minnesota said on Twitter it had canceled all flights until Sunday morning “due to the extreme weather conditions.” Rapidly falling snow also prompted Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to suspend flight operations on Saturday afternoon.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Letitia Stein in Detroit; Editing by Helen Popper and Alistair Bell</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LIMA (Reuters) - The United States urged regional leaders on Saturday to take stronger steps to isolate Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, as it joined a declaration condemning the worsening humanitarian crisis and political repression in the South American nation.</p> Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores attend a rally with supporters in Caracas, Venezuela April 14, 2018. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS
<p>U.S. Vice President Mike Pence told the Summit of the Americas in the Peruvian capital that immediate action was needed as Venezuela gears up for presidential elections on May 20 that have been condemned by many regional leaders as a farce to legitimize Maduro’s rule.</p>
<p>For the first time, the United States backed a statement by heads of state from the Lima Group of nations - established last year to seek a peaceful end to Venezuela’s political turmoil - which called on Maduro to release political prisoners and hold free elections.</p>
<p>Despite an economic collapse that has driven an estimated 3 million people to flee his once-prosperous OPEC nation, Maduro is expected to win next month’s poll.</p>
<p>Venezuela’s two most popular opposition leaders are banned from competing and electoral authorities are stacked with government supporters.</p>
<p>“The United States of America will not stand idly by as Venezuela crumbles,” Pence said in a speech. “Every free nation gathered here must take stronger action to isolate the Maduro regime. We must all stand with our brothers and sisters suffering in Venezuela.”</p> U.S. Vice President Mike Pence participates in the opening session of the Americas Summit in Lima, Peru April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Andres Stapff
<p>The statement by the Lima Group voiced alarm at an exodus of migrants from Venezuela and urged governments to intensify actions aimed at restoring democracy.</p>
<p>Washington has already targeted senior members of Maduro’s administration with sanctions due to accusations of corruption and rights abuses.</p>
<p>Former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson raised the prospect in February that this could be broadened to restrict Venezuela’s exports of crude oil and its imports of U.S. refined products.</p>
<p>Neighboring countries’ frustration with Maduro’s socialist government has been stoked by the arrival of thousands of hungry migrants across the border into Colombia and Brazil every day.</p> CALL FOR HUMANITARIAN AID
<p>The joint statement called on international organizations to offer support to neighboring countries to cope with the arrivals and for Maduro to allow access for humanitarian aid to his nation of 30 million people - something he has refused to do, denying there is a crisis.</p>
<p>“To have in Maduro a leader that will not allow humanitarian aid into his own country as people are starving and people are dying is unconscionable,” Pence said.</p>
<p>Addressing red-shirted supporters at an “anti-imperialist” rally in Caracas, Maduro branded the meeting in Lima as “a complete failure” and said Latin American presidents were wasting their time criticizing him.</p> Slideshow (12 Images)
<p>Maduro was banned from the Lima gathering due to regional censure of his democratic record.</p>
<p>Hosting the summit, Peru has sought the broadest possible support for the document from governments outside the 14-nation Lima Group - which includes regional heavyweights such as Brazil, Mexico and Canada but not the United States.</p>
<p>However, efforts to build momentum behind the statement were hit by the last-minute cancellation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s attendance.</p>
<p>In the end, the statement was signed by 16 nations, fewer than half of the 35 countries that are members of the Organization of American States (OAS).</p>
<p>Previous efforts to build consensus behind strongly worded condemnations of Venezuela at the OAS have run into resistance not just from Caracas’ left-leaning allies such as Cuba and Bolivia, but Caribbean nations that have benefited from Venezuela’s subsidized oil programmers.</p>
<p>The official theme of the Lima summit was the fight against corruption and leaders agreed a statement calling for improvements in transparency of public tenders, more independent and accountable judiciaries and stronger international cooperation on money laundering.</p>
<p>However, the meeting was overshadowed by U.S. air strikes in Syria in retaliation for what Washington said was a chemical weapons attack by President Bashar al-Assad’s government.</p>
<p>While Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau voiced strong support for the air strikes by the United States, France and Britain, several Latin American nations including Brazil, Argentina and Peru expressed caution about the escalating military action.</p>
<p>“There’s deep concern in Brazil with the escalation of military conflict in Syria,” Brazilian President Michel Temer told the summit. “It’s time to find permanent solutions based on international law to a war that has been going for far too long and ended too many lives.”</p>
<p>Reporting By Roberta Rampton, Lisandra Paraguassu and Teresa Cespedes; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Alistair Bell</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Western powers said on Saturday their missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria’s chemical weapons program, but the restrained assault appeared unlikely to halt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s progress in the 7-year-old civil war.</p>
<p>The United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles overnight in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Syria a week ago, targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities, including a research and development center in Damascus’ Barzeh district and two installations near Homs.</p>
<p>The bombing was the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and his superpower ally Russia, but the three countries said the strikes were limited to Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war.</p>
<p>The air attack, denounced by Damascus and its allies as an illegal act of aggression, was unlikely to alter the course of a multisided war that has killed at least half a million people.</p>
<p>U.S. President Donald Trump called the operation a success.</p>
<p>He proclaimed on Twitter: “Mission accomplished,” echoing former President George W. Bush, whose use of the same phrase in 2003 to describe the U.S. invasion of Iraq was widely ridiculed as violence there dragged on for years.</p>
<p>“We believe that by hitting Barzeh in particular we’ve attacked the heart of the Syrian chemicals weapon program,” U.S. Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said at the Pentagon.</p>
<p>However, McKenzie acknowledged elements of the program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-sarin/u-s-official-says-information-points-to-sarin-chlorine-use-in-syria-attack-idUSKBN1HL172" type="external">U.S. official says 'information' points to sarin, chlorine use in Syria attack</a>
<a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-trump/trump-mission-accomplished-on-perfectly-executed-syria-strike-idUSKBN1HL0TW" type="external">Trump: 'mission accomplished' on 'perfectly executed' Syria strike</a>
<a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idlib/france-warns-of-humanitarian-disaster-in-syrian-city-idlib-idUSKBN1HL1C2" type="external">France warns of humanitarian disaster in Syrian city Idlib</a>
<p>The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again, “The United States is locked and loaded.”</p>
<p>The Western countries said the strikes were aimed at preventing more Syrian chemical weapons attacks after a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 killed up to 75 people. They blame Assad’s government for the attack.</p>
<p>In Washington, a senior administration official said on Saturday that “while the available information is much greater on the chlorine use, we do have significant information that also points to sarin use” in the attack.</p>
<p>Speaking at a summit in Peru, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence seemed less sure of the use of sarin, saying that Washington may well determine that it was used along with chlorine.</p> ASSAD ‘RESILIENCE’
<p>Ten hours after the missiles hit, smoke was still rising from the remains of five destroyed buildings of the Syrian Scientific Research Center in Barzeh, where a Syrian employee said medical components were developed.</p>
<p>There were no immediate reports of casualties.</p>
<p>Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombed-out research lab, but also of Assad arriving at work as usual, with the caption “Morning of resilience”.</p>
<p>Late on Saturday Syria time, a large explosion was heard in a Syrian government-controlled area in a rural region south of Aleppo, according to the Britain-based war monitor The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Observatory said the cause of the explosion was unknown, as well as its target.</p>
<p>Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has allowed Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him.</p>
<p>The United States, Britain and France have all participated in the Syrian conflict for years, arming rebels, bombing Islamic State fighters and deploying troops on the ground to fight that group. But they have refrained from targeting Assad’s government, apart from a volley of U.S. missiles last year.</p>
<p>Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power, they held back in the past from striking his government, lacking a wider strategy to defeat him.</p>
<p>Syria and its allies also made clear that they considered the attack a one-off, unlikely to do meaningful harm to Assad.</p>
<p>A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia.</p>
<p>Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the strikes were “unacceptable and lawless.”</p>
<p>Syrian state media called them a “flagrant violation of international law,” while Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called it a crime and the Western leaders criminals.</p>
<p>Russia had promised to respond to any attack on its ally, but the Pentagon said no Russian air defense systems were used. Syria fired 40 unguided surface-to-air missiles - but only after the Western strikes had ended, the Pentagon said.</p>
<p>“We are confident that all of our missiles reached their targets,” McKenzie said.</p>
<p>British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as “limited and targeted,” with no intention of toppling Assad or intervening more widely in the war.</p>
<p>Washington described the strike targets as a center near Damascus for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons; a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs; and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post.</p>
<p>The Pentagon said there had been chemical weapons agents at one of the targets, and that the strikes had significantly crippled Syria’s ability to produce such weapons.</p>
<p>Trump spoke to May and French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss results of the strikes, the leaders’ offices said.</p> A U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer, deployed to Al Udeid Air Base, launches a strike as part of the multinational response to Syria's use of chemical weapons is seen in this image from Al Udeid Air Base, Doha, Qatar released on April 14, 2018. U.S. Air Force/Handout via REUTERS
<p>U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all Security Council members to exercise restraint and avoid escalation in Syria, but said allegations of chemical weapons use demand an investigation.</p> WEAPONS INSPECTIONS
<p>Inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW were due to try to visit Douma on Saturday to inspect the site of the suspected gas attack. Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings.</p>
<p>Russia, whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold War-era hostility, has denied any gas attack took place in Douma and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up anti-Russian hysteria.</p>
<p>The Western countries took precautions to avoid unexpected conflict with Russia. French Defence Minister Florence Parly said Russians was warned beforehand to avert conflict.</p>
<p>Dmitry Belik, a Russian member of parliament who was in Damascus and witnessed the strikes, told Reuters: “The attack was more of a psychological nature rather than practical. Luckily there are no substantial losses or damages.”</p>
<p>In Douma, site of the suspected gas attack, the last buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town, state TV reported. That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta, marking one of the biggest victories for Assad’s government of the war.</p>
<p>The Western assault involved more missiles than a U.S. attack last year but struck targets limited to Syria’s chemical weapons facilities. The U.S. intervention last year had effectively no impact on the war.</p> Slideshow (18 Images)
<p>Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma. Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use, although its use as a weapon is banned. Allegations of Assad’s chlorine use have been frequent during the war although, unlike nerve agents, chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week.</p>
<p>Reporting by Phil Stewart and Tom Perry; additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland, Idrees Ali, Yara Bayoumy, Matt Spetalnick and Joel Schectman in Washington; Michelle Nichols in New York; Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Laila Bassam, Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut; Kinda Makieh in Barzeh; Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London; and Jean-Baptiste Vey, Geert de Clerq and Matthias Blamont in Paris; Polina Ivanova in Moscow; writing by Doina Chiacu; editing by Yara Bayoumy, Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards:
