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<p>Digital currency prices wobbled Thursday after South Korea, a hotbed for currencies like bitcoin, said it will consider a trading ban.</p>
<p>The country's justice minister said South Korea is planning a ban, but the presidential office said later that a ban is under review. No policy changes have been made, and while the country's justice ministry has taken a stern stance against the currencies, other agencies oppose an outright ban.</p>
<p>Also on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that China ordered that bitcoin "mining" operations be shut down there. Those were just the latest signs that regulators around the world are taking a harder stance on the currencies as their values skyrocketed. Mining involves having computers solve complex mathematical problems to confirm transactions. Miners are rewarded with bitcoin.</p>
<p>The price of bitcoin slid 6 percent, to $13,939 as of 1:30 p.m. ET, according to Coindesk. Ethereum, another popular digital currency, fell as much as 8 percent early on and was little changed from the day before at $1,248.</p>
<p>During 2017 the price of bitcoin surged from under $1,000 to almost $14,000 by the end of the year, and ethereum jumped from about $8 to $734. That has experts warning that both are speculative bubbles that could burst any time.</p>
<p>South Korea, which is also among the biggest bitcoin markets, has been looking for ways to regulate trading. In December its financial regulator ruled out using bitcoin for derivate products such as futures.</p>
<p>Bitcoin futures began trading on two U.S. financial exchanges last month, but bitcoins themselves continue to be traded only on private exchanges, which are essentially unregulated. Futures allow investors to make bets on what bitcoin's price will do in the coming months and they are traded in many kinds of commodities including crude oil, wheat and copper. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission recently proposed regulating bitcoin as a commodity.</p>
<p>Japan, the world's largest market for bitcoin trading, is the only major advanced economy with a licensing system for digital currency intermediaries such as exchanges and payment providers.</p>
<p>Global regulators are also paying more attention to initial coin offerings, which allow startups to use the technology behind bitcoin, known as blockchain, to fund projects. China banned those offerings last month, while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stopped two planned offerings. There are no regulations over the creation and use of virtual currencies, and the nature of the transactions make them hard to trace.</p>
<p>Some companies are scrambling to associate themselves with digital currencies and the technology behind them in hopes of tapping the investor mania around them.</p>
<p>The stock of Long Island Iced Tea Corp. soared last month after the company said it plans to change its name to Long Blockchain Corp. The company said it wants to focus more on blockchain technology while continuing to make beverages.</p>
<p>Eastman Kodak more than doubled in value this week after it launched KodakOne and KodakCoin, which will allow photographers to register work that they can license and then receive payment.</p>
<p>Digital currency prices wobbled Thursday after South Korea, a hotbed for currencies like bitcoin, said it will consider a trading ban.</p>
<p>The country's justice minister said South Korea is planning a ban, but the presidential office said later that a ban is under review. No policy changes have been made, and while the country's justice ministry has taken a stern stance against the currencies, other agencies oppose an outright ban.</p>
<p>Also on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that China ordered that bitcoin "mining" operations be shut down there. Those were just the latest signs that regulators around the world are taking a harder stance on the currencies as their values skyrocketed. Mining involves having computers solve complex mathematical problems to confirm transactions. Miners are rewarded with bitcoin.</p>
<p>The price of bitcoin slid 6 percent, to $13,939 as of 1:30 p.m. ET, according to Coindesk. Ethereum, another popular digital currency, fell as much as 8 percent early on and was little changed from the day before at $1,248.</p>
<p>During 2017 the price of bitcoin surged from under $1,000 to almost $14,000 by the end of the year, and ethereum jumped from about $8 to $734. That has experts warning that both are speculative bubbles that could burst any time.</p>
<p>South Korea, which is also among the biggest bitcoin markets, has been looking for ways to regulate trading. In December its financial regulator ruled out using bitcoin for derivate products such as futures.</p>
<p>Bitcoin futures began trading on two U.S. financial exchanges last month, but bitcoins themselves continue to be traded only on private exchanges, which are essentially unregulated. Futures allow investors to make bets on what bitcoin's price will do in the coming months and they are traded in many kinds of commodities including crude oil, wheat and copper. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission recently proposed regulating bitcoin as a commodity.</p>
<p>Japan, the world's largest market for bitcoin trading, is the only major advanced economy with a licensing system for digital currency intermediaries such as exchanges and payment providers.</p>
<p>Global regulators are also paying more attention to initial coin offerings, which allow startups to use the technology behind bitcoin, known as blockchain, to fund projects. China banned those offerings last month, while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stopped two planned offerings. There are no regulations over the creation and use of virtual currencies, and the nature of the transactions make them hard to trace.</p>
<p>Some companies are scrambling to associate themselves with digital currencies and the technology behind them in hopes of tapping the investor mania around them.</p>
<p>The stock of Long Island Iced Tea Corp. soared last month after the company said it plans to change its name to Long Blockchain Corp. The company said it wants to focus more on blockchain technology while continuing to make beverages.</p>
<p>Eastman Kodak more than doubled in value this week after it launched KodakOne and KodakCoin, which will allow photographers to register work that they can license and then receive payment.</p> | Digital currencies dip as South Korea considers trading ban | false | https://apnews.com/amp/0989585816a84a9c967d9de481b8d3c8 | 2018-01-11 | 2 |
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<p>DENVER — A Colorado man accused of performing an illegal surgery to remove a transgender woman’s testicles could spend years in prison, but the woman doesn’t want that.</p>
<p>KUSA-TV reported ( <a href="http://on9news.tv/2qgrWpx" type="external">http://on9news.tv/2qgrWpx</a> ) Thursday that the woman had asked 57-year-old James Pennington to do the surgery. She says she doesn’t want to press charges — but that decision is up to the district attorney.</p>
<p>Pennington is charged with second-degree assault and unauthorized practice of medicine.</p>
<p>The woman’s lawyer David Beller had said his client feels the surgery had been an act of compassion. Beller says she “begged” Pennington to perform the surgery.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Beller says many transgender people do not pursue legal surgery for changes to their bodies because of the high cost and lack of insurance coverage.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: KUSA-TV, <a href="http://www.9news.com" type="external">http://www.9news.com</a></p> | Transgender woman doesn’t want man who did surgery charged | false | https://abqjournal.com/1008589/transgender-woman-doesnt-want-man-who-did-surgery-charged.html | 2017-05-25 | 2 |
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<p>At the end of March, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, with U.S. political and military support, launched Operation Knight’s Assault to assert government control over Basra and several other cities dominated by rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. George Bush called the assault a “defining moment in the history of a free Iraq.”</p>
<p>The U.S. and the Iraqi government–chiefly, Maliki’s Dawa Party and his backers in the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI)–hoped to assert central government control over Basra’s oil fields and port, and block the Sadrists from winning in October’s provincial elections. Success would have ensured their ability to establish a federal structure in Iraq and implement a new oil law allowing U.S. multinationals to invest and develop Iraq’s oil industry.</p>
<p>The Sadrists foiled these plans by holding their ground in Basra. The government offensive sparked demonstrations across Shia Iraq, with Mahdi forces launching mortar attacks on U.S. positions inside the Green Zone in Baghdad. After a week of fighting, Iran stepped in to broker a ceasefire.</p>
<p>Thus, Iran and Sadr emerged as the victors. Sensing his advantage, Sadr has called for a million-strong demonstration against the occupation on April 9, the anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the U.S. and the Iraqi government are promising to crack down on “illegal militias” and have continued their attack on Sadr strongholds in Sadr City and elsewhere.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>HOW DID the Sadrist movement arise, and what are the sources of its conflict with other Shia forces, such as the clergy-dominated Dawa party and ISCI? A new book by journalist Patrick Cockburn–called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1416551476/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq</a>–provides answers.</p>
<p>The Shia Islamist currents represented by Sadr on the one hand and the ruling Shia parites on the other were a minority until the last few decades. Iraqi politics was dominated by various secular forces–nationalism, Baath pan-Arabism and Communism.</p>
<p>As Cockburn writes, “Few paid much attention to the radical potential of Shi’ism before the Iranian revolution of 1978-79; the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon following the Israeli invasion of 1982; and the Shia uprising in Iraq in 1991, followed by their gradual takeover of power after the U.S. invasion of 2003.”</p>
<p>The Sadrs, one of the great families of the Shia clerical establishment, played a key role in forging Shia Islamism in Iraq in the run-up to the secular nationalist revolution in 1958. Muqtada’s father-in-law, Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, along with a layer of radical young clerics, founded the Dawa Party in 1957.</p>
<p>Mixing nationalist aims along with a religious commitment to defend Islam and its institutions from the secular threat, the Dawa Party aimed to build an alternative to the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), which recruited heavily among impoverished Shia workers.</p>
<p>Dawa was the source of all the major currents of Islamism in Iraq today, from the ISCI to the Sadrists. Baqir was forced out of the party in 1960, but he continued his political activism in opposition to the Baath Party, which eventually seized power in a coup in 1968. With U.S. backing, the Baathists mounted a relentless campaign of persecution against all its political opponents, from the ICP to Kurdish parties to Dawa and Baqir’s Shia followers.</p>
<p>Baqir and Dawa’s conflict with the Baathists came to a head in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution, when the Shia clergy led by Ayatollah Khomeini seized power. Baqir became an open advocate of Islamic revolution in Iraq.</p>
<p>Faced with a Shia revolution in neighboring Iran and within Iraq itself, Saddam Hussein seized control of the Baath Party and the Iraqi government. The new regime banned the Dawa party, making membership in it punishable by death; it arrested and executed Baqir; and it launched a disastrous eight-year war against Iran.</p>
<p>During the war, another great clerical family, the Hakims, called a meeting of Shia Islamists in Iran in 1982 to form the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI, recently changed to ISCI). The Iranian state backed SCIRI and built up its Badr Brigades as a force it hoped to install in Baghdad after defeating Saddam. The Badr Brigades even fought on Iran’s side in the war against Iraq. As a result, Dawa, which had Iraqi nationalist leanings, distanced itself from SCIRI.</p>
<p>Cockburn argues that SCIRI “swiftly acquired a dubious reputation in Iraq for doing the Iranians’ dirty work. ‘They tortured Iraqi prisoners during the war,’ says one professor at Najaf University. ‘The Sunni and the Shia twice as badly because they used to ask them: Why did you join Saddam’s army if you are a Shia?’ In the coming years, SCIRI never quite shook the reputation, in the minds of many Iraqis, of being stooges of Iran who tortured their fellow countrymen.”</p>
<p>Inside Iraq, the clerical establishment advocated a return to quietism, rejection of the Sadrists and Khomeini, and accommodation to Saddam’s dictatorship. This strategy didn’t resonate with the Shia masses, however. In the wake of Saddam’s defeat in his next disastrous war, the 1991 Gulf War, Shia troops revolted in southern Iraq, setting off a regional rebellion to accompany a Kurdish uprising in the North.</p>
<p>The U.S. government under George Bush Sr. feared the development of another Islamic revolution and therefore refused to aid the Shia. Iran, SCIRI and the Badr brigades also balked at aiding the rebellion, out of fear of a hopeless confrontation with the U.S. Left with a free hand, Saddam’s forces massacred 150,000 Shia. The regime also attacked the Kurds in the North, driving millions into Turkey and Iran. But after an international outcry, the U.S. imposed a no-fly zone and cultivated the Kurdish parties as their key ally in Iraq.</p>
<p>Despite the genocidal U.S.-UN sanctions imposed on Iraq, Saddam was able consolidate his police state around Sunnis from his tribe, and carried on the oppression of both Shia and Kurds. He attempted to co-opt Baqir al-Sadr’s cousin and Muqtada’s father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, to provide the regime with a base among Shia.</p>
<p>Sadiq used the space to develop his own distinctive brand of Islamism and never expressed support for the regime. In contrast to Baqir’s orientation on political struggle, Sadiq pioneered a new Islamism focused on waging a cultural revolution and advocacy for economic grievances of the Shia poor, suffering under the sanctions.</p>
<p>Sadiq built a mass base in the city that would eventually be named after him, Sadr City in Baghdad. In his Friday sermons, he denounced U.S. imperialism, Israel, the devil, the sins of the West and economic injustice. He also advocated Sunni and Shia unity, thereby posing an Islamist alternative to the more moderate clergy and the exiled parties.</p>
<p>SCIRI and the other exiles abroad denounced Sadiq as an agent of Saddam and looked down on his appeal to the Shia poor. Their base was among the elite–the petty bourgeoisie and other expatriate ruling classes. Moreover, Sadiq infuriated Iran by proclaiming himself supreme leader of the Shia in Iraq. The Iranian clergy closed down his offices in Iran and expelled his representatives.</p>
<p>Increasingly, however, Sadiq came into conflict with Saddam, who feared, rightly, that the Sadrist movement would be a threat to the regime. Saddam moved to suppress the movement, murdering Sadiq and two of his four sons in February 1999.</p>
<p>The Shia masses rose up in the al-Sadr Intifada, and the regime again carried out mass collective punishment against them. Once again, Iran, SCIRI and the Badr brigades refused to lift a finger to support the uprising. Outraged at this betrayal, the Sadrists chanted in their meetings, “Long live al-Sadr! The al-Hakim family are traitors.”</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>IN THE run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, SCIRI, Dawa and prominent secular Shia collaborated with the U.S. in the hopes of establishing themselves in the new Iraqi government.</p>
<p>Sadiq’s son, Muqtada al-Sadr, pursued a different course. He survived the assassination of his father and two brothers, went underground and maintained a skeletal structure of his father’s movement. He held SCIRI, the Dawa Party and the clergy in contempt for collaborating with U.S. imperialism or Iran, or standing passively by.</p>
<p>Once the U.S. invaded, Muqtada emerged from the underground, quickly established control of Sadr City and reached out to the Shia south. He rebuilt the Sadrist mass movement among the Shia poor that advocated Shia-Sunni unity in opposition to the occupation.</p>
<p>Almost immediately, the schisms between the Shia factions emerged. SCIRI, Dawa and other Shia formations participated in the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). In contrast, Muqtada denounced the IGC as a tool of the occupation and set up the Madhi Army to provide security amid the post-occupation chaos and to resist the occupation.</p>
<p>The U.S. immediately targeted Muqtada. They accused him of murdering the cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei, repeatedly battled the Mahdi fighters and finally shut down the Sadrists’ newspaper. In response, while the Sunni resistance rose up in Falluja, Sadr’s followers rose up in Sadr City, across the South and finally in the holy city of Najaf.</p>
<p>For a brief moment, a united Arab resistance against the occupation seemed about to emerge. But the U.S. struck a deal with the leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, which enabled Muqtada to survive, but also broke the possibility of a joint resistance.</p>
<p>Sistani compelled all the Shia parties to campaign for the series of elections that eventually established the Iraqi government, something that alienated the Sunnis who increasingly feared a Shia majority. The Sunnis also contributed to the breakdown of Arab nationalism by refusing to purge al-Qaeda forces who were carrying out increasing attacks on Shia.</p>
<p>Sadr shifted from military opposition to the U.S. toward politics and used the Mahdi Army to impose his puritanical religious edicts and self-defense against al-Qaeda and U.S. attacks.</p>
<p>The Shia parties divided the government among themselves, taking over its various institutions as bases to compete with one another, and against the Sunnis and Kurds. ISCI controlled the Security Ministry, filling its forces with the Badr Brigades. The Sadrists gained control of the Health Ministry and sent the Madhi Army into the police.</p>
<p>Unlike other Shia parties, however, Muqtada maintained his opposition to the U.S. occupation, denouncing the Americans for failing to meet the needs of the Shia poor. As a result, as the U.S. failed to reconstruct the society or provide basic security, Muqtada’s popularity soared among the Shia poor–while ISCI and Dawa lost support because they were tainted by open collaboration with the occupiers.</p>
<p>When a full-scale civil war broke out between Sunnis and Shia after the bombing of al-Askari Mosque in February 2006, the Madhi Army defied Muqtada’s public call for Shia-Sunni unity and joined in an ethnic-cleansing campaign of atrocities against Sunnis. Sadr’s forces won the Battle of Baghdad, asserting control over half the city and 80 percent of Shia neighborhoods.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>FACED WITH a failing occupation, the Bush administration opted for the so-called “surge.” This involved making peace with the Sunni tribes, arming them to attack al-Qaeda and setting their sites on Sadr’s Madhi Army in Baghdad and the Shia south.</p>
<p>The U.S. pressured Maliki to confront the Madhi Army. Maliki had been the compromise candidate for prime minister supported by the Sadrists, but now wholly dependent on the U.S., he broke with Sadr and formed an alliance with ISCI that took was based on orders from the U.S.</p>
<p>To avoid an unwinnable confrontation with the U.S., Muqtada declared a ceasefire. He went underground and implemented a plan to regain control over the loose structure of the Mahdi Army through religious indoctrination and military training.</p>
<p>The U.S., ISCI and Dawa, in alliance with the Kurdish parties, went ahead with their plans for the soft partition of Iraq into a federated state, with Kurdish, Sunni and Shia super-provinces. The U.S. also pushed for a new oil law to open Iraq’s industry to foreign investment.</p>
<p>The Sadrists agitated for a strong central state, opposition to the occupation and defense of the national oil industry. They still appealed for Sunni-Shia unity for a new Iraq–notably leaving the Kurds out of their vision. But given the Mahdi Army’s pivotal role in the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad, the Sadrists are unlikely to forge a genuine nationalist resistance.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Iran has cultivated relations with all the Shia parties–not only their favored sons in ISCI, but also the Sadrists–in the hopes of positive relations with whoever wins the intra-Shia battle.</p>
<p>The U.S. and Iraqi governments’ decision to attack Sadr has destabilized the country and forced into the open the conflicts among the Shia, and between them and the Sunnis and Kurds. This foolish gambit disrupted the temporary peace that coincided with the U.S. surge–and tipped Iraq toward further chaos.</p>
<p>ASHLEY SMITH writes for the <a href="http://www.socialistworker.org/" type="external">Socialist Worker</a>. He lives in Vermont.</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr | true | https://counterpunch.org/2008/04/10/the-rise-of-muqtada-al-sadr/ | 2008-04-10 | 4 |
<p>Since President Trump’s election victory, we’ve heard experts proclaiming that it was Trump’s blue collar appeal that led him to the win. Free trade left Americans in rust belt states behind; Trump promised to quash that free trade. Government subsidies went only to areas beyond the horizon; Trump promised to bring them back. A solid mix of Democratic redistributionism and protectionism brought these voters home.</p>
<p>But now a <a href="https://www.prri.org/research/white-working-class-attitudes-economy-trade-immigration-election-donald-trump/" type="external">new study</a> says that the real reason so many white blue collar workers went for Trump had nothing to do with their Hillbilly Elegy economic status. Instead, the data show that these voters were simply alienated by the cultural myopia of Democrats, who have focused on an intersectionality-laden definition of American politics, labeling straight white men the bad guy in their bizarre morality play. According to PRRI/The Atlantic, a new model has been developed to measure the five most significant factors leading to support for Trump among white working-class voters. The first was obvious: identification with the Republican Party.</p>
<p>The second was fear of cultural displacement — the data showed that “white working-class voters who say they often feel like a stranger in their own land and believe the U.S. needs protecting against foreign influence were 3.5 times more likely to favor Trump than those who did not share these concerns.” This is where the Democratic Party has truly gone off the rails. By trotting out Hollywood celebrities who deride flyover America as a bunch of Bible-thumping simpletons, more and more Americans feel alienated inside their own country — and no Lena Dunham speeches and Laverne Cox diatribes will reverse that. In fact, the more Dunham and Cox are thrust to the fore by the Democrats, the more people will vote Republican in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>The third factor: support for deporting immigrants living in the country illegally. Voters who supported deportation were “3.3 times more likely to express a preference for Trump than those who did not.” This was Ann Coulter’s thesis, and it was correct: people feel that the culture is changing in the United States not only due to the acidic effect of leftism, but due to the Left’s overt desire to change American culture through unfettered immigration without concern for assimilation. Workers in Ohio aren’t all that concerned about losing their jobs to illegal immigrants, but they are concerned about losing their country to people coming from lands that do not share the same basic values.</p>
<p>The fourth factor: disdain for higher education. Again, this is a cultural hallmark, not an economic one. According to PRRI, “White working-class voters who said that college education is a gamble were almost twice as likely to express a preference for Trump as those who said it was an important investment in the future.” That has less to do with people disdaining an engineering degree than people seeing that liberal colleges have become breeding grounds for anti-American “globalism” and anti-traditionalism.</p>
<p>The notion that these blue collar workers were deeply concerned with trade and subsidies is belied by the fact that the fifth factor evaluated, economic hardship, actually correlated in reverse fashion with Trump voting: “being in fair or poor financial shape actually predicted support among white working-class Americans, rather than support for Donald Trump.” These people — the people the media have suggested were completely taken in by Trump’s man of the people shtick — were actually 1.7 times more likely to support Clinton.</p>
<p>All of which suggests that the call from “moderate” Republicans to embrace Democratic economics is a fools’ errand, and that dumping the Reagan combination of social conservatism and free markets won’t actually guarantee a winning combination in the rust belt. Trumpism is less about Trump than about rejection of Obamaism and Clintonism. And that’s a good thing for conservatism and America.</p> | STUDY: Trump Didn’t Win Because Unemployed White Workers Were ‘Left Behind’ By The Economy. He Won Because Democrats Alienated Them With Their Culture War. | true | https://dailywire.com/news/16216/study-trump-didnt-win-because-unemployed-white-ben-shapiro | 2017-05-09 | 0 |
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) – Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal are just one step away from a U.S. Open semi-final clash but both face tricky challenges to set up what would be their maiden encounter at Flushing Meadows.</p>
<p>Swiss Federer, chasing a record-extending 20th grand slam title, takes on Argentine Juan Martin Del Potro, the man who beat him in the 2009 final in New York.</p>
<p>While Federer eased into the fourth round, 24th seed Del Potro battled through five sets against Austrian Dominic Thiem and his flat forehand could prove lethal against the former world number one.</p>
<p>Current world number one Nadal faces the impressive Russian 19-year-old Andrey Rublev, a player who has shown no fear in his run to the quarter-finals.</p>
<p>“I have a good shots. I can play really fast,” the teenager warned his 31-year-old opponent.</p>
<p>The first match of the day will see women’s world number one Karolina Pliskova, who demolished Jennifer Brady 6-1 6-0 in the previous round, face off against another American when she plays 20th seed Coco Vandeweghe.</p>
<p>Madison Keys, one of four Americans in the quarter-finals this year, plays Estonian qualifier Kaia Kanepi, who is back to her best after almost two years off the courts because of an injury and a virus.</p>
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<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> | Federer and Nadal one step from dream U.S. Open semi-final | false | https://newsline.com/federer-and-nadal-one-step-from-dream-u-s-open-semi-final/ | 2017-09-06 | 1 |
<p>Olivier Douliery/DPA/ZUMA</p>
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<p>Update, 2/15/17, 12:25 p.m.: President Trump continued to defend Flynn during Wednesday’s joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying Flynn is a “wonderful man” who has “been treated very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it, the ‘fake media’ in many cases.”</p>
<p>Trump also blasted the leaks from the US intelligence community that forced Flynn’s ouster as National Security Adviser: “From intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked. It’s criminal action, criminal act, and it’s been going on for a long time, before me, but now it’s really going on. People are trying to cover up for a terrible loss that the Democrats had under Hillary Clinton.”</p>
<p>President Donald Trump angrily repudiated a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/politics/russia-intelligence-communications-trump.html" type="external">New York Times report</a> that alleged his aides engaged in “repeated” contact with Russian officials throughout the campaign, taking to his Twitter account on Wednesday to blast the intelligence community for continuing to leak information to the media.</p>
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<p>Trump’s denial comes amid the fallout from former national security adviser <a href="" type="internal">Michael Flynn’s abrupt resignation</a> on Monday, after it was revealed he misled the administration about his communications to the Russian ambassador. The Washington Post reported last week Flynn discussed easing American sanctions against Russia, contradicting the administration’s previous characterization of the calls as innocent.</p>
<p>In typical Trump fashion, the president on Wednesday thanked Bloomberg View columnist Eli Lake and Fox News for siding with his position on the ongoing leaks.</p>
<p /> | Trump Blasts Report of “Repeated” Campaign Contact with Russia | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2017/02/donald-trump-dismisses-report-constant-campaign-contact-russia/ | 2017-02-15 | 4 |
<p>Progress to deploy&#160; <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/new-risk-atmospheric-aerosols-sunscreen/" type="external">solar engineering, experimental technology designed to protect the world</a>&#160;against the impact of the changing climate, must pause, a former United Nations climate expert says, arguing that governments need to create “effective guardrails” against any unforeseen risks.</p>
<p>Janos Pasztor, who served as a UN assistant secretary-general on climate change, is using a speech to Arizona State University, broadast via Facebook Live by&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/asulightworks/" type="external">ASU LightWorks</a>, 6:30-8pm Arizona time (9:30pm EDT – US Eastern Daylight Time) today [Friday], to warn the world that governments are largely ignoring the fundamental question of who should control geoengineering, and how.</p>
<p>There are widespread misgivings, both among scientists and more widely, about geoengineering, with many regarding it as at best a strategy of last resort to help to avoid calamitous climate change.</p>
<p>Mr Pasztor’s warning comes as researchers prepare for what is thought to be the world’s first outdoor experiment on&#160; <a href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/researchers-highlight-warnings-over-controversial-stratospheric-aerosol-injection-idea/news-story/9e04b87f6bc97f1f6f51bf3a5c78a728" type="external">stratospheric aerosol injection</a>&#160;(SAI), one type of solar geoengineering. The test is due to take place later this year over Arizona.</p>
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<p>Pasztor heads the&#160; <a href="https://www.c2g2.net/" type="external">Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative&#160;</a>(C2G2),&#160; an initiative of the New York-based Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.&#160; <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/23366-2/" type="external">The Initiative wants solar geoengineering deployment to be delayed</a>&#160;until the risks and potential benefits are better known and governance frameworks are agreed.</p>
<p>“Some time within the next year, we may see the world’s first outdoor experiment on stratospheric aerosol injection take place here in the skies above Arizona, yet for the most part governments are not aware of, nor addressing, the profound governance issues this poses,” Mr Pasztor says.</p>
<p>“We urgently need an open, inclusive discussion on how the world will research and govern solar geoengineering. Otherwise we could be in danger of events overtaking society’s capacity to respond prudently and effectively.”</p>
<p>Solar geoengineering does not remove carbon from the atmosphere, and so it can be used only to supplement action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: it can never replace that action. Many risks and unknowns remain, Pasztor says, including possible harm to the environment, and to justice, geopolitical concerns and governance.</p>
<p>With SAI aerosols are sprayed into the stratosphere to reflect the sun’s radiation and cool the earth fast. It is still in its early stages, and scientists say it will take another 15 to 20 years for the technology to be developed fully.</p>
<p>Too soon to decide Any eventual full-scale deployment of technology of this sort would have planet-wide effects and pose profound ethical and governance challenges, C2G2 says. Pasztor says the risks and potential benefits of SAI are not yet understood well enough for policymakers to reach informed decisions.</p>
<p>This year’s planned experiment, called SCoPEx (Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment) is run by&#160; <a href="https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/keutschgroup/scopex" type="external">a Harvard University research group</a>, which says the physical risks posed by the quantity of aerosols to be released during SCoPEx will be hundreds of times smaller than during a transatlantic flight by a commercial airliner.</p>
<p>Even so, Pasztor says, the governance of SCoPEx will probably set important precedents. “As solar geoengineering moves from the lab to outdoor experiments, crucial questions remain unanswered,” he argues.</p>
<p>“How does this experiment acquire legitimacy from other scientists? Do civil society groups and the public, including those located in the area of the experiment, have a say? What are the ramifications for other proposed experiments in this country or in other countries?”</p>
<p>Priority for cuts So far, he says, many governments and civil society groups have shied away from the need to create governance for the new technology, or have not been aware of it. One common concern is that discussing geoengineering could distract society from concentrating on cutting carbon dioxide emissions.</p>
<p>Other geoengineering ideas, which may be nearing testing, include&#160; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/12/plan-to-refreeze-arctic-before-ice-goes-for-good-climate-change" type="external">proposals to refreeze parts of the Arctic</a>&#160;and to&#160; <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tiny-ocean-plants-geoengineer-brighter-clouds/" type="external">brighten clouds at sea</a>.</p>
<p>“There’s no question we must accelerate efforts to rapidly reduce global emissions, whilst at the same time remaining open to the possibility that other approaches may also be needed if we are to limit some of the adverse impacts of global warming”, Pasztor says.</p>
<p>“Public policy needs to address very legitimate safety, human rights and accountability issues, as well as concern for future generations.</p>
<p>“Getting this right is a challenge that affects all humanity, and needs to be addressed through discussions that include all sectors of society. It’s critical the world addresses this issue as soon as possible.”</p> | Solar Geoengineering ‘Too Uncertain to Go Ahead Yet,’ Expert Cautions | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/solar-geoengineering-too-uncertain-to-go-ahead-yet/ | 2018-04-08 | 4 |
<p />
<p />
<p>She sure had a determined spirit, unfortunately she applied it to committing a crime. NYPD said a woman tried to rob four Manhattan banks in 40 minutes, and managed to make off with some cash on her last attempt before noon on Tuesday.</p>
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<p>The woman first tried to rob Bank of America located at 127 8th Avenue at 11:17 a.m. and passed a note to a teller demanding cash, but wasn't successful.</p>
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<p>Only three minutes after, she attempted to rob another bank, this time hitting Capital One at 144 8th Ave., at 11:20 a.m. She was seen with a note inside the bank but didn't get to pass it.</p>
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<p>Her third attempt happened just seven minutes after, this time with Apple Bank at 250 West 23 St., where at 11:27 she passed a note to a teller but again left empty-handed.</p>
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<p>Assistant manager Mohamed Ali at Apple Bank said the teller called him to the booth , but the suspect calmly left the bank without any cash when she saw him approaching. He thinks she knows what she's doing since inexperienced robbers would typically make a scene if they fail to get the money they wanted.</p>
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<p>Ali observed that the woman wore a red wig under a black hat.</p>
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<p>Three failed attempts did not dampen the woman's determination as she tried one final time to "successfully" rob a bank. On her fourth attempt, she hit Chase Bank located at 71 West 23rd St. At 11:57 a.m. She finally made off with some cash with the bank. The amount the suspect took is yet to be determined by officials. Police officers said she left the note at the bank.</p>
<p />
<p>It is unclear why the same woman was able to attempt four consecutive bank robberies in the same area in less than an hour without being caught and arrested by authorities.</p>
<p />
<p>The suspect remains at large. The woman who pulled off such an odd bank robbery stunt is described by the police as 5-foot-6 in height and weighing around 125 pounds. They said she was wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt that day of the attempted robberies with the word "London" on it and a black "NY" cap. She claimed to the tellers that she had a gun, but she never once showed it during all her attempts.</p>
<p />
<p>The authorities have yet to provide surveillance footage of the suspect inside the banks she tried to rob to better help the investigations and the search for her.</p>
<p />
<p>Source:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/armed-woman-tries-to-rob-four-manhattan-banks-in-40-minutes" type="external">http://www.thedailybeast.com/armed-woman-tries-to-rob-four-manhattan-banks-in-40-minutes</a></p> | ?Determined? Woman Tries to Rob Four Manhattan Banks in Less Than an Hour | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/8743-Determined-Woman-Tries-to-Rob-Four-Manhattan-Banks-in-Less-Than-an-Hour | 2017-09-26 | 0 |
<p>When I first started researching my book Global Warming is Good for Business in 2007, terms such as "triple bottom line," "green technology" and "social entrepreneurship" were not commonly used or even understood. For most businesspeople, a sustainable business was one that continued to generate economic profits over time and had nothing to do with environmental impact, employee relations or community involvement.</p>
<p>By year-end 2010, however, in spite of one of the largest economic downturns in recent history -- or maybe because of it -- many industries are embracing a broader definition of sustainable business practices in the sense that they are actively looking for ways to generate less waste, cut costs, keep employees and increase profits. And while much of the hoopla about "doing the right thing" and "saving the planet" has died down in the past year, at least some environmentally sustainable business practices have become, well, business as usual for new ventures and established companies alike.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>More and more companies are looking for the low-hanging fruit -- changing out light bulbs, turning off computers, recycling paper and ink cartridges, using ceramic coffee mugs instead of Styrofoam cups -- to save a few bucks (and maybe the planet, too). They may not be installing solar panels or other capital-intensive technologies, but they are making slow-but-sure incremental changes to the way they do business. And they are looking for ways to become even more sustainable, if only so they can boost sales by advertising that they are "green."</p>
<p>No doubt there are still business owners out there who are in denial -- so leery of the negative political connotations of "going green" that they steadfastly refuse to join the rest of the world. More common are those business owners who are simply so overwhelmed trying to make payroll that they don't have the time, energy or resources to set CO2 benchmarks or implement sustainable strategies. But even they are open to the idea of becoming more efficient.</p>
<p>If the buzzword for 2009 was "green" and the buzzword for 2010 was "sustainable," then I would say the buzzword for 2011 is going to be "efficient." With the economic recovery still plodding along, small businesses in particular are watching their pennies. They are uncertain about how the new government regulations are going to affect them and unhappy about the looming prospect of higher tax rates and excessive red tape (the proverbial granddaddy of all government inefficiencies).</p>
<p>Energy efficiency was one of the five leading sectors for venture funding in the third quarter of 2010, according to <a href="http://cleantech.com/" type="external">Cleantech Group LLC Opens a New Window.</a>. And experts predict that trend will continue into 2011 as entrepreneurs and investors join forces to bring energy-efficient technologies to market to meet the needs of businesses that must cut waste and reduce energy use.</p>
<p>Unlike "green" or even "sustainable," the goal of being more efficient is a business concept that appeals to everyone. And while some business owners are genuinely concerned about climate change and the environment, and others are committed to bettering the lives of their employees and adding value to their communities, many are just trying to break even and keep their heads above water. Regardless, everyone can benefit from being more efficient.</p> | 'Green' Evolves to 'Efficient' in 2011 | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2010/12/16/green-evolves-efficient.html | 2016-03-17 | 0 |
<p>I’ve&#160; <a href="" type="internal">written&#160;before</a>&#160;about how the Hillary Democrats are running against hope, and how the Sanders campaign have outed them as frank corporate shills and enemies of even <a href="" type="internal">mild social democracy</a>. But now even nominal liberals, or progressives, or whatever we’re calling them these days, have gotten in on the act.</p>
<p>Not content with merely saying “No!” to new programs like single-payer health insurance and free college, they’re highlighting the worst aspects of the New Deal in an effort to .&#160;.&#160;. well, what exactly? Promote Hillary? Fight Trump? It’s hard to tell.</p>
<p>A few days ago,&#160; <a href="http://jamellebouie.net/about-jamelle" type="external">Jamelle Bouie</a>, chief political correspondent for&#160;Slate&#160;Magazine and a political analyst for CBS News, tweeted this remarkable observation (since deleted):</p>
<p />
<p>Actually, that working-class movement had a lot to do with the <a href="" type="internal">Communist Party</a>, which&#160;was an antiracist organization with a large black membership. Not only did it organize autoworkers in Flint, it organized black farmers in the South and black urbanites in Harlem. But saying nice things about the CPUSA is not the way to keep a job with CBS News.</p>
<p>Not long after Bouie’s ridiculous tweet came a longer instance of 1930s-bashing from&#160; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/campaign-stops/make-america-great-again-for-the-people-it-was-great-for-already.html" type="external">Bryce Covert</a>, economic policy editor at ThinkProgress and a contributor to&#160;the&#160;Nation. Covert identifies Donald Trump’s pledge to “make America great again” as appealing to whites, especially men, longing for the days before the Civil Rights Movement and feminism ruined things for them.</p>
<p>That’s not a controversial point; it may be incomplete, but it’s not untrue. Covert’s innovation is to locate much&#160;of that appeal in New Deal programs like Social Security and unemployment insurance, and postwar successors like the G.I. Bill.</p>
<p>This is rather odd, given the holy place that the New Deal once had in Democratic discourse. Covert’s beef is that to get the votes of racist Southern congressmen, FDR had to craft his programs to exclude black workers. This is both true and awful, though it’s not clear how they would have gotten through Congress otherwise.</p>
<p>But instead of saying that the New Deal was a <a href="" type="internal">good partial model</a>, something that should&#160;be built upon — probably the only period in American history when a sense of the collective, and not competitive individualism, dominated our political thought — she emphasizes only the exclusions, and identifies them as the source of the nostalgias that Donald Trump, not previously known as a friend of social programs,&#160;has been basing his campaign on.</p>
<p>Neither Bouie’s tweet nor Covert’s op-ed&#160;makes any&#160;sense unless&#160;they’re trying to discredit an ambitious social agenda. That is precisely what the Hillary Democrats are doing to fight off the&#160;persistent Sanders threat that just won’t go away. (That despite the fact that, as&#160; <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea-fed-funded-healthcare-system.aspx?g_source=Politics&amp;g_medium=newsfeed&amp;g_campaign=tiles" type="external">Gallup recently reported</a>, a majority of Americans support a single-payer system. The least popular option is Hillary’s position, keeping Obamacare largely as is.)</p>
<p>But how is this going to play once she wins the nomination? At first it seemed like the rightward, anti-social-democratic tilt was intended to lure moderate suburban voters who might have voted for a sane Republican (not that there was one among the initial Gang of Seventeen) but can’t bring themselves to vote for Trump. Bernie’s voters were expected either to shut up and fall in line or just go to hell.</p>
<p>But that strategy might not pan out. As Dave Weigel&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-appeal-stretches-to-suburbs-that-had-been-trending-blue/2016/05/17/4c640c60-1b7b-11e6-b6e0-c53b7ef63b45_story.html" type="external">reports</a>&#160;in the&#160;Washington Post,&#160;Trump is winning over a lot of those suburbanites that Democratic strategists were, just a few weeks ago, hoping to harvest in November. As former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell&#160; <a href="https://lbo-news.com/2016/03/01/the-new-republicans/" type="external">put it</a>&#160;less than two months ago:</p>
<p>For every one of those blue-collar Democrats [Trump]&#160;picks up, he will lose to Hillary two socially moderate Republicans and independents in suburban Cleveland, suburban Columbus, suburban Cincinnati, suburban Philadelphia, suburban Pittsburgh, places like that.</p>
<p>Now it looks like&#160;that might not happen. But that’s no cause for worry. The endlessly creative Rendell revealed a new strategy to Weigel:</p>
<p>Will [Trump]&#160;have some appeal to working-class Dems in Levittown or Bristol? Sure .&#160;.&#160;. For every one he’ll lose 1½ , two Republican women. Trump’s comments like “You can’t be a 10 if you’re flat-chested,” that’ll come back to haunt him. There are probably more ugly women in America than attractive women. People take that stuff personally.</p>
<p>Rendell and the centrist Democrats do deserve a moment of sympathy. When you have nothing positive to sell voters, you have to get creative. Trolling for votes by calling&#160;your potential supporters&#160;“ugly” is seriously creative.</p> | Doom and Gloom Democrats | true | https://jacobinmag.com/2016/05/democrats-hillary-clinton-new-deal-sanders/ | 2018-10-06 | 4 |
<p>The Pentagon is expected to announce on Thursday a softening of "don't ask, don't tell" rules, as promised, while a full review is under way. Only Congress can overturn the policy, but the military can make limited changes, like reforming the way it handles outings by a third party.</p>
<p>Update:</p>
<p>CNN:</p>
<p>The official said one of the changes will be that outings by third parties may no longer be automatic grounds for initiating separation proceedings, especially if it is proven that the person making the allegation has a grudge against the military member.</p>
<p />
<p>Gates' announcement will focus on regulatory changes that can be made at the Pentagon without the approval of Congress, which has been debating whether to change the policy.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/24/military.gays/?hpt=T2" type="external">Read more</a></p> | 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Announcement Coming Thursday (Update: Video) | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/dont-ask-dont-tell-announcement-coming-thursday-update-video/ | 2010-03-24 | 4 |
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<p />
<p>Christmas is only a day in the rear-view mirror, but metro-area programs will be traveling near and far for events over the next three days.</p>
<p>A majority of the tournaments, in a nod to the inconvenience of teams traveling the day after Christmas, have condensed their events into a three-games-in-two-days format on Friday and Saturday.</p>
<p>But not the annual Stu Clark Invitational in Las Vegas, N.M., which celebrates its 60th birthday this year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Four metro boys squads are at the Stu Clark, including two in the tournament opener at 1 p.m. today between district rivals St. Pius and Moriarty.</p>
<p>Bernalillo faces West Las Vegas at 6 p.m., and probable pre-tourney favorite Atrisco Heritage meets Robertson in the finale at 8 tonight.</p>
<p>The semifinals are Friday, with the title game at 8 p.m. Saturday, all at the John A. Wilson Complex at New Mexico Highlands.</p>
<p>RIO RANCHO: With Los Lunas no longer having a holiday event, that leaves Rio Rancho High as the only site with a local tournament this week. And even then, the Jalene Berger Allstate Holiday Hoops Classic (for boys only) is more the Rams’ tournament than one shared with Cleveland, since the Storm opted out this year.</p>
<p>Del Norte faces Canyon Randall from Texas in the opener at 8 a.m. Friday. Then it’s Hope Christian and Mayfield at 9:45 a.m.</p>
<p>On the bottom half, Oñate meets Española Valley at 11:30, with the host Rams meeting Santa Teresa at 1:15 p.m.</p>
<p>Everyone also has a second game Friday, with the final game Saturday. The championship game is 7:15 p.m. Saturday.</p>
<p>HOBBS: The Eagles’ 56th annual boys holiday tournament features La Cueva and Cleveland.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The surging Storm takes on Odessa High at 11:30 a.m. Friday, with the Bears playing Lawton, Okla., at 10 a.m. Friday.</p>
<p>All eight teams in the field have two games Friday, with the final game for everyone on Saturday.</p>
<p>CLOVIS: Sandia’s boys and girls are in Clovis, part of six-team fields.</p>
<p>The boys meet a pair of Texas schools, Hereford and Cathedral, on Friday.</p>
<p>Aside from the host Wildcats, the other prominent New Mexico school in Clovis is St. Michael’s. Clovis and the Horsemen kick off the tournament against one another at 7 tonight. It’s the only game today; the remainder of the event is Friday and Saturday.</p>
<p>Gallup, Lovington and Clovis are also in the girls’ field. The Matadors face Lovington and the host Wildcats, both on Friday.</p>
<p>ALAMOGORDO: There is a large contingent of teams from the metro area in Alamogordo this week.</p>
<p>On the boys side, Los Lunas squares off with Eldorado at 4 p.m. Friday, followed at 5:30 by Sandia Prep and Carlsbad, and at 7 p.m. by Valencia and Canutillo, Texas.</p>
<p>Unlike some of the other tournaments this week, Alamogordo is having teams play one game Friday and two on Saturday.</p>
<p>For the girls, Los Lunas takes on Santa Teresa at 9:30 a.m. Friday. Eldorado plays Carlsbad at 11 a.m., and Valencia faces El Paso Chapin at 12:30 p.m.</p>
<p>LAS CRUCES: The girls from La Cueva and Rio Rancho are at the Holiday Hoopla tournament at Centennial High on Friday and Saturday.</p>
<p>All eight teams have two games Friday, and a third Saturday.</p>
<p>In the openers, the Bears meet Las Cruces at 10 a.m. in one gym, with the Rams facing Mayfield in another gym, also at 10.</p>
<p>Hobbs is also in the field.</p>
<p>EL PASO-ABQ: A quartet of El Paso schools are in town Friday and Saturday at Johnson Center.</p>
<p>Friday’s schedule is as follows: El Paso Franklin’s girls versus West Mesa at noon; Coronado’s boys against Manzano at 2; the girls from Burges and Rio Grande at 4; and the Ravens’ boys against Andress at 6 p.m.</p>
<p>On Saturday, the best matchup of the day is perhaps the first one, with Volcano Vista’s undefeated girls facing Franklin at 11 a.m. Next, at 1 p.m., is the Hawks’ boys versus Andress. Cibola’s girls play Burges at 3, with Cibola’s boys taking on Coronado at 5 p.m.</p>
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<p /> | Prep hoops: Holiday break is over | false | https://abqjournal.com/326463/holiday-is-over-for-prep-hoops.html | 2 |
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<p>The nominees for Best Musical Performance by an Actress are:&#160;</p>
<p>The nominees for Best Musical Performance by an Actor are</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>The nominees for Best Production, Best Direction, and Best Ensemble are:</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Individual nominees will compete live on stage at the Popejoy Awards show at Popejoy Hall on Sunday, May 8, at 6:30 pm. The Tony Awards-style show, hosted by 2&#160; KASA Style's Chad Brummett, features the best of New Mexico's high school musical theater talent performing selections from popular Broadway musicals in addition to a live awards presentation. Acting award nominees will perform solos from their respective performances as well as opening and closing numbers as an ensemble. Ensembles nominated for group awards will also perform selections from their productions.</p>
<p>Winners of the Popejoy Awards for Best Actor and Best Actress will be sent to New York in June to participate in the National High School Musical Theater Awards, known as the Jimmy Awards, a program run by the not-for-profit Broadway League. Students train with Broadway coaches and performers before competing on the national awards show stage at the Minskoff Theater, current home of Disney's The Lion King. The two New Mexico winners will compete for the Jimmy Awards with other winners from 31 similar local competitions from across the country.</p>
<p>Tickets for the Popejoy Awards show are currently available at the UNM Ticketing Offices at the UNM Bookstore and The WisePies Arena (formerly The Pit), at select area Albertsons, and online at unmtickets.com. To charge tickets by phone, call UNM Ticketing at <a href="" type="external">(505) 925-5858</a> or <a href="" type="external">(877) 664-8661</a>&#160;Monday through Friday 10:00AM to 4:00PM. Tickets cost $5 for students and $15 for the general public. Support seats, which include a $10 donation to the Popejoy Awards, are available for $25.</p> | Nominees for Popejoy Awards announced | false | https://abqjournal.com/763052/nominees-for-popejoy-awards-announced.html | 2 |
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<p>In 2013, Eddie Bocanegra was developing an anti-violence program for young people in Chicago, Illinois. He wanted the teens, many of whom were in gangs, to have positive role models, so he gave them a list to choose from. The kids were most drawn to combat veterans who’d fought in recent wars. To Bocanegra, the choice made sense: teens living in high violence neighborhoods in Chicago and soldiers fighting overseas are linked by the experience of being constantly under threat. This Monday alone, <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago-shooting-violence-20160125-story.html" type="external">16 people were shot</a> in the city during a 12-hour period.</p>
<p>“Kids identify themselves as soldiers, because they live in war zone communities,” Bocanegra <a href="http://www.wbez.org/programs/all-things-considered/2016-01-25/chicago-teens-and-combat-veterans-join-forces-process" type="external">told NPR</a> in a segment about the program he co-directs, Urban Warriors. “They make the parallels between, veterans, you know, carry guns, we carry guns. They got ranks, we got ranks. They got their army uniforms, we got our gang colors. And the list went on and on.”</p>
<p>Bocanegra has his share of stories from the battlefield. As a teenager in Chicago, he was involved in gangs, beat up by police, and stabbed. While serving prison time for gang-related murder, he was visited by his brother, an Army combat veteran. The two men talked about PTSD, and Bocanegra began to realize that his trauma was not so unlike his brother’s. Today, Urban Warriors pairs kids from high-violence neighborhoods with veterans who’ve fought in Iraq or Afghanistan. The approach is based on the idea that trauma from exposure to violence can <a href="http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/types/violence/effects-community-violence-children.asp" type="external">shape the way kids think, act, and learn</a>, and that they need ways to process it. The veterans facilitate the sessions, which include sharing stories of loss, suicide, and grief.</p>
<p>In the NPR segment, we hear from several of the kids about what it’s like to live in Chicago in 2016, where already this year at <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago-shooting-violence-20160125-story.html" type="external">least 244 people</a> have been shot. “Every time you look up somebody else is getting killed, and I never know if it’s me or somebody I am really close to,” 15-year-old Jim Courtney-Clarks told reporter Audie Cornish.</p>
<p>Mikhail Dasovich, a Marine Corps veteran who helps&#160;facilitate the meetings, told NPR he was surprised how quickly the kids jump into difficult subjects. “One of the youth … he says to me like, ‘Hey, you ever seen someone get shot in front of you?’ And the whole room went silent, and I was like ‘Oh man, like, this quick, huh?'” Dasovich explained how he’d watched his platoon sergeant be struck by a burst of bullets. In response, the teen described watching the murders of his two cousins.</p>
<p>“These kids, before they’re 16, have, in essence, really been to combat,” Dasovich told NPR.</p>
<p>[Photo:&#160;Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images]</p> | Combat Veterans Help Troubled Chicago Teens Cope with the War at Home | false | https://thetrace.org/2016/01/chicago-gun-violence-veterans-urban-warriors/ | 2016-01-27 | 3 |
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<p>Agricultural groups in New Mexico and Texas want two cacti and a rare bat thrown off the federal endangered species list.</p>
<p>A lawsuit recently filed in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque seeks to have five species reclassified under the Endangered Species Act.</p>
<p>Among those the groups want reclassified are the lesser long-nosed bat, which lives in New Mexico's Bootheel and southern Arizona, and the black-capped vireo, a bird that roams Texas and Oklahoma.</p>
<p>The groups also want the Kuenzler hedgehog cactus, the Tobusch fishhook cactus and the gypsum wild-buckwheat reclassified.</p>
<p>According to court documents, the groups say the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services failed to act on previous requests to relist the species.</p>
<p>U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Lesli Gray says officials are evaluating the lawsuit.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Endangered bat, cacti subjects of new federal lawsuit | false | https://abqjournal.com/681576/endangered-bat-cacti-subjects-of-new-federal-lawsuit.html | 2 |
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<p>On Wednesday, <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/307462-trump-adviser-tells-house-republicans-youre-no-longer-reagans-party" type="external">The Hill</a> reported that Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore, a longtime free market advocate and Reagan conservative, had told House Republicans that they should forget about Reagan conservatism and instead convert to Trumpism. “Just as Reagan converted the GOP into a conservative party, Trump has converted the GOP into a populist working-class party,” Moore explained. “In some ways this will be good for conservatives and in other ways possibly frustrating.” According to Moore, he gave up on his free trade principles after traveling the country:</p>
<p>Having spent the last three or four months on the campaign trail, it opens your eyes to the everyday anxieties and financial stress people are facing….He wants to spend all this money on infrastructure. I don’t want to spend all that money on infrastructure. I think it’s mostly a waste of money. But if the voters want it, they should get it. If Trump says build a wall then he should build a wall. If Trump says renegotiate TPP, he should renegotiate TPP…I used to be a unilateral free trader. If somebody wants to sell something to us at less cost than we can produce here, then do it. But the political reality is there’s a backlash against trade. Whether we like it or not we better adapt the rules in ways that benefit American workers more, or free trade is not going to flourish.</p>
<p>In other words, Trump won votes, the voters want things, so it’s now right for Trump to do those things. I don’t recall Moore making the same arguments about Barack Obama, who won far more votes than Trump twice. Did Moore suddenly shift and embrace the Iran deal because clearly, Obama had a mandate? What utter nonsense. Falsehood doesn’t become truth thanks to the halo effect of victory.</p>
<p>Moore’s not the only one. Here’s the staff at the Trump-centric Laura Ingraham fanzine <a href="https://www.lifezette.com/polizette/nevertrump-conservatives-still-dont-get/" type="external">Lifezette</a>, criticizing my syndicated column this week:</p>
<p>[T]he most tin-eared of Shapiro's assertions is that "Trump has already challenged traditional conservative standards." He charges the GOP nominee has "forced Republicans to swallow anti-conservative heresies on economics (free trade is a negative; entitlements should be left alone)." Trump did challenge those old, failed, Bush-world orthodoxies — and that's exactly the point. The fundamental problem with these conservatives — the No. 1 reason that they are in the mess they are today — is that they have no popular ideas when it comes to fixing the economy. Free trade deals, without significant protections built in for American workers, are not popular. Open borders are not popular. Cutting entitlement programs is not popular.</p>
<p>Popular, you see, means good. If free trade is unpopular, dump it. If entitlement programs are popular, grow them. (For the record, I have never spoken in favor of open borders, and was in favor of a border wall long before Trump was.) But this is the danger of Trumpism – Trump’s victory seems to be converting conservatives away from core beliefs. Hillary has been vanquished, thank God, but that isn’t shifting many conservatives from their refusal to criticize Trump for violating conservative principles.</p>
<p>Actually, some of the most ardent Trumpsters are honest enough to criticize him when he deviates from principle. Ann Coulter has gone after Trump for any inclination to go soft on illegal immigration. Sean Hannity has been upset over Trump’s pledge to do nothing to Hillary Clinton. That’s honest – at least Coulter and Hannity have some standard, apparently. But those who cave to Trumpism just because Trump does it are another story. And that group seems to have grown dramatically since November 8.</p> | Does Victory Mean Trumpism Is Always Right? | true | https://dailywire.com/news/11081/does-victory-mean-trumpism-always-right-ben-shapiro | 2016-11-25 | 0 |
<p>A Canadian scheme to pay green energy companies more for their electricity if they use local technology broke World Trade Organization rules, the global body said on Wednesday in a ruling that could lead to challenges against similar programmes.</p>
<p>The WTO largely backed complaints from Japan and the European Union that the scheme set up by the Canadian province of Ontario discriminated unfairly against foreign companies.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The case has been closely watched because it deals with "local content requirements", where countries ensure their own firms get a guaranteed cut of big projects, that are at the center of a number of other disputes.</p>
<p>The EU welcomed the ruling and said it would open up more business for the bloc's businesses in Canada.</p>
<p>"Exports from the EU into Canada in wind power and photovoltaic power generation equipment are significant, ranging from 300 to 600 million euros in 2007-2009," the European Commission said in a statement.</p>
<p>"These figures could be higher should the local content requirements be removed from the legislation in question," it added.</p>
<p>Brazil, India, Indonesia and Nigeria have been criticised repeatedly in WTO committee meetings for having similar local content clauses in big infrastructure projects.</p>
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<p>China has also launched a challenge against the EU over renewable energy rules in Italy and Greece, alleging they discriminate against Chinese suppliers of solar power components.</p>
<p>A WTO adjudication panel agreed Canada had broken some of the trade body's rules, but was split on the question of whether Ontario's scheme constituted an illegal subsidy that had disadvantaged importers.</p>
<p>The panel offered a suggestion about how the Japanese and EU cases could have been framed to overcome their objections.</p>
<p>Canada, the EU and Japan all have the right to appeal.</p> | WTO: Green Energy Scheme Broke Rules | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/12/19/wto-green-energy-scheme-broke-rules.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
<p>Ten years on from the start of the global financial crisis, one of only a handful of economists to predict the crash, Professor Steve Keen, warns another one is “almost inevitable.”</p>
<p>On August 9, 2007, the French investment bank BNP Paribas announced it was shutting down three investment funds specializing in the US subprime market, explaining it was struggling to calculate their values against a backdrop of growing concerns over liquidity.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/shows/renegade-inc/397347-financial-fallout-crisis-economy/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The rest is history. Banks collapsed, unemployment soared, and some governments even went bust. For a decade, politicians, regulators, and financiers have sought to find ways to recover and stop a similar catastrophe befalling the system.</p>
<p>Keen, now head of the economics department at Kingston University in London, anticipated the last financial crisis at a time when most academic economists complacently didn’t.</p>
<p>Speaking to RT, Keen said another financial crisis could be just around the corner unless a fundamentally different approach to debt is adopted. He says we are too focused on government debt, when what actually caused the crisis was “run-away private debt.”</p>
<p>“The economy in the UK is not stable. It’s in the aftermath of the biggest financial crisis since the great depression, and there’s still a lack of awareness in the political classes about what actually caused the crisis in the first place,” Keen told RT.</p>
<p>“The Tories were incredibly successful in convincing the electorate that the crisis was caused by government spending, which is absurd. That is technically saying government spending in the UK caused the financial crisis in the United States. Which is just nonsense.</p>
<p>“And that gave us austerity for the last 10 years. That austerity has actually further weakened the economy.”</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/396309-hammond-austerity-economic-shock/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Keen says the level of private debt in the UK peaked at about 195 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) post-crisis. While it is now down to about 170 percent of GDP, it is roughly three times the level of debt England carried before the Margaret Thatcher era, he says.</p>
<p>“That’s the stuff that’s being ignored. Nothing is really being done about that. With the amount of debt just sitting there we are still likely to have another crisis – but more likely, we are going to have stagnation.”</p>
<p>What is cause for concern, Keen says, is what he calls the “zombie-to-be” economies, such as Australia, Belgium, China, Canada, and South Korea, which avoided the 2008 crisis by borrowing their way through it.</p>
<p>Now they have a bigger debt burden to deal with when the next crisis hits, which could be between 2017 and 2020, he says.</p>
<p>“[The ‘zombie-to-be’ economies] are roughly equivalent in size to the American economy. So when they fall, then there will be a crisis that affects the rest of the world, including the UK.”</p>
<p>Keen sees China as a terminal case. It has expanded credit at an annualized rate of around 25 percent for years on end. With private sector debt exceeding 200 percent of GDP, China resembles the over-indebted economies of Ireland and Spain prior to 2008.</p>
<p>He also has little hope for his native Australia, whose credit and housing bubbles failed to burst in 2008. Last year, Australian private sector credit nudged above 200 percent of GDP, up more than 20 percentage points since the global financial crisis.</p>
<p>Australia shows “that you can avoid a debt crisis today only by putting it off until tomorrow,” Keen says.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>He adds that the effect Brexit will have on the economy has been “exaggerated” and says it will be “far less damaging than austerity has been.”</p>
<p>His comments come as Lord Alistair Darling, who was chancellor when the crash hit, has warned that regulators must remain “very very” vigilant about the risks to the economy. Speaking to the BBC, he said a rising level of consumer debt in the economy was a growing concern.</p>
<p>Darling said the financial system is now safer, but warned of “complacency.”</p> | 10yrs after financial crisis, another crash is ‘almost inevitable,’ economist Steve Keen tells RT | false | https://newsline.com/10yrs-after-financial-crisis-another-crash-is-almost-inevitable-economist-steve-keen-tells-rt/ | 2017-08-09 | 1 |
<p />
<p>At the conclusion of its two-day June policy-setting meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee maintained near-zero interest rates, but did not directly suggest when it might those rates. The central bank, though, did say that after a weak first quarter, and mixed data in recent weeks, the economy has been expanding moderately.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in April suggests that economic activity has been expanding moderately after having changed little during the first quarter," the statement said.</p>
<p>The Fed also released its forecast for the U.S. economy, predicting GDP will grow 1.9% in 2015, a significant downward revision from its March projection of 2.5%. Fed economists predict the unemployment rate for the year will be 5.3%, up from a March prediction of 5.1%.</p>
<p>Its statement mirrors recent comments by Fed officials that economic conditions are strengthening and would likely warrant a rate hike by the end of 2015. In May, the unemployment rate ticked up to 5.5%, but <a href="" type="internal">the economy added a batter than expected 280,000 new jobs for the month</a>. Retail sales also jumped 1.2%, further suggesting winter's economic weakness was only temporary.</p>
<p>Despite upping its unemployment rate forecast for the year, the Fed said “the pace of job gains picked up while the unemployment rate remained steady.”</p>
<p>However, the International Monetary Fund has also recommended that the Fed hold off on raising rates until 2016. That suggestion came after first-quarter GDP was revised downward to a 0.7% contraction.</p>
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<p>The Fed has kept interest rates flat for seven years. Central bankers have been reluctant to raise interest rates too quickly and the Fed has said it won't do so until it meets its dual mandate of full employment and price stability, which it defines as an unemployment rate in a range of 5.0- 5.2% and inflation at around 2%. The Fed’s latest projection doesn’t have inflation reaching that level until 2017.</p>
<p>After this week's gathering, Fed watchers, businesses owners and consumers looking to borrow for big purchases will be looking next to July's meeting for any hints of a policy change. Many analysts, though, &#160;have pointed to September's meeting as a strong possibility for liftoff.</p>
<p>The FOMC policy action was unanimous among voting members.</p> | Majority of FOMC Members See First Rate Hike in ‘15 | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2015/06/17/fomc-statement.html | 2016-03-10 | 0 |
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<p>The situation is worrisome enough in Kansas, Oklahoma and Indiana that lawmakers are now debating whether to reverse course and raise taxes. And political leaders in states that have seen expanded Republican control, such as Arkansas and Iowa, are signaling caution about any new tax-cut proposals.</p>
<p>“It does not take a Ph.D. in economics to know that we can’t say yes to every spending need, and we should also not say yes to every tax-cut idea,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson warned late last year.</p>
<p>The reforms show that tax changes always carry an element of uncertainty — about the economy, government needs and even the prices of commodities such as oil. Although the federal and state tax systems are significantly different, both are subject to forces beyond lawmakers’ control.</p>
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<p>A recent Associated Press survey found that more than half of the states — 33 — are currently dealing with a budget shortfall or expect to confront one in the coming fiscal year. Experts say state economic growth has been slower than expected, with revenue in some places failing to meet projections or keep up with rising spending needs.</p>
<p>Hutchinson, who took office vowing to slash income taxes, has proposed a much more modest cut of $50 million annually for low-income taxpayers. Meanwhile, a top Arkansas GOP lawmaker has said any tax-cut ideas may have to be set aside for a few years until the state’s financial picture improves. State revenue is running $8.8 million behind projections for the fiscal year.</p>
<p>After Indiana Republicans cut income, corporate and property taxes, the state developed a $300 million budget gap. GOP lawmakers are now pushing a plan to raise gasoline taxes and adopt a new registration fee for motorists to help pay for road improvements. Critics say the effort is simply shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to everyone else.</p>
<p>“This is going to be the first session I remember coming into that the Republicans are advocating for tax increases,” said Senate Minority Leader Tim Lanane, a Democrat. “At the same time, we’re continuing to give tax breaks to corporations and businesses. How are they going to explain that?”</p>
<p>In Kansas, lawmakers have struggled to balance the budget since they slashed personal income taxes in 2012 and 2013 at the urging of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. The state has faced economic pressures related to a decline in agriculture and oil prices, but the broad-based tax cuts are viewed largely as an unsuccessful effort to stimulate the economy.</p>
<p>Lawmakers are now debating their third tax increase since the cuts were passed, with the state facing projected shortfalls of $1.1 billion through June 2019. The Brownback administration has proposed higher taxes on certain business owners, cigarettes, beer and liquor. Other plans include diverting highway money to general government programs, scaling back contributions to the pension program for public employees and liquidating a $317 million investment fund.</p>
<p>Brownback’s budget director, Shawn Sullivan, warned of dire consequences if the proposals are not approved.</p>
<p>“You’re left with huge tax increases or huge (budget) cuts,” Sullivan said. “Even the mix between the two is huge.”</p>
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<p>Whatever happens in Washington is likely to affect state budgets in some way. That gives lawmakers another reason to move cautiously.</p>
<p>A congressional tax overhaul could eliminate key exemptions benefiting state and local governments. At the same time, the promise by Trump and congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act would probably reduce the amount of federal money sent to states. In New York alone, repealing the health care law would cost the state an estimated $3.7 billion in federal funding, or roughly 2.5 percent of the state budget.</p>
<p>A House tax plan would reduce federal revenue by $3 trillion in the first 10 years, while Trump’s plan would cut revenue by $9.5 trillion over the same period, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Trump has disputed the analysis.</p>
<p>Previous tax cuts are not the only reason for downbeat budget forecasts.</p>
<p>In Democrat-dominated California, where voters approved tax increases and state revenue has soared in recent years, Gov. Jerry Brown is warning of a possible $1.6 billion shortfall.</p>
<p>Medicaid costs are contributing to budget gaps in Massachusetts, Maryland, Mississippi, New York and Rhode Island. Other states are dealing with increasing spending demands in education and health care.</p>
<p>Energy-producing states such as Oklahoma, Alaska and New Mexico have struggled in part because of a decline in oil and natural gas prices.</p>
<p>Oklahoma’s budget woes were deepened by a reduction in the top individual income tax rate that took effect just as the state’s economy began to contract amid lower oil and natural gas prices. Three straight years of budget shortfalls were closed largely with cuts to state agencies. Now the Republican governor and GOP-controlled Legislature are considering raising taxes on cigarettes, gasoline and some services to help fill an $870 million budget hole.</p>
<p>The state Department of Human Services has slashed about 1,200 non-child welfare positions to deal with the falling revenue.</p>
<p>“Every time the government wants to cut,” said Marcellius Bell of Oklahoma City, who serves as legal guardian for three adults with severe developmental disabilities, “it seems like they cut services to the disabled, the veterans and the nursing homes.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Stephen Ohlemacher in Washington, D.C.; and Brian Slodysko in Indianapolis contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Christina Almeida Cassidy on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/AP_Christina" type="external">http://twitter.com/AP_Christina</a> and Andrew DeMillo at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/ademillo." type="external">www.twitter.com/ademillo.</a></p> | States can offer a lesson as GOP proposes deep cut taxes | false | https://abqjournal.com/928602/states-can-offer-a-lesson-as-gop-proposes-deep-cut-taxes.html | 2017-01-16 | 2 |
<p>Who should decide whether someone gets to live or die?</p>
<p>This is a question you’re left to answer by the powerful episode “Eye for an Eye” of the CNN series Death Row Stories, executive-produced by Academy Award winners Alex Gibney and Robert Redford.</p>
<p>In this one-hour, true-crime documentary, produced and directed by Steve Rivo, we’re told the story of the mass murder committed by death-row inmate Nathan Dunlap at a Chuck E. Cheese’s in Aurora, Colorado, in 1993. But this case—as these highly charged trials often are—is about much more. These vicious murders and the resulting punishment handed down by a jury are like holding a mirror up to America 2014.</p>
<p>We’re confronted in this film with myriad social problems, including the lack of mental-health treatment available to those can’t afford it, the ability to gain easier access to a gun than cold medicine in America, and the continuing scourge of racism, most recently seen writ large on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.</p>
<p>Dunlap is a murderer, there is no question about that. But he is a murderer who was abused as a child and suffered from bipolar disorder, which runs in his family. This, of course, was untreated until he reached death row, after which he became a “model inmate.” Because the only time we ever talk about better mental health care in this country is when some right-wing loon’s claiming we should cut it so some suburbanite can get an extra Audi, or after a mass shooting when apparent outpatient Wayne LaPierre applies it as a smokescreen so he can change the conversation to requiring Kalashnikovs for every kindergarten teacher.</p>
<p>We largely have Saint Reagan to thank for the current system, although too many congressional Republicans and Democrats who liked telling their constituents they were cutting taxes—and their funders they were increasing defense spending—make more than a cameo here, too.</p>
<p>Speaking of dearest LaPierre, he and his fellow arms-dealing profiteers, as well as their base of extraordinary gentlemen open-carrying assault rifles into stores to buy boxes of Oreos, have made sure over the past 30 years that the Dunlaps of this world have easy access to this weaponry for any act of barbarism in which they wish to engage. Let’s be clear: It still takes one willing to murder, as Dunlap was and for which he must be held to account. But it would have been harder with hammers. So would have a recent mass murder in Aurora that occurred in a movie theater in 2012. Sadly, you’ve probably heard of that one.</p>
<p>There’s also the fact that Dunlap is black, as are the two other men on death row in Colorado. In a state that is overwhelmingly not black. They all went to the same high school and had the same prosecutor, who seems so enthusiastic and untroubled by using the state to kill people in “Eye for an Eye” that you just get the feeling he could become quick hunting buddies with Antonin Scalia.</p>
<p>You know Scalia, the Supreme Court justice who declared Henry McCollum as a justification for using a “lethal injection” when he declined to review his murder conviction in 1994. The same McCollum <a href="" type="internal">who DNA evidence just cleared after he spent 30 years of his life on death row</a>.</p>
<p>But where Rivo perhaps accomplishes his most impressive feat, is in an interview with current Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who got a bit ahead of himself on the death penalty (he ran in 2010 as a supporter). Hickenlooper had granted Dunlap a temporary reprieve in 2013, which amounted to a half-measure that made nobody happy. But in his interview with Rivo, the governor, <a href="" type="internal">who is running for reelection</a>, came out pretty strongly against the death penalty, and admitted he might grant clemency to Dunlap if he lost his reelection battle.</p>
<p>According to Colorado journalist David Sirota, who is interviewed in the short film, “His opponents see an opportunity to demagogue the issue for their own electoral gain. The question now is: Will Colorado voters punish the governor for his decision, or will they acknowledge the inherent and obvious problems with capital punishment?”</p>
<p>This is, in the end, an important question. Can voters get beyond emotion and ask themselves the kinds of questions we would hope they would in a democracy, about justice vs. vengeance, and what effect key factors such as race and mental health have in many of these cases?</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>We’ve learned a lot since DNA testing has become a reality. And we’re learning more about other aspects of science that should give us pause. Former prosecutor Mark Godsey, director of the Global Study of Wrongful Convictions and the Ohio Innocence Project, is writing a book on the new science surrounding faulty eyewitness testimony.</p>
<p>According to Godsey, “We’ve realized that eyewitness identification is far more unreliable than most realize. In fact, it’s the leading cause of wrongful conviction, and was a contributing factor in 75 percent of wrongful conviction cases.” <a href="" type="internal">That may not keep Rick Perry up at night</a>. But it should.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, you can stay up 10 p.m. or 12 a.m. ET this Sunday, Sept. 10, and watch this fascinating story on CNN and ponder who should decide if another person lives or dies.</p> | Why Are We Still Deciding Who Lives or Dies? | true | https://thedailybeast.com/why-are-we-still-deciding-who-lives-or-dies | 2018-10-02 | 4 |
<p>By Juan Cole | —</p>
<p>What an incredible year this has been! Informed Comment has gone from strength to strength. We expect 2015 to be as dramatic, and will continue to expand our coverage, with both expert opinion and observers on the ground. I tried but failed to enlist a regular Middle East-based correspondent, but will keep trying, and did succeed in attracting many submissions from freelancers in the region this year. Be sure to <a href="" type="internal">sign up for delivery of the daily postings by email so you don’t miss even one.</a> Our aim is to be even more comprehensive, and to provide insights on world developments not found elsewhere that challenge lazy conventional wisdom and inside-the-beltway tunnel blindness. We seek to provide visitors with one-stop access to high quality curated sources for research on the Middle East, including maps and key documents and translations. That endeavor obviously requires resources, and the more we have the more we can do. Your support allowed me to pay guest columnists for some of our more popular entries this year.</p>