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<p>PARIS (Reuters) - French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned of a humanitarian disaster in the rebel-controlled Syrian city of Idlib, which could be a next target of the Syrian army.</p> FILE PHOTO - People inspect the damage at a site hit by airstrikes in the rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria February 7, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah
<p>The northwestern Idlib region remains the largest populated area of Syria in the hands of insurgents fighting the Damascus government. In recent years, tens of thousands of fighters and civilians have fled there from parts of the country which the army has recaptured with the help of Russia and Iran.</p>
<p>Le Drian said Idlib now has some 2 million inhabitants, including hundreds of thousands of Syrians evacuated from rebel-held cities taken back by the Syrian regime.</p>
<p>“There is a risk of a new humanitarian disaster. Idlib’s fate must be settled by a political process, which includes disarming the militias,” Le Drian said in an interview with French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche.</p>
<p>Some insurgent officials have said they feared an onslaught against Idlib, which a senior Iranian official has indicated could be the next target.</p>
<p>He added that France would also keep a close eye on the situation in northeastern Syria, which was freed from Islamic State with French help.</p>
<p>“Let’s not forget that our principal enemy remains Islamic State, as well as other terrorist groups which are currently regrouping in the east of the country,” Le Drian said.</p>
<p>The insurgents controlling Idlib include both jihadist factions and nationalist FSA rebels. The dominant force there is Hayat Tahrir al Sham, an Islamist alliance spearheaded by the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.</p>
<p>Le Drian also said Russia was denying reality in Syria and that its protection of Bashar al-Assad could not be justified.</p>
<p>“There is a denial of reality, and he have seen this several times. Already in 2013 and then again in 2017 the Russians denied that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons,” he said.</p>
<p>He said that at the time verification mechanisms already put in place by the United Nations had placed responsibility on the regime.</p>
<p>“It is no wonder that Russia voted against the renewal of this mechanism last autumn,” he said, adding that when France proposed last week to put in place a comparable mechanism, Russia had vetoed it.</p>
<p>Reporting by Geert De Clercqd; editing by Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | 589 |
<p>National Catholic Worker Farm Gathering, Platteville, Wisconsin, February 18, 2017</p>
<p>When I met Dorothy Day after arriving in New York City in 1975, I was 19 years old and she was 78 and the only thing that impressed her about me was that I had read Bread and Wine, a novel by Ignazio Silone published in 1936, that she cherished and often cited. The book’s protagonist is a leader in the Italian Communist party who secretly returns from exile to the village where he was born with the intention of organizing the rural masses to revolt against Fascism. He barely makes it home before falling ill and his fevered musings grasp part of the dilemma of the modern person:</p>
<p>“If only I could wake up tomorrow morning at dawn, put a stick to my donkey, and go the vineyard, Don Paolo said to himself. If I could go to sleep, and wake up, not only with healthy lungs, but with a normal brain, free of all intellectual abstractions. If I could only go back to a real, ordinary life. If I could dig, plow, sow, reap, earn my living, talk to the other men on Sundays, read and study; fulfill the law that says, ‘In the sweat of thy face thou shalt earn thy bread.’ On further reflection Don Paolo decided that the root of his trouble lay in his infraction of that law- in the irregular life he had been living, in cafes, libraries, and hotels, in having rudely broken the chain that for centuries had bound his ancestors to the soil. He was an outlaw, not because he contravened the arbitrary laws of the party in power, but because of his infringement of that more ancient law, ‘In the sweat of thy face thou shalt earn thy bread.’ He had ceased to be a peasant, and he had not become a townsman. It would never be possible for him to return to the soil. Still less would it be possible for him ever to forget it.”</p>
<p>Today it seems obvious that a return to the land, to a proper relationship with creation and to meaningful, productive work is integral to the aims of the Catholic Worker movement. For much of its history, however, since its beginning in 1933, this aspect of its founder’s original intentions was relegated to the margins of an already marginal movement.</p>
<p>For the next eleven years after meeting Dorothy, I lived in Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality in New York and then Davenport, Iowa, sharing meals and giving shelter to those in need. Peter Maurin’s visions of “agronomic universities” and return to a village based craft economy were not taken too seriously in those days and most of us, I think, would have been just as happy to dump these as slightly embarrassing and quaint anachronisms.</p>
<p>Peter’s “Easy Essays” about Irish monks establishing salons de culture across medieval Europe did not seem relevant to our demanding work of offering hospitality, nor did his suggestion that in following these monks’ example was the answer to global hunger and the threat of nuclear annihilation. We took Dorothy Day at her word that Peter Maurin was her mentor and co-founder of the movement but there was at the time little evidence of his influence in our life and work.</p>
<p>Mel Piehl in his fine historical review of the Catholic Worker movement, Breaking Bread,1982, even quotes some Catholic Workers of an earlier era who suggested that Peter’s “intellectual genius was clearly exaggerated” and that Peter was uncomfortable in his “feigned role of leadership.” Piehl estimates that Dorothy Day had exaggerated Peter’s role as “co-founder” and that she “promoted the fiction that the Catholic Worker was simply an attempt to realize Peter Maurin’s ‘Idea.’” It was, Piehl said, “strategically useful to her as a woman leading a social movement in the sexually conservative Catholic Church, to be able to point to a male co-founder of the movement.”</p>
<p>For generations of young Americans attracted to Catholic Worker communities, the European peasant Peter Maurin might have appeared as obscure and incomprehensible as the very American radical Dorothy Day was accessible. Daniel Berrigan, in his introduction to Dorothy’s memoir, The Long Loneliness, published in 1981, a year after her death, reflected a common if less than generous perception of Peter and his vision: “They started a newspaper and the rest is history. They started houses of hospitality; that too is history. Peter was forever talking about something he called ‘agronomic universities.’ They started one, on the land; and that is something less than history.”</p>
<p>Dorothy’s announcement in The Catholic Worker in January 1936, “we are going to move out on a farm… and start there a true farming commune,” however, was clearly proclaimed with the expectation that history was being made: “We believe that our words will have more weight, our writings will have more conviction, if we ourselves are engaged in making a better life on the land.” While she assured her readers that “we are not going to abandon the city,” it is clear that Dorothy’s historic expectation was that the Catholic Worker was going to realize its original vision, that of a rural based “back to the land” movement keeping some presence in the city, “sending out apostles of labor from the farm, to scenes of industrial conflict, to factories and to lodging houses, to live and work with the poor.”</p>
<p>If this and other early experimental farming communes came and went as “something less than history,” as Dan offers, or as the abject failures that others have named them, the concept did continue to limp along somehow for the next decades. Rather than the cutting edge of a revolution as Peter envisioned the agronomic university, however, most Catholic Worker farms were planned and grew, if they did, as dependent branches of urban Catholic Worker houses of hospitality. Most of these few farms were seen even by those who lived and worked at them in an urban context, as auxiliaries, existing to provide cheap food for soup lines, hospitality for the urban poor and places for retreat and recreation for Catholic Workers from the city. Most were rural responses to urban poverty and homelessness with little regard to the poverty of their neighbors. By and by, the “true farming communes” originally proposed gave way to “retreat centers.”</p>
<p>Some few here and there in the most obscure and remote places have always remembered and stood by Peter’s vision. These were often marginalized and misunderstood by the larger Catholic Worker movement as much as by their neighbors and the culture at large. When in 1986, Betsy Keenan and I moved with our children from the Catholic Worker hospitality house in Davenport, Iowa, to Maloy, a town of less than 30 souls just north of Iowa’s border with Missouri, many friends assumed that we had left the Catholic Worker movement. Some challenged us, what need is there for a soup line in so small a town? No soup line? What kind of Catholic Worker house are you? Whose farm are we, we were challenged, meaning what city house owns and controls our farm, assuming that the legitimate existence of any rural entity is bound to its tie to an urban one. About that time our good friend Chuck Trapkus included in his iconic “Catholic Worker Primer” a cartoon of a man in overalls holding a chicken and saying, “We’re Catholic Workers, too, don’t you forget it!”</p>
<p>Over the past 30 years there has been a great shift in understanding and respect for Peter’s vision and what it means. At one of the sporadically convened national Catholic Worker gatherings, I think that this was in 1987, a “round table” discussion of Peter’s agronomic university was attended by a few of us farmers and the most pressing question that surfaced from the few mildly curious others who wandered in was “why bother with a garden when we have more donated old vegetables from the market than we can ever sort out?” Since that time, there has been a resurgence in Peter’s dreams of farming communes in the movement. At more recent gatherings, roundtables on rural issues and Peter Maurin are among the liveliest and best attended and this, the fourth biannual national Catholic Worker gathering is the largest ever.</p>
<p>This resurgence is evidenced not only in the unprecedented plethora of Catholic Worker farms around the country and abroad. It is also shown in the level of discussion given Peter and his ideas in the newspapers of the various houses. Peter’s influence is seen in the growth of urban gardens in the yards and vacant lots around our city houses. Catholic Worker cottage industries, such as carving spoons, repairing bicycles, making soap, all are examples of a growing movement.</p>
<p>In Maloy each winter we host a craft retreat, when up to a dozen Catholic Workers from around the Midwest crowd into our farmhouse to join us and some neighbors to weave, make cheese, carve wood, dip candles, knit, make baskets, cook, eat, pray, dance and sing. We have fun but these sessions were not recreational in the conventional sense nor are we really “on retreat.” &#160;These gatherings are the Catholic Worker movement going about some of its most serious business. As it happens, the craft retreat often gets scheduled just before or after the annual Witness Against Torture event in Washington, DC, an intense time of fasting and action to demand the closing of the prison at Guantanamo and the abolition of torture that I usually attend. In my mind, these two yearly events have melded into one continuum.</p>
<p>This shift of paradigm has come in part, I think, as people who come to Catholic Worker houses are staying longer. While many still come to Worker houses to donate a “gap year” or two of their lives in service to the poor between college and “real life,” from the 1970s on, more and more came and stayed. It has been suggested that some of these moved out to farms looking for a better place to raise kids than an inner city house of hospitality. There may be something to that, but I offer that for many of us, living and working for years with the urban poor made us look deeper into the roots of the world’s problems and see that serving soup, good work that it is, is not enough. Speaking for myself, I needed to live in urban hospitality houses for many years before I could make any sense of Peter’s talk about revolution on the land.</p>
<p>For many of us, too, solidarity work and travel to places exploited by economic and other kinds of colonialism brought us to see that Peter was right when he pointedly insisted that issues of war and peace always are, at the heart, issues of the land and its use. In New York City or Los Angeles as in Jerusalem or Mexico City or San Salvador, the peace and good order of society requires justice on the land. It strikes us, finally, that even the food that we serve on our soup lines that is donated or gleaned from dumpsters depends on slave labor and is grown in ways that cannot be sustained. When the peace for which we yearn and struggle finally comes and our global neighbors will no longer be forced by debt and oppression to clothe and feed us but will use their own labor, land and water to care for themselves, how then will we live?</p>
<p>The crisis of climate change on our threshold, too, makes Peter’s dream of agrarian revolution look less like a medieval utopian fantasy and more like an urgent and rational plan for a new and sustainable social order of the future.</p>