<p>Thanks to all those who have contributed in the past to make it possible for Informed Comment to continue and improve. This year those who contribute to Informed Comment will become members with a Golden Lion beside their own name in the comments as recognition for your role in making this site possible. You will also be included in a private newsletter only for contributors with some additional big picture behind-the-scenes analysis which will be newsletter only.</p>
<p>Those of you who donated last year supported important trips to the region so as to have first-hand, on-the-ground impressions that would help me interpret the news. I’d like to tell you about those trips, below.</p>
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<p>This is a time of vast transformations in the Middle East, and it has never been more important for us to understand what is happening there. I, along with guest columnists, covered and will continue to cover key developments in a way seldom found in the MSM (which obsessed over a lost airliner, a New Jersey bridge, a Solange-Jay-Z tiff, and a phony Benghazi “scandal” instead of reporting news). The Obama administration is pursuing negotiations with Iran that, if ultimately successful, will change the face of the world. The Obama administration’s effort at Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations were derailed by the intransigence of PM Binyamin Netanyahu’s far right government, setting the stage for another Israeli attack on little Gaza (during which ABC news showed an Israeli rocket strike near non-combatants and labeled it a Hamas attack on Israel). Sweden recognized Palestine, and the British and Spanish parliaments urged this step on their governments. Tunisia has passed a new constitution guaranteeing women’s rights and freedom of belief and expression, and conducted new parliamentary and presidential elections in which the Muslim fundamentalists lost to secularists. Egypt saw the consolidation of a new military dictatorship and the crushing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Iraq collapsed, with the government losing 40% of the country’s territory to an insurgent “caliphate” that erased the border with eastern Syria– perhaps the most dramatic alteration of borders in the region since World War I. These events drew the US back into Iraq militarily for the first time since 2011. Radical al-Qaeda affiliates or offshoots took over most rebel-held territory in Syria, besieging the Kurdish city of Kobane, even as the nationalist Baath government reasserted itself along the urban trunk road from Damascus up to Aleppo. Stay tuned in 2015 to the outcomes of these weighty developments!</p>
<p>Our new format, driven by a technical plug-in, has allowed four or five postings a day on world affairs and progressive politics, so that I’ve been functioning as an editor in finding or soliciting these other pieces for you. I brought out a new book a few months ago, <a href="" type="external">The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East,</a> which has been widely and favorably reviewed and which makes an excellent holiday present for your friends and relatives :-)! In our pages, we’ve had eyewitness accounts from Egypt, Israel, Gaza, Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey, and searching, critical opinion pieces on politics and Islam. And, I’ve continued to give you an interpretive essay every day of the year on what I think is the most important or interesting story of the day. (Those who like the old <a href="" type="internal">weblog view and are mainly interested in my essays can still find it here (click on the underlined text).</a> We were up to nearly four and a half million page views last year, from slightly over four the year before. Informed Comment also has a big presence in social media. Twitter impressions for November alone were 1.3 million. I’m proud to say some 45 percent of our readers are women, and 60 percent of you are 34 and younger.</p>
<p>Years ago I decided that I did not want to put Informed Comment behind a firewall and charge a subscription fee for it. That just isn’t who I am. In my own view, there has been a long crisis between the United States (and perhaps much of the West) and the Muslim world that I felt a duty to attempt to interpret and analyze for both publics, not just for well-heeled elites. More recently issues have arisen such a climate change and the energy and water crises, which have a great deal to do with the Middle East and South Asia, my areas of expertise. This is a democratic blog, for the people and in dialogue with the people, for the common weal.</p>
<p>Although I have some research funds from my university, there are categories of expense it does not cover, and my ability to go spontaneously to the region when there are important developments is enhanced by your subscriptions (academic fellowships have to be plotted out at least a year in advance, which is too inflexible for my style of academic journalism). Also, I do some pro bono speaking and traveling for, e.g. peace groups, and you support those expenses, too. Your support gives me the determination and courage to go on.</p>
<p>Visits to the region this year included a trip to Egypt last spring, so that I could gauge the political atmosphere in the run-up to the presidential elections. I found the atmosphere fearful and repressed in some respects, as the government is increasingly going after human rights Non-Governmental Organizations and jailing protesters. In other respects, there was among the people I met (from all walks of life) a happiness to be shut of Muslim Brotherhood rule (one working class man told me it had been like being in prison). Nor was the population all that cowed– there were lots of labor strikes, which the government clearly feared to put down with a heavy hand. I did attend a concert by dissident singer Mohamed Mohsen, who was later disinvited from performing at the Cairo opera house because he is not on board with Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s turn to neo-authoritarianism. The concert was packed with very enthusiastic young people who I suspect were blowing off some frustrations in this way.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /> (Screenshot from the concert via Youtube).</p>
<p>I also went to Turkey, where the talk was about the over 1 million Syrian refugees now in that country and the lurching of the Justice and Development Party government toward more authoritarian government, with heavy press censorship and repression of peaceful protest.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /> Ataturks’ Tomb in Ankara</p>
<p>I attended while in Ankara the World Middle East Studies Association meeting and gave a paper on cyber-activism in Tunisia. I was privileged to meet a number of young academics and activists from Egypt, Tunisia and other countries of the Middle East, and to learn from their perspectives.</p>
<p>Middle East issues are often framed by right wing media such as Fox Cable News in Islamophobic and frankly racist ways. Unscrupulous “news” providers play on the comparative lack of good information and analysis to manipulate public opinion on these matters so as to create fear and promote right-wing policies. Informed Comment is one of the few solid counterweights to this propaganda. Corporate news outlets, even relatively liberal ones, can almost never report evenhandedly on controversial issues such as the plight of the stateless Palestinians, because of fear of consumer boycotts. Likewise, much of the MSM in the US seems determined to obscure the dangers and sources of climate change, perhaps influenced by the vast wealth of Big Carbon or even because their parent companies are invested in that sector. Informed Comment is unconstrained by such considerations.</p>
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<p>For 2015, we will continue to explore and develop the potentials of this magazine-format Informed Comment, to make sure it is the best possible resource on the contemporary Middle East.</p>
<p>I have several projects at Informed Comment for which I’d like to ask those who can to support. These plans continue to serve the larger goal of promoting understanding between the West and our neighbors in the Middle East. I will also continue to follow energy issues and climate change as these unfold, with their implications on the US, Europe, and the global South.</p>
<p>When events call for first hand reporting, I will continue travel for research and journalism to places where important developments are unfolding affecting US foreign policy, including of course the Middle East. Your contributions also allow me to solicit and pay for pieces from stringers on the scene.</p>
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<p>Your donation helps me keep Informed Comment independent and prolific. Together we keep independent media alive. I would like to thank all my readers and contributors again for your support in 2014 and look forward to an even more productive 2015 together. Thank you for supporting our independent thinking and dialogue!</p> | Annual Informed Comment Fundraiser | true | http://juancole.com/2014/12/2014-annual-informed-comment-fundraiser.html | 2014-12-01 | 4 |
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<p>Those are among the unclaimed property in the state’s possession that the Taxation and Revenue Department plans to auction off next week, Gov. Susana Marti nez and state officials announced Thursday.</p>
<p>The auction is the first of its kind in nearly 20 years, though New Mexico law requires that state officials auction off unclaimed items within three years of their discovery.</p>
<p>“New Mexico collects all unclaimed property,” Martinez said at an Albuquerque news con ference announcing the auction. “Most if it has some sentimental value to someone.”</p>
<p>But after a press blitz showcasing some of the unclaimed property and no one coming forward to claim the items, the state is obligated to auction them off to the general public.</p>
<p>The live auction, planned for July 27, will feature nearly 800 lots, including a 7-pound gold bar, more than 220 U.S. and foreign gold coins, nearly 1,900 U.S. silver dollars and a number of pieces of American Indian art.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Taxationand Revenue Department Secretary Demesia Padilla said the state could bring in around “$1 million to millions” from the sales. Live and online auctions are being held.</p>
<p>C.L. Bentley, CEO of the Amarillo, Texas-based Bentley’s Auction House, said the gold bar, valued at around $113,000, has attracted a lot of interest. “We’ve already had more than 200,000 hits on website and 38 people register for the online auction,” he said. “We’re going to have all kinds of items, from rare comics to rare coins.”</p>
<p>Padilla said owners of items can still claim the property before the auction. After the items are sold, the owners can claim part of the proceeds provided that they couldshow proof of ownership.</p>
<p>The money raised through the auction will go to the state’s general fund, Padilla said</p>
<p>Bids can be submitted online at <a href="http://www.bentleysauction.com" type="external">www.bentleysauction.com</a>.</p> | Items up for bid in overdue auction | false | https://abqjournal.com/223112/items-up-for-bid-in-overdue-auction.html | 2013-07-19 | 2 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=6516523"&gt;Orla&lt;/a&gt;/Shutterstock</p>
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<p>Editor’s Note:&#160;For perspective on the debate over tax cuts and deficit fixes, a classic case study of how the tax code became a slush fund for corporate America.</p>
<p>IN A SEASON OF campaign rallies and million-dollar ad buys, President Bush opted for one decidedly understated ceremony. On October 22, just 11 days before the election, he boarded Air Force One to sign $137 billion in new tax breaks for corporate America, one of the largest industry giveaways in two decades. This was his fifth major tax cut, but this time there was no glad-handing, no photo op—just a one-sentence press release. The president had nothing to brag about. His signature expanded exactly the sort of tax avoidance he had railed against at a campaign rally that morning: “The rich hire lawyers and accountants for a reason when it comes to taxes,” Bush had told a roaring audience at a hockey arena in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. “That’s to slip the bill, and stick you with it.”</p>
<p>It was an apt description of the vaingloriously named American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. Though the law began as an effort to end a $5 billion-a-year corporate tax subsidy that had been declared illegal by the World Trade Organization, it had grown into a hydra-headed beast. The law’s principal author, Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), jokingly referred to it as “Miss Piggy” on the House floor. Arizona Senator John McCain decried “the worst example of the influence of special interests that I have ever seen.” The president’s own Treasury secretary, John Snow, bemoaned the myriad “tax provisions that benefit few taxpayers.” Top White House economists protested one new loophole that would cut $3 billion, primarily from the taxes of pharmaceutical and high-tech companies, without yielding “any substantial economic benefits.”</p>
<p>Almost every industry in America received special favors. The tax cuts included half a billion for shipbuilders Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, $100 million for NASCAR racetrack owners, and $9 million for arrow manufacturers. Importers of Chinese ceiling fans—like Home Depot—got a break, as did energy companies angling to build a natural gas pipeline in Alaska. About $231 million went to reduce the taxes of shopping-mall developers in the states of key House and Senate members. Four Texas companies received special dispensation to shelter their profits in the Caribbean. The law also cut taxes on railroads, coffee roasters, timber firms, and Hollywood studios. General Electric received tax benefits worth more than $1 billion over the next decade.</p>
<p>“From the beginning to the end, this was designed by lobbyists,” says C. Eugene Steuerle, codirector of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, who spearheaded corporate tax reform as a member of the Reagan Treasury in 1986. “The only question was whether this was the worst tax bill in our lifetime or the worst tax bill in U.S. history.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>WHEN REPUBLICAN leaders took control of the House of Representatives a decade ago, they vowed to end such legislative fiascoes. Unfettered markets rather than government intervention, they proclaimed, would determine Wall Street’s winners and losers. In the Contract With America, Republicans promised a return to “fiscal responsibility” and to “end the cycle of scandal and disgrace” by which Democrats pandered to special interests. But far from living up to this rhetoric, the GOP leadership has presided over an explosion of new tax loopholes and pork-barrel spending. “It’s worse now than it was under the Democrats,” says Stephen Moore, president of the archconservative Club for Growth. “The Democrats invented the game, and Republicans perfected it.”</p>
<p>Conservatives in Congress, especially, have seized upon tax policy as a way of doling out favors to supporters while maintaining a facade of “smaller government”; tax breaks boost corporate bottom lines as effectively as pork-barrel expenditures, without requiring the Treasury to cut a check. Since 2000 alone, Wall Street’s tax bills have dropped by a third. As a percentage of the gross domestic product, corporate taxes are now at their lowest level in 20 years—and their second-lowest level since the Great Depression. Nearly 95 percent of corporations pay less than 5 percent of their income in taxes. This despite a tax rate that officially stands at 35 percent.</p>
<p>“The corporate income tax bears no relation to income—it’s a bunch of special-interest provisions,” says Gary Hufbauer, a fellow at the Institute for International Economics and a former tax policy analyst in the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations. Corporate America, he says, has gotten the message: Taxation is little more than punishment for not promoting your interests on Capitol Hill. “If you do not lobby,” says Hufbauer, “you are going to get taxed.”</p>
<p>A WILDLY UNPOPULAR loophole secured by four companies from Houston illustrates how easily special interests were able to hijack the American Jobs Creation Act. Weatherford International, Noble Corporation, Nabors Industries, and Cooper Industries—all located in or around the home district of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay—hired a small army of lobbyists in 2002 with a simple, if audacious, aim: to protect a tax benefit that the congressional leadership, and even President Bush, had vowed to end.</p>
<p>The provision in question allowed U.S. firms to open Potemkin headquarters in tax havens like Bermuda to hide their profits from the Internal Revenue Service. This so-called Bermuda loophole had saved companies like Accenture and Tyco International millions. Concerns about leaving other taxpayers to take up the slack were—at least in corporate boardrooms—easily dismissed. As one consultant from Ernst and Young advised at the time, “The patriotism issue needs to take a backseat.”</p>
<p>But in the God-Bless-America fervor that followed 9/11, the press began spotlighting these “corporate turncoats,” whose new headquarters often amounted to little more than a post office box with a beachfront view. Public outrage followed. In March of 2002, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, vowed to close the loophole and promised “serious penalties” for any company that moved offshore. “Proceed at your own peril,” he said. The Senate promptly proposed stiff fines for any company bolting to a tax haven after the date of Grassley’s declaration. Rep. Thomas, the chief Republican tax writer in the House, soon introduced his own bill backing up Grassley’s threat.</p>
<p>The tough talk worked. Several corporations scuttled talk of moving. Stanley Works, the tool company, even reversed its decision to relocate to Bermuda after a personal appeal from lawmakers—including DeLay. “We had Senator Grassley holding up our products and saying, ‘Here is a company that is a traitor,'” said Mike Bartone, Stanley’s vice president for taxes. “It was a factor.”</p>
<p>But the Houston Four openly defied the Republican leadership. Placing potential profits over patriotism—and, seemingly, over prudence—each of the companies moved its headquarters overseas between April and June of 2002. It was a risk with a huge upside: Cooper Industries—a direct competitor to Stanley Works—stood to save $55 million a year by moving to Bermuda. Oil service firms Nabors Industries and the Noble Corporation would each shave at least $9 million from their taxes. For Weatherford, a third oil service firm, a Caribbean address would slash its taxes by a reported $40 million.</p>
<p>Cementing these gains, of course, would mean derailing Grassley’s and Thomas’ proposals. But, in the current Congress, that was nothing a couple million dollars worth of high-powered lobbying couldn’t accomplish.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>THE LAST GOLDEN AGE for corporate tax dodgers came in the mid-1980s. Businesses trafficked in paper losses to mask profits. Blue-chip corporations spent lavishly on equipment for the tax benefits of leasing it to other companies. By the end of his first term, Ronald Reagan promised to turn things around. “It would be immoral,” Reagan said during his 1984 State of the Union address, “to make those who are paying taxes compensate for those who aren’t paying their share.”</p>
<p>Fixing the tax code fell to the economists at the Treasury. With few exceptions, special interests were kept at bay. Congress soon passed the Tax Reform Act of 1986—Reagan’s signature domestic achievement. Although the bill lowered tax rates, it closed so many loopholes that corporations paid the IRS an additional $100 billion over the next five years. But this era of more equitable taxation was short-lived. As Treasury Department analysts later lamented, the new system only made the art of tax evasion more profitable. Two decades later the great American tax dodge was back: At least 82 companies in the Fortune 500 paid no income taxes whatsoever during at least one of the first three years of George W. Bush’s administration.</p>
<p>Like Reagan, President Bush has repeatedly claimed that he wants to simplify the tax code. “The more simple it is,” he declared on a campaign swing last August, “the better it is for the American people.” But Bush showed none of the Gipper’s mettle when it came to putting those words into action in the corporate tax bill.</p>
<p>The American Jobs Creation Act was a monster two years in the making. In January 2002, the World Trade Organization ruled that a $5 billion-a-year tax break for American exporters amounted to an illegal subsidy. Congress would have to repeal the law to avoid punishing European tariffs. But antitax crusaders on the Hill weren’t about to stick corporate America with the equivalent of $50 billion in new taxes over the next decade, so the congressional leadership sought to replace the illegal benefit with a legal one.</p>
<p>With the corporate tax code in need of major surgery, Bush was presented with a once-in-a-generation opportunity for comprehensive reform. But the president refused to get involved. Unlike his approach to cutting personal income, dividend, and estate taxes, he didn’t instruct the Treasury to craft a coherent policy. To avoid stepping on the toes of his corporate supporters by shuttering favored tax breaks, Bush simply let the Republican Congress have at it.</p>
<p>Lawmakers began with a modest reform agenda—one that included closing the Bermuda loophole and ending tax breaks to companies that let executives take personal flights on company aircraft. But reform quickly took a backseat to horse-trading. “The way you get the votes,” said one tax lobbyist who worked on the bill, “is you buy them.” The bill needed the support of hundreds of lawmakers, each with corporate constituents to please.</p>
<p>Corporate lobbyists began targeting members with plum committee assignments to sponsor their pet tax cuts. International Speedway Corp. spent $280,000 to retain four former congressional staffers. Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who has a Speedway track in his state, responded by adding $92 million in tax cuts for NASCAR racetrack owners. After collecting more than $45,000 in campaign contributions from Carnival Corporation, Senate Finance Committee members Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Bob Graham (D-Fla.) snuck in a $28 million tax break for cruise ship operators. Fellow committee members Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and John Breaux (D-La.) both pushed a break for military shipbuilders with shipyards in their home states.</p>
<p>The bill quickly degenerated into a special-interest free-for-all. Even reform-minded senators weren’t immune: “Nearly every member raised narrow-interest provisions,” Grassley later remarked. “We all do it.”</p>
<p>THE HOUSTON FOUR joined early in the lobbying frenzy. They didn’t need to stop the Bermuda loophole from being closed; it was to their advantage to know that it would be shut—eventually. They simply needed to make sure the cutoff date was changed so that their tax gains would be grandfathered in. For that they needed to get the ear of the House leadership—particularly Majority Leader DeLay and Chairman Thomas.</p>
<p>The four had the advantage of being longtime contributors to Republican campaign chests, with Cooper Industries leading the pack with nearly $200,000 in contributions to House Republicans in the 2004 campaign cycle. To push their agenda, the firms signed up a former congressman and more than a half-dozen high-profile former Republican staffers. Noble Corporation and Weatherford International joined forces to retain Bill Archer, the retired representative from Houston who had run Ways and Means until 2001, when Thomas took over. They also bought the services of Archer’s former chief of staff, Don Carlson. Cooper and Nabors teamed up to hire an all-star cast that included the former director of the Joint Committee on Taxation, as well as both a former chief of staff and a special counsel to that tax committee. In all, the four companies spent more than $2 million on lobbyists for the single issue.</p>
<p>They got what they paid for. In March 2003, DeLay himself intervened on their behalf. At the time, the House was considering an unrelated bill freighted down with tax proposals—including a measure to close the Bermuda loophole—that would eventually find their way into the American Jobs Creation Act. At 8:30 p.m. on March 5—the night before the House was scheduled to vote on this bill—GOP leaders called an “emergency meeting” of the Rules Committee. There, according to the Houston Chronicle, DeLay introduced a new proposal that would postpone closing the Bermuda loophole by exactly one year.</p>
<p>While Republican infighting doomed the bill—it never came up for a vote—DeLay’s backroom maneuver permanently altered the House debate over the Bermuda loophole. When the final versions of the American Jobs Creation Act passed in the House and Senate, the Senate stuck to Grassley’s original Bermuda deadline. The House favored DeLay’s—which, in turn, favored the Houston Four.</p>
<p>The task of reconciling the two bills fell to Chairman Thomas. Although he had previously stood shoulder to shoulder with Grassley, he did not cross DeLay. The later cutoff date prevailed.</p>
<p>All that was left was grandstanding. Grassley made one final protest. “There were many companies,” he complained, “that defied our warnings.” He then addressed Thomas directly: “The problem I have with your [bill], Mr. Chairman, is that these companies get off scot-free.”</p>
<p>Rep. Sandy Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, asked a congressional accountant to read the names of all the companies that would benefit from delaying the loophole closure by one year. There were exactly four: Noble. Weatherford. Cooper. Nabors.</p>
<p>Three weeks later, somewhere in the airspace over Ohio, the tax break for the Houston Four—along with hundreds of other corporate considerations crafted by lawyers and tax accountants—became law when President Bush signed the $137 billion bill. Or, more accurately, when he stuck you with it.</p>
<p /> | Make Your Taxes Disappear!* | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2005/03/make-your-taxes-disappear/ | 2018-03-01 | 4 |
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<p>If it wasn’t for public transit, Founding Father Benjamin Franklin might not have been able to take part in the Constitutional Convention. He was in his 80s then and had health problems, so four convicts carried him by sedan chair all over Philadelphia.</p>
<p>The point to the story Kristen Joyner delivered is this: “We’ve had a need for public transportation for a long time in the United States.”</p>
<p>And she said with nationwide population projections showing one in six people will be over the age of 65 by 2020, their need for medical, housing, food and other services will increase over time, not to mention the need for transportation to connect them to such services.</p>
<p>“And if we’re not planning and getting ready for 2020, we’re going to hit a place that is not very pretty,” Joyner said. “We can provide all of these great services for our elders, but if they can’t get to them, what’s the point. That’s why I am so passionate about public transportation.”</p>
<p>Joyner, executive director of the South West Transit Association, was among the speakers taking part in a two-day Rural Transportation Conference that ended Wednesday.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The AARP and New Mexico Passenger Transportation Association program was aimed at rural providers, and those taking part included public transit operators and programs that provide transportation.</p>
<p>Along with driver and manager training, “they’re here to exchange information, come up with new ways of raising revenue when there are fewer public dollars (and) a rising aging population,” said Stan Cooper, AARP New Mexico state director.</p>
<p>In about two decades, the Census Bureau predicts 26 percent of New Mexico’s population will be 65 and older, Cooper said. “We’ll be the fourth highest state in the nation percentage-wise,” he said. “So I think that there’s a crying need for finding ways to share and coordinate” services.</p>
<p>Joyner, who talked about some unique ways to save costs and generate money for transportation programs, held up as an example the “Road to Work Oklahoma” — a statewide rural transit network aimed at getting low-income people working.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Forum: Older Population Relies on Public Transit | false | https://abqjournal.com/8404/forum-older-population-relies-on-public-transit.html | 2 |
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<p>DALLAS — Officials say the year-old King Charles Spaniel belonging to the Dallas nurse hospitalized with Ebola has been given comfortable bedding, toys and other items to entertain him while he stays at a decommissioned naval air base.</p>
<p>City spokeswoman Sana Syed said Tuesday that Bentley is staying in the former residence of the executive officer at the decommissioned Hensley Field, which is owned by the city. Bentley was moved Monday from nurse Nina Pham’s apartment to his new home, where he’ll be monitored.</p>
<p>Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings says city officials vowed to do everything in their power to care for Pham’s beloved pet.</p>
<p>There was an uproar in Spain after Madrid authorities euthanized a dog belonging to a nursing assistant sickened by Ebola. Authorities were concerned the dog might be harboring the virus.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Dog of Dallas nurse with Ebola moved to air base | false | https://abqjournal.com/479974/dog-of-dallas-nurse-with-ebola-moved-to-air-base.html | 2 |
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<p>by Andrew Kohut, President, Pew Research Center Special to the New York Times</p>
<p>Washington’s frenzied embrace of all things populist in recent weeks notwithstanding, it is far too early to say how much of an impact the Tea Party movement will have on elections this year. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found just 49% expressing either a positive or negative opinion about the Tea Party movement. Similarly, the Field Poll found only about half of California voters expressing a general view of the movement.</p>
<p>But a number of public opinion trends suggest that the movement is likely to attract supporters as it becomes better known. These include: a surge in anti-incumbent sentiment, growing public concerns about big government and the budget deficit, and real anger at Wall Street and the big banks. Most importantly, these sentiments have increased markedly among political independents, who are most likely to be attracted to third party movements.</p>
<p>Still, the hurdles ahead for the movement are considerable. First, a third party needs a visible, credible leader. Ross Perot’s Reform Party tapped in to the anti-incumbent, anti-Washington mood of the early 1990’s because Perot convincingly made the case for many Americans. The Tea Party needs a strong voice to make a big impact. News reports of divisions within the movement as it gathers for a national convention are not a good sign. Secondly, independents, and swing voters generally, are for the most part centrists, who typically are not attracted to political extremes, their discontents notwithstanding.</p>
<p>That may be a significant problem for the Tea Party movement. In California, the Field Poll found that identification with the Tea Party movement was concentrated mostly among strong conservatives. About half (46%) of strong conservatives said they identified a lot with the Tea Party movement compared with only 13% of moderate conservatives and only 5% of middle-of-the-roaders. (One indication of its current appeal is that only 29% of Californians who identify with the Tea Party movement think that President Obama was born in the United States, according to the poll.)</p>
<p>Perhaps not surprisingly, Americans surveyed have mixed views about the movement, as the NBC/WSJ poll and others have found. How those numbers change will be significant for both parties.</p>
<p>The movement is ideologically a natural ally of the Republican Party, so it could hurt the GOP if it fields its own candidates for races. On the other hand, it could help the Republicans if it galvanizes the conservative vote, even if the movement itself doesn’t achieve broad acceptance among independents and swing voters. This seems to be what occurred in the Republican victory in the Massachusetts senate election.</p>
<p>Read the full debate on the Tea Party movment at <a href="http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/tea-partyers-and-the-power-of-no/" type="external">nytimes.com</a>.</p> | Inviting Centrists to the Tea Party | false | http://pewresearch.org/2010/02/01/inviting-centrists-to-the-tea-party/ | 2010-02-01 | 2 |
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<p>And if all goes as planned, the Benedictine monks will have wrapped gifts under the abbey’s Christmas tree this morning.</p>
<p>“We get more and more families coming with their kids now,” said the Rev. Aidan Gore, who was named abbot here earlier this year. “I encourage people to bring their kids because it brings some life, some joy, some spirit around here.”</p>
<p>The Welsh-born abbot leads 11 other monks who live in a valley of astonishing beauty where the upper Pecos River has cut high bluffs through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains about 15 miles east of Santa Fe.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In his homily, Gore uses “A Charlie Brown Christmas” – and, in particular, Linus’ explanation of the Christmas story – to appeal to children.</p>
<p>“That’s how Jesus taught, with stories and parables,” he said.</p>
<p>“When we have a lot of kids, I like to engage the kids and make Mass an enjoyable experience for them.”</p>
<p>For many Americans, Christmas is a time of shopping, gift-giving, social gatherings and, of course, huddling around the television to watch sporting contests and specials.</p>
<p>“We get caught up in all that,” Gore said. “I try to remind people to do things too for others on a spiritual level as well. To not forget what it’s all about, Charlie Brown.”</p>
<p>The abbey’s 1,100-acre property at various times has served as a ranch, a dude ranch, and even a Wells Fargo stagecoach stop, complete with stables since remodeled as office and living space for the monks.</p>
<p>The Olivetan Benedictine monks have owned the site since 1985. They host individual and group retreats, which provide the abbey’s main income. Visitors too often arrive at the abbey “exhausted, wiped out, drained,” Gore said.</p>
<p>“It’s not easy living out there in the world,” said Gore, who bought, restored and sold houses in Santa Fe before he became a monk at age 50. “They just need to rest, be healed, restore themselves, then go back out there.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Christmas can be a time of tension between the material and the spiritual worlds, but the Rev. Bob Lussier, the abbey’s prior, forever rid himself of that dilemma in 1988.</p>
<p>Then a successful film and television actor, Lussier summoned friends to his plush home in Hollywood Hills and gave away all his worldly possessions in one wild day of gift-giving.</p>
<p>“I got rid of everything in that one day,” said Lussier, who acted in dozens of feature films, television series and more than 200 commercials.</p>
<p>“I didn’t know what my reaction was going to be when that time came,” he said.</p>
<p>Lussier said he was surprised by his reaction as friends picked through his fine furniture, jewelry and dinnerware, then hauled it away.</p>
<p>“I giggled for the whole day,” he said. “I didn’t realize that I would be so happy about it. It was really a great joy.”</p>
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<p /> | Finding balance at Christmas | false | https://abqjournal.com/915411/find-a-balance-at-christmas-abbot-urges.html | 2016-12-24 | 2 |
<p>Paper</p>
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<p>This paper argues that violent events have two economic effects: a direct loss from the destruction of physical and human capital, and a reallocation of financial and economic resources. It documents the positive cross-border impact that follows violent events as a result of this reallocation. Thus, it reconciles the two existing perspectives in the literature on whether violence has a small or large economic&#160; effect.&#160; Our results show that, in globally integrated markets, the substitution of financial and economic activities away from afflicted countries magnifies their losses. This study evaluates certain factors affecting the impact of violence in non-event countries. Geographic distance from the event country is not monotonic in its effect on the valuation of equities of other countries. Also, the safer a non-event country is perceived to be relative to the event country, the greater the positive impact on its financial market. Finally, event countries with deeper financial markets are less susceptible to capital reallocation following an event.</p>
<p /> | The Cross-Border Financial Impact of Violence | false | http://belfercenter.org/publication/cross-border-financial-impact-violence | 2 |
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<p>Russia struck out at the U.S. on Friday, saying it would expel diplomats and close a diplomatic retreat outside Moscow after Congress passed a new round of sanctions against Moscow.</p>
<p>Legislation passed by both the House and the Senate this week tighten existing sanctions and introduce a set of new measures to punish Russia for alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election. The legislation also would prevent President Donald Trump from easing sanctions without congressional approval.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Mr. Trump, who has expressed skepticism over allegations of Russia's role in last year's election, hasn't made it clear whether or not he will sign the bill. Russian authorities said there was no need to wait for the president's signature to act.</p>
<p>"The most recent events show that Russophobia has taken hold in certain circles in the United States as has a course of open confrontation with our country," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.</p>
<p>The Russian measures will reduce the number of U.S. diplomatic and technical staff in Russia as of Sept. 1 to 455, the same number of Russian diplomats now operating in the U.S. after then-President Barack Obama expelled 35 late last year, the Russian foreign ministry said.</p>
<p>It wasn't clear how many people are employed by the U.S. embassy or whether the positions included Russian foreign service nationals. But the reduction would lead to the expulsion of around 700 staff members, said Russian parliamentary vice-speaker Sergei Zheleznyak.</p>
<p>"This will be felt by American diplomacy," Mr. Zheleznyak said on state television. "The measures against the United States have been a long time coming."</p>
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<p>The ministry also ordered a diplomatic retreat in a forested complex outside Moscow shuttered from Aug. 1 and closed diplomatic storage sites.</p>
<p>The measure looks to be a tit for tat move in response to U.S. authorities' decision last year to deny Russian diplomats access to two Moscow-owned compounds--one in New York and one in Maryland--used by Russian diplomats.</p>
<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has called the latest round of sanctions against Moscow "impudent," had initially expected warmer ties with the U.S. under Mr. Trump. The measures escalate tensions after ties fell to Cold War lows following the Ukrainian crisis in 2014 and allegations last year that Russia had used cyber attacks to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.</p>
<p>The U.S. ambassador, John Tefft was called to the Foreign Ministry on Friday and informed of the decision to implement the measures by Russian authorities, the ministry said.</p>
<p>Mr. Tefft "expressed his strong disappointment and protest" and the Russian government's notification has been passed on to Washington, a U.S. embassy spokesperson said.</p>
<p>Alexei Pushkov, the chairman of the upper house of parliament's committee on information policy said Russia could impose new sanctions on the U.S., including economic measures.</p>
<p>"The United States has been carrying out an economic war against a number of our companies," he said, without going into details of possible new measures.</p>
<p>Russian authorities say the sanctions passed in Congress, which includes a provision allowing the president to impose penalties on firms packing high-profile Russian pipeline projects, is merely a pretext to cut Russian gas exports to its largest trading partner, the European Union.</p>
<p>It would allow some joint energy ventures to go ahead, but would sanction new projects and joint ventures in which a sanctioned Russian person or entity holds a stake of 33% or more.</p>
<p>That provision has upset Europeans because it poses a potential risk to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a project of the Russian gas giant Gazprom backed by a consortium of five European companies, to transport gas from Russia to Europe through the Baltic Sea.</p>
<p>Write to Thomas Grove at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>July 28, 2017 08:57 ET (12:57 GMT)</p> | Russia to Kick Out Some U.S. Diplomats Over Sanctions | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/07/28/russia-to-kick-out-some-u-s-diplomats-over-sanctions.html | 2017-07-28 | 0 |
<p>A new <a href="https://ifstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IFSMenandMarriageResearchBrief2.pdf" type="external">study</a> has concluded that married men are happier and healthier than those who are not.</p>
<p>The study, conducted by the Institute for Family Studies, concluded that "the benefits of marriage for men are substantial by every conceivable measure, including more money, a better sex life, and significantly better physical and mental health."</p>
<p>When it comes to money, the study found that married men will be richer than single men by a range of 10 to 40 percent; when taking "selection effect" into account, that range decreases 10 to 24 percent.</p>
<p>"Men who stay married are in much better financial shape than their peers who divorced, or those who never married in the first place," the study's research brief states. "Married men earn more, save more, and generally have access to a second income. Consequently, they have much greater accumulated wealth than their unmarried peers. In fact, the typical fifty-something married man has three times the assets of his unmarried peer, about $167,000 compared to less than $49,000."</p>
<p>While married men did not have as much sex as men who were "co-habiting," married men clearly had more satisfactory sex lives, as 51 percent of married men described their sex lives as "extremely satisfactory" while only 39 percent of men in co-habitation relationships and 36 of single men said the same.</p>
<p>The reason is pretty obvious: sex is better when people are in love with their sexual partner.</p>
<p>"Women are four times as likely as men to make love a requirement for having sex, and marriage is obviously a venue in which women are going to feel the love necessary for sexual engagement," the study brief states. "Surprisingly, men too are more likely to experience sexual satisfaction when they know they’re in lasting relationships. So from a sexual perspective, research suggests that marriage is worth the commitment it requires."</p>
<p>Married men were also healthier from both a physical and mental standpoint; the study found that "men who get and stay married live almost 10 years longer than their unmarried peers." Part of this is because their spouses are more likely to push them to see a doctor as well as married men having healthier diets. But it's also due to the fact that married men can lean on their spouses for support in the case of illness and are, overall, just happier. In a survey of men asked if they are "very happy" with their lives, 43 percent of married men said yes, compared to 20 percent of single men and 21 percent of men in co-habitation relationships.</p>
<p>Here is how the study's research brief concluded:</p>
<p>Social science confirms that marriage confers enormous benefits for men’s wallets, for their sex life, and for their physical and mental health. Yet too many men still believe in the ball and chain myth, viewing marriage as an expensive encumbrance on their freedom and their sex lives. These views are ubiquitous in popular culture, and this has undoubtedly had adverse consequences for men’s aspirations to marriage.</p>
<p>We believe these negative perceptions need to change. The first step is ensuring that the next generation knows the truth about marriage. Journalists, social scientists, and policy-makers bear a special responsibility for making the good news about marriage more widely known. This is a priority given some of the adverse consequences men, women, and children have suffered in the retreat from marriage.</p>
<p><a href="https://ifstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IFSMenandMarriageResearchBrief2.pdf" type="external">The full research brief can be read here.</a></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/bandlersbanter" type="external">Follow Aaron Bandler on Twitter.</a></p> | Study: Married Men Are Happier | true | https://dailywire.com/news/14235/study-married-men-are-happier-aaron-bandler | 2017-03-08 | 0 |
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<p>Hispanic students in New Mexico schools rank No. 1 in the nation for their participation and success on Advanced Placement tests, which are aimed at preparing students for college and allow them to skip certain introductory college courses, according to a ranking compiled by education nonprofit College Board.</p>
<p>MARTINEZ: Wants to increase AP funding</p>
<p>"This is absolutely amazing and I'm so excited," the governor told reporters during a news conference at the University of New Mexico engineering building. "This shows that what we're doing with Advanced Placement is working."</p>
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<p>This is the second consecutive year that New Mexico's Hispanic students topped the list for AP exam success. College Board compiles data from states, the federal government and the AP program to build the ranking, according to the nonprofit's website.</p>
<p>The governor also pointed out that New Mexico's low-income students were ranked second in the country for their success on the exams, as well. That's the first time New Mexico has ranked that high, she said. Because the full report won't be released until later this month, the governor's staff said, the name of the first-ranked state in that category was not released.</p>
<p>The report found that nearly half of Hispanic students who graduated last year took an AP class - the highest percentage in the nation. Further, the governor said, 43 percent of those Hispanic students who took the test scored a "3" or better, which enables them to bypass introductory courses in that subject when they attend college. The students who leapfrog the introductory courses tend to be better prepared for college and save their parents money in paying for the courses, the governor said.</p>
<p>The governor and state Public Education Department chief Hanna Skandera touted her administration's efforts at expanding access to AP courses, which are offered in a variety of subjects, to low-income students and students in rural areas. The governor used the high ranking as proof that their efforts were working and announced that she plans to ask the Legislature to increase AP funding in the state budget to $2 million.</p>
<p>The Governor's Office did not immediately provide data that would have compared New Mexico Hispanic students' performance to their non-Hispanic classmates?.</p>
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<p /> | NM Hispanic students top nation on AP tests | false | https://abqjournal.com/346706/nm-hispanic-students-top-nation-on-ap-tests.html | 2 |
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<p>RUSH: Trump is now threatening to pull out of the CNN debate if they don't give the additional ad revenue that they're earning here to charity. This is last night with Greta Van Susteren on the Fox News Channel. He was asked, "If Jeff Zucker over at CNN does not agree with your demand, as you wrote in that letter today, to donate the money, the ad revenue, to veterans, will you consider not showing up?"</p>
<p>TRUMP: We're gonna make a determination, but he should make a big donation. And, frankly, so should the other networks because they're making a lot of money, and I would like to see that money go to the vets.</p>
<p>REPORTER: So if he doesn't give the money, you won't show up?</p>
<p>TRUMP: We'll make a determination.</p>
<p>RUSH: We're gonna determine later whether or not we'll show up. Trump's maintaining that before this CNN was charging $5,000 a minute. That's news that we had yesterday. With the anticipated audience for the September 16th debate, CNN's charging $200,000 a minute. And Trump, as a full-fledged capitalist and, by the way, a commissioned salesman - commissioned sales, boy, if you can get the right deal of commissioned sales you can become rich. You get a percentage of everything and you be the one to explain why it's happening, you get yourself directly in the revenue stream, that's what Trump considers himself to do.</p>
<p>He says, "All right, five grand a minute before I show up, right? Two-hundred grand the minute after I show up? Who should get the money here? You guys? What are you doing? You already own the cameras. You're not even using your studios. You're using the Reagan library. What are you guys doing for this? Money should go to vets."</p> | Trump Threatens Debate Pullout Unless CNN Donates Ad Revenue to Veterans | true | http://rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/09/10/trump_threatens_debate_pullout_unless_cnn_donates_ad_revenue_to_veterans | 2015-09-10 | 0 |
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<p>When it comes to your career, there’s nothing worse than being professionally stuck. Unless you’re stuck and unaware that you are also on your company’s chopping block for the next round of layoffs.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Most of the time people aren’t aware when their career falls into a rut. You could actually be hurting yourself with your actions (or lack of action) and putting yourself at great professional risk. In fact, you could be sitting around, literally waiting to be fired.</p>
<p>So, how do you know if you are in jeopardy? If one or more of the following resonates with you, it’s possible you are about to be handed a pink slip.</p>
<p>1. Every day is the same and boring. If you feel like you are just going through the motions every day at the office, it’s no wonder you’re bored. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking there’s nothing you can do to fix your mundane routine. Come up with new project ideas to pitch to your boss that can help advance the company (as well as your career).</p>
<p>2. You have no idea what your boss intends for the company's (or more specifically your department's) future. If you don't understand, in depth, the purpose of what you do each day, there’s no way you can do your job to the best of your ability. Consider having a conversation with your boss to better understand the firm’s mission and what he or she needs from you to achieve success. It’s vital to your career that you know why you do what you do and what need you’re fulfilling.</p>
<p>3. You don't see the possibilities of career advancement. Attitude is everything. If you don’t believe there are advancement opportunities within or outside your current organization, then your eyes won’t be open to seeing them when they are smacking you in the face. There are opportunities out there. Figure out what your worth is to an organization and how you can help your company succeed. Once you have this determined, get in front of those who can help point you in the direction of the available opportunities. And don’t get discouraged if you don’t see them right away. Be persistent and they will show up.</p>
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<p>4. You don't do anything beyond the bare minimum. If you find yourself only doing what you are asked, then you might find yourself being shown the way out soon. Ask yourself if you would pay someone you have hired (such as someone to cut your lawn) more than you are paying now if he doesn’t do more than the minimum you expect. Of course not. So why would you think it’s acceptable to be that person?</p>
<p>5. You harbor resentment (or even hatred). If you have ill will toward your boss, your company, your colleagues, your customers or any combination of then it can be hard to put your best foot forward each day. If you dislike everyone you work with (or even the majority of those you work with) don’t think for a second that no one notices. People are more perceptive than you think. Why on earth would anyone want to promote you or give you an opportunity for anything if you have such an attitude toward everyone?</p>
<p>6. You have 'friends' at work with whom you mutually gossip or complain with all the time. We all need a person to vent to in the office, but if you find yourself complaining with co-workers on an ongoing basis about almost everything relating to the job and the company, you might want to change this behavior fast. The office gossips or complainers are the people that are usually also the troublemakers--or are perceived as the troublemakers-- of the bunch. They are not to be trusted and they often make the office environment toxic. If this is you, stop it now!</p>
<p>7. You can't wait to retire. Ok, so you have to work to pay the bills, but if it’s true that Americans spend (on average) more than half of their waking hours at work or in work-related activities, then why on earth would you accept being so unhappy at work to the point of wishing your life away?&#160; Life is way too short to be unhappy, start looking for a new opportunity that will be make you happy.</p>
<p>And one final note: even if you fall into all seven of these categories, it’s not too late. It is entirely up to you to change the trajectory of your career. Start with a long hard look in a big mirror, identify the areas where you can do better and then be willing to have a change in attitude.</p>
<p>Wall Street veteran <a href="http://www.occupreneur.com/about" type="external">Lindsay Broder Opens a New Window.</a>(on twitter: @occurpeneur) is a certified professional coach known as The Occupreneur™&#160;Coach. Based in New York, she specializes in&#160; <a href="http://www.occupreneur.com/services" type="external">Occupreneur Opens a New Window.</a>™career coaching, strategy &amp; <a href="http://www.occupreneur.com" type="external">consulting services Opens a New Window.</a> for highly successful professionals &amp; organizations who strive to improve one or more aspects of their businesses or careers.</p> | 7 Signs You’re Waiting Around to Get Fired | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/01/08/7-signs-youre-waiting-around-to-get-fired.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
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<p>PHOENIX (AZ)The Dallas Morning NewsBy REESE DUNKLIN and SUSAN HOGAN/ALBACH / The Dallas Morning News</p>
<p>The troubles of America's Catholic bishops deepened Monday as one of their own was arrested in connection with a hit-and-run traffic fatality.</p>
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<p>Phoenix Bishop Thomas O'Brien, who recently cut a deal with criminal authorities to avoid prosecution for covering up sexual abuse, now stands accused of driving away from a deadly accident after a Saturday night Mass.</p>
<p>Police said that he admitted driving the car that hit 43-year-old Jim L. Reed, a father of four. A diocesan attorney declined to comment Monday, and a personal attorney for the bishop could not be reached.</p>
<p>This is believed to be the most serious criminal charge ever brought against an American Catholic prelate. It comes after the chairman of a national lay review board compared some bishops to the Mafia and resigned – and just days before U.S. church leaders gather for what they had hoped would be a low-key meeting and a private discussion of their sex-abuse crisis.</p>
<p /> | Arizona bishop arrested in hit-and-run death | false | https://poynter.org/news/arizona-bishop-arrested-hit-and-run-death | 2003-06-17 | 2 |
<p>ALTENBERG, Germany (AP) - Defending champion Jacqueline Loelling extended her overall lead with a third skeleton World Cup win of the season on Friday, leading a German sweep of the podium.</p>
<p>Yun Sung-bin of South Korea followed up by extending his lead in the men's standings with his fourth win from six competitions.</p>
<p>The 22-year-old Loelling was fastest in the women's first run and quick enough in the second for a combined time of 1 minute 57.74 seconds, beating Tina Hermann by 0.13 seconds and Anna Fernstaedt by 0.43.</p>
<p>With two races remaining, Loelling was leading the overall standings on 1,227 points, ahead of Canada's Elisabeth Vathje, who was ninth in Altenberg, on 1,118, and Hermann on 1,084. A race-winner is awarded 225 points, while the runner-up gets 210.</p>
<p>Yun was fastest in both his runs for a combined time of 1:54.28, beating Russia's Alexander Tretiakov by 0.39 and Germany's Christopher Grotheer by 0.76. Another Russian, Nikita Tregubov, was fourth.</p>
<p>Yun stretched his lead to 1,320 points - 100 ahead of Martins Dukurs, who was fifth, and 216 ahead of Dukurs' sixth-place brother Tomass.</p>
<p>ALTENBERG, Germany (AP) - Defending champion Jacqueline Loelling extended her overall lead with a third skeleton World Cup win of the season on Friday, leading a German sweep of the podium.</p>
<p>Yun Sung-bin of South Korea followed up by extending his lead in the men's standings with his fourth win from six competitions.</p>
<p>The 22-year-old Loelling was fastest in the women's first run and quick enough in the second for a combined time of 1 minute 57.74 seconds, beating Tina Hermann by 0.13 seconds and Anna Fernstaedt by 0.43.</p>
<p>With two races remaining, Loelling was leading the overall standings on 1,227 points, ahead of Canada's Elisabeth Vathje, who was ninth in Altenberg, on 1,118, and Hermann on 1,084. A race-winner is awarded 225 points, while the runner-up gets 210.</p>
<p>Yun was fastest in both his runs for a combined time of 1:54.28, beating Russia's Alexander Tretiakov by 0.39 and Germany's Christopher Grotheer by 0.76. Another Russian, Nikita Tregubov, was fourth.</p>
<p>Yun stretched his lead to 1,320 points - 100 ahead of Martins Dukurs, who was fifth, and 216 ahead of Dukurs' sixth-place brother Tomass.</p> | Loelling, Yun win skeleton World Cup races to stretch leads | false | https://apnews.com/3ffdefabb66c4725a44ce8f85c492a7c | 2018-01-05 | 2 |
<p>Everyone go read <a href="http://therumpus.net/2012/08/the-illusion-of-safetythe-safety-of-illusion/" type="external">Roxane Gay’s piece about trigger warnings and the illusion of safety</a>:</p>
<p>There are things that rip my skin open and reveal what lies beneath but I don’t believe in trigger warnings. I don’t believe people can be protected from their histories. I don’t believe it is at all possible to anticipate the histories of others in ways that would be satisfying for anyone.</p>
<p>There is no standard for trigger warnings, no universal guidelines. Once you start, where do you stop? Does the mention of the word rape require a trigger warning or is the threshold an account of a rape? How graphic does an account of abuse need to be before meriting a warning? Are trigger warnings required anytime matters of difference are broached? What is graphic? Who makes these determinations?</p>
<p>It all seems so futile, so impotent and, at times, belittling. When I see trigger warnings, I think, “How dare you presume what I need to be protected from?”</p>
<p>Although I use them here at Feministing, I don’t think I really believe in trigger warnings either. Mostly because, as Roxane says, “everything is a trigger for someone” and it feels arbitrary what gets the warning and what doesn’t. And on a blog like this, especially, I sort of expect that everything could be somewhat triggering. Indeed, Shakesville has moved towards providing “content notes,” which seems like a more useful kind of warning to me. But, again, what happens is that almost everything gets a warning, because we cover lots of fucked-up injustices in the feminist blogosphere.</p>
<p>On the other hand, despite their imperfections, trigger warnings seem to be appreciated by some people and that’s good enough for me. As <a href="http://www.shakesville.com/2010/04/i-write-letters_13.html" type="external">Melissa wrote</a> during the last <a href="http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2010/04/16/trigger-warnings-and-being-an-asshole/" type="external">dust-up on this topic</a>, “We provide trigger warnings because it’s polite, because we don’t want to be the asshole who triggered a survivor of sexual assault because of carelessness or laziness or ignorance.”</p>
<p>But you tell me. What are your triggers? Have you been triggered by a post here or elsewhere on the interwebs? Do you think trigger warnings are useful? Do you appreciate that we use them at Feministing? Do you think we should use them more often?</p> | The Wednesday Weigh-In: Trigger Warning Edition | true | http://feministing.com/2012/08/29/the-wednesday-weigh-in-trigger-warning-edition/ | 4 |
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<p>WASHINGTON – We are in the throes of another round of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter memorably called “creative destruction.”</p>
<p>Two icons of American business – Macy’s and Sears – are struggling. Macy’s plans to close 100 stores to improve profitability, and Sears has sold its Craftsman tools line for roughly $900 million to raise cash.</p>
<p>Conceivably, one or both of these historic chains could go bankrupt.</p>
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<p>Their distress is part of a larger consolidation of retailers under siege from e-commerce. The Limited is closing all its 250 stories. Kmart, owned by Sears, is shutting dozens of stores.</p>
<p>This is a rough process for workers, managers and shareholders, but it holds out the promise of improved business efficiency, aka productivity.</p>
<p>The most inefficient stores will shut; the survivors will be more viable and stable.</p>
<p>Except it hasn’t happened yet.</p>
<p>What’s puzzling about this episode of creative destruction is that we’ve gotten much pain but are still waiting for the gain. Instead of improving, productivity growth has slowed dramatically.</p>
<p>From 2010 to 2015, average labor productivity increased only 0.4 percent a year, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics.</p>
<p>That’s well below the average post-World War II productivity gain, which is about 2 percent annually.</p>
<p>What happened to the productivity dividend?</p>
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<p>I have written about this subject before, because – though obscure – it is vital to our economic future.</p>
<p>Faster productivity growth is the basic source of higher incomes and living standards. If not reversed, the productivity slowdown implies something close to long-term stagnation in wages and incomes.</p>
<p>Changing the trajectory of productivity growth is a central challenge for the incoming Trump administration – as it would have been if Hillary Clinton had won.</p>
<p>To explain the puzzle, economists have offered many theories. Here are four:</p>
<p>⋄&#160; Despite contrary appearances, American technology is actually lagging.</p>
<p>⋄&#160; An aging society weakens risk-taking.</p>
<p>⋄&#160; Too many government regulations discourage start-up firms.</p>
<p>⋄&#160; The Great Recession, with peak unemployment of 10 percent, made both consumers and corporations more reluctant to spend, resulting in slower economic growth.</p>
<p>There may be something to all these theories, but none resolves the underlying paradox of plentiful technology and skimpy productivity gains.</p>
<p>My explanation lies in what I call “parallel technologies.”</p>
<p>We have two systems to do one job. Companies have to support the old as well as the new technology.</p>
<p>People no longer buy everything in stores, but stores are still necessary. (In 2016, e-commerce totaled about 8 percent of retail sales.)</p>
<p>Still, the loss of sales makes brick-and-mortar stores less productive, and their loss of productivity offsets some or all of the gains from digital technologies.</p>
<p>This is, I think, the basic explanation of what’s happening at Macy’s and Sears. They have to invest in the new technology, even as the value of the old technology erodes.</p>
<p>The effect is compounded because they’ve been slow to shut marginal stores. There’s always the hope that these stores will bounce back and avoid large losses.</p>
<p>If these “parallel technologies” applied only to e-commerce and stores, it would be interesting but not decisive. But it applies to many industries and products, which magnifies its economic significance.</p>
<p>You can think of many cases: smartphones and traditional landlines; paper and digital newspapers; cable TV and streaming internet video; standard taxis and Uber. Doubtlessly, there are other examples.</p>
<p>We’re in the midst of a massive reallocation of economic resources – workers, firms and capital investment – that initially weakened productivity growth.</p>
<p>That’s my theory at least.</p>
<p>Could there be a silver lining to this dark cloud? Maybe. Sooner or later, the adjustment will ebb as past inefficiencies are purged.</p>
<p>But how long do we have to wait?</p>
<p>Copyright, The Washington Post Writers Group.</p>
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<p /> | Economic pain will lead to gain, won’t it? | false | https://abqjournal.com/926934/economic-pain-will-lead-to-gain-wont-it.html | 2 |
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<p>During his confirmation hearings this past June, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned the Senate, “The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems.” It was powerful imagery: a mighty fleet reduced to smoking ruin, an expansionist Asian power at the nation’s doorstep.</p>
<p>But is “cyber war” really a threat? Can cyber war actually “cripple” the U.S., and who might these computer terrorists be? Or is the language just sturm und drang spun up by a coalition of major arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, and Internet security firms, allied with China bashers aimed at launching a new Cold War in Asia?</p>
<p>The language is apocalyptic. Former White House Security Aide Richard Clarke, author of “Cyberwar”, conjures up an horrrifying prospect of paralyzed U.S. cities, subways crashing, planes “literally falling out of the sky,” and thousands dead. Retired Admiral and Bush administration National Intelligence Director, Mike McConnell grimly warns “The United States is fighting a cyber war today and we are losing.”</p>
<p>Much of this rhetoric is aimed at China. According to U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, the Chinese government has launched a “predatory” campaign of “cyber theft” that has reached an “intolerable level.” U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) charges that a “significant portion” of “cyber attacks” on U.S. companies “emanate from China.” Former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden told Congress, “I stand back in awe of the breadth, depth, sophistication, and persistence of the Chinese espionage effort against the United States of America.”</p>
<p>China has been accused of hacking into the Pentagon, the International Monetary Fund, the French government, the CIA, and stealing information from major U.S. arms maker Boeing, and the Japanese firm Mitsubishi. The latter builds the American fighter, the F-15.</p>
<p>The Pentagon has even developed a policy strategy that considers major cyber attacks to be acts of war, triggering what could be a military response. “If you shut down our power grid,” one Defense official told the Wall Street Journal, “maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks.”</p>
<p>But consider the sources for all this scare talk: Clarke is the chair of a firm that consults on cyber security, and McConnell is the executive vice-president of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Both are currently doing business with the Pentagon.</p>
<p>Arms giants like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and other munitions manufactures are moving heavily into the cyber security market. In 2010, Boeing snapped up Argon ST and Narus, two cyber security firms with an estimated value of $2.4 billion. Raytheon bought Applied Signal Technology, General Dynamics absorbed Network Connectivity Solutions, and Britain’s major arms firm, BAE, purchased Norkom and ETI.</p>
<p>“There is a feeding frenzy right now to provide products and services to meet the demands of governments, law enforcement and the military,” says Ron Deibert, director of the Canada Center for Global Security Studies.</p>
<p>There are big bucks at stake. Between the Defense Department and Homeland Security, the U.S. will spend some $10.5 billion for cyber security by 2015. The Pentagon’s new Cyber Command is slated to have a staff of 10,000, and according to Northrop executive Kent Schneider, the market for cyber arms and security in the U.S. is $100 billion.</p>
<p>But is cyber war everything it is cracked up to be, and is the U.S. really way behind the curve in the scramble to develop cyber weapons?</p>
<p>According to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in his New Yorker article “The Online Threat,” the potential for cyber mayhem has “been exaggerated” and the Defense Department and cyber security firms have blurred the line between cyber espionage and cyber war. The former is the kind of thing that goes on, day in and day out, between governments and industry, except its medium is the Internet. The latter is an attack on another country’s ability to wage war, defend itself, or run its basic infrastructure.</p>
<p>Most experts say the end-of-the-world scenarios drawn up by people like Clarke are largely fiction. How could an enemy shut down the U.S. national power grid when there is no such thing? A cyber attack would have to disrupt more than 100 separate power systems throughout the nation to crash the U.S. grid.</p>
<p>Most financial institutions are also protected. The one example of a successful cyber attack in that area was an apparent North Korean cyber assault this past march on the South Korean bank Nonghyup that crashed the institution’s computers. But an investigation found that the bank had been extremely remiss in changing passwords or controlling access to its computers. According to Peter Sommer, author of “Reducing Systems Cybersecurity Risk,” the cyber threat to banks “is a bit of nonsense.”</p>
<p>However, given that many Americans rely on computers, cell phones, I-Pads, smart phones and the like, any hint that an “enemy” could disrupt access to those devices is likely to get attention. Throw in some scary scenarios and a ruthless enemy—China—and it’s pretty easy to make people nervous.</p>
<p>But contrary to McConnell’s statement, the U.S. is more advanced in computers than other countries in the world, and the charge that the U.S. is behind the curve sounds suspiciously like the “bomber gap” with the Russians in the ‘50s and the “missile gap” in the 1960s. Both were fictions that had more to do with U.S. presidential elections and arms industry lobbying than anything in the real world.</p>
<p>The focus on the China threat certainly fits the Obama administration’s recent “strategic pivot” toward Africa and Asia. China draws significant resources from Africa, including oil, gas, copper, and iron ore, and Beijing is beginning to reassert itself in south and east Asia. The U.S. now has a separate military command for Africa—Africom—and the White House recently excluded U.S. military forces in the Asia theatre from any cutbacks. Washington is also deploying U.S. Marines in Australia. As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the National Defense University this past August, “We know we face some long-term challenges about how we are going to cope with what the rise of China means.”</p>
<p>But James Lewis, an expert on Chinese cyber espionage, told Hersh that the Chinese have no intention of attacking U.S. financial services since they own a considerable portion of them. According to Lewis, “current Chinese officials” told him “a cyber-war attack would do as much economic harm to us as to you.” The U.S. is China’s largest trading partner and Beijing holds over a trillion dollars in U.S. securities.</p>
<p>There is also a certain irony to the accusations aimed at China. According to the New York Times, the U.S.—and Israel—designed the “Stuxnet” virus that has infected some 30,000 computers in Iran and set back Teheran’s nuclear program. The virus has also turned up in China, Pakistan, and Indonesia. In terms of cyber war, the U.S. is ahead of the curve, not behind.</p>
<p>What all this scare talk has done is allow the U.S. military to muscle its way into cyber security in a way that could potentially allow it to monitor virtually everything on the Internet, including personal computers and email. In fact, the military has resisted a push to insure cyber security through the use of encryption because that would prevent the Pentagon from tapping into Internet traffic.</p>
<p>Does China really pose a threat to the U.S.? There is no question that China-based computers have hacked into a variety of governmental agencies and private companies (as have Russians, Israelis, Americans, French, Taiwanese, South Koreans, etc.—in short everyone spies on everyone), but few observers think that China has any intention of going to war with the much more powerful U.S.</p>
<p>However, Beijing makes a handy bug-a-boo. One four-star admiral told Hersh that in arguing against budget cuts, the military “needs an enemy and it’s settled on China.” It would not be the first time that ploy was used.</p>
<p>If the Pentagon’s push is successful, it could result in an almost total loss of privacy for most Americans, as well as the creation of a vast and expensive new security bureaucracy. Give a government the power to monitor the Internet, says Sommers, and it will do it. In this electronic field of dreams, if we build it, they will use it.</p>
<p>CONN HALLINAN can be read &#160;at&#160; <a href="http://dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com/" type="external">dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com</a></p>
<p /> | Cyber War: Reality or Hype? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2012/01/12/cyber-war-reality-or-hype/ | 2012-01-12 | 4 |
<p>MAINZ, Germany — Dozens of Holocaust survivors and their relatives from around the world are expected to converge on a German courtroom Tuesday as the so-called "accountant of Auschwitz" is due to go on trial.</p>
<p>Former concentration camp bookkeeper and guard Oskar Groening, 93, is <a href="" type="internal">accused of being an accessory to the murder of at least 300,000 Jews</a>.</p>
<p>“Many of the survivors, who are co-plaintiffs in the trial, are stepping on German soil for the first time since the end of Nazi regime,” Christoph Heubner, the executive vice president of the <a href="http://www.auschwitz.info/en/welcome.html" type="external">International Auschwitz Committee</a>, told NBC News from Berlin.</p>
<p>A total of 63 Holocaust survivors or their relatives from the United States, Canada, Israel and elsewhere have joined the prosecution as co-plaintiffs in the closely-watched trial. Around 30 are expected in court in Lueneburg.</p>
<p>Groening's trial comes 70 years after the liberation of Adolf Hitler’s concentration camps.</p>
<p>He is accused of working as a guard at the Auschwitz death camp between May and June 1944, when some 425,000 Jews from Hungary were brought there and at least 300,000 almost immediately gassed to death. German prosecutors allege that Groening was responsible for dealing with the belongings and money stolen from camp victims, which is why he has often been referred to as “the accountant of Auschwitz” in the German media.</p>
<p>As fugitives age, the case is likely to be one of Germany's last Nazi trials. Authorities say it is intended to be “an important signal for the last remaining survivors of the Holocaust.”</p>
<p>But while the proceedings highlight Germany’s last push to bring Nazi criminals to justice, critics accuse the country’s judicial system of “disastrous failings.”</p>
<p>Following the Nuremberg trials in 1949, German authorities for decades had only targeted individuals linked to specific atrocities.</p>
<p>An estimated 6,500 Nazis who worked at SS concentration camps were alive at the end of World War II. However, just 43 men from Hitler’s elite SS units faced court afterward.</p>
<p>Nine received life sentences, 20 received prison terms between three and 15 years and 10 were acquitted, according to the <a href="http://www.fritz-bauer-institut.de/" type="external">Fritz-Bauer-Institute in Frankfurt</a>, a Holocaust research center.</p>
<p>“It is a black stain on Germany’s map," Heubner said. "The culprits were welcomed in the midst of society and the general public kept silent. Groening was a wheel in the murder machine of Auschwitz and therefore, also had blood on his hands.”</p>
<p>The 2011 prosecution of John Demjanjuk, an autoworker who lived in the U.S. for years after the war and was convicted of 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder, was a game-changer for the German legal system. The court’s ruling that Demjanjuk could be convicted on his service record alone, triggered a search for dozens of suspected Auschwitz guards who were still believed to be living in Germany.</p>
<p>According to the federal office investigating Nazi crimes, there are currently 11 open investigations against former Auschwitz guards, and “charges have been filed in three of those cases including Groening’s case,” prosecutor Thomas Will told NBC News.</p>
<p>If convicted, Groening could face up to a 15-year prison sentence.</p>
<p>“It is important that Groening stands trial, but the survivors had hoped to see prosecution much earlier,” Heubner added.</p>
<p>The Associated Press contributed to this report.</p> | ‘Accountant of Auschwitz’ Oskar Groening Set to Stand Trial | false | http://nbcnews.com/news/world/bookkeeper-auschwitz-oskar-groening-set-stand-trial-n344796 | 2015-04-20 | 3 |
<p>John Kinnucan, the famed analyst who went public after <a href="" type="internal">FBI</a> agents visited his home asking him to wear a wire to trap his clients, is set to be released from jail Thursday, after being charged with passing insider tips to his hedge fund clients.</p>
<p>In his bail hearing in Portland, Oregon, Kinnucan read a letter of apology in reference to threatens against law enforcement officials and members of the U.S. attorneys office over the past year.</p>
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<p>Prosecutors for the government urged the judge to keep Kinnucan in jail, saying he had a pattern of threats and intimidation.</p>
<p>Court papers show Kinnucan engaging in profanity-laced language and racially-charged comments over voicemail and email to members of the legal community.</p>
<p>Kinnucan, founder of Broadband Research in Portland, represented himself and his firm as an expert network to clients and allegedly gave them insider tips about various tech companies, including <a href="" type="internal">SanDisk</a>, Corp (NASDAQ:SNDK), F5 Networks Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) and OmniVision Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:OVTI).</p>
<p>He was arrested last week and charged with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and two counts of securities fraud in the Southern District of New York under U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.</p>
<p>The judge ordered Kinnucan to wear at GPS bracelet while under house arrest and instructed him not to contact anyone.</p>
<p>Kinnucan will be brought to New York at a suitable date to be arraigned, said senior law enforcement officials.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Kinnucan Set for Release on Thursday | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/02/23/kinnucan-set-for-release-on-thursday.html | 2016-01-26 | 0 |
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<p>The Air Force Safety Center at Kirtland Air Force Base is getting a new commander.</p>
<p>The base said in a news release Friday that Maj. Gen. Gregory A. Feest will assume command of the Air Force Safety Center in a 9 a.m. ceremony Wednesday at the Mountain View Club.</p>
<p>The news release said Feest is replacing Maj. Gen. Frederick F. Roggero, who is retiring effective Oct. 1 after more than 34 years of active-duty service.</p>
<p>Feest comes to Kirtland from Randolph AFB in Texas, where he was the commander of the 19th Air Force, according to the news release.</p>
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<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Air Force Safety Center at Kirtland AFB Getting New Commander | false | https://abqjournal.com/9077/air-force-safety-center-at-kirtland-afb-getting-new-commander.html | 2 |
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<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (Reuters) - A western Pennsylvania man was sentenced on Monday to up to 60 years in prison for stabbing 20 fellow students and a security guard with two kitchen knives in a high school rampage in 2014.</p> FILE PHOTO: Alexander Hribal, 18, is seen in an undated picture released by the Westmoreland County Prison in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Hribal, a teen who was arrested last year for wounding 21 people in a stabbing spree at his Pennsylvania high school, was transferred Thursday to an adult correctional facility, according to county prison records. REUTERS/Westmoreland County Prison/Handout via Reuters/File Photo
<p>Alex Hribal, now 20, was 16 years old at the time of the attack at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, 18 miles (30 km) east of Pittsburgh. He suffered from pre-schizophrenia symptoms, according to court documents. ( <a href="http://reut.rs/2mZVjba" type="external">reut.rs/2mZVjba</a>)</p>
<p>“I feel horrible about everything,” Hribal said at the sentencing in Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court.</p>
<p>“There’s no words I can use, and nothing I can say, to make it all better. There’s nothing I can say to fix it,” he said.</p>
<p>Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court Judge Christopher Feliciani sentenced Hribal to 23-1/2 to 60 years behind bars and ordered him to pay $269,000 in restitution.</p>
<p>“Each of the victims was consulted. They wanted 30-60 years,” Westmoreland County District Attorney John Peck said.</p>
<p>Hribal pleaded guilty in October to 21 counts each of attempted homicide and aggravated assault.</p>
<p>The guilty pleas followed two failed defense requests. The first was to move the case to juvenile court where, if convicted of the crimes, Hribal would have been free at age 21.</p>
<p>Judge Feliciani also turned down a request to plead guilty but mentally ill, which would have delayed prison time until Hribal’s mental state improved after treatment at a mental health facility.</p>
<p>After both requests failed, the Hribal family opted to spare the victims from reliving the horror through a trial, defense lawyer Patrick Thomassey said.</p>
<p>The slashing spree ended when Hribal was tackled by Assistant Principal Sam King, who testified at a previous court hearing that the teen said: “‘I am not going to drop the knives, my work is not finished, there’s more people to be killed.’”</p>
<p>At the same hearing, several mental health professionals testified that Hribal’s untreated psychiatric disorders were to blame, saying he was obsessed with the 1999 Columbine school shooting in Colorado.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by Susan Thomas and Marguerita Choy</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Louisiana will not charge two white police officers who in 2016 fatally shot Alton Sterling, one of series of black men slain by police that sparked protests across the United States, because evidence showed their actions were justified, a state official said on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Sterling’s death in Baton Rouge helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement and inflamed a national debate over racial bias in U.S. policing.</p>
<p>Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican, said Baton Rouge officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake had good reason to believe Sterling, 37, was armed with a gun and was resisting arrest.</p>
<p>“Our investigation has concluded that officers Lake and Salamoni attempted to make a lawful arrest of Alton Sterling based upon probable cause,” Landry told a news conference.</p>
<p>Civil rights activists contend the officers escalated tensions during the arrest in a convenience store parking lot, turning it into a deadly encounter.</p>
<p>“He was murdered by two white racist police officers. He was murdered like an animal,” Sterling’s aunt, Veda Washington-Abusaleh, told reporters in video posted on social media by local media.</p>
<p>Landry told reporters the two Baton Rouge officers gave verbal instructions and tried non-lethal methods to subdue Sterling, who did not comply.</p>
<p>Sterling was shot outside the store on July 5, 2016, after a resident reported he had been threatened by a black man selling CDs. Police said Sterling was trying to pull a loaded gun out of his pocket when Salamoni opened fire.</p>
<p>“There was never any criminal activity here. It was an unfortunate situation but it was a justified shooting,” John McLindon, an attorney for Salamoni, said in a telephone interview.</p>