<p>Some criticize such changes in the movement as if they are evidence that we are losing our way. My perspective is that, with some growing pains, the Catholic Worker is rather finding its way now after so many years. “Our houses of hospitality are scarcely the kind of houses that Peter Maurin has envisioned in his plan for a new social order,” Dorothy Day wrote in her column in September 1942. “He recognizes that himself, and thinks in terms of the future to accomplish true centers of Catholic Action and rural centers such as he speaks of.” Perhaps it is true that Peter Maurin’s role as “co-founder” of the Catholic Worker was exaggerated in the past. If so, it might also be true that he is now posthumously growing into that role as the movement matures into the dynamic revolutionary social force it was meant to be.</p>
<p>While I am gratified to see this revival, I must confess that, along with Silone’s Don Paolo, I am still a townsman and after three decades of rural living I am far more at home in the city, “in cafes, libraries, and hotels,” than I am on the farm and in the small town where I live. In recent years as a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, I am spending about half my time on the farm, half on the road, often in cities in America and abroad, sometimes in war zones and in jails and prisons. Some friends assume that my time on the farm is a respite from the stresses of activism, but the opposite is true. I love my home but often do not feel at rest there- the farm is the place where I feel most challenged and humbled and the city is where I go to escape.</p>
<p>Betsy has become an accomplished weaver, goatherd and gardener, but the skills and attitudes needed to be a farmer continue to elude and frustrate me. Going to jail comes easier for me than fixing a fence or attending a church pot luck. I can make many varieties of cheeses from the milk of our goats, but find more satisfaction writing a press release or organizing a protest. A shopping trip to the county seat can be more daunting to me than traveling alone to Seoul or Kabul. By education, aptitude and temperament, I am not able to return to the soil but neither can I forget it.</p>
<p>We are gathered here, Catholic Worker farmers and friends, at a time of extraordinary uncertainty and peril. It is unclear if the damage our wars and industrialized lifestyles are inflicting on the planet can be reversed at this late date. Never have so many people been displaced and the danger of nuclear war is more imminent now than ever before in the lifetimes of most of us here. If previous generations of Catholic Worker farms have measured in the end as “somewhat less than history,” our efforts today must be of historic proportions, God help us, if we are to contribute to the continuation of life on earth.</p> | Peter Maurin’s Vision for the Catholic Worker, an Idea Whose Time has Come | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/03/17/peter-maurins-vision-for-the-catholic-worker-an-idea-whose-time-has-come/ | 2017-03-17 | 4left
| Peter Maurin’s Vision for the Catholic Worker, an Idea Whose Time has Come
<p>National Catholic Worker Farm Gathering, Platteville, Wisconsin, February 18, 2017</p>
<p>When I met Dorothy Day after arriving in New York City in 1975, I was 19 years old and she was 78 and the only thing that impressed her about me was that I had read Bread and Wine, a novel by Ignazio Silone published in 1936, that she cherished and often cited. The book’s protagonist is a leader in the Italian Communist party who secretly returns from exile to the village where he was born with the intention of organizing the rural masses to revolt against Fascism. He barely makes it home before falling ill and his fevered musings grasp part of the dilemma of the modern person:</p>
<p>“If only I could wake up tomorrow morning at dawn, put a stick to my donkey, and go the vineyard, Don Paolo said to himself. If I could go to sleep, and wake up, not only with healthy lungs, but with a normal brain, free of all intellectual abstractions. If I could only go back to a real, ordinary life. If I could dig, plow, sow, reap, earn my living, talk to the other men on Sundays, read and study; fulfill the law that says, ‘In the sweat of thy face thou shalt earn thy bread.’ On further reflection Don Paolo decided that the root of his trouble lay in his infraction of that law- in the irregular life he had been living, in cafes, libraries, and hotels, in having rudely broken the chain that for centuries had bound his ancestors to the soil. He was an outlaw, not because he contravened the arbitrary laws of the party in power, but because of his infringement of that more ancient law, ‘In the sweat of thy face thou shalt earn thy bread.’ He had ceased to be a peasant, and he had not become a townsman. It would never be possible for him to return to the soil. Still less would it be possible for him ever to forget it.”</p>
<p>Today it seems obvious that a return to the land, to a proper relationship with creation and to meaningful, productive work is integral to the aims of the Catholic Worker movement. For much of its history, however, since its beginning in 1933, this aspect of its founder’s original intentions was relegated to the margins of an already marginal movement.</p>
<p>For the next eleven years after meeting Dorothy, I lived in Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality in New York and then Davenport, Iowa, sharing meals and giving shelter to those in need. Peter Maurin’s visions of “agronomic universities” and return to a village based craft economy were not taken too seriously in those days and most of us, I think, would have been just as happy to dump these as slightly embarrassing and quaint anachronisms.</p>
<p>Peter’s “Easy Essays” about Irish monks establishing salons de culture across medieval Europe did not seem relevant to our demanding work of offering hospitality, nor did his suggestion that in following these monks’ example was the answer to global hunger and the threat of nuclear annihilation. We took Dorothy Day at her word that Peter Maurin was her mentor and co-founder of the movement but there was at the time little evidence of his influence in our life and work.</p>
<p>Mel Piehl in his fine historical review of the Catholic Worker movement, Breaking Bread,1982, even quotes some Catholic Workers of an earlier era who suggested that Peter’s “intellectual genius was clearly exaggerated” and that Peter was uncomfortable in his “feigned role of leadership.” Piehl estimates that Dorothy Day had exaggerated Peter’s role as “co-founder” and that she “promoted the fiction that the Catholic Worker was simply an attempt to realize Peter Maurin’s ‘Idea.’” It was, Piehl said, “strategically useful to her as a woman leading a social movement in the sexually conservative Catholic Church, to be able to point to a male co-founder of the movement.”</p>
<p>For generations of young Americans attracted to Catholic Worker communities, the European peasant Peter Maurin might have appeared as obscure and incomprehensible as the very American radical Dorothy Day was accessible. Daniel Berrigan, in his introduction to Dorothy’s memoir, The Long Loneliness, published in 1981, a year after her death, reflected a common if less than generous perception of Peter and his vision: “They started a newspaper and the rest is history. They started houses of hospitality; that too is history. Peter was forever talking about something he called ‘agronomic universities.’ They started one, on the land; and that is something less than history.”</p>
<p>Dorothy’s announcement in The Catholic Worker in January 1936, “we are going to move out on a farm… and start there a true farming commune,” however, was clearly proclaimed with the expectation that history was being made: “We believe that our words will have more weight, our writings will have more conviction, if we ourselves are engaged in making a better life on the land.” While she assured her readers that “we are not going to abandon the city,” it is clear that Dorothy’s historic expectation was that the Catholic Worker was going to realize its original vision, that of a rural based “back to the land” movement keeping some presence in the city, “sending out apostles of labor from the farm, to scenes of industrial conflict, to factories and to lodging houses, to live and work with the poor.”</p>
<p>If this and other early experimental farming communes came and went as “something less than history,” as Dan offers, or as the abject failures that others have named them, the concept did continue to limp along somehow for the next decades. Rather than the cutting edge of a revolution as Peter envisioned the agronomic university, however, most Catholic Worker farms were planned and grew, if they did, as dependent branches of urban Catholic Worker houses of hospitality. Most of these few farms were seen even by those who lived and worked at them in an urban context, as auxiliaries, existing to provide cheap food for soup lines, hospitality for the urban poor and places for retreat and recreation for Catholic Workers from the city. Most were rural responses to urban poverty and homelessness with little regard to the poverty of their neighbors. By and by, the “true farming communes” originally proposed gave way to “retreat centers.”</p>
<p>Some few here and there in the most obscure and remote places have always remembered and stood by Peter’s vision. These were often marginalized and misunderstood by the larger Catholic Worker movement as much as by their neighbors and the culture at large. When in 1986, Betsy Keenan and I moved with our children from the Catholic Worker hospitality house in Davenport, Iowa, to Maloy, a town of less than 30 souls just north of Iowa’s border with Missouri, many friends assumed that we had left the Catholic Worker movement. Some challenged us, what need is there for a soup line in so small a town? No soup line? What kind of Catholic Worker house are you? Whose farm are we, we were challenged, meaning what city house owns and controls our farm, assuming that the legitimate existence of any rural entity is bound to its tie to an urban one. About that time our good friend Chuck Trapkus included in his iconic “Catholic Worker Primer” a cartoon of a man in overalls holding a chicken and saying, “We’re Catholic Workers, too, don’t you forget it!”</p>
<p>Over the past 30 years there has been a great shift in understanding and respect for Peter’s vision and what it means. At one of the sporadically convened national Catholic Worker gatherings, I think that this was in 1987, a “round table” discussion of Peter’s agronomic university was attended by a few of us farmers and the most pressing question that surfaced from the few mildly curious others who wandered in was “why bother with a garden when we have more donated old vegetables from the market than we can ever sort out?” Since that time, there has been a resurgence in Peter’s dreams of farming communes in the movement. At more recent gatherings, roundtables on rural issues and Peter Maurin are among the liveliest and best attended and this, the fourth biannual national Catholic Worker gathering is the largest ever.</p>
<p>This resurgence is evidenced not only in the unprecedented plethora of Catholic Worker farms around the country and abroad. It is also shown in the level of discussion given Peter and his ideas in the newspapers of the various houses. Peter’s influence is seen in the growth of urban gardens in the yards and vacant lots around our city houses. Catholic Worker cottage industries, such as carving spoons, repairing bicycles, making soap, all are examples of a growing movement.</p>
<p>In Maloy each winter we host a craft retreat, when up to a dozen Catholic Workers from around the Midwest crowd into our farmhouse to join us and some neighbors to weave, make cheese, carve wood, dip candles, knit, make baskets, cook, eat, pray, dance and sing. We have fun but these sessions were not recreational in the conventional sense nor are we really “on retreat.” &#160;These gatherings are the Catholic Worker movement going about some of its most serious business. As it happens, the craft retreat often gets scheduled just before or after the annual Witness Against Torture event in Washington, DC, an intense time of fasting and action to demand the closing of the prison at Guantanamo and the abolition of torture that I usually attend. In my mind, these two yearly events have melded into one continuum.</p>
<p>This shift of paradigm has come in part, I think, as people who come to Catholic Worker houses are staying longer. While many still come to Worker houses to donate a “gap year” or two of their lives in service to the poor between college and “real life,” from the 1970s on, more and more came and stayed. It has been suggested that some of these moved out to farms looking for a better place to raise kids than an inner city house of hospitality. There may be something to that, but I offer that for many of us, living and working for years with the urban poor made us look deeper into the roots of the world’s problems and see that serving soup, good work that it is, is not enough. Speaking for myself, I needed to live in urban hospitality houses for many years before I could make any sense of Peter’s talk about revolution on the land.</p>
<p>For many of us, too, solidarity work and travel to places exploited by economic and other kinds of colonialism brought us to see that Peter was right when he pointedly insisted that issues of war and peace always are, at the heart, issues of the land and its use. In New York City or Los Angeles as in Jerusalem or Mexico City or San Salvador, the peace and good order of society requires justice on the land. It strikes us, finally, that even the food that we serve on our soup lines that is donated or gleaned from dumpsters depends on slave labor and is grown in ways that cannot be sustained. When the peace for which we yearn and struggle finally comes and our global neighbors will no longer be forced by debt and oppression to clothe and feed us but will use their own labor, land and water to care for themselves, how then will we live?</p>
<p>The crisis of climate change on our threshold, too, makes Peter’s dream of agrarian revolution look less like a medieval utopian fantasy and more like an urgent and rational plan for a new and sustainable social order of the future.</p>
<p>Some criticize such changes in the movement as if they are evidence that we are losing our way. My perspective is that, with some growing pains, the Catholic Worker is rather finding its way now after so many years. “Our houses of hospitality are scarcely the kind of houses that Peter Maurin has envisioned in his plan for a new social order,” Dorothy Day wrote in her column in September 1942. “He recognizes that himself, and thinks in terms of the future to accomplish true centers of Catholic Action and rural centers such as he speaks of.” Perhaps it is true that Peter Maurin’s role as “co-founder” of the Catholic Worker was exaggerated in the past. If so, it might also be true that he is now posthumously growing into that role as the movement matures into the dynamic revolutionary social force it was meant to be.</p>
<p>While I am gratified to see this revival, I must confess that, along with Silone’s Don Paolo, I am still a townsman and after three decades of rural living I am far more at home in the city, “in cafes, libraries, and hotels,” than I am on the farm and in the small town where I live. In recent years as a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, I am spending about half my time on the farm, half on the road, often in cities in America and abroad, sometimes in war zones and in jails and prisons. Some friends assume that my time on the farm is a respite from the stresses of activism, but the opposite is true. I love my home but often do not feel at rest there- the farm is the place where I feel most challenged and humbled and the city is where I go to escape.</p>
<p>Betsy has become an accomplished weaver, goatherd and gardener, but the skills and attitudes needed to be a farmer continue to elude and frustrate me. Going to jail comes easier for me than fixing a fence or attending a church pot luck. I can make many varieties of cheeses from the milk of our goats, but find more satisfaction writing a press release or organizing a protest. A shopping trip to the county seat can be more daunting to me than traveling alone to Seoul or Kabul. By education, aptitude and temperament, I am not able to return to the soil but neither can I forget it.</p>
<p>We are gathered here, Catholic Worker farmers and friends, at a time of extraordinary uncertainty and peril. It is unclear if the damage our wars and industrialized lifestyles are inflicting on the planet can be reversed at this late date. Never have so many people been displaced and the danger of nuclear war is more imminent now than ever before in the lifetimes of most of us here. If previous generations of Catholic Worker farms have measured in the end as “somewhat less than history,” our efforts today must be of historic proportions, God help us, if we are to contribute to the continuation of life on earth.</p> | 590 |
<p>The leaders of a House panel told Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday that they had serious concerns about the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at The Associated Press.</p>
<p>Attorney General Eric Holder says the search was justified to get to the bottom of one of the most serious leaks he's ever seen.</p>
<p>But testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Holder said that he had earlier recused himself from the case, so had no knowledge of the secret subpoena or other details on why regulations to govern press subpoenas were bypassed.</p>
<p>But the story at issue appears to be an AP report on a CIA investigation into a bomb plot that was disrupted in Yemen last year.</p>
<p>Steven Aftergood directs the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, and he joins host Marco Werman to break down what this means.</p> | US Attorney General Holder Grilled in Congress Over Justice Dept. Swoop on AP Phone Records | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-05-15/us-attorney-general-holder-grilled-congress-over-justice-dept-swoop-ap-phone | 2013-05-15 | 3left-center
| US Attorney General Holder Grilled in Congress Over Justice Dept. Swoop on AP Phone Records
<p>The leaders of a House panel told Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday that they had serious concerns about the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at The Associated Press.</p>
<p>Attorney General Eric Holder says the search was justified to get to the bottom of one of the most serious leaks he's ever seen.</p>
<p>But testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Holder said that he had earlier recused himself from the case, so had no knowledge of the secret subpoena or other details on why regulations to govern press subpoenas were bypassed.</p>
<p>But the story at issue appears to be an AP report on a CIA investigation into a bomb plot that was disrupted in Yemen last year.</p>
<p>Steven Aftergood directs the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, and he joins host Marco Werman to break down what this means.</p> | 591 |
<p />
<p>It shouldn’t come as any great surprise that Karl Rove is leaving the administration. His job is <a href="/news/feature/2006/11/revenge_of_the_nerds.html" type="external">all about winning</a>, and with Bush, there’s nothing left to be won. (Though even on his way out the door, Rove can’t keep himself from spinning, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118698747711695773.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news" type="external">predicting that we’ll turn a corner in Iraq and Bush’s poll numbers will rise</a>. But that’s a sucker’s game, and Rove himself wants no part of it.)</p>
<p>Rove has said he’s going back to Texas to spend more time with his family. Awww, that’s nice. But then what? I wouldn’t expect him to stay out of politics for long. One only has to read a few sentences into “Revenge of the Nerds,” our piece on high school policy debaters, to realize how deep and long standing is Rove’s love of playing hardball:</p>
<p>It would have been the spring of 1969, the Vietnam War in full swing, when a scrawny 18-year-old in a suit and tie and horn-rimmed glasses pushed a handcart stacked with 10 boxes into a classroom at Olympus High School, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. Each shoebox was stuffed with four-by-six notecards pasted with evidence clipped from newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. As the young man and his partner unpacked their evidence on a small table at the front of the room, members of the other policy debate team looked on in horror. They’d only brought one shoebox.</p>
<p>What they didn’t know was that 99 percent of the notecards in the Olympus team’s 10 shoeboxes were just props. Even at 18, the scrawny kid with the horn-rims understood the power of intimidation.”Rove didn’t just want to win,” James Moore and Wayne Slater write in their book Rove Exposed: How Bush’s Brain Fooled America. “He wanted the opponents destroyed. His worldview was clear even then. There was his team and the other team, and he would make the other team pay.”</p>
<p>This isn’t a man that’s going to be content going back to Texas and raising chickens. And though the 2006 rout of the RNC may taken the bloom off Rove’s rose somewhat, “the architect” has still got to be a highly sought-after campaign consultant. Provided he can modernize his direct mail data mining/smear expertise to dovetail with the whole <a href="/news/feature/2007/07/crashing_the_system.html" type="external">cell phone/social networking/video wave of the future</a>. But let’s assume he can.</p>
<p>So any bets as to where Rove will pop up? Fred Thompson seems to be running as the “most like Bush” candidate; could that strategy include Rove? Will Rove sit this election out entirely, perhaps scouting the next feckless son of a prominent politician?</p>
<p /> | What Will Bush’s Brain Do Next? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/what-will-bushs-brain-do-next/ | 2007-08-13 | 4left
| What Will Bush’s Brain Do Next?
<p />
<p>It shouldn’t come as any great surprise that Karl Rove is leaving the administration. His job is <a href="/news/feature/2006/11/revenge_of_the_nerds.html" type="external">all about winning</a>, and with Bush, there’s nothing left to be won. (Though even on his way out the door, Rove can’t keep himself from spinning, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118698747711695773.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news" type="external">predicting that we’ll turn a corner in Iraq and Bush’s poll numbers will rise</a>. But that’s a sucker’s game, and Rove himself wants no part of it.)</p>
<p>Rove has said he’s going back to Texas to spend more time with his family. Awww, that’s nice. But then what? I wouldn’t expect him to stay out of politics for long. One only has to read a few sentences into “Revenge of the Nerds,” our piece on high school policy debaters, to realize how deep and long standing is Rove’s love of playing hardball:</p>
<p>It would have been the spring of 1969, the Vietnam War in full swing, when a scrawny 18-year-old in a suit and tie and horn-rimmed glasses pushed a handcart stacked with 10 boxes into a classroom at Olympus High School, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. Each shoebox was stuffed with four-by-six notecards pasted with evidence clipped from newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. As the young man and his partner unpacked their evidence on a small table at the front of the room, members of the other policy debate team looked on in horror. They’d only brought one shoebox.</p>
<p>What they didn’t know was that 99 percent of the notecards in the Olympus team’s 10 shoeboxes were just props. Even at 18, the scrawny kid with the horn-rims understood the power of intimidation.”Rove didn’t just want to win,” James Moore and Wayne Slater write in their book Rove Exposed: How Bush’s Brain Fooled America. “He wanted the opponents destroyed. His worldview was clear even then. There was his team and the other team, and he would make the other team pay.”</p>
<p>This isn’t a man that’s going to be content going back to Texas and raising chickens. And though the 2006 rout of the RNC may taken the bloom off Rove’s rose somewhat, “the architect” has still got to be a highly sought-after campaign consultant. Provided he can modernize his direct mail data mining/smear expertise to dovetail with the whole <a href="/news/feature/2007/07/crashing_the_system.html" type="external">cell phone/social networking/video wave of the future</a>. But let’s assume he can.</p>
<p>So any bets as to where Rove will pop up? Fred Thompson seems to be running as the “most like Bush” candidate; could that strategy include Rove? Will Rove sit this election out entirely, perhaps scouting the next feckless son of a prominent politician?</p>
<p /> | 592 |
<p />
<p>RUSH: Look at what we’ve had leaked. We’ve had Trump’s phone call with the president of Mexico. We’ve had Trump’s phone call now with the president of Philippines (that oddball, Duterte guy). What other phone calls? Trump, during the transition and his early days as president, there were actual transcripts — in some cases voice recordings — of Trump phone calls, right? Now, why has there never been a leak of any evidence that Trump colluded with Russia?</p>
<p>If they have the kind of access where they can get transcripts and audio recordings of Trump’s calls with presidents of Mexico and the Philippines and wherever else, after all of this time, why is there no hard evidence of Trump colluding with the Russians or any of his associates? Well, the answer is obvious: because there wasn’t any. But here is an ongoing problem. YouGov published the results of a poll recently, and it contains some data that nobody — I think the <a href="http://www.mrctv.org/blog/poll-majority-democrats-still-believe-russia-tampered-vote" type="external">Media Research Center noticed this</a>.</p>
<p>God bless them, but nobody else has, and it is very important. Yesterday, I spent quite a bit of time explaining the trouble the Democrats are in, and they are in trouble. They have so pushed this collusion theory, they have so pushed that the Russians “hacked the election.” That is a phrase: “Russia hacked the election.” You know what people who are not capable of critical thinking are going to think, knee-jerk reaction when you say that. You’re already a livid Democrat. You’re already ticked off because Hillary lost. You’re already mad at that.</p>
<p>You hate Trump on general principles. And then Trump wins, and your friends start talking about collusion with the Russians. And then comes the very, very precise allegation that the Russians “hacked the election.” That’s different than the Russians colluded with Trump during the campaign. “Hacking the election.” A lot of people are gonna think that means that the Russians somehow found a way to tamper with the vote — voting machines, paper ballots. But since they don’t think critically, they’re not gonna take it any further. They’re just gonna accept — because of prejudice and bias — that the Russians hacked the election.</p>
<p>Now, the Democrats have not been pushing that other than it’s primarily been the media that has been pushing that narrative, but it’s not as frequently pushed as the narrative of collusion. So now the Democrats are walking back impeachment. Al Franken literally had to tell voters yesterday Trump’s not gonna be impeached this month. There are only seven days left this month! What must those people believe? What must they be out there anticipating? Does this mean that Trump might be impeached next month if Franken’s not gonna get to it next week?</p>
<p>So the results in the YouGov poll (ready for this?): 55% of Democrats think that it is probably or definitely true that Russia hacked vote totals to get Trump elected. Folks, this is not 55% who believe that the Russians colluded with Trump. This is 55% of Democrats who believe that the Russians actually hacked voting machines and that the election was literally stolen! Who has made them believe this? It’s their buddies in the mainstream media, followed by willing accomplices in the Democrat Party. There have been two memes: Russians colluded with Trump. Trump colluded with Russia.</p>