<p>L. Chris Stewart, an Atlanta-based lawyer representing Sterlings’ relatives, said the family was disappointed by the decision.</p> FILE PHOTO: Alton Sterling, who was shot dead by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S. on July 5, 2016, is seen in an undated photo posted on his Facebook account. Alton Sterling via Social Media/Handout via Reuters/File Photo
<p>“This case did not even go to a grand jury, which would have allowed the citizens of Baton Rouge to decide this. It takes courage and we just didn’t see that in this situation,” he said in a telephone interview.</p>
<p>In June 2017, Sterling’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city, alleging a history of excessive-force and racism toward African-Americans.</p>
<p>Democratic Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said state prosecutors had followed the law in evaluating the case. He supported calls for the Baton Rouge Police Department to conduct a review to determine if disciplinary action should be taken.</p>
<p>“We owe this final review to the Baton Rouge community and the Sterling family,” he said in a statement.</p> FILE PHOTO: A boy sits next to a makeshift memorial outside the Triple S Food Mart where Alton Sterling was fatally shot by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S. July 7, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman/File Photo
<p>The two officers are on paid administrative leave, Salamoni’s lawyer said.</p>
<p>The Sterling shooting prompted nationwide protests, including a demonstration two days later in Dallas where five law enforcement officers were fatally shot by an African-American ex-serviceman.</p>
<p>Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; editing by Scott Malone and Dan Grebler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>DETROIT (Reuters) - A former Michigan State University dean, who supervised the doctor at the center of the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal, was himself charged on Tuesday with criminal sexual conduct involving medical school students.</p>
<p>A student at the College of Osteopathic Medicine accused William Strampel, 70, of forcible sexual contact, prosecutors said in papers filed in state district court in East Lansing. Prosecutors said other students also accused Strampel of sexual misconduct.</p>
<p>The charges emerged during a probe into how Michigan State handled complaints about the gymnastics doctor, special prosecutor William Forsyth told reporters in Lansing. The focus widened after investigators received a tip.</p>
<p>The new charges, which Strampel’s attorney denied, make the university a bigger target for the “#MeToo” movement that has engulfed powerful men across society in harassment and abuse allegations.</p>
<p>“We did what we felt we needed to do and it led us to where we are today,” Forsyth said.</p>
<p>Strampel was dean from 2002 until the end of 2017. He supervised ex-USA Gymnastics physician Larry Nassar, who has been sentenced to prison for sexually abusing female gymnasts.</p>
<p>The four criminal counts against Nassar’s former boss include fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct. The accusations also include failing to properly oversee Nassar, whose scandal sparked probes into why the U.S. Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics and the university failed for years to investigate complaints.</p>
<p>After a short hearing in state court in East Lansing, Strampel’s attorney John Dakmak told reporters, “My client denies that he ever engaged in any inappropriate touching of anyone. He denies that there was any quid pro quo for sexual favors.”Regarding the charges relating to Strampel’s supervision of Nassar, Dakmak said his client immediately involved other school officials in 2014 when the complaints surfaced and fired Nassar in 2016 when the sexual assault allegations were made.</p>
<p>Michigan State’s interim President John Engler said in a statement that one of his first actions upon his appointment in early February was moving to fire Strampel. Engler called the allegations against the former dean “disturbing.”</p>
<p>“Today’s charges confirm our belief that he has fallen short of what is expected and required from academic leadership,” Engler said.</p>
<p>Four female medical students told investigators Strampel made sexually suggestive comments during meetings, including what some perceived as academic privileges in exchange for sex. Two accused him of grabbing their buttocks without consent.</p>
<p>One student described meeting with Strampel in June 2017 to appeal a test score and feeling intimidated when he mentioned her age, saying: “26-year-old women can ‘put out’ for 20 minutes with an old man ... and in return the women could get the benefit of a free vacation,” according to court documents.</p>
<p>Another witness said Strampel suggested she become a centerfold model and related to her how another student had become a stripper to pay for school, court documents said.</p> William Strampel, a former Dean at Michigan State University and former supervisor of convicted USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, is arraigned by video for 'Criminal Sexual Conduct' involving medical students, in 54B District Court in East Lansing, Michigan, U.S., March 27, 2018. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook
<p>When Strampel agreed to let the student retake a test, he said she must agree to do anything for him, which she interpreted as a request for sex, court documents said.</p>
<p>Strampel is also accused of using his position as dean to receive pornographic images of women “through threats and manipulation,” court documents said. They said investigators seized his computer in February and found about 50 photos of nude women, sex toys and pornography, including selfies of female students, pornographic videos and a video of Nassar performing “treatment” on a young female patient.</p>
<p>Strampel, handcuffed hands clasped in his lap and his legs crossed, appeared at his arraignment via video feed. A split screen showed him expressing little emotion as he interacted with the judge.</p>
<p>Judge Richard Ball, citing a lack of criminal history, set a $25,000 personal recognizance bond, meaning Strampel need not post a cash bond. A preliminary hearing is set for May 3.</p>
<p>If convicted, he faces five years and a possible fine of $10,000 for a misconduct in office charge, two years and a possible fine of $500 for the fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct charge and one year and a possible fine of $1,000 for each of the two willful neglect of duty charges, according to court documents.</p> Slideshow (5 Images)
<p>An attorney for more than 150 of Nassar’s victims said his clients were encouraged by the charges against Strampel.</p>
<p>The charges demonstrate that officials are “serious about investigating the systemic misconduct at MSU that led to the largest child sex abuse scandal in history and holding the responsible parties accountable,” John Manly said in a statement.</p>
<p>Michigan State has been criticized for its handling of Nassar, 54, who was a faculty member and physician at an on-campus clinic. Athletes had complained about Nassar since the 1990s, but the school did not open an investigation until 2014.</p>
<p>Nassar was fired in September 2016. He received sentences this year that will keep him in prison for the rest of his life.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Rebecca Cook in East Lansing, Michigan, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Gina Cherelus in New York; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by David Gregorio</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An attorney for President Donald Trump raised the idea of Trump pardoning two of his former top advisers last year as Special Counsel Robert Mueller was building a case against them as part of his Russia probe, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.</p> FILE PHOTO: Lawyer John Dowd exits Manhattan Federal Court in New York, U.S. on May 11, 2011. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
<p>John Dowd, who was Trump’s lead lawyer in the special counsel investigation until he resigned last week, broached the issue in discussions with attorneys for former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign manager Paul Manafort, the Times reported, citing three people with knowledge of the talks.</p>
<p>White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said at a press briefing that White House counsel “Ty Cobb is the person that would be most directly involved in this and he’s got a statement on the record saying that there’s no discussion and there’s no consideration of those at this time at the White House.”</p>
<p>Dowd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p>According to the newspaper, the discussions about potential pardons raise questions about whether Dowd was using the issue to influence Flynn and Manafort’s decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate with Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.</p>
<p>The paper said in its report, however, that it was unclear whether Dowd discussed the idea of the pardons with Trump before approaching the lawyers for Flynn and Manafort.</p>
<p>Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia and is cooperating with Mueller’s probe.</p>
<p>Robert Kelner, Flynn’s lawyer, and Reginald Brown, Manafort attorney at the time, did not respond to requests for comment.</p>
<p>Manafort is facing charges in two separate indictments charging him with a variety of offenses, including conspiring to launder money, tax evasion and failing to register as a foreign agent of Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government. He has denied wrongdoing and is preparing for trial.</p>
<p>The discussions between Dowd and lawyers for Manafort and Flynn indicated Trump’s legal team was concerned about what the two former aides would reveal if they cut a deal with Mueller in exchange for leniency, according to the newspaper.</p>
<p>Dowd denied to the Times that he discussed pardons with lawyers for the president’s former advisers.</p>
<p>Reporting by David Alexander, Sarah Lynch, and Karen Freifeld in Washington and Nathan Layne in New York; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Cynthia Osterman</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | Man sent to prison for up to 60 years in Pennsylvania school stabbings Louisiana will not charge police in Alton Sterling shooting U.S. gymnastics doctor's boss at Michigan State charged with sex crime Trump attorney discussed pardons with Flynn, Manafort lawyers: report | false | https://reuters.com/article/us-pennsylvania-stabbing/man-sent-to-prison-for-up-to-60-years-in-pennsylvania-school-stabbings-idUSKBN1FB2SX | 2018-01-22 | 2 |
<p>Gilead Sciences Inc. said Tuesday that sales of its newest hepatitis C drug, Harvoni, totaled $2.11 billion in the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>The Food and Drug Administration approved Harvoni in October. The daily pill can cure the most common form of hepatitis C without the grueling pill-and-injection cocktail long used to treat the virus.</p>
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<p>The hepatitis C and HIV drugmaker reported better-than-expected quarterly results and said it will start paying a cash dividends as well.</p>
<p>Gilead earned net income of $3.49 billion, or $2.18 per share, in the fourth quarter. Excluding one-time charges, Gilead earned $2.43 per share. Its revenue more than doubled to $7.31 billion.</p>
<p>Analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research expected earnings per share of $2.17 on revenue of $6.69 billion.</p>
<p>Gilead reported $1.73 billion in quarterly revenue from another hepatitis C drug, Sovaldi, which was approved in December 2013. It reported $10.28 billion in revenue from Sovaldi for all of 2014. Gilead has faced complaints over the prices of the drugs, which come to $1,125 per pill for Harvoni and $1,100 a pill for Sovaldi.</p>
<p>Gilead expects $26 billion to $27 billion in revenue in 2015. According to FactSet, analysts expect $28.67 billion in revenue, on average.</p>
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<p>The Foster City, California-based company plans to buy back up to $15 billion in stock. The company announced a separate repurchase authorization of $5 billion worth of shares in May, and it has bought back around $2 billion in stock since then.</p>
<p>The company also said it will start paying dividends in the second quarter, declaring a payment of 43 cents.</p>
<p>Gilead shares rose 99 cents to $107.18 in regular trading Tuesday, and they are up 14 percent in 2015. In aftermarket trading, the stock declined $5.45, or 5.1 percent, to $101.73.</p>
<p>_____</p>
<p>Elements of this story were generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on GILD at http://www.zacks.com/ap/GILD</p>
<p>_____</p>
<p>Keywords: Gilead Sciences, Earnings Report</p> | Gilead posts solid 4th-quarter results and announces stock buyback and dividend; shares slip | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/02/03/gilead-posts-solid-4th-quarter-results-and-announces-stock-buyback-and-dividend.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>Australia’s prime minister has been politically tone deaf for the duration of his tenure, which was won by the political assassination of his predecessor, Tony Abbott. Since being in power, he has squandered a workable majority, been held in a headlock by reactionaries in his party, and looking every bit the straw man of politics. As he withers, opponents within and without feed remorselessly.</p>
<p>While this slide into oblivion has taken place, the global brushfire of populism has done its bit to rattle a few of Australia’s politicians. Generally speaking, the soil for revolt in Australia has generally been infertile, much like most of the hostile continent.</p>
<p>There have been sharp moments of inspired anger, usually confined to the agrarian and blue-collar segments of the population. Be it the disaffected worker, or the farmer at risk of losing his or her property, such individuals provide potentially rich pickings for demagogues and party strategists.</p>
<p>Again, such protests have been generally contained in brief spurts of electoral indignation: Pauline Hanson’s One Nation successes in Queensland in the 1990s, for instance, and, then the party’s resurgence among other curious fruit salad choices for the Australian federal senate in the last election.</p>
<p>Australian voters have generally detested those “pointy-headed” intellectual types, let alone anything remotely resembling cerebral noise: there has, in fact, been very little need to engineer a broad war against the experts, since they were never liked to begin with. Pragmatism remains cult and practice down under. Revolutionary potential there remains modest.</p>
<p>At heart, Australia remains, essentially, a conservative society more interested in interest rates and franked dividends than broader arguments about liberties, the grand vision of its place in the world or the vanishing society. Even Prime Minister Turnbull has publicly reneged on his Republican vision, preferring to praise Australia’s titular head of state, the Queen.</p>
<p>Protest against the Trans Pacific Partnership has been, relative to counterparts in the US and Europe, murmurings of regret. The sovereign surrender of the country to both the unelected corporation and the United States as bully are features that are occasionally acknowledged, though never seriously.</p>
<p>This is the context with which Senator Cory Bernardi, one of Australia’s true reactionary conservatives, has been working within. As far back as 2014, he was already telling the National Press Club that voters were gravitating towards independents and minor parties – the big don’ts of the country’s politics – as “a popular response to a perception of cowardice and distrust of the major parties.”</p>
<p>Dazzled by his time in New York on secondment to the United Nations, he returned to Australia convinced that there was something coursing in the waters. He was so convinced he started giving Turnbull a splitting headache, snipingly suggesting that his leader had lost, or at the very least misplaced, the plot. Kellyanne Conway, one of the architects of Trump’s victory, loomed in his consciousness.</p>
<p>“The past weeks,” he said reflecting on his New York sojourn with callow optimism, “have been enlightening and filled with amazing experiences. In a sense, they have extended my understanding of what is possible and reinforced my knowledge of what needs to be done.”</p>
<p>His Damascus conversion meant the need to leave the Liberal Party, the bosom that had nurtured and warmed his conservative instincts for years. “My time in the USA has made me realise I have to be part of that change, perhaps even in some way a catalyst for it.”</p>
<p>Modest to a fault. “If you didn’t love a guy who was so in love with himself, you’d have a lot of trouble living with Cory,” observed his wife, Sinead. As far as ego is concerned, Bernardi has it in bucket loads.</p>
<p>His brief speech on the reasons why he was leaving the Liberal Party cherry pick the populist tree with self-serving grit. “There are few, if any, who can claim that respect for politics and politicians is stronger now than it was a decade ago.” (For those familiar with Aussie-gazing, Australians have never deemed politics a genuinely admirable pursuit now or then.)</p>
<p>According to Bernardi, “the body politic is failing the people of Australia and it’s clear we need to find a better way.” The major parties had been a cause of “public disenchantment,” a “direct product of the political class being out of touch with the hopes and aspirations of the Australian people.”</p>
<p>Political tribalism in Australia deems such acts of defection and independence as perfidious. It reeks of the rat fleeing briskly from a sinking ship; it suggests a level of intelligence and opportunism higher than the primitive collective.</p>
<p>“Acts of disloyalty and failing to stand by your commitments,” comments Paul Colgan, “are hallmark drivers of the type of voter cynicism which Bernardi is railing against.” Having been elected a Senator on the conservative ticket, “he will now enjoy five years of using that platform against them, while sitting in the Senate trousering $200,000 a year in taxpayers’ money as salary.”</p>
<p>What are, then, his chances in driving this new party? Small, if not microscopic. One Nation is far more likely to scoop a larger share, as would Family First. The church, one filled with sermons against climate change as a reality, the joys of the fossil fuel state, the evils of same-sex marriage, or the tyranny of progressivism, is already rather full and particularly noisy. Bernardi will find it hard finding a chair.</p>
<p>We can always say that Trump’s chances at political glory were similarly limited, with chances deemed so obscure the Huffington Post refused – initially – to cover his candidacy other than in its entertainment section.</p>
<p>But unlike Trump, Bernardi is a professional politician, the very figure of the establishment common room that many Australian voters would have trouble identifying with. The immediate future is more prosaic, though no less problematic for the government. It means that Turnbull will have a fully-fledged reactionary on the Right of the spectrum, a person outside the tent piddling in: a grim proposition for him indeed.</p> | Populism in Australia: Channelling Trump Down Under | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/populism-in-australia-channelling-trump-down-under/ | 2017-02-10 | 4 |
<p>Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group Senior Director Jason Meister and former Fannie Mae executive Tom Booker on the cleanup and recovery after Harvey.</p>
<p>Several of the largest banks operating in Houston are making it easier for customers affected by Hurricane Harvey to access one of the most essential things in an emergency: cash.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Banks like JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and BBVA Compass have announced plans to waive fees, including those for using ATMs outside of their networks to help their customers in the path of the hurricane. The storm, which made landfall on Aug. 26 has dropped more than 30 inches of rain.</p>
<p>JPMorgan Chase, which is the largest bank in the Houston metro market by deposits, will waive ATM fees in Houston and other affected areas through Sept. 10. It also will waive or refund late fees on mortgage, credit card, business banking and auto loan payments. The same goes for overdraft or monthly service fee charges.</p>
<p>Wells Fargo, which is the second largest bank in the Houston metro market, also will waive out-of-network ATM fees for its customers. It said it would also reverse late fees and other charges on all of its consumer products.</p>
<p>Bank of America says it will automatically refund fees incurred by consumer and small-business customers in the areas impacted by the storm.</p>
<p>Frost Bank says it will waive overdraft and non-sufficient fund fees incurred between Aug. 28 and Sept. 8 for customers in Houston and Galveston, Texas. Fees already incurred would be refunded.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The bank said its customers in the affected areas can use any ATM without incurring a fee, and that it would waive the fees for non-customers using its ATMs in the region.</p>
<p>BBVA Compass Bank and Comerica are extending the ATM courtesy to non-customers, too. In addition to waiving fees for its customers using other ATMs, they both said they wouldn’t charge non-customers in the affected areas to use their ATMs, either.</p>
<p>Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America each have pledged $1 million to relief efforts. Wells Fargo also will allow its Go Far Rewards customers to redeem their points for donations to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. Customers can do so through Sept. 12 by going to GoFarRewards.wf.com or calling 877-517-1358.</p>
<p>What you can do</p>
<p>To find out if your bank or credit union will waive fees or make other accommodations, call the customer service number on the back of your debit card or visit the institution’s website or social media pages.</p>
<p>Several banks have set up special phone numbers for banking customers:</p>
<p>Chase — 888-356-0023</p>
<p>Bank of America — 800-432-1000</p>
<p>Frost Bank — 800-513-7678</p>
<p>If you’re in an area impacted by Harvey, look to technology to help make banking a bit easier. As long as you have battery power and data access, you can use smartphone banking apps to to accomplish some of your financial tasks, like:</p>
<p>Transferring money.</p>
<p>Depositing checks.</p>
<p>Sending money to friends or relatives.</p>
<p>Determining if your branch is open.</p> | Banks waiving penalties, fees for Hurricane Harvey victims | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/09/02/banks-waiving-penalties-fees-for-hurricane-harvey-victims.html | 2017-09-02 | 0 |
<p>Can a commercial ever be so annoying that it makes you turn the channel, hit the mute button, scream or leave the room? If you’ve answered yes, you are not alone, according to <a href="http://www.walletpop.com/" type="external">WalletPop.com Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>What do they say is the one thing that can guarantee an ad will get on our nerves? An annoying mascot. And which of today’s brand boasters are best at crawling under our skin? Here are <a href="http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/08/16/the-8-most-annoying-company-mascots-on-tv-today/" type="external">WalletPop's picks for the 8 most annoying ad mascots Opens a New Window.</a> on TV today.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | 8 Most Annoying Ad Mascots on TV Today | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2010/08/17/annoying-ad-mascots-tv-today.html | 2016-03-23 | 0 |
<p>J.C. Penney Co Inc said on Thursday that commercial lender CIT Group Inc continued to support deliveries from suppliers, and claimed reports to the contrary were untrue.</p>
<p>The retailer added it has plenty of cash on hand and all major supplier were still shipping.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>J.C. Penney shares rose 6.2 percent to $15.50 in premarket trading. The stock price fell 10 percent in late trading on Wednesday, after The New York Post reported CIT had cut off credit to smaller suppliers on concerns about J.C. Penney's sales performance this quarter.</p>
<p>A source told Reuters Wednesday that CIT had stopped funding some future shipments to J.C. Penney, and that the two parties were in talks to resolve the issue. The retailer did not return several requests for comment Wednesday afternoon.</p>
<p>"Jcpenney continues to have the support of all of its key vendors, who have maintained their shipments to the company," the company said in a statement on Thursday.</p>
<p>Finance companies such as CIT, known in the industry as factors, provide short-term loans to suppliers that wait to be paid. It is usually smaller vendors that use the services, since larger suppliers finance their own sales.</p>
<p>CIT, run by former Wall Street executive John Thain, temporarily halted loans to Sears Holdings Corp suppliers in January 2012 after the company posted dismal holiday results. It resumed funding a few months later after Sears provided assurances about its finances.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In the last fiscal year, J.C. Penney's sales dropped 25 percent after then-chief executive failed in a bid to reinvent the chain as an emporium offering fashionable but affordable goods.</p>
<p>J.C. Penney also said Thursday it expects to have $1.5 billion in cash on hand for the quarter just ending. It added that CIT provides factoring services for less than 4 percent of its merchandise inventory.</p>
<p>Penney will report results later this month. Wall Street analysts expect a 6.7 percent drop in sales at stores open at least a year. (Reporting by Phil Wahba in New York and Siddharth Cavale in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das and Jeffrey Benkoe)</p> | J.C. Penney Rebukes Report on Credit Clampdown | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/08/01/jc-penney-rebukes-report-on-credit-clampdown.html | 2016-01-25 | 0 |
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<p>I'm not sure whether RGIII is referring to the renewed effort to change <a href="http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/9230556/dc-pol-suggests-redtails-name-change-washington-redskins" type="external">his employer's team name</a>, or the recent coming out of Jason Collins. But either way, I'd like to know what "tyranny" is preventing RGIII from expressing himself.</p>
<p>To wingers, "political correctness" just means "not being able to express offensive or bigoted ideas without being publicly rebuked for it." They want the "freedom" to say whatever they want, but they don't want to extend that "freedom" to anyone else to say whatever they want back.</p>
<p>Again, self-awareness and logic aren't their strong suits.</p> | Stupid Right-Wing Tweets: RGIII Edition | true | http://crooksandliars.com/blue-texan/stupid-right-wing-tweets-rgiii-edition | 2013-05-03 | 4 |
<p>By Wayne Cole</p>
<p>SYDNEY (Reuters) – Asian shares rallied for a second session on Friday as investors awaited major economic data from China and the United States while marveling at the meteoric ascent of the market’s new crypto-star, bitcoin.</p>
<p>Japan’s Nikkei () led the way again with an early gain of 0.9 percent, adding to Thursday’s 1.45 percent bounce.</p>
<p>Australian stocks put on 0.4 percent () while MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan () edged up 0.1 percent.</p>
<p>Bidders were encouraged by a steadier performance on Wall Street, where the Dow () rose 0.29 percent. The S&amp;P 500 () gained 0.29 percent and the Nasdaq () 0.54 percent.</p>
<p>Facebook (O:) climbed 2.3 percent and Google parent Alphabet (O:) 1.2 percent, helping the S&amp;P 500 end higher after losing ground for four straight sessions.</p>
<p>Investors in Asia were awaiting November trade numbers from China to gauge the pulse of global growth and the Asian giant’s demand for commodities.</p>
<p>The main event later will be U.S. non-farm payrolls, with investors looking for 200,000 new jobs in November and much talk wages might show some welcome strength.</p>
<p>Also on the radar are negotiations between the United Kingdom and Ireland on how to run their post-Brexit land border, where a deal could remove the last obstacle to opening free-trade talks with the European Union.</p>
<p>Speculation about an agreement saw sterling rebound sharply overnight to reach $1.3474 , having been as low as $1.3320 at one point.</p>
<p>It was one of only a few currencies to gain on the U.S. dollar, which was otherwise broadly firmer.</p>
<p>The U.S. currency cleared 113.00 yen to reach 113.11 , while the euro touched a two-week low at $1.1770 . Against a basket of currencies the dollar held firm at 93.786 ().</p>
<p>DIGITAL DARLING</p>
<p>() crested above $16,600 after climbing more than 47 percent so far this week, intensifying the debate about whether it is a bubble about to burst.</p>
<p>The largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange struggled to manage record traffic, with an upcoming launch of the first bitcoin futures contract further fuelling investor interest.</p>
<p>Some, however, warned the coming of futures might prove to be the downfall of the digital darling.</p>
<p>“Dragging Bitcoin into the futures market poses a risk of big players opening doors to short selling hell,” said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at Think Markets UK.</p>
<p>“Futures markets make it possible to short in decent size with a lot of liquidity, thus affecting the price discovery in the underlying asset market.”</p>
<p>The spectacular rise of the cryptocurrency has stolen some thunder from gold bulls, providing an asset that is also seen as a hedge against inflation and government interference.</p>
<p>Gold finally breached its recent tight trading range on Thursday to hit a four-month trough at $1,246.90 .</p>
<p>“Demand for gold relative to supply has had centuries to reach an equilibrium,” noted Alan Ruskin, a macro strategist at Deutsche Bank (DE:). “Bitcoin global demand is still finding its place relative to constrained/inelastic supply.”</p>
<p>Oil prices went the other way as a threatened strike by oil workers in Nigeria forced a bout of short covering.</p>
<p>Brent futures () were at $62.20 a barrel having climbed 98 cents overnight. U.S. crude () was off 10 cents in early trade at $56.59.</p> | Japanese shares rally, bitcoin shoots for the moon | false | https://newsline.com/japanese-shares-rally-bitcoin-shoots-for-the-moon/ | 2017-12-07 | 1 |
<p>By Eric DeggansSt. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, Fla.) Published: 10/22/05 Excerpt:</p>
<p>"If I had seen a different kind of coverage in the Guatemalan floods, I might have been convinced Katrina changed something," said Al Tompkins, a former TV news director and broadcast journalism instructor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which owns the St. Petersburg Times. "New Orleans got lots of coverage for a lot of reasons ... it's one of America's most important port cities, it's a city with a rich tradition," he said. "There are hurricanes which hit this country all the time, but not every one of them is a national calamity for days." <a href="http://www.sptimes.com/2005/10/22/Artsandentertainment/Storm_rewrites_media_.shtml" type="external">More of this article...</a> <a href="http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&amp;ned=us&amp;q=" type="external">Search Google News for more quotes by Al Tompkins...</a></p>
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<p /> | Storm rewrites media role | false | https://poynter.org/news/storm-rewrites-media-role | 2005-11-28 | 2 |
<p>Larry King got right to the point in his interview with former Congressman Eric Massa on Tuesday’s “Larry King Live,” asking Massa directly if he was gay. This was a question Massa was not about to answer, because, as he informed his confused host, “It insults every gay American … it somehow classifies people.” Oh. –KA</p>
<p>Gay Agenda:</p> | Larry King to Eric Massa: 'Are You Gay?' | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/larry-king-to-eric-massa-are-you-gay/ | 2010-03-11 | 4 |
<p>WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A suspect is hospitalized but expected to survive after being shot in the jaw by police in Wichita.</p>
<p>Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston says a man shot at officers responding to a disturbance call at a business on Wednesday. Police returned fire.</p>
<p>Officers were not struck by gunfire and the man took off in a stolen car. Police say he shot at another officer during the chase and swerved the car at an officer deploying stop sticks.</p>
<p>The chase ended with a crash and the suspect was apprehended. He is hospitalized in fair but stable condition.</p>
<p>A woman who was with the man is in custody.</p>
<p>Police say one officer suffered a hand injury, but it isn't yet clear how.</p>
<p>The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is assisting in the investigation.</p>
<p>WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A suspect is hospitalized but expected to survive after being shot in the jaw by police in Wichita.</p>
<p>Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston says a man shot at officers responding to a disturbance call at a business on Wednesday. Police returned fire.</p>
<p>Officers were not struck by gunfire and the man took off in a stolen car. Police say he shot at another officer during the chase and swerved the car at an officer deploying stop sticks.</p>
<p>The chase ended with a crash and the suspect was apprehended. He is hospitalized in fair but stable condition.</p>
<p>A woman who was with the man is in custody.</p>
<p>Police say one officer suffered a hand injury, but it isn't yet clear how.</p>
<p>The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is assisting in the investigation.</p> | Police: Man wounded after firing at officers during pursuit | false | https://apnews.com/amp/4800006e309441d286249f91ef7f8e7a | 2017-12-27 | 2 |
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<p>U.S. wireless carrier AT&amp;T Inc said on Monday it would buy Straight Path Communications Inc , a holder of licenses to wireless spectrum, for $1.25 billion.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The No.2 U.S. carrier said it would offer $95.63 per share, a premium of 162.1 percent to Straight Path's Friday close.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)</p> | AT&T to buy Straight Path Communications for $1.25 billion | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/04/10/att-to-buy-straight-path-communications-for-125-billion.html | 2017-04-10 | 0 |
<p>Dear NCWO,</p>
<p>I am a self-employed consultant and free-lance writer who lives 20 miles from Augusta, GA in Aiken, SC. I have also worked for non-profit environmental and social justice activist groups for about 6 years. I have followed your campaign to pressure the Augusta National Golf Club to allow women into the membership. The entire issue has puzzled me for some time, so I have some questions:</p>
<p>1. Have any other private clubs received letters from NCWO similar to the one sent to the Augusta National?</p>
<p>2. Your original letter stated: “Our member groups are very concerned that the nation’s premier golf event, the Masters, is hosted by a club that discriminates against women by excluding them from membership.”</p>
<p>a. Are you also aware that the club discriminates against the commoners as well? How many non-millionaires or non-celebrities wear a green jacket?</p>
<p>b. Which of your member groups originally expressed concern about this issue? Were all of your member groups solicited for their opinion as to the gravity of the issue and whether pursuing it was a worthwhile cause?</p>
<p>c. What victory for women’s rights will derive from one or two multi- millionaire women (in all likelihood white women) CEO’s hobnobbing with the white male CEO’s of Citigroup or IBM?</p>
<p>3. Are you aware that the Augusta National Golf Course was suffering from bad publicity on two fronts prior to your campaign, and that one repercussion of your campaign has been to stifle discussion on these issues as locals rally around their landmark?</p>
<p>a. Mr. Hootie Johnson’s letters to past Masters champions revoking their lifetime privelege to participate in the tournament. This was Arnold Palmer’s last year, something that did not go over well with his legion of fans, male and female alike.</p>
<p>b. The Augusta National has systematically purchased extensive tracts of land on the West Side of its boundary in order to expand their territory. The Augusta Chronicle, in a rare show of laudable investigative journalism, ran a Sunday feature prior to your campaign. Their reporters described a club acting with minimal respect to its long-time neighbors, one that uses shadowy Limited Liability Company’s to buy up land for resale to Augusta National. From all indications these actions have fragmented and demoralized a part of the community.</p>
<p>How can NCWO’s concerns compare to these other issues? How does NCWO feel about singlehandedly reversing public opinions about Mr. Johnson and the club?</p>
<p>4. Another repercussion is providing some cover to the world of CEO’s. While Citigroup and its financial con artist colleagues are under attack for abusing the market, here comes NCWO with the opportunity for a dose of positive publicity.</p>
<p>Does this bother NCWO at all?</p>
<p>5. How many women are willing to protest the Master’s tournament next year?</p>
<p>If there is some bias in my tone, you detected correctly. This issue is so trivial in the grand scale of things and diverts attention from multitudes of other issues. It appears to me, as a activist with media skills, that this functions—inadvertently or intentionally—as a stunt to draw attention to an organization that cannot make its primary issues resonate with the public. It is also an example of lame duck activism, akin to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton taking umbrage at the dialogue in Barber Shop. It gets publicity, accomplishes nothing of value, and generally just provokes the regressive faction of the Republican Party.</p>
<p>Feel free to post this letter on your website if you are willing to answer it.</p>
<p>Sincerely,</p>
<p>DON MONIAK</p>
<p><a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p> | An Open Letter to the NCWO on the Augusta Golf Club Campaign | true | https://counterpunch.org/2002/11/16/an-open-letter-to-the-ncwo-on-the-augusta-golf-club-campaign/ | 2002-11-16 | 4 |
<p>Are we seeing the next “Battle of Algiers”? Coming only a day after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, thousands of people defied a government ban to hold a pro-democracy rally in Algeria.</p>
<p>Shouting “Bouteflika out!” in reference to the country’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, protesters joined an upwelling in the region demanding more freedoms and improved living conditions.</p>
<p>Algeria has been under a state of emergency since 1992.</p>
<p>The BBC:</p>
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<p>The protesters gathered at Algiers’ 1 May Square on Saturday morning.</p>
<p>They chanted “Bouteflika out!” — in reference to the country’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.</p>
<p>Some demonstrators waved copies of a newspaper front page with the headline about the ousting of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Friday, Reuters reports.</p>
<p>About 30,000 police are reportedly deployed in and around [the] capital, and extra police with water cannons are on stand-by.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12438015" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Pro-Democracy Fever Comes to Algeria | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/pro-democracy-fever-comes-to-algeria/ | 2011-02-13 | 4 |
<p>DALLAS, TX — If you go to war based on what’s later shown to be a lie, how does a museum dedicated to your legacy address it?</p>
<p>That’s the overarching question as you set foot into the George W. Bush Presidential Center, which opened last month on Southern Methodist University’s campus.</p>
<p>The answer: uncomfortably.</p>
<p>In at least eight separate instances, the library offers displays, audio, or video designed to give the impression that Saddam Hussein either possessed weapons of mass destruction, or was on the verge of getting them. It’s the Beetlejuice approach: say “weapons of mass destruction” enough times and they will appear.</p>
<p>To refresh, one of the primary rationales the Bush administration used to go to war with Iraq was that country’s supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction. Secretary of State Colin Powell <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/05/sprj.irq.powell.transcript/index.html" type="external">told</a> the United Nations Security Council that “the facts and Iraq’s behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.” White House Press Secretary <a href="http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/04/20030410-6.html" type="external">said</a> WMDs were “what this war was about and it is about.” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz agreed, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060427065632/http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html" type="external">calling</a> WMDs the “core reason” for going to war. Bush himself made the case in an October 2002 speech, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/06/iraq.wmd.report/" type="external">stating</a>, “If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today — and we do — does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?” After none were found, the debate has been whether or not the Bush administration deliberately misled about WMDs in order convince the public and go to war.But you won’t see any hint of that debate walking through Bush’s presidential museum. In fact, unless you were a news junkie in the mid-2000s or a foreign policy aficionado, you could be forgiven for thinking that Iraq had either possessed WMDs that were simply never found, or were about to produce them had the U.S. not gone to war.</p>
<p>For example, the museum has a big display detailing the “Threat Assessment” of Saddam Hussein, followed by the “Status by the end of Bush presidency”. One curt sentence among the 44 lines notes that “No stockpiles of WMD were found.” Meanwhile, twelve lines are devoted to the possible presence of WMDs in Iraq before the war and how we never have to worry about that now post-war, including that Saddam “refused to account for his chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs” and that “post-invasion inspections confirmed that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to resume production of WMD.”</p>
<p>A timeline nearby also gives the impression that Saddam was on the cusp of attaining WMDs, stopped only by Bush’s decision to go to war:</p>
<p>Even in the instances where the museum concedes that WMDs didn’t exist in Iraq, it still uses an asterisk approach to leave visitors with the impression they did, or were about to. One interactive panel tells users that, although there were “no WMD found,” the chief U.S. weapons inspector found that Hussein “had a large number of WMD program-related activities” and “never gave up its ambition to obtain WMD”.</p>
<p>Similarly, it later tells users that “no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction are found, although Iraq’s WMD-related program activities are still a threat.”</p>
<p>Finally, a document in the interactive detailed the WMD situation in Iraq, telling users that “Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability” because he saw significant “value” in possessing WMDs.</p>
<p>An audio tour also underscored the idea that Saddam would have gotten WMD were it not for Bush’s decision to invade. Here are a few highlights:</p>
<p>Narrator: “For 12 years, the Iraqi dictator defied the international community. After September 11th, he was a threat the United States could not ignore.”</p>
<p>Narrator: “Ultimately, no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. However, a report by Chief Weapons Inspector Charles Duelfer revealed that Saddam retained the ability to restart his weapons programs.”</p>
<p>Bush: “The Duelfer Report shows that Saddam was gaming the system. He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away.”</p>
<p>Later, a choose-your-own-adventure style interactive features advisers who link Saddam and 9/11: “The world changed on 9/11. Saddam shows every signs he wants to give terrorists weapons of mass destruction to attack the US, a risk we cannot afford.” Another unequivocally declares that “Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. And don’t forget, during the Gulf War, we also discovered Saddam was much further along in developing nuclear weapons than anyone believed.”</p>
<p>Bush later came on screen and remarked, “Saddam posed too big a risk to ignore. He had used weapons of mass destruction in the past and showed every sign of continuing to pursue such weapons.”</p>
<p>To be sure, one wouldn’t necessarily expect that a museum dedicated to President Bush would be highly critical of his decision to go to war. That having been said, the museum goes out of its way to muddy the water over the existence of WMDs in Iraq and leave visitors with the impression that the war was based on a justifiable truth, not a verifiable falsehood. Indeed, in the decade since 2003, GOPers have been so successful at obfuscating the issue that a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/21/iraq-wmd-poll-clueless-vast-majority-republicans_n_1616012.html" type="external">poll</a> earlier this year found that 2-in-3 Republicans still believe that Iraq possessed WMDs prior to the war. Were any of that 63 percent of Republicans to visit the museum in Dallas, they would likely walk away still believing that Saddam had WMDs and Bush was right to take us to war.</p> | Bush Presidential Library Misleads Visitors On WMDs In Iraq | true | http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/07/24/2117351/george-bush-wmd/ | 2013-07-24 | 4 |
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<p>According to breaking reports, Florida Senator Mel Martinez <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061113/ap_on_re_us/rnc_chairman" type="external">will be the next head of the RNC</a>, replacing Ken Mehlman.</p>
<p>Martinez is best known nationally as the senator whose staffer wrote a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32554-2005Apr6.html" type="external">memo</a> calling the Terri Schiavo situation a “great political issue.” The memo suggested ways Republicans could exploit the issue in the media and created a firestorm of criticizism surrounding the freshman senator. The staffer eventually resigned.</p>
<p>But the public might soon know Martinez for other reasons. He has <a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001539.php" type="external">the standard GOP connection</a> to Jack Abramoff: Before Martinez was a senator, he was Bush’s head of HUD. Convicted former Congressman Bob Ney lobbied Martinez on behalf of Abramoff’s Indian clients; the clients got $4 million in HUD money in two years and Martinez later got $250,000 at a fundraiser co-chaired by Abramoff. Martinez also may have had an <a href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/15552225.htm" type="external">inappropriate relationship</a> with a major Florida engineering firm that got government business in exchange for making donations to Martinez’s campaigns through straw donors.</p>
<p>But let’s not forget Martinez’s ethical problems that Mother Jones <a href="/news/feature/2003/11/ma_560_01.html" type="external">drudged up</a>.</p>
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<p>In the run-up to the 2002 midterm election, for instance, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez appeared in New Hampshire with GOP Senate candidate John Sununu to announce more than $1.6 million worth of grants to cities in the state from the Community Development Block Grant program, which he called “one of the most successful ways the federal government provides funding for…communities across the nation.” At the time, Bush was proposing that $1.3 billion be chopped from the program, which provides money for everything from housing rehabs to Meals on Wheels for the elderly.</p>
<p>So there you have it. The new RNC chair hates old people.</p>
<p /> | Next RNC Chair Hates the Elderly | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2006/11/next-rnc-chair-hates-elderly/ | 2006-11-13 | 4 |
<p>Despite the financial crisis and fears of depression, on September 29 German voters elected a government still farther to the right than the one they already had.&#160; Christian Democrat Angela Merkel remains Chancellor, but will govern with the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) instead of the traditionally pro-labor Social Democratic Party (SPD).</p>
<p>With 15 per cent of the vote, the FDP won the biggest victory in its history.&#160; The SPD lost roughly a third of its previous electorate, dropping to a little over 23 per cent, a historic low.</p>
<p>Some commentators saw this paradoxical result as proof that voters love capitalism even as it flounders.</p>
<p>“Is socialism dying?” the International Herald Tribune asked boldly on its front page, headlining a New York Times article on the German elections.&#160; French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy was called on to confirm the demise of socialism with evident Schadenfreude.</p>
<p>In reality, socialism was not and could not be the issue in the latest German election.&#160; Socialism has long since been evicted from German electoral politics. In the past two decades, even its reformist cousin social democracy has been sacrificed to “the market”, meaning the dictates of the financial markets. Whatever they say during election campaigns, center left and center right parties alternatively adopt roughly the same economic policy. This is called “liberalism” or “neoliberalism” in Europe.&#160; It has one guiding principle: the task of government is to coddle and cajole finance capital into investing in the national economy.&#160; This means not only enacting measures called “reforms” designed to increase profits at the expense of labor and social costs.&#160; It also entails privatizing well-functioning public services in order to give investment capital a crack at skimming off profits that might otherwise go to benefit employees and the public.</p>
<p>Whether in Germany or France, or anywhere else, however people vote, this is what they get.</p>
<p>So the more pertinent question might be, “is democracy dying?”</p>
<p>French Voters Ignored</p>
<p>François Mitterrand was elected President of France in 1981 on the basis of a program including socialist features such as nationalized industries. Early in the Mitterrand presidency, in 1983, French Socialists abandoned the idea that there could be “socialism in one country”. Instead, they have held up the mirage of an eventual “social Europe”, a mirage that has faded as the European Union has moved steadily to the right. European Socialist parties have vigorously supported all the EU treaties, starting with the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, that have locked the EU member states into neoliberal economic policy.</p>
<p>In May 2005, 55 per cent of French voters rejected the draft European Constitution in a popular referendum.&#160; A few days later, Dutch voters rejected it by an even wider margin (62 per cent).&#160; Legally, this meant that the treaty was dead. French Socialists joined other European leaders in repackaging it as “the Lisbon Treaty”. This time, the citizens were not to be allowed to spoil things by holding referendums. The Lisbon Treaty would be ratified by compliant legislatures. Only Ireland went ahead with a referendum, and on June 12, 2008, rejected the “Lisbon Treaty” by over 53 per cent of the vote.</p>
<p>This week, Irish voters are called back to the polls to correct their “mistake” of last year.&#160; Presumably, they can be made to keep voting until they come up with the correct result.</p>
<p>Bernard-Henri Lévy, ludicrouslyy described by the New York Times as “an emblematic Socialist”, [as stupid as&#160; calling David Horowitz an unreconstructed 60s leftist, Editors] has been in the forefront of a 30-year ideological offensive to kill socialism by redefining the left as solely concerned with “human rights”, devoid of economic policy. Economic policy is left to “the markets”. For BHL, criticism of capitalism, and even more, of war and imperialism, is condemned as “anti-American” or even “anti-Semitic”. Any attempt to change the order of things must lead to the Gulag or to Auschwitz. The ever-expanding religion of the Holocaust and the Gulag teaches resignation and guilt more effectively than the Christianity it replaces.</p>
<p>Left of the SPD</p>
<p>Even more than the French Socialists, the German SPD has abandoned its historic commitment to social justice. As a result, in ten years it has lost a third of its voters. Its defeat can in no way be seen as a repudiation of socialism.&#160; On the contrary, it could even be seen as the beginning of a socialist revival.</p>
<p>The SPD lost voters to abstention, to the CDU, to the Greens, but above all, to Die Linke, the Left Party based on a coalition between the East German “Party of Democratic Socialism” headed by Gregor Gysi, some West German trade unionists and above all, dissident social democrats who left the SPD under the leadership of Oskar Lafontaine.</p>
<p>With over 12 percent of the vote, the Left Party became Germany’s fourth strongest, just ahead of the Greens. This was a promising score, considering the way the mildly left Left Party has been ostracized by media and the political class as though it were a reincarnation of the Bolsheviks.&#160; For the media, a party calling for a minimum wage and a pullout from Afghanistan is the “hard left” – not fit to be associated with.&#160; The SPD and the Greens stressed that they would never consider a coalition with such disreputable folk.</p>
<p>Oskar Lafontaine denied wanting to take votes away from the SPD.&#160; “We wanted a left majority and not a weaker SPD.”&#160; The vote for the Left Party could, at this stage, only be a protest rather than a “useful” vote, since a left coalition was ruled out by potential partners. But from now on, the SPD will be under pressure to move far enough to the left to make a coalition with Die Linke, while Die Linke will be tempted to move to the right to accommodate the SPD.</p>
<p>Haves Versus Have Nots</p>
<p>On reflection, the historically high score of the FDP by no means signifies that German society as a whole is enamored with capitalism. Rather, it can be symptomatic of a polarization that takes place in hard times.&#160; While the socially precarious grope around for protection, the socially advantaged look for leaders who will preserve their advantages.&#160; Germany is, after all, a rich country, and there are plenty of rich people who want to stay that way.&#160; The FDP campaign to revise the tax structure was a signal to the rich that they won’t be taxed to pay for the poor and unemployed.</p>
<p>This may spell trouble for Angela Merkel in her role as “mother of the nation”.</p>
<p>Ms Merkel said she preferred to rule with the FDP rather than the SPD. But the FDP’s high score, at the expense of her own party, puts it in a strong position to dictate policies that may be hard for her own party to swallow.&#160; The Christian Democrats have never been pure “free marketeers”. Rather, their trademark has been the “social market”.</p>
<p>Germany’s prosperity has been based on high quality exports.&#160; The collapse of credit in consumer nations – primarily the United States – is hurting German industry.&#160; The government has temporarily propped up domestic car sales, long enough to get through the elections, but this will not last and massive layoffs are likely in the coming months.&#160; Germany will be faced with both shrinking exports and a shrinking domestic market.&#160; FDP “cost-cutting” policies can only make things worse for most of the population.</p>
<p>The fact that more voters than ever before turned to smaller parties is symptomatic of a period of transition.</p>
<p>A big unknown is which way younger voters will turn.&#160; The SPD won only 18 percent of votes in the 18 to 24 age bracket, with its best score among retired people.&#160; A big chunk of the youth vote, over eight hundred thousand, went to the Pirate Party, an invention of internet addicts opposed to government censorship and surveillance.&#160; It is not clear how such strong libertarian tendencies will relate to economic and social issues in the future.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, polls in Germany indicate that the idea of socialism is not dead.&#160; A recent survey asked the question: “Is socialism basically a good idea that was only badly applied?”&#160; A few years ago, a majority disagreed, but this year, 53 per cent agree.</p>
<p>So the real question may be, how can this good idea be applied better?&#160; Oskar Lafontaine starts from the notion of “local social control” of energy and such necessary industries*.&#160; This can be more in keeping with German federalism than nationalization, which is more in the French tradition of the strong central state.&#160; One way or another, the future of democracy in Europe depends on enabling the popular idea of socialism to evolve into political reality.</p>
<p>Note: * Michael Jäger, “Das Gespenst war gestern: Die Idee des Sozialismus wird wieder populär”, Freitag, July 27, 2007.</p>
<p>DIANA JOHNSTONE can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Is Socialism Really Dead in Europe? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/10/02/is-socialism-really-dead-in-europe/ | 2009-10-02 | 4 |
<p>The longer we delay the necessary and principled impeachment process against Bush Jr. and his Neo-conservatives apparatchiks the greater will be the disaster for all the peoples of the world and even here in the United States. Witness the racist and class-based criminal mistreatment inflicted by the Bush Jr. administration upon the victims of Hurricane Katrina. President Bush Jr., Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff must all be impeached immediately for denying Equal Protection of the Laws to the Katrina Victims because they are African Americans and because they are Poor in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Their criminal negligence and resulting mass homicides constitute “other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” within the meaning of Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution quoted above.</p>
<p>There is a recent precedent for introducing an Article of Impeachment against an incumbent American President for such Equal Protection violations amounting to massive discrimination on the grounds of Race and Class threatening the lives of American citizens that this author personally advised upon. On 14 January 1991, pursuant to the terms of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the United States Congress authorized President Bush Sr. to use military force against Iraq in order to expel Iraq from Kuwait in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 678 of 29 November 1990. In direct reaction thereto, Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez of Texas, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and I agreed to set up a National Campaign to Impeach President Bush Sr. if he went to war against Iraq, initially for the purpose of deterring him from doing so. It was agreed that I would write the Bill of Particulars against President Bush Sr. to serve as the basis for drafting the Articles of Impeachment comprising the Gonzalez Bill of Impeachment. We launched the Bush Sr. Impeachment Campaign on 15 January 1991.</p>
<p>Nevertheless the war started, and the very next day Congressman Gonzalez appeared on the floor of the House of Representatives to introduce his Bill of Impeachment against President Bush Sr. It was my great honor and privilege to serve as Counsel to Congressman Gonzalez on the subsequent course of this impeachment effort that he so courageously and tenaciously investigated and pursued in his capacity as Chairman of the House Banking Committee, a position he held until the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in the 1994 congressional elections. In response, President Bush Sr. even unleashed the C.I.A. on this beloved congressman known affectionately to his friends as “Henry B.”</p>
<p>I will not review here either the contents or the bases for the 1991 Gonzalez Impeachment Resolution against President Bush Sr. But for the purpose of this Equal Protection impeachment argument with respect to the Katrina victims on grounds of Class and Race, its most salient feature was Article I:</p>
<p>Article I</p>
<p>In the conduct of the office of President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution. U.S. soldiers in the Middle East are overwhelmingly poor white, black, and Mexican-American, and their military service is based on the coercion of a system that has denied viable economic opportunities to these classes of citizens. Under the Constitution, all classes of citizens are guaranteed equal protection, and calling on the poor and minorities to fight a war for oil to preserve the lifestyles of the wealthy is a denial of the rights of these soldiers. In all of this George Herbert Walker Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.</p>
<p>Wherefore George Herbert Walker Bush, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.</p>
<p>As Congressman Gonzalez so eloquently, presciently and prophetically stated when he introduced his Bill of Impeachment against President Bush Sr. onto the Floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on 16 January 1991:</p>
<p>My resolution has five articles of impeachment. First, the President has violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Our soldiers in the Middle East are overwhelmingly poor white, black, and Mexican-American or Hispanic-American. They may be volunteers technically, but their voluntarism is based on the coercion of a system that has denied viable opportunities to these classes of our citizens. Under the Constitution, all classes of citizens are guaranteed equal protection, and calling on the poor and the minorities to fight a war for oil to preserve the lifestyles of the wealthy is a denial of the rights of these soldiers.</p>
<p>Let me add that since 1981 we have suffered the Reagan-Bush and now the Bush war against the poor, and to add insult to injury, we now are asking the poor to fight while here, as a result of this fight, even the meager programs that the Congress had seen fit to preserve as a national policy will suffer because the money for those programs will be diverted to the cause of this unnecessary war.</p>
<p>Of course the same constitutional arguments apply today to justify the impeachment of President Bush Jr. for his illegal and criminal war against Iraq in order to steal oil that is being waged by poor Whites, Blacks, and Latinos to support the luxurious lifestyles of the White Racist Power Elite who effectively govern this country and criminally abandoned the Black and Poor Katrina victims to their grisly and cruel fate.</p>
<p>Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of <a href="" type="internal">Foundations of World Order</a>, Duke University Press, <a href="" type="internal">The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence</a>, and <a href="" type="internal">Palestine, Palestinians and International Law</a>, by Clarity Press. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>CLARIFICATION</p>
<p>ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH</p>
<p>We published an article entitled “A Saudiless Arabia” by Wayne Madsen dated October 22, 2002 (the “Article”), on the website of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org (the “Website”).</p>
<p>Although it was not our intention, counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.</p>
<p>We do not have any evidence connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism.</p>
<p>As a result of an exchange of communications with Mr Al Amoudi’s lawyers, we have removed the Article from the Website.</p>
<p>We are pleased to clarify the position.</p>
<p>August 17, 2005</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Grounds for Impeachment | true | https://counterpunch.org/2005/09/16/grounds-for-impeachment/ | 2005-09-16 | 4 |
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<p>Absolutely jaw dropping the mentality of these ‘militant non-violent protestors’.</p>
<p>Protesters anxiously awaiting the St. Louis grand jury decision relating to the shooting death of 18-year-old Mike Brown have been training activists all weekend in preparation for the day the grand jury makes an announcement about whether to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for Brown’s death.</p>
<p>In a small room located on South Jefferson Avenue in a building used by&#160; <a href="http://www.elections.il.gov/campaigndisclosure/ItemizedContrib.aspx?FiledDocID=389022&amp;ContributionType=Individual%20Contributions&amp;Archived=True&amp;OrderBy=LastorOnlyName-AtoZ&amp;ItemizedContribFrom=D2Semi.aspx" type="external">IUOE Local 148</a>, organizers like Rev. Osagyefo Sekou are instructing groups of individuals about tactics relating to resisting police commands during demonstrations. &#160;Sekou is a St. Louis native who grew up in the area but now lives in Massachusetts.</p>
<p>Topics covered by organizers like Sekou as well as Deray McKesson and others included decentralized protest actions, jail support, first aid, legal issues, as well as staying safe on the streets during demonstrations.</p>
<p>McKesson explains, “Today we’ll talk about what it means about decentralized actions. So one of the four parts of what we’re doing is we are not actually telling you &#160;where to go or what to do or anything to do with most of your actions. We have some central things planned, but the power of this movement has been with really strong decentralized actions.”</p>
<p>Sekou however, kicks off the training with audience responses to questions he asks.</p>
<p>Sekou says to the group, “Our task in part is, in addition to all the information is get a sense as to why we are here. We are part of the guiding principles for this movement. It’s militant non-violent civil disobedience. Can you please say that?”</p>
<p>Attendees respond, “militant non-violent civil disobedience.”</p>
<p>Sekou continues, “And we use the word ‘militant’ as opposed to the word ‘passive’ non-violent civil disobedience, because we are about a direct encounter with the state to create drama to show that we are willing to take a risk in confronting the state because of injustice. Right?”</p>
<p>Attendees reply, “Right.”</p>
<p>“We break unjust laws, because it’s the morally right thing to do. That’s why we do it. And there’s a tradition of that,” Sekou says to the group of mainly white attendees–many who are at least 50 years old.</p>
<p>“And militant non-violent civil disobedience gave us the 8 hour work day It gave us women’s right to vote. It gave us the possibility of me standing here in this room with you without the relative fear of arbitrary violent because this meeting would have been historically illegal 50 years ago. That’s what militant non-violent civil disobedience gave us.&#160; We are angry, but we will not allow the anger to have the last word,” says Sekou as the protesters-in-training answered him positively with rousing congregational “yeahs” after each sentence.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/17/Organizers-Train-Newly-Minted-Protesters-in-St-Louis" type="external">This&#160;article continues on breitbart.com</a></p> | FERGUSON MILITANT ‘NON-VIOLENT’ PROTESTORS: ‘We’re Not Going to Get a Change in Society Unless White People are Just a Little Bit Affraid’ | true | http://girlsjustwannahaveguns.com/ferguson-militant-non-violent-protestors-going-get-change-society-unless-white-people-just-little-bit-affraid/ | 0 |
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<p>ROCKY HILL, Conn. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday evening's drawing of the Connecticut Lottery's "Cash 5" game were:</p>
<p>04-05-06-20-34</p>
<p>(four, five, six, twenty, thirty-four)</p>
<p>ROCKY HILL, Conn. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday evening's drawing of the Connecticut Lottery's "Cash 5" game were:</p>
<p>04-05-06-20-34</p>
<p>(four, five, six, twenty, thirty-four)</p> | Winning numbers drawn in 'Cash 5' game | false | https://apnews.com/amp/8a8fff4360c84fe083aeb2062fdd940c | 2017-12-29 | 2 |
<p>Published time: 9 Nov, 2017 16:20</p>
<p>Dubai police have broken a Guinness World Record by pulling the world’s largest passenger airliner, a giant Airbus A380, for 100 meters.</p>
<p>Described by the Dubai Police as an “historic occasion,” 56 cops were involved in the impressive feat which saw the group pulling the 302.68 metric ton plane, smashing the previous record of just over 218 tons set by 100 people at Hong Kong International Airport back in 2011.</p>
<p>A delegation from Guinness World Records presented the certificate to the commander-in-chief of the police who, in a Facebook <a href="https://www.facebook.com/dubaipolicehq.en/posts/1517857928291737" type="external">post</a>, praised the “courageous police officers” and the government for supporting them.</p>
<p />
<p>سجلت شرطة دبي رقما قياسا جديدا بعدما نجح موظفوها في جر طائرة تابعة لطيران الإمارات <a href="https://t.co/0YbKwnBf2M" type="external">pic.twitter.com/0YbKwnBf2M</a></p>
<p>— مؤسسة دبي للإعلام (@dubaimediainc) <a href="https://twitter.com/dubaimediainc/status/928561948085669888?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">November 9, 2017</a></p>
<p /> | 300-ton plane stunt breaks world record (VIDEO, PHOTOS) | false | https://newsline.com/300-ton-plane-stunt-breaks-world-record-video-photos/ | 2017-11-09 | 1 |
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<p>In planning Amazon.com Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AMZN) second headquarters, Chief Executive Jeff Bezos faces a new challenge: how to maintain the online retail giant's carefully cultivated culture when he can't be in two places at once.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The answer to his riddle may lie in one defining element of Amazon's business practices. Its highly decentralized structure, with small, siloed teams, is the equivalent of "1,000 independent businesses, all marching in the same direction," says former Amazon senior manager Eric Heller, who now helps brands sell on the site.</p>
<p>Mr. Bezos has been fundamental in defining the Seattle-based company's culture, setting the tone on everything from innovation to how many pizzas teams should need to order in for lunch. Amazon emphasizes 14 leadership principles that guide employee behavior, focus and goals.</p>
<p>Former executives say that while they saw Mr. Bezos infrequently -- in part because the 33-building Seattle campus is so large -- he still has an outsize presence at the company he founded in his garage in 1994. Mr. Bezos is known for encouraging employees to reach out via email directly for his guidance. That's even as the number of Amazon's employees surpasses 450,000 globally, including the recent acquisition of Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market Inc.</p>
<p>But Amazon, having outgrown Seattle, is now planning to split its headquarters in half, an unusual step that presents the risk of reduced collaboration, decreased face time and an off-kilter leadership structure if executives don't split their time evenly between the two sites, management experts say.</p>
<p>Amazon said the new location, which could house as many as 50,000 employees, will be equal in stature to Seattle. Amazon is soliciting proposals for the $5 billion project from metro areas that meet criteria including access to an international airport, mass transit and more than a million people.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>An Amazon spokesman declined to comment on the company's plans.</p>
<p>Multinational corporations like Lenovo Group Ltd. and advertising giant WPP maintain several large business centers, but most are the result of mergers or cross-border shareholding structures, such as Airbus SE.</p>
<p>Amazon already has more than a dozen tech hubs across the U.S. as well as international offices, with about a quarter of its corporate staff operating outside Seattle. But Amazon's power center has always remained in and around the place where Mr. Bezos founded the company.</p>
<p>Mr. Bezos, 53 years old, still works to preserve the remnants of startup culture at Amazon, including a mandate to make quick decisions.</p>
<p>"I've been reminding people that it's Day 1 for a couple of decades," he wrote in his annual shareholder letter this year. "Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1."</p>
<p>Mr. Bezos constantly emphasizes Amazon's leadership principles, such as customer obsession, ownership and frugality. Managers know that the optimal size of a team is one that can be fed on two pizzas.</p>
<p>He frequently forwards customer emails to teams with the message "??," to jog them to respond.</p>
<p>Through "feedback mechanisms like that, we got clarity of what he was looking for," said Jennifer Arthur, who worked at Amazon for 16 years and is now a general manager at online home-improvement marketplace BuildDirect. "He also delivered a lot of the messages and a lot of that consistency" via his senior leadership team.</p>
<p>Indeed, Mr. Bezos is likely to lean heavily on his team of senior executives in opening the second headquarters. Veterans, including senior executives who have shadowed Mr. Bezos, are often chosen to open new remote offices to help ensure cultural cohesion.</p>
<p>A similar tactic is likely to be used at the new headquarters. Amazon has said team leaders will be allowed to choose whether to keep their reports in Seattle, move them, or work out of both locations.</p>
<p>Mr. Bezos will "probably send over some of his leaders who he thinks are some of his strongest culture carriers," says Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "The people make the place."</p>
<p>One trait that might prove helpful for a dual-headquartered company is the decentralization of teams at Amazon. A former lead engineer recalls being kept in the dark about other projects under way just a floor or two above him in the same office building. Other former employees say teams were at times purposefully kept unaware of similar projects.</p>
<p>"Every team functions like an independent company," says Elaine Kwon, founder of e-commerce management and software firm Kwontified and a former Amazon manager. "They're all moving as quickly as they can because they're given a lot of autonomy."</p>
<p>That can lead to confusion or duplication at times, some former employees say -- something that could worsen with two headquarters.</p>
<p>"One team rarely knows what another team is doing," says Chris McCabe, a former Amazon performance evaluation and policy enforcement investigator who now works with sellers on the retailer's marketplace.</p>
<p>Still, Mr. Bezos expects employees to act like owners, even if that pits teams against each other.</p>
<p>While launching the sports and outdoors marketplace platform about a decade ago, former Amazon senior manager Mr. Heller was given only a few weeks to get it up and running. He later even competed directly against Amazon's internal retail team, something he said demonstrated the leadership principle of putting the customer first.</p>
<p>"You really had to almost represent it as your own business," says Mr. Heller, who has since founded consultation firm Marketplace Ignition.</p>
<p>Write to Laura Stevens at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>September 15, 2017 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)</p> | Amazon: Can two headquarters still equal one culture? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/09/15/amazon-can-two-headquarters-still-equal-one-culture.html | 2017-09-15 | 0 |
<p>America's religious Left has issued a counter-statement to the recently-released <a href="https://cbmw.org/nashville-statement" type="external">Nashville Statement</a> that affirmed the biblical view of human sexuality and was signed by scores of evangelical leaders.</p>
<p>The new statement, signed by various pro-LGBTQ theologians and activists, denounces the Nashville Statement as "toxic" against the Holy Spirit and redefines the nature ​of sin.</p>
<p>"A theologically liberal coalition quickly issued a counter-statement to the Nashville document. Going under the name 'Christians United,'" <a href="https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pro-gay-religious-left-condemns-toxic-evangelical-nashville-statement-defen" type="external">reports</a> LifeSiteNews, "the leftist response reverses the historic Christian understanding of homosexuality as a sin and replaces it with the ' <a href="http://www.christiansunitedstatement.org/about.html" type="external">sin of exclusion,</a>' of which it calls on the Church of Jesus Christ to repent."</p>
<p>The counter-statement's preamble offers up a fresh helping of post-colonialist, Christian Marxism that characterizes true Christians not by their outward virtue or their steadfast commitment to the Truth or their moral fortitude, but how their differences have excluded them from the inside groups.</p>
<p>Throughout our history, those who have been on the leading edge of the Holy Spirit's sanctifying work have often found themselves initially excluded, marginalized, and demonized by some of those within established Christian institutions. In the twenty-first century, we believe that the Church finds itself once again on the brink of a new reformation, one which in which the Holy Spirit is calling us to return to the Scriptures and our traditions in order to re-examine our teachings on human sexuality and gender identity.</p>
<p>They then go on to redefine this understanding of gender identity. From the statement's <a href="http://www.christiansunitedstatement.org/about.html" type="external">first Article</a>:</p>
<p>WE AFFIRM that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God and that the great diversity expressed in humanity through our wide spectrum of unique sexualities and gender identities is a perfect reflection of the magnitude of God's creative work. WE DENY any teaching that suggests God's creative intent is limited to a gender binary or that God's desire for human romantic relationships is only to be expressed in heterosexual relationships between one man and one woman.</p>
<p>Article 5 tackles transgenderism and says that rejecting one's biological sex remains faithful to God:</p>
<p>WE AFFIRM that while the male and female gender identity reflects a majority of the human family, God has created individuals whose gender identity does not fall on such a binary spectrum. We also affirm that there are many transgender individuals who are born with a physical body that is incongruent with their true gender identity, and these individuals should be supported and trusted in regards to their own self-knowledge of who they are and how God has created them. WE DENY that forcing individuals to embrace a gender identity that matches the cultural assumptions based on their biology is a healthy practice and that the heterosexual, male/female binary is the only consistent reflection of God's holy purposes in Creation.</p>
<p>“Christians United” has been endoresed by the LGBTQ lobby Human Rights Campaign, which called the Nashville Statement a <a href="https://www.hrc.org/blog/evangelical-leaders-aligned-with-trump-pence-launch-vicious-attack-on-lgbtq" type="external">“vicious attack on LGBTQ people.”</a></p> | Religious Left Strikes Back Against 'Toxic' Nashville Statement Affirming Biblical View Of Sexuality | true | https://dailywire.com/news/20594/religious-left-strikes-back-against-toxic-paul-bois | 2017-09-04 | 0 |
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<p>Over the weekend I checked off a major bucket list item by attending Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting in Omaha. It was spectacular. From the meeting itself to the post-meeting Dilly Bar liquidation sale, I couldn't have asked for much more.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The hours-long Q&amp;A session with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger left me with three major takeaways.</p>
<p>1. Still the sharpest investors aroundIf there were any doubt that old age has left Buffett and Munger incapable of managing Berkshire Hathaway, think again. I think the best display of Buffett's sharpness came early in the meeting, when he was discussing Coca-Cola's business.</p>
<p>Buffett noted that the soda company sold about 1.9 billion servings of product a day, then quickly worked out that it amounted to 693.5 billion servings a year in his head. He even made a joke that his math was off, since 2016 is a leap year.</p>
<p>Big deal? No. It's just mental multiplication problem (or multiplication, division, and subtraction, if you prefer), but it was a really good sign that Buffett's no mental slouch, even at 85 years of age. Buffett and Munger seemingly ended the meeting with just as much energy that they had at the beginning, which is no small feat for men their age.</p>
<p>2. Built for successionOne of my favorite anecdotes from this year's meeting had to do with incentives, specifically how Berkshire uses incentives at GEICO to incent behaviors that create wealth for shareholders.</p>
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<p>GEICO's incentive program for its employees is relatively simple -- it's based on a table with policies in force on one axis and the profitability of the business on another axis. Where those two numbers for any given year meet ultimately determines the bonus pool for employees.</p>
<p>GEICO employees thus have incentive to grow the business, and do it profitably -- a win-win for GEICO's stakeholders and sole corporate shareholder, alike.</p>
<p>It's an anecdote, but it says something about how important incentives are in managing the behavior of Berkshire's many far-flung business units. With the proper incentives in place at every portfolio company, the next CEO of Berkshire will step into a position where the heavy lifting has already been done.</p>
<p>I left with the sense that Buffett and Munger, both of whom have spent years explaining the importance of employee incentives, are spending a lot of their time to leave Berkshire with systems that will guide it for years and decades to come.</p>
<p>3. The importance of share buybacksIt's no secret that Berkshire will likely repurchase shares of stock when it trades for less than 1.2 times book value, Buffett has said as much. Not surprisingly, it was the subject of an analysts' question, who asked why Berkshire didn't buy back stock given it had traded below 1.2x book value in January and February.</p>
<p>Buffett was quick to note that Berkshire hadn't actually traded below 1.2x book value, but that it had gotten very close. He also made it very clear that the company would have been buying back stock if it had traded below that threshold.</p>
<p>To the Oracle of Omaha, Berkshire's capital allocation is as much a promise as it is a policy.</p>
<p>He also went on to say that the buyback program essentially guarantees a better outcome than a policy in which Berkshire pays out dividends. If Berkshire commits to buying back stock at 1.2x book value, a dollar on its balance sheet is essentially worth $1.20 or more to the share price. Shareholders should obviously prefer $1.20 in share price to $1.00 paid out as a dividend.</p>
<p>Buying Berkshire at or very near to 1.2x book value may be the very best risk-reward proposition on the stock market.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/03/3-takeaways-from-berkshire-hathaways-annual-meetin.aspx" type="external">3 Takeaways from Berkshire Hathaways Annual Meeting Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFValueMagnet/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Jordan Wathen Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Berkshire Hathaway and Coca-Cola. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 3 Takeaways from Berkshire Hathaways Annual Meeting | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/05/03/3-takeaways-from-berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting.html | 2016-05-03 | 0 |
<p>In the late 1970s, the Khmer Rouge presided over a four-year reign of terror in Cambodia. The regime launched an agrarian crusade that killed, starved, or worked to death some 1.7 million people. Some of the targets of the Khmer Rouge were turned over to torture centers; the most notorious center was Tuol Sleng. It's in Phnom Penh.</p>
<p>The word on what happened at Tuol Sleng is already going out in the form of a short documentary film. The film is called "The Conscience of Nhem En." The title character is Nhem En; he was the staff photographer at the torture center. His job was to take photos of the prisoners shortly before they were to be killed.</p>
<p>&#160;The film's been nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary-short. Director Steven Okazaki admits that he wasn't sure he understood the man who would become the subject of his film.</p>
<p>Steven Okazaki: I essentially found his situation really hard to fathom I guess, from just myself personally, that he would stand by--I think he says he took about 6,000 photos. And so he'd know pretty much absolutely everyone that he photographed was innocent and about to die.</p>
<p>Lisa Mullins, host: These are people, if you look at the photographs they were black and white photographs and they're essentially mug shots of people looking straight at the camera.</p>
<p>Okazaki: Well, what's amazing about them though is that they were taken with a large-format camera and, you know, it's 1975 to 1979. There was--it would be easy to take a quick 35 millimeter camera and no, I haven't had a clear answer on why but they used a large-format camera with lighting.</p>
<p>Mullins: So you shoot them?</p>
<p>Okazaki: Yeah, and so they're much higher quality than you would normally have for ID photos. And so I think that's what's really sort of compelling about them is they're--many of them are just quite beautiful photographs. And I guess what's also startling is some of the people seem to be smiling because someone says--you know, is about to take their picture. But most of the people have the look of, you know, what it looks like when you know you're about to die.</p>