<p>Despite the claims that there’s been no evidence found. That gets covered up and dwarfed by a year’s worth of stories featuring countless anonymous sources, former and current high-ranking government officials. Nevertheless, every story — practically every story, if you dug deep in it — would admit that, so far, there’s no evidence. But these Democrats never got that far. So when you’ve got… Imagine yourself. You’re the Democrat Party leadership, and you’re already in a mess… Do you know that Jane Sanders, Crazy Bernie’s wife, is out there praising the Iranian election as a model for us to learn from?</p>
<p>The Iranians elected a new president last week, Rouhani, and Crazy Bernie’s wife is out there saying, “That’s the kind of model we need to be following, the way the Iranians do elections.” Now, wait. Before you go off on this, remember what happened to her husband. He was cheated. The Democrat Party indeed rigged the primary against her husband. She knows it; her husband knows it; and Crazy Bernie voters suspect it, and there’s a lawsuit about it. There’s real tampering, by the way. There’s real hacking, by the way. There’s real collusion.</p>
<p>It happened on the Democrat side. Now, Jane Sanders is a mess anyway. Self-contained mess. But on this you can’t really blame her. Her husband’s campaign was sabotaged by her husband’s opponent and Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz and the rest of the DNC. So imagine you’re a Democrat, any Democrat — you’re Chuck Schumer, you’re Pelosi, you’re a Democrat lobbyist, you are in the Drive-By Media — and you have been trying to destroy Donald Trump. With who, by the way? With who have you been trying to destroy Trump?</p>
<p>You don’t need to destroy Trump in the minds of Democrats. They already hate Trump. Democrats don’t need convincing that Trump is bad news. They don’t need to constantly be told what a danger Trump is. Trump voters are the targets of this. The media’s been trying to distance Trump voters from Trump by impugning his character and his honesty and his legitimacy and all of that. But it the audience that’s heard it is also Democrat base voters.</p>
<p>So the Democrats are thinking that their voters are far too sophisticated to really know what’s going on here, so it’s a wink and nod and they’ll be in the game. No, no, no. They’re buying this. There are now 55% of Democrat voters think the Russians stole election by hacking voting machines or whatever they think the mechanism was. Now, those people, because they believe that, are convinced that Comey knows it. They were convinced that Sally Yates knows it. They are convinced that Mueller is going to find it!</p>
<p>They’re convinced that Eric Holder and Obama and John Brennan know it. So, therefore, they are convinced that it’s going to be made public in an investigation, and they are convinced that Trump may go to jail. They are convinced. They are just waiting for all of it to unfold and happen. Al Franken had to tell ’em it wasn’t gonna happen this month. This is a problem for Democrats, ’cause this isn’t gonna happen, because that didn’t happen. The Russians did not hack the election. The Russians had nothing to do with the outcome of the election!</p>
<p>That’s all on Hillary. And one day, these people are gonna have to told. One day these people are gonna figure out there isn’t gonna be an investigation. One day… Well, there isn’t gonna be the revelation, and there isn’t gonna be a conviction, and there isn’t gonna be a frog march in handcuffs of Donald Trump to the nearest jail. There isn’t gonna be Donald Trump lined up before a firing squad. This isn’t gonna happen. And when it doesn’t, when these 55% and growing figure out that there’s nothing here, what are they gonna do?</p>
<p>I’m telling you: The Democrats are scared to death of that day.</p>
<p>BREAK TRANSCRIPT</p>
<p>RUSH: Now, YouGov, this poll that shows 55% of Democrats think that it’s pretty true that Russia tampered with vote totals. They did the question back in December too. In December the number was 52%. Now, think about that. In December. This is still during the Trump transition. In December, 52% of Democrat voters believed the Russians tampered with the vote. Ballots that were cast were tampered with by the Russians. Last week they did the same poll, 55%. So the number is growing. The number is expanding.</p>
<p>I think this poll is one of the reasons why so many Democrats are now starting to walk back this whole notion of impeachment. And now a couple more have joined the chorus and are saying not only is there not gonna be any impeachment this year, there isn’t gonna be any impeachment, period. They’re tiptoeing with it, they’re whispering it. They have to do this gradually. This is like withdrawing these people off of a very, very addictive drug. They can’t take ’em off this cold turkey or who knows what they’ll do. They’re having to walk this back very, very slowly.</p> | Poll: Majority of Democrat Voters Think Russians Hacked Voting | true | https://rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/05/24/poll-majority-of-democrat-voters-think-russians-hacked-voting/ | 2017-05-24 | 0right
| Poll: Majority of Democrat Voters Think Russians Hacked Voting
<p />
<p>RUSH: Look at what we’ve had leaked. We’ve had Trump’s phone call with the president of Mexico. We’ve had Trump’s phone call now with the president of Philippines (that oddball, Duterte guy). What other phone calls? Trump, during the transition and his early days as president, there were actual transcripts — in some cases voice recordings — of Trump phone calls, right? Now, why has there never been a leak of any evidence that Trump colluded with Russia?</p>
<p>If they have the kind of access where they can get transcripts and audio recordings of Trump’s calls with presidents of Mexico and the Philippines and wherever else, after all of this time, why is there no hard evidence of Trump colluding with the Russians or any of his associates? Well, the answer is obvious: because there wasn’t any. But here is an ongoing problem. YouGov published the results of a poll recently, and it contains some data that nobody — I think the <a href="http://www.mrctv.org/blog/poll-majority-democrats-still-believe-russia-tampered-vote" type="external">Media Research Center noticed this</a>.</p>
<p>God bless them, but nobody else has, and it is very important. Yesterday, I spent quite a bit of time explaining the trouble the Democrats are in, and they are in trouble. They have so pushed this collusion theory, they have so pushed that the Russians “hacked the election.” That is a phrase: “Russia hacked the election.” You know what people who are not capable of critical thinking are going to think, knee-jerk reaction when you say that. You’re already a livid Democrat. You’re already ticked off because Hillary lost. You’re already mad at that.</p>
<p>You hate Trump on general principles. And then Trump wins, and your friends start talking about collusion with the Russians. And then comes the very, very precise allegation that the Russians “hacked the election.” That’s different than the Russians colluded with Trump during the campaign. “Hacking the election.” A lot of people are gonna think that means that the Russians somehow found a way to tamper with the vote — voting machines, paper ballots. But since they don’t think critically, they’re not gonna take it any further. They’re just gonna accept — because of prejudice and bias — that the Russians hacked the election.</p>
<p>Now, the Democrats have not been pushing that other than it’s primarily been the media that has been pushing that narrative, but it’s not as frequently pushed as the narrative of collusion. So now the Democrats are walking back impeachment. Al Franken literally had to tell voters yesterday Trump’s not gonna be impeached this month. There are only seven days left this month! What must those people believe? What must they be out there anticipating? Does this mean that Trump might be impeached next month if Franken’s not gonna get to it next week?</p>
<p>So the results in the YouGov poll (ready for this?): 55% of Democrats think that it is probably or definitely true that Russia hacked vote totals to get Trump elected. Folks, this is not 55% who believe that the Russians colluded with Trump. This is 55% of Democrats who believe that the Russians actually hacked voting machines and that the election was literally stolen! Who has made them believe this? It’s their buddies in the mainstream media, followed by willing accomplices in the Democrat Party. There have been two memes: Russians colluded with Trump. Trump colluded with Russia.</p>
<p>Despite the claims that there’s been no evidence found. That gets covered up and dwarfed by a year’s worth of stories featuring countless anonymous sources, former and current high-ranking government officials. Nevertheless, every story — practically every story, if you dug deep in it — would admit that, so far, there’s no evidence. But these Democrats never got that far. So when you’ve got… Imagine yourself. You’re the Democrat Party leadership, and you’re already in a mess… Do you know that Jane Sanders, Crazy Bernie’s wife, is out there praising the Iranian election as a model for us to learn from?</p>
<p>The Iranians elected a new president last week, Rouhani, and Crazy Bernie’s wife is out there saying, “That’s the kind of model we need to be following, the way the Iranians do elections.” Now, wait. Before you go off on this, remember what happened to her husband. He was cheated. The Democrat Party indeed rigged the primary against her husband. She knows it; her husband knows it; and Crazy Bernie voters suspect it, and there’s a lawsuit about it. There’s real tampering, by the way. There’s real hacking, by the way. There’s real collusion.</p>
<p>It happened on the Democrat side. Now, Jane Sanders is a mess anyway. Self-contained mess. But on this you can’t really blame her. Her husband’s campaign was sabotaged by her husband’s opponent and Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz and the rest of the DNC. So imagine you’re a Democrat, any Democrat — you’re Chuck Schumer, you’re Pelosi, you’re a Democrat lobbyist, you are in the Drive-By Media — and you have been trying to destroy Donald Trump. With who, by the way? With who have you been trying to destroy Trump?</p>
<p>You don’t need to destroy Trump in the minds of Democrats. They already hate Trump. Democrats don’t need convincing that Trump is bad news. They don’t need to constantly be told what a danger Trump is. Trump voters are the targets of this. The media’s been trying to distance Trump voters from Trump by impugning his character and his honesty and his legitimacy and all of that. But it the audience that’s heard it is also Democrat base voters.</p>
<p>So the Democrats are thinking that their voters are far too sophisticated to really know what’s going on here, so it’s a wink and nod and they’ll be in the game. No, no, no. They’re buying this. There are now 55% of Democrat voters think the Russians stole election by hacking voting machines or whatever they think the mechanism was. Now, those people, because they believe that, are convinced that Comey knows it. They were convinced that Sally Yates knows it. They are convinced that Mueller is going to find it!</p>
<p>They’re convinced that Eric Holder and Obama and John Brennan know it. So, therefore, they are convinced that it’s going to be made public in an investigation, and they are convinced that Trump may go to jail. They are convinced. They are just waiting for all of it to unfold and happen. Al Franken had to tell ’em it wasn’t gonna happen this month. This is a problem for Democrats, ’cause this isn’t gonna happen, because that didn’t happen. The Russians did not hack the election. The Russians had nothing to do with the outcome of the election!</p>
<p>That’s all on Hillary. And one day, these people are gonna have to told. One day these people are gonna figure out there isn’t gonna be an investigation. One day… Well, there isn’t gonna be the revelation, and there isn’t gonna be a conviction, and there isn’t gonna be a frog march in handcuffs of Donald Trump to the nearest jail. There isn’t gonna be Donald Trump lined up before a firing squad. This isn’t gonna happen. And when it doesn’t, when these 55% and growing figure out that there’s nothing here, what are they gonna do?</p>
<p>I’m telling you: The Democrats are scared to death of that day.</p>
<p>BREAK TRANSCRIPT</p>
<p>RUSH: Now, YouGov, this poll that shows 55% of Democrats think that it’s pretty true that Russia tampered with vote totals. They did the question back in December too. In December the number was 52%. Now, think about that. In December. This is still during the Trump transition. In December, 52% of Democrat voters believed the Russians tampered with the vote. Ballots that were cast were tampered with by the Russians. Last week they did the same poll, 55%. So the number is growing. The number is expanding.</p>
<p>I think this poll is one of the reasons why so many Democrats are now starting to walk back this whole notion of impeachment. And now a couple more have joined the chorus and are saying not only is there not gonna be any impeachment this year, there isn’t gonna be any impeachment, period. They’re tiptoeing with it, they’re whispering it. They have to do this gradually. This is like withdrawing these people off of a very, very addictive drug. They can’t take ’em off this cold turkey or who knows what they’ll do. They’re having to walk this back very, very slowly.</p> | 593 |
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<p />
<p>There’s a point when a simple lapse in judgment becomes a pattern of bad judgment. And for a perfect example of that, one need look no further than Bernalillo County Commissioner Michael Wiener.</p>
<p>His latest was posing for photos with scantily clad young women in a red-light district in the Philippines. Perhaps last month’s photo-op, now out there in the blogosphere, is as innocuous as Wiener portrays it — he had gone to the Philippines to visit his daughter and used the four-hour airline layover to check out the sights with his unnamed “girlfriend/fiancee.” When a photographer approached him and asked him to pose with the young women for a group picture, he agreed, even provided his e-mail address so he could get a copy to remember the happy outing.</p>
<p>Or maybe it’s as the professional photographer, who was documenting efforts to fight the sex trade in the area, portrays it — a middle-aged American man in “the second-largest sex tourist destination in the world” in a part of town where “everyone is essentially for sale” asked a stranger to take his photo with several girls in short-shorts and midriffs, then told a lewd joke.</p>
<p>Wiener’s variety of prior ethical lapses could affect which version you believe. In 2008 he panhandled 22 county employees via their county government emails for $100 donations to help retire his campaign debt because “It costs money to run a campaign.” He forwarded an e-mail joke about African Americans, sex and prison showers to other county officials six months after an African American man was beaten into a coma by fellow inmates at the county jail, which he helps oversee. He repeats ad nauseum what he terms “jokes” about a woman being attacked by a gang of men in Central Park, as well as jokes about his last name and that of fellow Commissioner Wayne Johnson. He continues to defend his inappropriate references to LAPD beating victim Rodney King and about how Hispanics stereotypically look. And he claims that when he said “looking good” he was referring to new paint in a commission office and not the young staffer bent over a box of files.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Before deciding if the photos continue his pattern of troubling behavior, remember this is a 57-year-old former state senator and Albuquerque city councilor who helps oversee a multimillion-dollar budget funded by property taxes, a career public official who should know the importance of perception.</p>
<p>It’s not a frat boy counting on everything that happens in Vegas — or the outskirts of Manila — staying there. At least it shouldn’t be.</p>
<p>Bernalillo County taxpayers deserve better. Michael Wiener ought to make the right choice for once and step down.</p>
<p>This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.</p> | Editorial: Wiener Should Take High Road For Once | false | https://abqjournal.com/102656/wiener-should-take-high-road-for-once.html | 2012-04-28 | 2least
| Editorial: Wiener Should Take High Road For Once
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<p />
<p>There’s a point when a simple lapse in judgment becomes a pattern of bad judgment. And for a perfect example of that, one need look no further than Bernalillo County Commissioner Michael Wiener.</p>
<p>His latest was posing for photos with scantily clad young women in a red-light district in the Philippines. Perhaps last month’s photo-op, now out there in the blogosphere, is as innocuous as Wiener portrays it — he had gone to the Philippines to visit his daughter and used the four-hour airline layover to check out the sights with his unnamed “girlfriend/fiancee.” When a photographer approached him and asked him to pose with the young women for a group picture, he agreed, even provided his e-mail address so he could get a copy to remember the happy outing.</p>
<p>Or maybe it’s as the professional photographer, who was documenting efforts to fight the sex trade in the area, portrays it — a middle-aged American man in “the second-largest sex tourist destination in the world” in a part of town where “everyone is essentially for sale” asked a stranger to take his photo with several girls in short-shorts and midriffs, then told a lewd joke.</p>
<p>Wiener’s variety of prior ethical lapses could affect which version you believe. In 2008 he panhandled 22 county employees via their county government emails for $100 donations to help retire his campaign debt because “It costs money to run a campaign.” He forwarded an e-mail joke about African Americans, sex and prison showers to other county officials six months after an African American man was beaten into a coma by fellow inmates at the county jail, which he helps oversee. He repeats ad nauseum what he terms “jokes” about a woman being attacked by a gang of men in Central Park, as well as jokes about his last name and that of fellow Commissioner Wayne Johnson. He continues to defend his inappropriate references to LAPD beating victim Rodney King and about how Hispanics stereotypically look. And he claims that when he said “looking good” he was referring to new paint in a commission office and not the young staffer bent over a box of files.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Before deciding if the photos continue his pattern of troubling behavior, remember this is a 57-year-old former state senator and Albuquerque city councilor who helps oversee a multimillion-dollar budget funded by property taxes, a career public official who should know the importance of perception.</p>
<p>It’s not a frat boy counting on everything that happens in Vegas — or the outskirts of Manila — staying there. At least it shouldn’t be.</p>
<p>Bernalillo County taxpayers deserve better. Michael Wiener ought to make the right choice for once and step down.</p>
<p>This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.</p> | 594 |
<p>CARSON CITY — Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske said Wednesday that her office is unaware of any evidence to support <a href="" type="internal">President Donald Trump’s claims of voter</a> <a href="" type="internal">fraud</a>.</p>
<p>“There is no evidence of voters illegally casting ballots at the most recent election in Nevada,” Cegavske, a Republican, said in a statement.</p>
<p>“The secretary of state’s office is aware of attempted fraud related to voter registration in Nevada; however, with the help of local election officials, we were able to investigate and make one arrest.”</p>
<p>She said other investigations are ongoing, and she encouraged anyone with evidence of voter fraud to file a complaint with her office.</p>
<p>Trump claimed millions of people voted illegally in the November election, and on Wednesday he called for an investigation into voter fraud.</p>
<p>The National Association of Secretaries of State also said in a statement that it was not aware of any evidence supporting Trump’s voter fraud claims, but the group added it is “open to learning more about the administration’s concerns.”</p>
<p>Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, who is in Washington, D.C. attending the National Governor’s Association meeting, echoed those sentiments.</p>
<p>During questioning from reporters, the Republican governor was asked about Trump’s claims that massive voter fraud denied him the popular vote.</p>
<p>“It’s over,” Sandoval said. “We need to move on.”</p>
<p>Contact Sandra Chereb at [email protected] or 775-461-3821. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/SandraChereb" type="external">@SandraChereb</a> on Twitter.</p>
<p>Gary Martin contributed to this report.</p> | No evidence of voter fraud in Nevada, election official says | false | http://reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/no-evidence-of-voter-fraud-in-nevada-election-official-says/ | 2017-01-25 | 1right-center
| No evidence of voter fraud in Nevada, election official says
<p>CARSON CITY — Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske said Wednesday that her office is unaware of any evidence to support <a href="" type="internal">President Donald Trump’s claims of voter</a> <a href="" type="internal">fraud</a>.</p>
<p>“There is no evidence of voters illegally casting ballots at the most recent election in Nevada,” Cegavske, a Republican, said in a statement.</p>
<p>“The secretary of state’s office is aware of attempted fraud related to voter registration in Nevada; however, with the help of local election officials, we were able to investigate and make one arrest.”</p>
<p>She said other investigations are ongoing, and she encouraged anyone with evidence of voter fraud to file a complaint with her office.</p>
<p>Trump claimed millions of people voted illegally in the November election, and on Wednesday he called for an investigation into voter fraud.</p>
<p>The National Association of Secretaries of State also said in a statement that it was not aware of any evidence supporting Trump’s voter fraud claims, but the group added it is “open to learning more about the administration’s concerns.”</p>
<p>Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, who is in Washington, D.C. attending the National Governor’s Association meeting, echoed those sentiments.</p>
<p>During questioning from reporters, the Republican governor was asked about Trump’s claims that massive voter fraud denied him the popular vote.</p>
<p>“It’s over,” Sandoval said. “We need to move on.”</p>
<p>Contact Sandra Chereb at [email protected] or 775-461-3821. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/SandraChereb" type="external">@SandraChereb</a> on Twitter.</p>
<p>Gary Martin contributed to this report.</p> | 595 |
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<p />
<p>Louie Burke, a member in good standing of the New Mexico Boxing Hall of Fame, deeply appreciated the honor when it was bestowed last year.</p>
<p>At the same time, he was a bit uncomfortable.</p>
<p>Burke had been a fine boxer, then a highly successful trainer – having guided fellow Las Crucen Austin Trout to a national amateur championship in 2004 and more recently to a professional world title.</p>
<p>Still, Burke wondered, how did he get into the New Mexico Boxing Hall of Fame ahead of Albuquerque’s Bob Foster, a world champion with a remarkable total of 14 successful title defenses and arguably the greatest light heavyweight of all time?</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Bob was a guy I always admired and was one of my idols growing up,” Burke says.</p>
<p>And what about New Mexico’s other world champions – Trout, Danny Romero, Holly Holm, the late Johnny Tapia?</p>
<p>Friday at the Las Cruces Convention Center, those concerns will be addressed. Foster, Tapia, Romero, Holm and Trout will be inducted into the New Mexico Boxing Hall of Fame at an event billed as “A Night of Champions.”</p>
<p>Tapia, who died in May 2012, will be represented by his widow, Teresa. Romero, Holm and Trout have confirmed they plan to attend. Foster, 75 and dealing with health issues, is not confirmed.</p>
<p>After Burke’s induction, he was brought on as a board member by Hall of Fame founder Jerry Martinez. It was Tapia’s death last year, Burke says, that started to make him feel the hall needed an overhaul.</p>
<p>“I just thought it was a shame that (before Tapia’s death) we never, ever got all the world champions under one roof,” he says. “… All the things they’ve done for New Mexico, being world champions. That’s where I’m coming from with this.”</p>
<p>Beyond this year’s world-champion induction class, Burke hopes to help establish some categories – boxer, trainer, promoter, referee, media, etc. – and diversify the Hall of Fame board.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Friday’s event doubles as a fundraiser for the Las Cruces Police Athletic League. The Las Cruces PAL boxing program, headed by Burke, has produced Trout, unbeaten pro prospect Abie Han of El Paso and many of the state’s top amateurs.</p>
<p>The following day, starting at 2 p.m., Trout will host The Austin Trout Youth Boxing Classic at the Convention Center.</p>
<p>For more information on both events, go to aightofchampions.com or email Lorenzo Alba Jr., Las Cruces PAL director, at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>TROUT UPDATE: Burke says Trout, who lost his WBA junior middleweight (154-pound) title to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez via unanimous decision in May, is looking at the winner of the July 19 Ishe Smith-Carlos Molina fight as a possible opponent for the fall. Smith is the IBF junior middleweight champion.</p>
<p>Another possibility is Erislandy Lara, who on June 8 TKO’d Alfredo Angulo for the WBA interim junior middleweight title.</p>
<p>Interim doesn’t really mean interim in this context.</p>
<p>Floyd Mayweather Jr. is that organization’s “super” champion at 154 pounds and Alvarez is the “regular” 154-pound champion. Technically, Lara’s interim-champion status makes him the mandatory challenger for Alvarez’s title.</p>
<p>If that ever happens, it won’t happen for a while. Mayweather and Alvarez, both undefeated, are scheduled to face each other in Las Vegas, Nev., Sept. 14.</p>
<p>“We’re just kind of waiting on the sidelines,” Burke said, “to see what all transpires.”</p>
<p>JUNIOR OLYMPICS: Six New Mexico teenagers have qualified for Junior Olympics nationals, scheduled for Wednesday through Sunday in Mobile, Ala.</p>
<p>Lorenzo Benavidez, Jordanne Garcia, Brianna Herrera, Natalie Martinez, Aaron Angel Perez and Zachary Jacquez advanced by winning at Four Corners regionals in Wheat Ridge, Colo.</p>
<p /> | State's champs to get their due | false | https://abqjournal.com/239864/states-champs-to-get-their-due.html | 2least
| State's champs to get their due
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<p />
<p>Louie Burke, a member in good standing of the New Mexico Boxing Hall of Fame, deeply appreciated the honor when it was bestowed last year.</p>
<p>At the same time, he was a bit uncomfortable.</p>
<p>Burke had been a fine boxer, then a highly successful trainer – having guided fellow Las Crucen Austin Trout to a national amateur championship in 2004 and more recently to a professional world title.</p>
<p>Still, Burke wondered, how did he get into the New Mexico Boxing Hall of Fame ahead of Albuquerque’s Bob Foster, a world champion with a remarkable total of 14 successful title defenses and arguably the greatest light heavyweight of all time?</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Bob was a guy I always admired and was one of my idols growing up,” Burke says.</p>
<p>And what about New Mexico’s other world champions – Trout, Danny Romero, Holly Holm, the late Johnny Tapia?</p>
<p>Friday at the Las Cruces Convention Center, those concerns will be addressed. Foster, Tapia, Romero, Holm and Trout will be inducted into the New Mexico Boxing Hall of Fame at an event billed as “A Night of Champions.”</p>