<p>Mullins: When you spoke to the photographer on film, his telephone rang, his cell phone rang about four times and a couple of times he said it was Cambodian authorities. I mean, clearly there's an eye on him. I imagine there is an eye on you as well. Why is that? I mean, what's the current situation like that people would still have someone from above watching them?</p>
<p>Okazaki: Well, I think that there are still people that were active in the genocide that are--they're still around and people are still afraid of them. I'm not sure exactly what was happening, but we had--while we were doing the filming there was a man nearby that we assumed was a janitor 'cause he was using a broom. And we saw him later coming out of a government building, and Nhem En, when we were doing his interview he got four cell phone calls and three of them were from a government official. He would not tell us who he was, but it was clear that by the way he was addressing them--and he actually said right in front of us on the phone, "No, I haven't said anything damaging."</p>
<p>Mullins: Why did he talk to you at all?</p>
<p>Okazaki: Nhem En is a really complicated person I think, that it seemed to me that he wants to make some money, he says to help educate people about what happened. In the film he does, and I think that it's true; he says if it weren't for these photographs who would even care?</p>
<p>Mullins: Let me just ask you something else. You ended this piece with something I didn't expect; it was the Goldberg Variations by Bach. How come you chose this?</p>
<p>Okazaki: When we were shooting the film, sort of when we were not doing the serious interviews I decided to do portraits of people on the street as a way of sort of responding to, you know, the miserable, cruel photos you see that were taken 30 years ago and have some sort of positive response, and so we did.</p>
<p>Mullins: And there is, I mean people look at you and smile as you're taking their photographs.</p>
<p>Okazaki: Yeah, and you have a sense of, you know, the other lives of people and, you know, the small joys. And so, I don't know why but the Goldberg Variations just sort of came into my head as soon as I brought the footage home. And then I thought, "Well, I'll drop this as soon as we figure out some other music." And I loved it more and more every time I played it and I asked my friend, a great classical pianist, Maury Codama to record it for the film.</p>
<p>PRI's "The World" is a one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. "The World" is a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.</p>
<p>More <a href="" type="internal">"The World."</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Cambodian film up for Oscar | false | https://pri.org/stories/2009-02-18/cambodian-film-oscar | 2009-02-19 | 3 |
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<p>A Colorado pot shop recently closed after a Washington-based group opposed to legal marijuana sued not just the pot shop but a laundry list of firms doing business with it - from its landlord and accountant to the Iowa bonding company guaranteeing its tax payments. One by one, many of the plaintiffs agreed to stop doing business with Medical Marijuana of the Rockies, until the mountain shop closed its doors and had to sell off its pot at fire-sale prices.</p>
<p>With another lawsuit pending in southern Colorado, the cases represent a new approach to fighting marijuana. If the federal government won't stop its expansion, pot opponents say, federal racketeering lawsuits could. Marijuana may be legal under state law, but federal drug law still considers any marijuana business organized crime.</p>
<p>"It is still illegal to cultivate, sell or possess marijuana under federal law," said Brian Barnes, lawyer for Safe Streets Alliance, a Washington-based anti-crime group that brought the lawsuits on behalf of neighbors of the two Colorado pot businesses.</p>
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<p>Lawyers on both sides say the Colorado racketeering approach is novel.</p>
<p>"If our legal theory works, basically what it will mean is that folks who are participating in the marijuana industry in any capacity are exposing themselves to pretty significant liability," Barnes said.</p>
<p>The 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act sets up federal criminal penalties for activity that benefits a criminal enterprise. The RICO Act also provides for civil lawsuits by people hurt by such racketeering - in this case, neighbors of the two businesses who claim the pot businesses could hurt their property values. If successful, civil lawsuits under the RICO Act trigger triple penalties.</p>
<p>Filed in February, the Colorado lawsuits have yet to go before a judge. But one has already had the intended effect.</p>
<p>In April, three months after the RICO lawsuit was filed, Medical Marijuana of the Rockies closed. Owner Jerry Olson liquidated his inventory by selling marijuana for $120 an ounce, far below average retail prices.</p>
<p>"I am being buried in legal procedure," Olson wrote on a fundraising Web page he created to fight the lawsuit. The effort so far has brought in just $674.</p>
<p>The closure came after the pot shop's bank, Bank of the West, closed the shop's account and was dismissed as a plaintiff.</p>
<p>"Its policy is never to offer accounts to recreational marijuana businesses," the court order said.</p>
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<p>And just last week, a bonding company in Des Moines, Iowa, paid $50,000 to get out of the lawsuit.</p>
<p>"We are out of the business of bonding marijuana businesses in Colorado and elsewhere until this is settled politically," said Therese Wielage, spokeswoman for Merchants Bonding Company Mutual.</p>
<p>The case of the mountain pot shop shows that racketeering lawsuits can affect the marijuana industry even if the lawsuits never make it to a hearing.</p>
<p>"This lawsuit is meant more to have a chilling effect on others than it is to benefit the plaintiffs," said Adam Wolf, Olson's lawyer.</p>
<p>In the other Colorado lawsuit, against a dispensary called Alternative Holistic Healing, the pot shop isn't going down so easily.</p>
<p>The shop owners are building a 5,000-square-foot warehouse in southern Colorado for growing pot, despite being sued by neighboring property owners for affecting their mountain views. A construction company and insurance company working with Alternative Holistic Healing haven't abandoned the job.</p>
<p>"It's a frivolous lawsuit," said the pot shop's lawyer, Matthew Buck. "It has not affected (the pot shop owners) whatsoever."</p>
<p>But the marijuana opponents funding the lawsuit say they're ready to expand the test lawsuits to more marijuana businesses. The end goal, they say, is clear: to stop the whole pot industry in its tracks.</p>
<p>"We're putting a bounty on the heads of anyone doing business with the marijuana industry," Barnes said. "Just because you see what appears to be this unstoppable growth of marijuana, we disagree. We're starting to change the economics of the marijuana industry."</p>
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<p>Kristen Wyatt can be reached at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/APkristenwyatt" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/APkristenwyatt</a></p> | Marijuana opponents using racketeering law to fight industry | false | https://abqjournal.com/611968/marijuana-opponents-using-racketeering-law-to-fight-industry.html | 2 |
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<p>This year's fifth-annual elementary school cook-off was just what Sodexo's general manager, Mark Willis, was expecting.</p>
<p>The cook-off was sponsored by Sodexo, the food service provider for Rio Rancho Public Schools, at Rio Rancho Middle School on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Each year, Sodexo accepts recipe submissions from Rio Rancho fifth-grade elementary students.</p>
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<p>The students must submit their recipe, as well as a step-by-step process on how to prepare their delicacy.</p>
<p>It turned into a messy process quickly, but not as messy as it could have been.</p>
<p>There were 10 contestants this year. As they prepared their delicious and healthy snacks, Rio Rancho High School's culinary students paced the kitchen, and later the dining room, to oversee the preparation process and to judge the quality of the students' food.</p>
<p>The high school culinary team judged the food in five categories: foods that are health-conscious, kid-friendly preparation, kid foods that are fun, best presentation and the judges' choice.</p>
<p>The entire event was overseen by a team of Sodexo employees to ensure that the children were using sanitary tools and methods. The employees also assisted them if they needed to use a knife or get advice on how to present the food in a "prettier" way.</p>
<p>One Sodexo team member peeled a tomato and used the skin to make a rose-shaped design.</p>
<p>The magic was made in the kitchen and then presented in the dining room to be judged. Medals, plaques and goodie bags were awarded to the contestants in each of the listed categories.</p>
<p>Everyone is a winner in this contest.</p>
<p>"It is so nice to see a younger crowd getting involved in creating healthy snacks," Willis said.</p>
<p>He and Kim Vesley, school district spokeswoman and photographer for the event, will team up to create a Powerpoint presentation, which will be given at the May 12 school board meeting.</p> | Fifth-graders show off healthy cooking skills | false | https://abqjournal.com/389911/fifth-graders-show-off-healthy-cooking-skills.html | 2 |
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<p>Dec. 17 (UPI) — Chile elected former President <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sebastian_Pinera/" type="external">Sebastian Pinera</a> to a new term in office in the country’s run-off election on Sunday.</p>
<p>Pinera, who served as president from 2010 to 2014, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-17/billionaire-pinera-takes-early-lead-in-chile-s-presidential-vote" type="external">held 54.6 of the vote</a> with 98.4 percent of ballots counted, as his primary opposition, Alejandro Guillier, conceded the race with 45.4 percent of the vote.</p>
<p>“My rival knew how to adopt our flags,” Guillier said. “Chile has changed and that change is forever. But we have to be self-critical; we have received a hard defeat.”</p>
<p>Guillier, a former journalist, was backed by center-left incumbent President <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Michelle_Bachelet/" type="external">Michelle Bachelet</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/17/world/americas/chile-presidential-election.html" type="external">won 22 percent of the vote</a> during the first round of elections in November.</p>
<p>He promised to carry on Bachelet’s policies, but was ultimately defeated by Pinera — a billionaire businessman — and his more conservative, pro-business platform.</p>
<p>Pinera, who was preceded and succeeded by Bachelet, said he will rein in some of her policies, including halting the same-sex marriage bill she introduced in August.</p>
<p>He also promised to double economic growth, create 600,000 jobs, ease industry regulations and narrow the budget deficit.</p> | Sebastian Pinera wins Chile's presidential run-off election | false | https://newsline.com/sebastian-pinera-wins-chiles-presidential-run-off-election/ | 2017-12-17 | 1 |
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<p>Donald Trump has come out against North Carolina’s House Bill 2. (Photo by Andy Katz; courtesy Bigstock)</p>
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<p>The Republican presidential front-runner made the comments in response to a question during a town hall on NBC’s “Today Show” <a href="" type="internal">days after his dominating win in the New York primary</a>.</p>
<p>“I had a feeling that question was going to come up, I will tell you,” Trump said. “Well, look, North Carolina did something that was very strong and they’re paying a big price, and there’s a lot of problems. And I heard, one of the best answers I heard, was from a commentator yesterday, saying: Leave it the way it is. Right now. There have been very few problems. Leave it the way it is. North Carolina, what they’re going through, with all of the business that’s leaving and all of the strife — and that’s on both sides — you leave it the way it is.”</p>
<p>Trump added before the enactment of House Bill 2 in North Carolina, “there have been very few complaints” and indicated transgender people should be able to use the public restroom they think is appropriate for them.</p>
<p>“People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate,” Trump said. “There has been so little trouble. And the problem with what happened in North Carolina is the strife and the economic, I mean, the economic punishment that they’re taking. So I would say that’s probably the best way.”</p>
<p>Trump said he doesn’t know if any transgender people work for him, but said that is “probably” the case. Asked if he’s OK with transgender personality Caitlyn Jenner coming into Trump Tower and using any restroom she chooses, Trump replied, “That is correct.”</p>
<p>“You know, there’s a big move to create new bathrooms,” Trump said. “The problem with that is, for transgender, that would be a, first of all, I think that would be discriminatory in a certain way. It would be unbelievably expensive for businesses and for the country. Leave it the way it is.”</p>
<p>Mark Curry, founder of Executive Pride, a network of members and supporters of the LGBT business community, said Trump was exactly right about North Carolina law.</p>
<p>“Donald Trump has sparked controversy with his statements on an array of issues over recent months, but he was dead right with regard to his comments about North Carolina’s so-called bathroom bill,” Curry said. “The bill is discriminatory, and spotlights the ongoing problem we have in this country of government setting out to solve problems that never actually existed in the first place, and wreaking economic havoc and damage in the process.”</p>
<p>Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who remain Trump’s rival even though it’s now mathematically impossible for him to claim the Republican presidential nomination, criticized Trump for taking a position against the law.</p>
<p>“Donald Trump is no different from politically correct leftist elites. Today, he joined them in calling for grown men to be allowed to use little girls’ public restrooms,” Cruz said. “As the dad of young daughters, I dread what this will mean for our daughters – and for our sisters and our wives. It is a reckless policy that will endanger our loved ones. Yet Donald stands up for this irresponsible policy while at the same time caving in on defending individual freedoms and religious liberty. He has succumbed to the Left’s agenda, which is to force Americans to leave God out of public life while paying lip service to false tolerance.”</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Donald Trump</a> <a href="" type="internal">election 2016</a> <a href="" type="internal">North Carolina</a> <a href="" type="internal">Ted Cruz</a></p> | Trump latest to oppose North Carolina anti-LGBT law | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2016/04/21/trump-latest-to-oppose-north-carolina-anti-lgbt-law/ | 3 |
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<p>WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump directed his administration Thursday to rewrite federal rules so consumers can have wider access to health insurance plans featuring lower premiums. He called his new executive order a “beginning” and promised more actions to come.</p>
<p>Frustrated by failures in Congress, Trump is moving to put his own stamp on health care. But even the limited steps the president outlined Thursday will take months for the federal bureaucracy to finalize in regulations. Experts said consumers should not expect immediate changes.</p>
<p>“With these actions, we are moving toward lower costs and more options in the health care market,” Trump said before he signed his directive in the Oval Office.</p>
<p>But the changes Trump hopes to bring about may not be finalized in time to affect coverage for 2019, let alone next year.</p>
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<p>Trump said he will continue to pressure Congress to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare.”</p>
<p>One of the main ideas from the administration involves easing the way for groups and associations of employers to sponsor coverage that can be marketed across the land. That reflects Trump’s longstanding belief that interstate competition will lead to lower premiums for consumers who buy their own health insurance policies, as well as for small businesses.</p>
<p>Those “association health plans” could be shielded from some state and federal insurance requirements. But responding to concerns, the White House said participating employers could not exclude any workers from the plan, or charge more to those in poor health.</p>
<p>Other elements of the White House plan include:</p>
<p>—Easing current restrictions on short-term policies that last less than a year, an option for people making a life transition, from recent college graduates to early retirees. Those policies are not subject to current federal and state rules that require standard benefits and other consumer protections.</p>
<p>—Allowing employers to set aside pre-tax dollars so workers can use the money to buy an individual health policy.</p>
<p>“This executive order is the start of a long process as the gears of the federal bureaucracy churn, not the final word,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.</p>
<p>It’s also unlikely to reverse the trend of insurers exiting state markets. About half of U.S. counties will have only one “Obamacare” insurer next year, although it appears that no counties will be left without a carrier as was initially feared. White House officials said over time, the policies flowing from the president’s order will give consumers more options.</p>
<p>Democrats are bracing for another effort by Trump to dismantle “Obamacare,” this time with the rule-making powers of the executive branch. Staffers at the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury have been working on the options since shortly after the president took office.</p>
<p>The president’s move is also likely to encounter opposition from medical associations, consumer groups and perhaps even some insurers—the same coalition that so far has blocked congressional Republicans from repealing Obama’s Affordable Care Act.</p>
<p>State attorneys general and state insurance regulators may try to block the administration in court, seeing the plan as a challenge to their traditional oversight authority.</p>
<p>As Trump himself once said, health care is complicated and working his will won’t be as easy as signing a presidential order.</p>
<p>Experts say the executive order probably won’t have much impact on premiums for 2018, which are expected to be sharply higher in many states for people buying their own policies.</p>
<p>Sponsors would have to be found to offer and market the new style association plans, and insurers would have to step up to design and administer them. For insurers, this would come at a time when much of the industry seems to have embraced the consumer protections required by the Obama health law.</p>
<p>Depending on the scope of regulations that flow from Trump’s order, some experts say the alternatives the White House is promoting could draw healthy people away from “Obamacare” insurance markets, making them less viable for consumers and insurers alike</p>
<p>But conservatives such as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., believe the federal government has overstepped its bounds in regulating the private health insurance market. They argue that loosening federal rules would allow insurers to design plans that—although they may not cover as much—work perfectly well for many people.</p>
<p>About 17 million people buying individual health insurance policies are the main focus of Trump’s order. Nearly 9 million of those consumers receive tax credits under the Obama law and are protected from higher premiums.</p>
<p>But those who get no subsidies are exposed to the full brunt of cost increases that could reach well into the double digits in many states next year. Many in this latter group are solid middle-class, including self-employed business people and early retirees. Cutting their premiums has been a longstanding political promise for Republicans.</p> | Trump Signs Executive Order on Health Care | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/trump-signs-health-care-executive-order/ | 2017-10-12 | 4 |
<p>I can still remember my shock and sorrow the day I heard that Pablo Neruda, Chile’s greatest poet and one of the towering figures of 20th-century literature, had died. It was Sept. 23, 1973. Two weeks earlier, the Chilean military had staged a coup against President Salvador Allende and installed a dictatorship that would last 17 years.</p>
<p>Fearing for my life, like so many intellectuals and supporters of Allende, I was in hiding in a safe house in Santiago when the news reached me that, along with losing our land to fascism, we were losing the major wordsmith of that land when we most needed him.</p>
<p>Even if there were reasons to doubt every syllable that emanated from the junta as they tortured and murdered, persecuted and exiled Allende’s followers, it did not occur to me that they could have been stupid enough to assassinate Neruda himself.</p>
<p>I knew that he was bedridden and had been suffering from prostate cancer. It seemed natural that the horror of watching Chile’s democracy being destroyed and the grief at so many deaths of comrades from his Communist Party and other left-leaning organizations would have hastened his demise.</p>
<p>Over the years, along with most Chileans, I dismissed the rumors that an agent of the dictatorship had poisoned Neruda during his internment in the Clinica Santa Maria. Testimony of friends who were by his side during his last days and hours reinforced that skepticism. The writer’s widow, Matilde Urrutia, told me that in effect, cancer was the cause of death, though her husband’s overwhelming distress at the fate of our country had been the final blow.</p>
<p>I was wary of wild tales that could not be corroborated and did more harm than good. Faced with numerous real and undeniable atrocities, it was futile to postulate crimes that appeared to have no foundation and could be construed as propaganda.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, decades later,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">denunciations</a>&#160;from Neruda’s former driver, Manuel Araya, mentioning a lethal injection administered to the poet hours before his death led a Chilean judge to exhume the author’s body and seek help from foreign forensic organizations to determine the true cause of death. And now 16 experts have&#160; <a href="" type="internal">announced</a>&#160;that Neruda died of a bacterial infection rather than of cancer cachexia, as fraudulently stated on his death certificate.</p>
<p>Although they offered no evidence of foul play, their research has caused a certain amount of speculation. Contrasting with the inevitable circumspection of the forensic professionals, many Chileans — pundits, politicians, intellectuals, joined by one of Neruda’s&#160; <a href="" type="internal">nephews</a>&#160;— take it as a given that an execution took place.</p>
<p>These renewed conjectures are bolstered by the circumstance that some years after Neruda’s death, former President Eduardo Frei Montalva died under suspicious circumstances in the same room at the very clinic where the great poet had expired.It took many years of investigations, but the Chilean courts ruled that Montalva was&#160; <a href="" type="internal">killed</a>&#160;by a group of secret service agents. You could see why they murdered him: Montalva, after initially supporting the military takeover, had become the valiant leader of the opposition to Gen. Augusto Pinochet.</p>
<p>Eliminating him was a way of getting rid of a figure who could rally and unify those who wanted democracy restored. A similar motive was behind the assassination in Washington, D.C., of Orlando Letelier, the popular and charismatic minister of foreign affairs in Allende’s government.</p>
<p>But murdering Neruda still seems to make little sense. Why would Pinochet’s minions risk killing a poet who was already dying, a Nobel Prize winner revered by Chileans of all stripes and allegiances? Wasn’t he sick and weak, about to go into exile in Mexico, where he would have soon wasted away anyway?</p>
<p>Whatever the truth about his death, its effect was stunning. Neruda’s funeral on Sept. 26, 1973, became the first act of public defiance against Chile’s new rulers.</p>
<p>Braving the soldiers in the streets and the fear in their hearts, thousands of patriots accompanied Neruda’s coffin to the Cementerio General, saying goodbye to the poet who had told their story and the story of a Latin America in search of liberation. How could they fail to accompany on its final journey the body of the poet who had celebrated the human body in all its sensual desires and deepest despair?</p>
<p>These were the people who had learned from his verses how to shape their dreams and dream their love, and forlorn and enraged, they chanted that their bard was alive inside them. They promised that Allende, our dead president, would not be forgotten; they vowed that Chile would not succumb to tyranny.</p>
<p>The significance of the event did not lie only in the symbolism of so many men and women and even children endangering themselves to express their need for liberty. That funeral was also a blueprint for how the resistance would eventually defeat Pinochet in the arduous years to come: by taking over every tiny and large space available, by pushing back the limits of what was permissible, by stating, in the face of bayonets and bullets, that silence would not prevail.</p>
<p>In his most famous lines from “Canto General,” Neruda spoke to the anonymous dead of Latin America, writing, “Sube a nacer conmigo, hermano,” asking those forgotten and desecrated by history to be born again. “Rise up and be born with me, my brother.”</p>
<p>The renewed conversation around Neruda’s death allows us to remember him once more, see him yet again as a prophet in the battle against darkness and doom and oblivion. Just as yesterday when he was alive, our Pablo now continues, from beyond death, to send humanity a message of hope, encouraging the struggle for justice and freedom in our dire times.</p>
<p>It may take a long time, but the crimes of the past will not be suppressed. It may take a long time, Neruda’s memory is telling us, but there will, finally, be a reckoning. It may take a long time, Neruda’s poetry is telling us, but the victims of history will surely find a way to be born again.</p>
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<p>A version of this op-ed originally appeared in the <a href="http://www.nyt.com" type="external">New York Times</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Rumors of Murder: Pinochet and the Death of Neruda | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/11/01/rumors-of-murder-pinochet-and-the-death-of-neruda/ | 2017-11-01 | 4 |
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Holloman Air Force Base airman was found dead Tuesday morning at his home in Alamogordo, the base’s public affairs office announced Thursday. Foul play is not suspected, according to a news release from the base’s host unit, the 49th Wing.</p>
<p>Sr. Airman Zachary Hudson, assigned to the 49th Wing, was found dead at approximately 10:30 a.m., the release states.</p>
<p>Hudson’s death is under investigation.</p>
<p>Hudson’s primary duty was processing key messages on behalf of wing commander Col. Robert Kiebler.</p>
<p>“Holloman is deeply saddened by this loss,” Kiebler said in the release. “Please keep the members of Team Holloman in your thoughts and prayers as we mourn this tragedy.”</p>
<p>Hudson is survived by his parents.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Holloman airman found dead in home | false | https://abqjournal.com/641829/holloman-airman-found-dead-in-home.html | 2015-09-10 | 2 |
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<p>GREENFIELD (MA)The RecorderGREENFIELD - Two more civil lawsuits were filed against the Diocese of Springfield by lawyer John J. Stobierski on behalf of two men who say they were sexually abused in the 1960s by priests.</p>
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<p>The suits, filed in Hampden County Superior Court, accuse the diocese of negligence and liability for failing to protect the plaintiffs from such acts.</p>
<p>"Adam Doe," now 52, of Chicopee, is suing Cathedral High School in Springfield and the diocese for failing to protect him in 1966 and 1967 against alleged molestation by the late Rev. Karl Huller, a former teacher, spiritual leader and guidance counselor at Cathedral High School.</p>
<p>The lawsuit has been filed under an alias to protect the privacy of a victim of alleged sexual abuse. It is the second lawsuit filed by Stobierski that accuses Huller of molesting boys. Norman D. LaPolice, of Jamestown, R.I., filed a lawsuit against Huller in December.</p> | Diocese named in two more civil lawsuits | false | https://poynter.org/news/diocese-named-two-more-civil-lawsuits | 2003-03-21 | 2 |
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<p>Altice , the telecoms and cable holding company owned by billionaire Patrick Drahi, kicked off on Tuesday the formal process for the initial public offering (IPO) of its U.S. activities in New York.</p>
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<p>The debt-fueled group, whose division Altice USA was put together after acquiring Cablevision and Suddenlink Communications, aims to increase its financial firepower to buy assets in the broadband and media businesses in the country, it said in the document filed with the U.S. markets watchdog.</p>
<p>The size of the shares sale and price range have not yet been determined, Altice said in a statement. Sources told Reuters in October that the IPO could raise close to $2 billion.</p>
<p>JP Morgan , Morgan Stanley , Citigroup and Goldman Sachs are the banks serving as joint book-runners on Altice's U.S initial public offering.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain and Gwenaelle Barzic; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)</p> | Telecoms and cable group Altice kicks off IPO process for U.S. arm | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/04/11/telecoms-and-cable-group-altice-kicks-off-ipo-process-for-us-arm.html | 2017-04-11 | 0 |
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<p>But consider his response when asked about Mosul, the Iraqi city that’s been under control of the Islamic State since the summer of 2014 and that is now the target of a ground offensive launched by the Iraqi government. The thrust of the question posed by debate moderator was whether – once the city is recaptured, as it is expected to be – U.S. troops should constitute some form of occupation force.</p>
<p>Clinton said no and that a large American troop deployment would be a “big red flag waving for ISIS to reconstitute itself.” She went on to talk about the difficulties of fighting the extremist group and linked the challenge to the civil war in neighboring Syria and the need to gain leverage over the Syrian regime and its international allies.</p>
<p>Then came Trump. Here is the entirety of his response, interspersed with analysis:</p>
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<p>“Let me tell you, Mosul is so sad. We had Mosul. But when she (Clinton) left, when she took everybody out, we lost Mosul. Now we’re fighting again to get Mosul. The problem with Mosul and what they wanted to do is they wanted to get the leaders of ISIS who they felt were in Mosul.</p>
<p>“About three months ago, I started reading that they want to get the leaders and they’re going to attack Mosul. Whatever happened to the element of surprise, okay? We announce we’re going after Mosul. I have been reading about going after Mosul now for about – how long is it, Hillary, three months? These people have all left. They’ve all left.”</p>
<p>Despite ignoring the real policy question at hand – what to do going forward – Trump starts off on relatively solid ground. He bangs the drum that other Republicans and neoconservatives have about the Obama administration’s withdrawal from Iraq, which its critics claim paved the way for the chaos that followed. This is a complicated and debatable assertion: the troop pullout was something acceded to by the Bush administration and desired by the Iraqi government in Baghdad itself; the Islamic State’s origins can also be pinned to the dissolution of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime after the 2003 U.S. invasion.</p>
<p>Trump then goes on to point out that the terrorist group’s leadership has likely now fled the Iraqi city toward their other redoubts in eastern Syria. That’s probably true, as recent reports indicate. But it’s totally beside the point. The offensive is about reclaiming one of Iraq’s most important cities and the major urban center in the country’s fractious north. Targeting the Islamic State’s leadership, mostly through airstrikes, is something Washington has been doing separately for quite some time.</p>
<p>Then comes the utterly laughable suggestion that the Mosul offensive has only been in discussion for the past three months. That may be a reflection of when the city and the strategic conundrum it represents first entered Trump’s consciousness, but anybody following the conflicts in Iraq and Syria would know that Baghdad’s plan to mobilize a complicated set of factions and reclaim Mosul has been out in the open for well over a year. In March 2015, as my colleagues report, the Iraqi government even dumped thousands of leaflets over Mosul telling everyone about their intent to liberate the city.</p>
<p>The idea that the best strategy would be a surprise attack demonstrates both an almost childish understanding of military matters as well a total obliviousness to the complexities on the ground.</p>
<p>“There is no way to assemble 40,000 troops and suddenly mad-dash into a city of 2 million people, with no advance, and – unavoidably – visible preparation,” notes Slate’s Fred Kaplan. “There is especially no way to do so when – for political as well as military reasons – these 40,000 troops consist of Iraqi soldiers and police, Kurdish peshmerga, Sunni tribesmen, Shiite militias, and American special forces, air power, and intelligence, all with Turkish assent.”</p>
<p>At no point in this election campaign has the Republican nominee ever demonstrated an interest or appreciation for this nuance.</p>
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<p>“The element of surprise. Douglas MacArthur, George Patton spinning in their graves when they see the stupidity of our country.”</p>
<p>And then he doubles down on the idea of a surprise attack with an amazing bit of hyperbole. Sure, it would be interesting to know what these famed American generals of yore would make of the “stupidity” of the present.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, though, MacArthur himself is accused of falling victim to surprise attacks, particularly the Japanese bombing and invasion of the Philippines in December 1941 that led to tens of thousands of American and Filipino deaths. He burnished his credentials in 1950 during the Korean War with a dramatic, surprise amphibious landing at Inchon that helped turn the tide against the North Koreans. That conflict, though, ended not in victory but in an intractable stalemate that remains to this day.</p>
<p>Whatever the case, the modern battlefield is vastly different from what it was more than half a century ago, and for Trump to assume otherwise reveals a great deal about his own capacity for strategic thinking.</p>
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<p>“So we’re now fighting for Mosul, that we had. All she had to do was stay there, and now we’re going in to get it.</p>
<p>“But you know who the big winner in Mosul is going to be after we eventually get it? And the only reason they did it is because she’s running for the office of president and they want to look tough. They want to look good. He violated the red line in the sand, and he made so many mistakes, made all the mistakes. That’s why we have the great migration. But she wanted to look good for the election. So they’re going in.”</p>
<p>Trump clutches at tiny straws, making the absurd claim that the offensive, which has been in the works for months, was timed to help Clinton’s election campaign. He then pivots in the next sentence to what seems to be an attack on President Obama, invoking the White House’s inability to punish the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons against civilians – what Obama had deemed a “red line.” The sentence structure is a bit convoluted – did Obama “violate” the red line or Assad?</p>
<p>Moreover, in the same debate, Trump also panned the United States’ dealings with rebels fighting Assad. So it’s not quite clear what “mistakes” he’s referring to, unless he’s implying that Washington should have backed the Syrian regime from the beginning.</p>
<p>He then goes on to suggest that, because of American inaction or indecision in Syria, we have a refugee crisis. Except, he doesn’t call it a refugee crisis or humanitarian disaster but a “great migration,” a curious term for a tragedy that the international community is struggling to manage. I have already written at length on Trump and the GOP’s obfuscation and lying about the status of refugees and the threat they would pose in the United States. It’s also interesting that Trump invokes the “great migration,” a phrase more commonly associated with the early 20th century movement of African Americans from the rural south to the industrialized cities of the north.</p>
<p>Given the heated politics of Trump’s campaign, maybe there’s logic in building a combined bogeyman.</p>
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<p>“But who’s going to get Mosul, really? We’ll take Mosul eventually. But the way – if you look at what’s happening, much tougher than they thought. Much, much tougher. Much more dangerous. Going to be more deaths that they thought.</p>
<p>“But the leaders that we wanted to get are all gone because they’re smart. They say, what do we need this for? So Mosul is going to be a wonderful thing. And Iran should write us a letter of thank you, just like the really stupid – the stupidest deal of all time, a deal that’s going to give Iran absolutely nuclear weapons. Iran should write us yet another letter saying thank you very much, because Iran, as I said many years ago, Iran is taking over Iraq, something they’ve wanted to do forever, but we’ve made it so easy for them.</p>
<p>“So we’re now going to take Mosul. And do you know who’s going to be the beneficiary? Iran. Oh, yeah, they’re making – I mean, they are outsmarting – look, you’re not there, you might be involved in that decision. But you were there when you took everybody out of Mosul and out of Iraq. You shouldn’t have been in Iraq, but you did vote for it. You shouldn’t have been in Iraq, but once you were in Iraq, you should have never left the way.”</p>
<p>The day after the debate, the Iraqi government announced that the Mosul offensive was moving far more swiftly than expected. Still, there are obvious reasons for caution, including concerns for the safety of Mosul’s civilian population as well as over the Islamic State’s capacity for hideous terrorist attacks and suicide bombings.</p>
<p>Trump returns to the irrelevant point about the jihadist “leaders” not being in Mosul before he launches into a bewildering attack on the Iran deal, which doesn’t have much to do with the Mosul offensive. A consensus of experts believes that the nuclear deal negotiated by world powers with Iran is working and minimizes the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.</p>
<p>The Islamic Republic is indeed a real player in Iraq. A host of Shiite militias with links to Tehran have been on the front lines against the Islamic State. But they’ve taken a backseat during the Mosul offensive, largely to allay fears of sectarian clashes once the majority-Sunni city returns to government control. It’s not clear at all that Iran will be the prime beneficiary of what follows – there are a host of other regional actors, including Turkey and the Kurds, who may all want a piece of the prize and have more immediate claims on northern Iraq.</p>
<p>And Iran’s strong position in Iraq is a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion in 2003, which toppled a doggedly anti-Iranian regime and enabled the rise of a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. And this is an invasion that, contrary to what Trump says at the very end, the Republican nominee was for before he was against it.</p>
<p>trump-iraq-analysis</p> | Trump’s response on Mosul misses key policy points | false | https://abqjournal.com/871436/trumps-response-on-mosul-misses-key-policy-points.html | 2 |
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<p>Wildlife-viewing, foliage and cooler hiking weather have always fueled autumn tourism in the West, but some destinations report more fall visitors than ever.</p>
<p>In New Mexico, September is nearly as strong as August, according to state tourism spokeswoman Jolene Mauer. The International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque brings another spike in October.</p>
<p>Colorado’s golden aspens and elk-mating have long drawn fall visitors, but as elsewhere, the season keeps getting longer. A half-dozen years ago, luxury guest ranch Vista Verde near Steamboat Springs closed in late September, but this year there’s enough demand to stay open until Oct. 19.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Fall colors season is lasting longer | false | https://abqjournal.com/464217/fall-colors-season-is-lasting-longer.html | 2014-09-18 | 2 |
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<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
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<p>August began with plenty of promise for the marijuana industry, but those high hopes went up in smoke on Aug. 11, when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency released its long-awaited decision on whether it would reclassify marijuana.</p>
<p>For months, the marijuana industry, cannabis supporters, and medical patients had hoped that the U.S. regulatory agency, with the recommendation of the Department of Health and Human Services, would reschedule marijuana from its current status of Schedule 1 -- which deems it an illicit drug with no accepted medical use -- to Schedule 2. This would have recognized that cannabis has an accepted medical benefit, and it would have allowed physicians around the country to prescribe medical marijuana to patients with very specific ailments.</p>