<p>Tapia, who died in May 2012, will be represented by his widow, Teresa. Romero, Holm and Trout have confirmed they plan to attend. Foster, 75 and dealing with health issues, is not confirmed.</p>
<p>After Burke’s induction, he was brought on as a board member by Hall of Fame founder Jerry Martinez. It was Tapia’s death last year, Burke says, that started to make him feel the hall needed an overhaul.</p>
<p>“I just thought it was a shame that (before Tapia’s death) we never, ever got all the world champions under one roof,” he says. “… All the things they’ve done for New Mexico, being world champions. That’s where I’m coming from with this.”</p>
<p>Beyond this year’s world-champion induction class, Burke hopes to help establish some categories – boxer, trainer, promoter, referee, media, etc. – and diversify the Hall of Fame board.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Friday’s event doubles as a fundraiser for the Las Cruces Police Athletic League. The Las Cruces PAL boxing program, headed by Burke, has produced Trout, unbeaten pro prospect Abie Han of El Paso and many of the state’s top amateurs.</p>
<p>The following day, starting at 2 p.m., Trout will host The Austin Trout Youth Boxing Classic at the Convention Center.</p>
<p>For more information on both events, go to aightofchampions.com or email Lorenzo Alba Jr., Las Cruces PAL director, at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>TROUT UPDATE: Burke says Trout, who lost his WBA junior middleweight (154-pound) title to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez via unanimous decision in May, is looking at the winner of the July 19 Ishe Smith-Carlos Molina fight as a possible opponent for the fall. Smith is the IBF junior middleweight champion.</p>
<p>Another possibility is Erislandy Lara, who on June 8 TKO’d Alfredo Angulo for the WBA interim junior middleweight title.</p>
<p>Interim doesn’t really mean interim in this context.</p>
<p>Floyd Mayweather Jr. is that organization’s “super” champion at 154 pounds and Alvarez is the “regular” 154-pound champion. Technically, Lara’s interim-champion status makes him the mandatory challenger for Alvarez’s title.</p>
<p>If that ever happens, it won’t happen for a while. Mayweather and Alvarez, both undefeated, are scheduled to face each other in Las Vegas, Nev., Sept. 14.</p>
<p>“We’re just kind of waiting on the sidelines,” Burke said, “to see what all transpires.”</p>
<p>JUNIOR OLYMPICS: Six New Mexico teenagers have qualified for Junior Olympics nationals, scheduled for Wednesday through Sunday in Mobile, Ala.</p>
<p>Lorenzo Benavidez, Jordanne Garcia, Brianna Herrera, Natalie Martinez, Aaron Angel Perez and Zachary Jacquez advanced by winning at Four Corners regionals in Wheat Ridge, Colo.</p>
<p /> | 596 |
|
<p>On June 22, the Paraguayan Congress <a href="" type="internal">impeached</a> President Fernando Lugo, a progressive who assumed office in 2008. Although <a href="" type="internal">technically legal</a>, Lugo’s removal threatens the very integrity of democracy in Paraguay. It is the latest in a disconcerting series of attacks against progressive governments in South America that highlights the vulnerability of its nascent democratic institutions and calls into question the trend of democratization in the region.</p>
<p>Lugo’s victorious election campaign was historic. It ended more than 60 years of dominance by the Colorado Party. This right-wing coalition of landed and military elites used violence and coercion to dominate Paraguay through the extensive state bureaucracy created by dictator Alfredo Strossner, a Colorado strongman who ruled from 1954 to 1989. The Party’s legitimacy gradually eroded through its land-grabs and corruption scandals involving high-level officials. It was also <a href="" type="internal">implicated</a> in political assassinations, most notably that of Vice President Luis Maria Argana in 1999, after which President Raul Cubas was forced to resign and flee the country.</p>
<p>Lugo, a progressive who proposed numerous social reforms, was widely known in Paraguay as the “bishop of the poor.” Pledging to fight corruption, reduce poverty, and enact agrarian reform in a country where 38 percent of people live in poverty and <a href="http://www.mag.gov.py/" type="external">2 percent</a> of the population controls 75 percent of fertile land, Lugo won 41 percent of the popular vote in 2008, beating out the Colorado candidate by 10 percentage points. Despite this electoral success, the conservative legislature and the tenuous coalition of center-right parties that helped bring him to power systematically <a href="" type="internal">frustrated</a> Lugo’s progressive efforts at reform.</p>
<p>The Impeachment</p>
<p>Lugo was impeached on grounds of “ <a href="" type="internal">malfeasance</a>” after 17 people were killed in a clash between police and landless squatters protesting land inequality. This legal formality, however, obscures the fact that Lugo’s ouster, long-desired by those who opposed his democratic reforms, was politically motivated.</p>
<p>A leaked <a href="" type="internal">2009 U.S. diplomatic cable</a> claimed that the “shared goal” of General Lino Oviedo and ex-President Nicanor Frutos, both Colorado party members, was “to change the current political equation, break the political deadlock in Congress, impeach Lugo and regain their own political relevance.” The cable, which was classified as “secret,” includes this prophetic sentence: “Oviedo’s dream scenario involves legally impeaching Lugo, even if on spurious grounds.”</p>
<p>South American governments from all across the political spectrum <a href="" type="internal">immediately condemned</a> Lugo’s abrupt removal (he was given less than 24 hours notice and just <a href="" type="internal">two hours</a> to defend himself). <a href="" type="internal">Mercosur</a> suspended Paraguay and refused to recognize the new government. Venezuela unilaterally halted all fuel shipments to Asuncion. Brazil and Mexico withdrew their ambassadors, as did Colombia, whose president, Juan Manuel Santos, is a staunch conservative. Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner publicly called Lugo’s impeachment a “coup d’état.”</p>
<p>Regional Trend?</p>
<p>The removal of Lugo is particularly disturbing because it is the latest in a series of actions against progressive populist governments in Latin America. In a <a href="" type="internal">2009 coup</a>, democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who had raised the national <a href="" type="internal">minimum wage</a> despite strong opposition from the business elite, was removed at gunpoint. In 2010, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa was tear-gassed, assaulted, and held captive by insurgent police officers in an <a href="" type="internal">attempted coup</a> that ended in a shootout.</p>
<p>An international <a href="" type="internal">fact-finding team</a> arrived in Asuncion on Monday to collect information on the events leading up to the impeachment, Lugo’s satellite government, and the major players in the recent events. The U.S. <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g_6v2H3TMGUm_lvNuS9ToDbUhNxA?docId=CNG.239964f1ca5382554f694a8a3bbf2d84.3b1" type="external">State Department</a> said it was “quite concerned” about the rapidity of Lugo’s impeachment. The United States is unlikely to take a more definitive stance until the OAS team submits its report in the coming days.</p>
<p>One thing is certain: few people want a repeat of what happened in Honduras. Since the 2009 coup, political dissidents have been assassinated, minorities have been targeted, and violence and disorder have ensued. <a href="" type="internal">Honduras</a> now has the world’s highest homicide rate.</p>
<p>The fact-finding mission’s report should elucidate the details of a political upheaval that remains opaque. So far, there is no indication that any outside powers played a role in the coup.</p>
<p>The impeachment’s rapidity and the vote’s unprecedented margin (in the House of Representatives, the vote was 73 in favor and 1 against impeachment) suggest that Lugo’s impeachment was not a response to his “malfeasance” surrounding the killings by the police. It was coordinated and politically motivated, likely by domestic landowning and business elites, with powerful allies in Congress, who opposed Lugo’s progressive agenda and preferred a return to the right-wing Colorado party.</p>
<p>Ironically, the state that has benefitted the most from Lugo’s ouster may be Venezuela. Venezuela was selected to replace Paraguay in Mercosur after Paraguay’s membership was suspended.</p>
<p>Gabriel Rossman is an intern with Foreign Policy in Focus, where this essay originally appeared.</p> | Return of the Coups | true | https://counterpunch.org/2012/07/13/return-of-the-coups/ | 2012-07-13 | 4left
| Return of the Coups
<p>On June 22, the Paraguayan Congress <a href="" type="internal">impeached</a> President Fernando Lugo, a progressive who assumed office in 2008. Although <a href="" type="internal">technically legal</a>, Lugo’s removal threatens the very integrity of democracy in Paraguay. It is the latest in a disconcerting series of attacks against progressive governments in South America that highlights the vulnerability of its nascent democratic institutions and calls into question the trend of democratization in the region.</p>
<p>Lugo’s victorious election campaign was historic. It ended more than 60 years of dominance by the Colorado Party. This right-wing coalition of landed and military elites used violence and coercion to dominate Paraguay through the extensive state bureaucracy created by dictator Alfredo Strossner, a Colorado strongman who ruled from 1954 to 1989. The Party’s legitimacy gradually eroded through its land-grabs and corruption scandals involving high-level officials. It was also <a href="" type="internal">implicated</a> in political assassinations, most notably that of Vice President Luis Maria Argana in 1999, after which President Raul Cubas was forced to resign and flee the country.</p>
<p>Lugo, a progressive who proposed numerous social reforms, was widely known in Paraguay as the “bishop of the poor.” Pledging to fight corruption, reduce poverty, and enact agrarian reform in a country where 38 percent of people live in poverty and <a href="http://www.mag.gov.py/" type="external">2 percent</a> of the population controls 75 percent of fertile land, Lugo won 41 percent of the popular vote in 2008, beating out the Colorado candidate by 10 percentage points. Despite this electoral success, the conservative legislature and the tenuous coalition of center-right parties that helped bring him to power systematically <a href="" type="internal">frustrated</a> Lugo’s progressive efforts at reform.</p>
<p>The Impeachment</p>
<p>Lugo was impeached on grounds of “ <a href="" type="internal">malfeasance</a>” after 17 people were killed in a clash between police and landless squatters protesting land inequality. This legal formality, however, obscures the fact that Lugo’s ouster, long-desired by those who opposed his democratic reforms, was politically motivated.</p>
<p>A leaked <a href="" type="internal">2009 U.S. diplomatic cable</a> claimed that the “shared goal” of General Lino Oviedo and ex-President Nicanor Frutos, both Colorado party members, was “to change the current political equation, break the political deadlock in Congress, impeach Lugo and regain their own political relevance.” The cable, which was classified as “secret,” includes this prophetic sentence: “Oviedo’s dream scenario involves legally impeaching Lugo, even if on spurious grounds.”</p>
<p>South American governments from all across the political spectrum <a href="" type="internal">immediately condemned</a> Lugo’s abrupt removal (he was given less than 24 hours notice and just <a href="" type="internal">two hours</a> to defend himself). <a href="" type="internal">Mercosur</a> suspended Paraguay and refused to recognize the new government. Venezuela unilaterally halted all fuel shipments to Asuncion. Brazil and Mexico withdrew their ambassadors, as did Colombia, whose president, Juan Manuel Santos, is a staunch conservative. Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner publicly called Lugo’s impeachment a “coup d’état.”</p>
<p>Regional Trend?</p>
<p>The removal of Lugo is particularly disturbing because it is the latest in a series of actions against progressive populist governments in Latin America. In a <a href="" type="internal">2009 coup</a>, democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who had raised the national <a href="" type="internal">minimum wage</a> despite strong opposition from the business elite, was removed at gunpoint. In 2010, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa was tear-gassed, assaulted, and held captive by insurgent police officers in an <a href="" type="internal">attempted coup</a> that ended in a shootout.</p>
<p>An international <a href="" type="internal">fact-finding team</a> arrived in Asuncion on Monday to collect information on the events leading up to the impeachment, Lugo’s satellite government, and the major players in the recent events. The U.S. <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g_6v2H3TMGUm_lvNuS9ToDbUhNxA?docId=CNG.239964f1ca5382554f694a8a3bbf2d84.3b1" type="external">State Department</a> said it was “quite concerned” about the rapidity of Lugo’s impeachment. The United States is unlikely to take a more definitive stance until the OAS team submits its report in the coming days.</p>
<p>One thing is certain: few people want a repeat of what happened in Honduras. Since the 2009 coup, political dissidents have been assassinated, minorities have been targeted, and violence and disorder have ensued. <a href="" type="internal">Honduras</a> now has the world’s highest homicide rate.</p>
<p>The fact-finding mission’s report should elucidate the details of a political upheaval that remains opaque. So far, there is no indication that any outside powers played a role in the coup.</p>
<p>The impeachment’s rapidity and the vote’s unprecedented margin (in the House of Representatives, the vote was 73 in favor and 1 against impeachment) suggest that Lugo’s impeachment was not a response to his “malfeasance” surrounding the killings by the police. It was coordinated and politically motivated, likely by domestic landowning and business elites, with powerful allies in Congress, who opposed Lugo’s progressive agenda and preferred a return to the right-wing Colorado party.</p>
<p>Ironically, the state that has benefitted the most from Lugo’s ouster may be Venezuela. Venezuela was selected to replace Paraguay in Mercosur after Paraguay’s membership was suspended.</p>
<p>Gabriel Rossman is an intern with Foreign Policy in Focus, where this essay originally appeared.</p> | 597 |
<p>By Joseph White</p>
<p>ANN ARBOR, Mich. (Reuters) – U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said on Tuesday that the Trump administration’s proposal to boost spending on new roads, bridges and other infrastructure will give preference to projects that promise innovation and new technology.</p>
<p>Chao said the administration plans to send out principles for its long-awaited infrastructure spending plan later this fall. The plan is expected to offer an easier path for private investors to finance and profit from public infrastructure projects. Automakers and safety advocates have called for investment to develop infrastructure that can monitor traffic, or help guide autonomous vehicles.</p>
<p>Chao said the Trump plan will provide for competition for federal money. “Those projects that have greater innovation will get a greater share of federal dollars,” she said.</p>
<p>Chao appeared in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at a facility where automakers and others are testing technology that allows vehicles to communicate with street lights, or operate autonomously.</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> | Trump infrastructure plan will favor 'innovation': Chao | false | https://newsline.com/trump-infrastructure-plan-will-favor-039innovation039-chao/ | 2017-09-12 | 1right-center
| Trump infrastructure plan will favor 'innovation': Chao
<p>By Joseph White</p>
<p>ANN ARBOR, Mich. (Reuters) – U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said on Tuesday that the Trump administration’s proposal to boost spending on new roads, bridges and other infrastructure will give preference to projects that promise innovation and new technology.</p>
<p>Chao said the administration plans to send out principles for its long-awaited infrastructure spending plan later this fall. The plan is expected to offer an easier path for private investors to finance and profit from public infrastructure projects. Automakers and safety advocates have called for investment to develop infrastructure that can monitor traffic, or help guide autonomous vehicles.</p>
<p>Chao said the Trump plan will provide for competition for federal money. “Those projects that have greater innovation will get a greater share of federal dollars,” she said.</p>
<p>Chao appeared in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at a facility where automakers and others are testing technology that allows vehicles to communicate with street lights, or operate autonomously.</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> | 598 |
<p />
<p>It wasn’t very long ago that you rarely heard words like “entrepreneurship” and “leadership” in business conversation. People just started businesses and ran companies. That’s what they did, so that’s what they identified with. Their jobs. Their work. Their companies. Not labels.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>To my knowledge, that hasn’t changed. But somehow, right under our very noses, emerged a massively overhyped fad made up of crazed zealots and opportunists that are essentially co-opting and capitalizing on the most critical function in the business world: those who start and run companies.</p>
<p>Today we have countless authors, bloggers, coaches, academics and gurus – self-proclaimed experts who, with rare exception, have never actually run a business or led a real company. And yet, without any first-hand experience, they’ve become preachers on a subject they have absolutely no visceral feel for.</p>
<p>Let me tell you why that’s an issue. Building a business into a thriving enterprise is not a skill you’re born with. It’s not a discipline you can learn in school. And while you can learn the fundamentals – the various functions of how a business operates – getting good at it is almost entirely experiential.</p>
<p>Now, here’s where this gets interesting. If you read books by some of the great management consultants and CEOs of our time – Peter Drucker, Andy Grove, and Mark McCormack, to name a few – you won’t find words like “leadership” and “entrepreneurship” thrown around a lot because they’re fairly amorphous terms.</p>
<p>No wonder we now have an enormous underclass of self-described entrepreneurs and leaders – CEOs of one-person companies. A more accurate description is that they’re self-employed. They’ve abandoned the labor force by the millions, which is why we actually have the lowest workforce participation rate and fewest new business starts in three decades.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>It seems the more we talk about entrepreneurship and leadership – not just talk but also generate, consume and propagate enormous amounts of content and communication – the less we actually do about it. No wonder. Everyone’s too busy blogging, reading, commenting, tweeting, sharing, posting and liking to get much done.</p>
<p>A couple of months ago, Stanford University business professor <a href="http://jeffreypfeffer.com" type="external">Jeffrey Pfeffer Opens a New Window.</a> published a book called “ <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062383167/leadership-bs" type="external">Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time Opens a New Window.</a>.” Pfeffer’s premise is that what he calls “the multibillion dollar leadership industry” has done little to improve executive careers, toxic workplaces and employee engagement.</p>
<p>Of course that’s true. What’s also true is that amateurs now dominate the leadership genre and the content they generate is overwhelmingly BS. After all, the vast majority of information and communication propagated through blogs and social media is user-generated content dominated by popular myths, feel-good fads, inspirational fluff and pseudoscience.</p>
<p>But this issue goes so much deeper than that. Of course we’d all like our bosses to be effective people managers instead of dysfunctional tyrants who rose to their level of incompetence via the Peter Principle. We’d like them to be more motivating, empowering and respectful, rather than the abusive, egotistical jerks we so often find at the top.</p>
<p>There’s just one problem with that. We all want happy marriages, parents who are supportive and wise, families that don’t resemble dystopian sitcoms, communities where everyone gets along and cultures that aren’t divided by political factions and civil wars. What in the world makes us think we can control how our companies work when we can’t control how any other organization of two or more people functions?</p>
<p>Every organization on Earth is a construct of man and a function of the human condition, meaning it’s more about human psychology and relationships than anything else. As long as there are dysfunctional individuals and differences among us, there will be dysfunctional families, organizations, communities, cities, nations and yes, companies and their cultures.</p>
<p>That’s why the same ideals that built a great culture can also build great companies. Concepts like freedom, meritocracy, competition, personal accountability and transparency are all critical to free markets. Employees thrive at companies like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) because they’re built on a foundation of principles that are very similar to those that built this nation.</p>
<p>But there’s a catch. Even if CEOs could know all there is to know about business, markets, products, technology, finance, economics and management, there’s still a complex set of variables we simplistically call the human element that determines how they run their companies. And you simply can’t regulate or legislate that or risk losing what makes free markets work.</p>
<p>Truth is, of the hundreds of successful founders, executives and VCs I’ve known over the decades, none ever attributed their accomplishments to a book, a coach, a professor or an inspirational speaker. It’s all about smarts, guts, good behavior, smart decisions and experience. And while they all had mentors who helped them along the way, they were those who came before them, not amateurs with fancy labels.</p> | Calling BS on the Leadership Business | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2015/11/17/calling-bs-on-leadership-business.html | 2016-03-04 | 0right
| Calling BS on the Leadership Business
<p />
<p>It wasn’t very long ago that you rarely heard words like “entrepreneurship” and “leadership” in business conversation. People just started businesses and ran companies. That’s what they did, so that’s what they identified with. Their jobs. Their work. Their companies. Not labels.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>To my knowledge, that hasn’t changed. But somehow, right under our very noses, emerged a massively overhyped fad made up of crazed zealots and opportunists that are essentially co-opting and capitalizing on the most critical function in the business world: those who start and run companies.</p>
<p>Today we have countless authors, bloggers, coaches, academics and gurus – self-proclaimed experts who, with rare exception, have never actually run a business or led a real company. And yet, without any first-hand experience, they’ve become preachers on a subject they have absolutely no visceral feel for.</p>
<p>Let me tell you why that’s an issue. Building a business into a thriving enterprise is not a skill you’re born with. It’s not a discipline you can learn in school. And while you can learn the fundamentals – the various functions of how a business operates – getting good at it is almost entirely experiential.</p>
<p>Now, here’s where this gets interesting. If you read books by some of the great management consultants and CEOs of our time – Peter Drucker, Andy Grove, and Mark McCormack, to name a few – you won’t find words like “leadership” and “entrepreneurship” thrown around a lot because they’re fairly amorphous terms.</p>
<p>No wonder we now have an enormous underclass of self-described entrepreneurs and leaders – CEOs of one-person companies. A more accurate description is that they’re self-employed. They’ve abandoned the labor force by the millions, which is why we actually have the lowest workforce participation rate and fewest new business starts in three decades.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>It seems the more we talk about entrepreneurship and leadership – not just talk but also generate, consume and propagate enormous amounts of content and communication – the less we actually do about it. No wonder. Everyone’s too busy blogging, reading, commenting, tweeting, sharing, posting and liking to get much done.</p>
<p>A couple of months ago, Stanford University business professor <a href="http://jeffreypfeffer.com" type="external">Jeffrey Pfeffer Opens a New Window.</a> published a book called “ <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062383167/leadership-bs" type="external">Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time Opens a New Window.</a>.” Pfeffer’s premise is that what he calls “the multibillion dollar leadership industry” has done little to improve executive careers, toxic workplaces and employee engagement.</p>
<p>Of course that’s true. What’s also true is that amateurs now dominate the leadership genre and the content they generate is overwhelmingly BS. After all, the vast majority of information and communication propagated through blogs and social media is user-generated content dominated by popular myths, feel-good fads, inspirational fluff and pseudoscience.</p>
<p>But this issue goes so much deeper than that. Of course we’d all like our bosses to be effective people managers instead of dysfunctional tyrants who rose to their level of incompetence via the Peter Principle. We’d like them to be more motivating, empowering and respectful, rather than the abusive, egotistical jerks we so often find at the top.</p>
<p>There’s just one problem with that. We all want happy marriages, parents who are supportive and wise, families that don’t resemble dystopian sitcoms, communities where everyone gets along and cultures that aren’t divided by political factions and civil wars. What in the world makes us think we can control how our companies work when we can’t control how any other organization of two or more people functions?</p>
<p>Every organization on Earth is a construct of man and a function of the human condition, meaning it’s more about human psychology and relationships than anything else. As long as there are dysfunctional individuals and differences among us, there will be dysfunctional families, organizations, communities, cities, nations and yes, companies and their cultures.</p>
<p>That’s why the same ideals that built a great culture can also build great companies. Concepts like freedom, meritocracy, competition, personal accountability and transparency are all critical to free markets. Employees thrive at companies like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) because they’re built on a foundation of principles that are very similar to those that built this nation.</p>
<p>But there’s a catch. Even if CEOs could know all there is to know about business, markets, products, technology, finance, economics and management, there’s still a complex set of variables we simplistically call the human element that determines how they run their companies. And you simply can’t regulate or legislate that or risk losing what makes free markets work.</p>
<p>Truth is, of the hundreds of successful founders, executives and VCs I’ve known over the decades, none ever attributed their accomplishments to a book, a coach, a professor or an inspirational speaker. It’s all about smarts, guts, good behavior, smart decisions and experience. And while they all had mentors who helped them along the way, they were those who came before them, not amateurs with fancy labels.</p> | 599 |
Subsets and Splits