<p>However, the decision by the DEA denied the two petitions seeking to reschedule the still-illicit drug. The DEA leaned on three points in its explanation of the decision.</p>
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<p>First, the DEA believes marijuana has a high potential for abuse. Both the evaluation from the Department of Health and Human Services and the DEA's own observations appeared to confirm that.</p>
<p>Second, the DEA pointed out that cannabis has no currently accepted medical use, listing five reasons why that is. Most notably, the drug's chemistry isn't known and reproducible, and there are no well-controlled studies to back up cannabis supporters' claims that it can treat pain, epilepsy, or any other number of ailments.</p>
<p>Finally, the agency believes marijuana lacks an acceptable safety profile. Without any approved cannabis products, the benefits of marijuana don't appear to outweigh its risks.</p>
<p>For these reasons, marijuana will continue to remain a Schedule 1 drug, and approvals at the medical and recreational level will still be conducted at the state level. The ruling took the wind out of the sails of supporters.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>However, it's not all bad news for the cannabis industry. The DEA's decision came with one notable caveat that will allow for easier access into medical marijuana research. Currently, the only approved grow farm in the U.S. is in Mississippi. New regulations could open the door for researchers to gain easier access to cannabis for medical research. Presumably, the sooner researchers can present a series of well-controlled studies on cannabis to the Food and Drug Administration and/or the DEA, the better chance they'll have of getting the latter to reclassify marijuana in the future.</p>
<p>Even more recently, on Aug. 16, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the cannabis industry by protecting legal recreational and medical marijuana users against federal prosecution. In effect, the 3-0 verdict by the federal court prevents the federal government from providing funding for the prosecution of recreational or medical marijuana users in states where recreational or medical marijuana is legal. With nine states set to vote on whether to legalize cannabis this November, millions of Americans could soon be protected from federal prosecution, according to this ruling. It should be noted that the Appeals Court could change its mind at any time. But for the time being, federal prosecutors will have better ways to spend their money than prosecuting consumers who are using marijuana in accordance with their states' laws.</p>
<p>There's also a bright side to the DEA's decision. Had the DEA rescheduled cannabis, the substance could have been exposed to a laundry list of FDA regulations. For example, the FDA could have placed requirements on packaging and marketing, or it could have demanded consistent levels of THC from each crop of marijuana. Even more importantly, FDA oversight may have forced the cannabis industry to run clinical trials in order to demonstrate the efficacy of the drug for treating certain ailments. These added costs could have put smaller players out of business and essentially handed the industry over to bigger businesses. Given less competition and more regulation, legal marijuana prices would likely rise rapidly.</p>
<p>In other words, marijuana's DEA defeat is, in many ways, a victory.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Perhaps the biggest loser here is the individual investor looking to take advantage of the marijuana industry's incredible growth.</p>
<p>According to ArcView Market Research, a cannabis research firm, legal marijuana sales hit $5.4 billion in 2015, and they're slated to grow by roughly 30% per year throughout the remainder of the decade. If this trend were to continue, then legal marijuana sales would total nearly $22 billion by 2020. An investment that could grow at 30% per year for five straight years is a real rarity for stock investors, so you can imagine how closely some investors are watching the marijuana industry. Unfortunately, keeping cannabis as aSchedule 1substance will probably keep big business from gaining substantial market share within the industry. This leaves investors little to no opportunity to profit from the growing legal marijuana market.</p>
<p>Making matters worse for investors is the fact that the vast majority of publicly traded marijuana stocks are penny stocks that trade on over-the-counter exchanges. While reporting standards are improving on the OTC exchanges, it can still be difficult to get accurate financial information on cannabis stocks. Nonetheless, losses remain common among marijuana stocks, and that's all the more reason to watch the advancement of the industry safely from the sidelines.</p>
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<p>The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley" 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> | The Marijuana Industry Pulls Victory From the Jaws of a DEA Defeat | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/08/28/marijuana-industry-pulls-victory-from-jaws-dea-defeat.html | 2016-08-28 | 0 |
<p>It’s true that politics is the art of the possible, but it’s also true that great leaders expand the scope of possibility. Barack Obama took office pledging to be a transformational president. The fate of a government-run public health insurance option will be an early test of his ability to end the way Washington’s big-money, special-interest politics suffocates true reform.</p>
<p>Without that option, what Obama now calls “health insurance reform” still would be better than no reform at all, I think. But frankly, it’s becoming hard to tell. So many genuine reforms have already been taken off the table — fully universal coverage, the ability to negotiate prices with the drug companies — that expectations are ratcheted down almost daily.</p>
<p>Giving up the public option would send many of Obama’s progressive supporters into apoplexy, yet the administration has sent clear signals that this is the path of less resistance it’s prepared to take.</p>
<p>“The public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it,” Obama said Saturday at a town hall in Grand Junction, Colo. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, told CNN that a public option is “not the essential element” of comprehensive reform.</p>
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<p>But what is the “essential element”? Where, if anywhere, does Obama draw a line in the sand? For reform to be meaningful, there must be some components that a final package absolutely should include. What on earth might they be?</p>
<p>Obama was wise to avoid the central mistake of Bill Clinton’s failed attempt at health reform, which was to hand Congress a fully elaborated package and say “take it or leave it.” Instead, Obama set broad — and, frankly, awfully fuzzy — policy outlines and let Congress fill in the details. But he followed this strategy to a fault, allowing the effort to be hijacked by special-interest lobbies determined to thwart genuine reform.</p>
<p>The let-Congress-do-it approach meant that multiple bills would be written in committees on both sides of the Capitol, which gave the health insurance and drug company lobbyists a target-rich environment. They could nibble a little here, gnaw a little there, find the weak points and exploit them. Republicans could find opportunities for demagoguery — the proposal to have Medicare pay for end-of-life counseling, for example, which was twisted into euthanizing the elderly and infirm. Opponents could write a script for chaos at town hall meetings, designed to create the impression that Americans love their health care system just the way it is.</p>
<p>Clearly, the White House feels itself on the defensive. But why?</p>
<p>Consider the political landscape. Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress. No matter how disciplined Republicans are in opposing any reforms — even if Republican objections are accommodated — they don’t have the votes to kill a final bill.</p>
<p>If conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats are successful in nixing a public health insurance option and watering down other reforms, progressive voters have a right to ask why they went to such trouble to elect Democratic majorities and a Democratic president. But the Senate still has the option of resorting to a parliamentary maneuver that would require only 51 votes, rendering most objections irrelevant. Historical trends indicate that it’s unlikely the Democrats will expand their majorities in 2010. Politically, therefore, there’s not likely to be a better moment for health reform than right now.</p>
<p>It’s also true, politically, that failure to get any health reform measure passed and signed would be a severe blow to Obama — and a bad omen for the rest of his ambitious agenda to revolutionize U.S. policy on energy and education. It would be understandable if the White House decided that the important thing, at this point, was to get a “win” at all costs. Is this what the apparent retreat on the public option signals?</p>
<p>If so, that would not only be wrong but also — even at this point — unnecessary, or at least premature. What the president hasn’t done is the obvious: Tell Congress and the American public, clearly and forcefully, what has to be done and why. Take control of the debate. Consult less and insist more. Remind the Blue Dogs who’s president and who’s not.</p>
<p>Giving up on the public option might be expedient. But we didn’t elect Obama to be an expedient president. We elected him to be a great one.</p>
<p>Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.</p>
<p>© 2009, Washington Post Writers Group</p> | Playing Defense Isn't Working | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/playing-defense-isnt-working/ | 2009-08-18 | 4 |
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<p>On April 13, 2015, the State Police sent a letter to Donna McKay stating that her pistol license, which she had possessed since 2008, was suspended, because of mental incompetence or involuntary commitment. All her firearms, including rifles and shotguns, had to be turned over to the Sheriff’s department for safekeeping while the matter was being adjudicated.</p>
<p>A date of 19 May was set for McKay to appear to respond to the letter. The letter did not state the basis for the ruling. She appeared with counsel on 19 May. Over a year later, on 7 June, 2016, Donna McKay’s pistol permit was ordered restored, and her firearms ordered returned. The routine report from her doctor had been the cause of the State infringing on her Second Amendment rights. In the court decision, the court noted that the state had considerable discretion when deciding whether a person should be allowed to exercise their Second Amendment rights. <a href="http://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/other-courts/2016/2016-ny-slip-op-26180.html" type="external">From justia.com</a>:</p>
<p>A pistol license may be revoked and cancelled “for any good cause” [see, Mtr of Vale v Eidens, 290 AD2d 612, 613 (3rd Dept 2002)] at any time if the court determines that a licensee is no longer eligible or fit to continue to possess a firearm. PL §400.00(1) (n). This could include an inability to possess a pistol license due to mental illness (P.L. §400.00(1)(i), having been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility [P. L. §400.00(1)(j)] or having a guardian appointed for her [P. L. §400.00(1)(m)].</p>
<p>When exercising its discretion, the court must look to the underlying facts in the record before it and as they relate to the respondent’s fitness and eligibility to hold a pistol license. And the court is not bound by a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt but rather “good cause” based upon “substantial evidence”. Perlov v Kelly, 21 AD3d 270, 271 (2nd Dept 2005), citing Mtr of Abramowitz v Safir, 293 AD2d 352, noting that “our obligation is limited to insuring that respondent (court) met the very minimal evidentiary requirement necessary to uphold its determination’, quoting Mtr of Scully v Safir, 282 AD2d 305, 308 (1st Dept 2001).</p>
<p>In this regard, “the State has a substantial and legitimate interest and indeed, a grave responsibility, in insuring the safety of the general public from the individuals who, by their conduct, have shown themselves to be lacking the essential temperament or character which [*5]should be present in one entrusted with a dangerous instrument.” Dorsey v Teresi, 26 AD3d 635, 636, quoting Mtr of Pelose v County Ct. of Westchester, 53 AD2d 645 (2nd Dept 1976), app. dism. 41 NY2d 1008.</p>
<p>Consider what happened to Donna McKay. At no time did she do any thing that would have justified taking her Second Amendment rights from her.&#160; A routine form, submitted by a doctor as a routine matter, that did not find that she was either involuntarily committed or mentally defective, was sent to the State Police. The police, without any further investigation or judicial process, issued the order that effectively deprived McKay of her rights for over a year. It is plausible that if she had not hired an attorney and vigorously defended her rights, they would have been taken forever.&#160; Notice the asymmetry. It took the State less than a week and a few keystrokes, to take away McKay’s rights. It took more than a year, and considerable treasure to restore them.</p>
<p>After winning the court case to restore her rights, her lawyer,&#160; Paloma Capanna, has filed a lawsuit to require a more rigorous process in the future. <a href="http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Gun-confiscation-prompts-lawsuit-10818702.php" type="external">From the timesunion.com</a>:</p>
<p>By not having representation when police initially took her weapons she was deprived of due process, Capanna contends.</p>
<p>The suit, filed earlier in December in federal court in Rochester, seeks an injunction that would require the state to provide legal counsel in gun confiscation cases and notification to individuals who are facing confiscation.</p>
<p>State Police declined to comment since the matter was pending litigation.</p>
<p>An estimated 380,000 New Yorkers have been reported to the NCIC database. Capanna argues that those people should be notified.</p>
<p>In spite of having her pistol permit restored and her firearms returned, Donna McKay is still in the federal NICS system as a prohibited person. Her name was added to the prohibited person list when the State Police sent the the notice suspending her pistol license.</p>
<p>The New York Safe Act has numerous significant flaws. It is actively being challenged in several court cases. The act was passed as an “emergency” measure without regular debate or committee hearings, in one night, under pressure from Governor Cuomo.</p>
<p>Of the three men most responsible for the “SAFE” act, two have been convicted on corruption charges. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Silver" type="external">Sheldon Silver, former Speaker</a>, of the New York State Assembly, was convicted in 2015. <a href="http://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/dean-skelos-adam-skelos-guilty-on-all-counts-1.11218578" type="external">Dean Skelos</a>, the former leader of the Senate, was convicted in December of 2015.&#160; Governor Cuomo, is being investigated on a number of corruption charges. The election of Donald Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton, does not bode well for Governor Cuomo.</p>
<p>The lawsuit against the State of New York was only filed a few days ago. It will take months to work its way through the courts.</p>
<p>The lawsuit was filed in federal court. It may be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. If the case travels that far, it may find a Court with one or more Donald Trump appointees.</p>
<p>©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.&#160; <a href="http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/" type="external">Link to Gun Watch</a></p>
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<p>We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.</p> | New York Woman Files Suit for Due Process when Denied Second Amendment Rights | true | http://bulletsfirst.net/2016/12/28/new-york-woman-files-suit-due-process-denied-second-amendment-rights/ | 0 |
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<p>LEICESTER, England (AP) — Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez led Leicester to a routine 2-0 win over Watford in the Premier League on Saturday.</p>
<p>Algeria playmaker Mahrez, who has been linked with a move in January, maintained his good form with a third goal in six games after Vardy's first-half penalty had put the home team ahead.</p>
<p>The spot-kick was awarded when the England striker was brought down by Molla Wague. Vardy picked the ball up before firing his 11th goal of the season into the bottom corner of the net.</p>
<p>Leicester moved up to seventh in the standings while midtable Watford continued a poor run that has earned the Hornets just one win in 11 games.</p>
<p>LEICESTER, England (AP) — Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez led Leicester to a routine 2-0 win over Watford in the Premier League on Saturday.</p>
<p>Algeria playmaker Mahrez, who has been linked with a move in January, maintained his good form with a third goal in six games after Vardy's first-half penalty had put the home team ahead.</p>
<p>The spot-kick was awarded when the England striker was brought down by Molla Wague. Vardy picked the ball up before firing his 11th goal of the season into the bottom corner of the net.</p>
<p>Leicester moved up to seventh in the standings while midtable Watford continued a poor run that has earned the Hornets just one win in 11 games.</p> | Vardy and Mahrez inspire Leicester to 2-0 win over Watford | false | https://apnews.com/amp/381ad8e77ca34212832b1c92cb59efb6 | 2018-01-20 | 2 |
<p>If the idea of machine learning and artificial intelligence freaks you out, don't worry. AI isn't all overly conscious robots. In fact, most employees shared a positive outlook about adopting the technology. According to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/adigaskell/2018/03/07/employees-optimistic-about-working-with-ai/#1dde3ba02543" type="external">Forbes</a>, "The majority thought that technology will not only make jobs easier, it will also take away many of the mundane tasks we have to perform, thus freeing us up for more enjoyable work." As machine learning and AI become more integrated into the workplace, it will benefit you to understand how the technology works, even if you're not a software engineer or master programmer.</p>
<p>This <a href="" type="internal">Machine Learning &amp; AI for Business Bundle</a> gives you that understanding, teaching you the basics (and far beyond) about machine learning and AI. This bundle typically retails for $1195, but lifetime access to its 164 lessons (over the span of four courses) <a href="" type="internal">is on sale for $39</a>, or 96% off. It gives you all the tools you need and lets you learn at your own pace. Here's a breakdown of the four courses:</p>
<p>You'll learn basic ideas and techniques in the design of intelligent computer systems, and how to identify potential areas of applications of AI. Understanding the framework of AI will allow you to see how it can be used in your work and in which areas it will be most beneficial.</p>
<p>You may not realize it, but you see this science in action all the time through spam filtering and search engines, and recently in more powerful applications like self-driving cars and speech recognition. This course will provide an introduction to the mechanisms of algorithms and how they are used to drive machine learning. You'll explore the science behind neural networks and practice implementing the most effective machine learning techniques.</p>
<p>If you're not familiar, the R programming language has become the most widely used language for computational statistics, visualization, and data science. In this course, you'll install R studio and learn the basics of R functions to get a better idea of how it can be applied. You'll also cover the evolution of business analytics and learn how tech giants like Google and Facebook use R to develop algorithms and further their companies.</p>
<p>If you were intrigued by R and think you could pursue a career in business analytics, this course is designed to help you. You'll discuss data manipulation and statistics basics before diving into practical, functional use of R, like learning how to calculate variance, covariance and build scatter plots. The practice problems will help to reinforce your learning, so by the time you've finished this course, you'll be ready to put your skills to work.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Get started with this course</a> to prepare yourself for AI and machine learning in the workplace. Reminder: it's 96% off now.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Scouted</a>&#160;is here to surface products&#160;that you might like.&#160; <a href="https://flipboard.com/@thedailybeast/scouted-t57nqmfky" type="external">Follow us on&#160;Flipboard</a>&#160;for more.&#160;Please note that if you buy something featured in one of our posts, The Daily Beast may collect a share of sales.</p> | This Is Why AI Might Actually Help Your Career And How To Take Advantage Of It | true | https://thedailybeast.com/this-is-why-ai-might-actually-help-your-career-and-how-to-take-advantage-of-it | 2018-10-06 | 4 |
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<p>The ruling by Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym, a former federal prosecutor, requires Apple to supply highly specialized software the FBI can load onto Syed Farook's work iPhone to bypass a self-destruct feature, which erases the phone's data after too many unsuccessful attempts to unlock it. The FBI wants to be able to try different combinations in rapid sequence until it finds the right one.</p>
<p>The decision gives the Justice Department a significant victory in an entrenched technology policy battle, as more-powerful encryption services threaten the ability of federal agents to uncover important evidence in criminal or terrorism cases. The Obama administration, which has embraced stronger encryption as a way to keep consumers safe on the Internet, had struggled to find a compelling example to make its case.</p>
<p>The ruling Tuesday tied the problem to the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in a Dec. 2 shooting at a holiday luncheon for Farook's co-workers. The couple later died in a gun battle with police.</p>
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<p>Federal prosecutors told the judge in a court application Tuesday that they can't access a work phone used by Farook because they don't know his passcode and Apple has not cooperated. Under U.S. law, a work phone is generally the property of a person's employer. The judge told Apple to provide an estimate of its cost to comply with her order, suggesting that the government will be expected to pay for the work.</p>
<p>Apple has provided default encryption on its iPhones since 2014, allowing any device's contents to be accessed only by the user who knows the phone's passcode.</p>
<p>The Cupertino, California-based company did not immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press asking about the case.</p>
<p>The order requires that the software Apple provides be programmed to work only on Farook's phone, but it was not clear how readily that safeguard could be circumvented. The order said Apple has five days to notify the court if it believes the ruling is unreasonably burdensome.</p>
<p>It also was not immediately clear what investigators believe they might find on Farook's work phone or why the information would not be available from third-party service providers, such as Google or Facebook, though investigators think the device may hold clues about whom the couple communicated with and where they may have traveled.</p>
<p>The couple took pains to physically destroy two personally owned cell phones, crushing them beyond the FBI's ability to recover information from them. They also removed a hard drive from their computer; it has not been found despite investigators diving for days for potential electronic evidence in a nearby lake.</p>
<p>Farook was not carrying his work iPhone during the attack. It was discovered after a subsequent search. It was not known whether Farook forgot about the iPhone or did not care whether investigators found it.</p>
<p>The phone was running the newest version of Apple's iPhone operating system, which requires a passcode and cannot be accessed by Apple, unlike earlier operating systems or older phone models. San Bernardino County provided Farook with an iPhone configured to erase data after 10 consecutive unsuccessful unlocking attempts. The FBI said that feature appeared to be active on Farook's iPhone as of the last time he performed a backup.</p>
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<p>The California judge didn't spell out her rationale in her three-page order, but the ruling comes amid a similar case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.</p>
<p>In that case, Magistrate Judge James Orenstein has not yet decided whether the government can compel Apple to unlock an iPhone under the same 18th century law applied to the California case. The All Writs Act has been used to compel a party to help the government in its law enforcement efforts, but Apple has argued that it is not its role to act as a government agent and that doing so would breach trust with its customers.</p>
<p>Investigators are still working to piece together a missing 18 minutes in Farook and Malik's timeline from Dec. 2. Investigators have concluded they were at least partly inspired by the Islamic State group; Malik's Facebook page included a note pledging allegiance to the group's leader around the time of the attack.</p>
<p>FBI Director James Comey told members of Congress last week that investigators in the case had been unable to access a phone in the California case but provided no details.</p>
<p>"It is a big problem for law enforcement armed with a search warrant when you find a device that can't be opened even when a judge says there's probable cause to open it," Comey said. "It affects our counterterrorism work. San Bernardino, a very important investigation to us, we still have one of those killers' phones that we have not been able to open, and it's been over two months and we're still working on it."</p>
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<p>Follow Tami Abdollah on Twitter at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/latams" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/latams</a> and Eric Tucker at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP</a></p> | Judge: Apple must help US hack San Bernardino killer's phone | false | https://abqjournal.com/724991/judge-apple-must-help-u-s-hack-san-bernardino-killers-phone.html | 2016-02-16 | 2 |
<p>Via press release from Catholic League blowhard Bill Donohue:</p>
<p>Catholics in America make up about 25 percent of the population. Yet when it comes to negative stereotypes of religion, Hollywood targets us almost 100 percent of the time.</p>
<p>Nowhere is this more true than with gay-themed entertainment. The hostility shown toward all things Catholic made us wary when we heard about ABC’s miniseries on the history of the gay rights movement, “When We Rise.” As last night’s opening episode confirmed, we were right to be on guard.</p>
<p>The slaps at Catholics kept coming. There was the nun, in full habit, of course, who walks in on two teenage boys kissing, grunts, and walks out; the young woman from a “very Catholic” family, whose put-upon mother was beaten down by 10 pregnancies and a domineering husband who wouldn’t let her work outside the home; and the same young woman afraid to reveal her lesbian relationship because of that big Catholic family.</p>
<p>Most vicious was a discussion about holding a “women’s march” in Boston. “We get beat up by the very cops that refuse to protect us,” one character says, “in a city run by all Catholic cops.”</p>
<p>Right. Any negative comments about “Jewish bankers,” or “gay hairdressers,” or “black criminals”? Of course not. Those vicious and hurtful stereotypes would never be uttered on TV networks—and rightfully so. But it’s OK to stereotype “Catholic cops” who run a city and beat up women. As always, Catholics are the target of the entertainment industry’s bigotry.</p> | Catholic League: ABC’s LGBT Rights Miniseries When We Rise Is Just More Of Hollywood’s Anti-Catholic Bigotry | true | http://joemygod.com/2017/02/28/catholic-league-abcs-lgbt-miniseries-rise-just-hollywood-anti-catholic-bigotry/ | 2017-02-28 | 4 |
<p>Just six months after Kenya was mired in violence from an election, Kenyans are heading back to the polls. In one region it's to replace an MP who was shot dead in the last election's violent crisis. This is a candidate for ODM, the faction associated with Odinga's followers. She says there will not be violence is the elections are open and fair. These by-elections are the strongest test yet of the fragile coalition government that was forged after the election crisis. Odinga and his coalition partner, Kibaki of the PNU, were bitter rivals in the December elections and are fielding candidates against each other again. The campaigns have tended to be nasty and some are worried about that. The Vice President and ally of the PNU says the coalition can withstand the strain. And yet minutes earlier he had made a campaign call to strengthen the PNU's voice in the coalition. For many Kenyans where they were last winter is where they remain today, and this refugee camp is still very full. Many say the government has done nothing to help them restart their lives. getting through these by-elections without violence would be a big step towards repairing fractures in the country.</p> | Kenyans head to the polls | false | https://pri.org/stories/2008-06-11/kenyans-head-polls | 2008-06-11 | 3 |
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<p><a href="http://network.msn.com/" type="external">Microsoft Network</a> In three years the sprawling Microsoft Network has launched and killed more “ <a href="http://network.msn.com/allsites.asp" type="external">Web shows</a>” than most browsers can shake a URL at, including the recently <a href="http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,17250,00.html" type="external">axed</a> travel magazine Mungo Park, while popular sites produced by Paramount and Disney recently dumped their exclusive MSN contracts in favor of the open Web. Among the survivors: Slate Magazine and Sidewalk. The current lineup:</p>
<p>@Watercooler CarTalk Microsoft CarPoint Microsoft Cinemania CMJ New Music Now Computing Central Encarta Online Microsoft Expedia.com Expedia Maps Getworking Hotmail Internet Gaming Zone Microsoft Internet Start Microsoft Investor Mama Planet Mauny’s Kitchen The Microsoft Plaza Microsoft Money Insider MSBET MSNBC MSN.com MSN Games Microsoft MusicCentral One Click Away Satori Slate Sidewalk UnderWire and several International Affiliates.</p>
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<p /> | Microsoft Network | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/1998/02/microsoft-network-2/ | 1998-02-03 | 4 |
<p>For the Geo Quiz, find the "world's longest continental mountain range". That takes us to the Andes, in South America. They form a long mountainous border between Chile and Argentina. Now head down the eastern slope of the Andes toward the geographical center of Argentina and you can't miss the city were looking for. It's Argentina's second largest city, roughly 400 miles northwest of the capital, Buenos Aires. And it's where Argentina's space agency has a ground station. The command and control center tracks satellites, including a new one that was launched just a few days ago. Argentina teamed up with NASA for the mission: it's called Aquarius. So, can you name the Argentine city that's home to the satellite command center? The answer is Córdoba, Argentina. It's home to a groundstation (part of Argentina's Space Program or CONAE) that will track the new Aquarius satellite that's designed to provide a global view of the planet's oceans. The Aquarius mission is a collaboration between NASA and the Space Agency of Argentina (Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales). The World's David Leveille reports.</p> | Argentine space mission | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-06-15/argentine-space-mission | 2011-06-15 | 3 |
<p>Flickr/&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dplanet/230757412/"&gt;DPlanet&lt;/a&gt;</p>
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<p>The Drudge Report, that right-leaning granddaddy of online rumor mills and news aggregators, is being blamed today—along with some other popular websites—for spreading a host of viruses to its readers. The best evidence available at current seems to bear that out:&#160;Through no fault of its own, the <a href="http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2008/10/Huffington_Post_and_Politico_Lead_Political_Blogs" type="external">No. 3 political website in the world</a> is apparently being used to transmit malware through popup ads.</p>
<p>Stalwart conservatives, though, took time out from their busy schedule of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/science/earth/04climate.html" type="external">global warming and evolution denials</a> to blame a vast left-wing conspiracy for the virus charges. “Democrats in the Senate are attempting to scare people away from alternative news websites by falsely claiming the sites contain dangerous software viruses,” <a href="http://www.prisonplanet.com/drudge-report-malware-accusation-coincides-with-cybersecurity-agenda.html" type="external">claimed</a> one (right-wing) alternative news website, which has branded the plot part of a larger liberal “cybersecurity agenda.”</p>
<p>For its part, Drudge Report—run by the mysterioso fedora-loving libertarian <a href="" type="internal">Matt Drudge</a>—is running with the bait. “The Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works issued an urgent e-mail late Monday claiming the Drudge Report is ‘responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate,'” Drudge wrote in <a href="http://www.drudgereport.com/flashsd.htm" type="external">an online broadside</a>. “The committee ordered hill staff: ‘Try to avoid’ the Drudge Report ‘for now.'”</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/09/senate-warns-staffers-stay-clear-drudge-report/" type="external">Fox News</a>, Sen. <a href="" type="internal">James Inhofe</a> (R-Okla.)—Capitol Hill’s <a href="" type="internal">biggest believer</a> in leftist global warming plots—is in on the conspiracy theory, too:&#160;“I suspect somebody was trying to make it look as if there’s a virus there to discourage people from using Drudge,” he said, adding:&#160;“We would encourage people to continue to use Drudge. That’s a great source.” (Which it is, frankly, if only to see what’s hot in Beltway hot air on any given day.)</p>
<p>Nice theory, but <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">Elinor Mills over at CNET</a>&#160;has the straight dope, including <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10466044-245.html" type="external">a screenshot of the malware popups</a>. She also points out that the other website targeted by Senate staffers—that hot political potato, <a href="http://www.WhitePages.com" type="external">WhitePages.com</a>—acknowledged <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10466753-245.html" type="external">its ads were spreading viruses</a> and acted quickly to rein in its offending ad networks.</p>
<p>Mills also <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10466044-245.html" type="external">got the Senate committee’s side</a> via a spokesperson, which kind of deflates the “vast left-wing conspiracy” meme:</p>
<p>“The Senate Help Desk, in discussing a recent increase in the number of virus infections in Senate computers, mentioned that it might be associated with pop-up ads appearing through certain websites, and they cited DrudgeReport.com and WhitePages.com as possible examples,” the spokesperson said in an e-mail statement. “Our non-partisan systems administrator notified both Majority and Minority staff that this issue had been brought to her attention. It is still not exactly clear where the increase in viruses is coming from, and staff have been advised to be cautious with outside Web sites at all times.”</p>
<p>But perhaps cyberconservatives can channel all their anger and fear into a new common cause: Defending <a href="" type="internal">Wal-Mart and Barbies</a>.</p>
<p /> | Is Drudge Spreading Viruses? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/drudge-spreading-malware-virus-senate-inhofe-republican-conspiracy-theory-right-wing-liberal/ | 2010-03-10 | 4 |
<p>How do you appease a feminist? You can’t. Case and point: the backlash over feminist “Ghostbusters" by feminists.</p>
<p>Third-wave feminists — a swath of women (and sad men) who dedicate their lives to important issues like <a href="" type="internal">petitioning for period emojis</a> on your keyboard — are at it again, complaining about the “Ghostbusters” movie reboot, feminist edition. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/08/ghostbusters-remake-not-feminist-black-women" type="external">According</a> to The Guardian, it’s cool the new film is comprised of an all-female core cast, but why does the “regular” ghostbuster have to be black?</p>
<p>Yes, really, this is their complaint.</p>
<p>In the perpetually-offended land of “intersectional feminism,” not only are so-called women’s issues (like killing a baby in the womb) up for dismemberment, but all other issues which forcibly fit their leftist, social justice warrior agenda too. Therefore, the strife of a black character in a feminist, girl-power film being “regular” is a huge issue. Or something.</p>
<p>Guardian contributor Janessa Robinson begins her predictable rant by complaining that the female cast lacks diversity of skin color.</p>
<p>“When Twitter began to buzz that the first ghostbusters reboot trailer had been released, I was anxious to see if it would soothe my uneasiness over the casting of three white female leads and one black woman as the sole representation of ‘diversity’ among the eponymous heroes,” writes Robinson, adding, “With three leading female characters, the film features no Latina, Asian or Indigenous women and simply opts to fulfil [sic] its black quota as a nod to the original storyline.”</p>
<p>Then Robinson zeros-in on black SNL star Leslie Jones’s character, Patty Tolan, a transit worker from the Metro Transport Authority; Patty is apparently stereotypically “regular” and not a scientist like the rest of the female ghostbusters.</p>
<p>“The trailer juxtaposes Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon as three experts in each of their scientific fields, then we cut to Jones. She enters with: ‘I’m here to join the club. You guys are really smart about this science stuff.’ This limits her character to an academically aloof, street savvy black woman who is apparently only allowed in the crew (and in the film) because of her familiarity with New York City,” writes Robinson.</p>
<p>Upon the ridiculous criticism, Jones herself has come out and defended the character, saying, “Why can’t a regular person be a ghostbuster?”</p>
<p>Jones, under the impression that feminists are rational people, is met with pushback such as this from Robinson:</p>
<p>And she is right, a regular person should be able to be a member of the Ghostbusters team. But we have to ask why the only “regular” ghostbuster has to be black. Again. Why is blackness conflated with “regular”, essentially designating the white characters as irregularly exceptional people?</p>
<p>Robinson adds that it’s “reassuring” that Jones sees no problem with the role, but “we cannot ignore how racism and sexism limit the representations black women see of ourselves to characters that fall far too flat in comparison with our real-life, wide-ranging intricacies.”</p>
<p>She continues, explaining that the new feminist reboot is guilty of “praising white women’s access to roles that challenge patriarchy yet simultaneously harm black women through perpetuating racist tropes can only be feminist if the word has no meaning."</p>
<p>Where white women stand on the backs of black women, and other women of colour, to gain success and power, feminism is not present. And the claim that the film somehow represents the practice of feminist casting and characters can only hold true if you do the mental gymnastics necessary to deny the fact that black women are women, too.</p>
<p>This angry feminist concludes that she will not be going to the theatres, “paying to watch a film that shrinks black womanhood for the ease of the white gaze in its marketing.”</p>
<p>Lesson learned: you can’t win. Stop trying to appease third-wave feminists.</p>
<p>Watch the sexist, racist Ghostbusters trailer below.</p>
<p><a href="https://t.co/GvhSCNo0r5" type="external">https://t.co/GvhSCNo0r5</a></p> | LOL Feminists Complain About Feminist 'Ghostbusters' For This Stupid Reason | true | https://dailywire.com/news/4033/lol-feminists-complain-about-feminist-ghostbusters-amanda-prestigiacomo | 2016-03-10 | 0 |
<p>Coffee prices were on track to end lower for the second session in a row, helped along by a boost to production estimates by the International Coffee Organization.</p>
<p>Arabica coffee for December fell 1% to $1.3075 a pound on the ICE Futures U.S. exchange.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The contract has given up much of its gains from the first two weeks of the month, and has been the worst performing commodity this week.</p>
<p>The arabica coffee market has been in standby mode, with high global stockpiles of coffee keeping consuming nations satisfied for now and low coffee prices leaving producers with little reason to sell.</p>
<p>The International Coffee Organization said this week that it expects record global coffee production of 153.9 million bags in 2016/2017, boosting its estimate by 2.3 million bags. Traders have been watching the weather in Brazil, the world's largest producing country, for hints at production for the 2018/2019 harvest but it is still early in the season. Some trees are flowering.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, according to the Green Coffee Association, stockpiles of coffee in warehouses reached 7.4 million bags at the end of July, the largest since 1994, according to ED&amp;F Man's Volcafe, enough to satisfy America's coffee needs for 100 days.</p>
<p>"In general the collapse of the terminal markets has shut the door for much of the physical business, compounded by the slow summer pace; producers and consumers all seem to be in standby mode," Commerzbank said in a note.</p>
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<p>Sucden Financial told clients that in five years of history when prices meet resistance at $1.47 a pound, it has prompted a sell off back to $1.20 a pound but that alternatively, if the market can rise above $1.35 a pound, prices have a chance to re-test $1.40 a pound.</p>
<p>In other markets, raw sugar for October was down 0.2% at 13.26 cents a pound, cocoa for December lost 0.2% at $1,866 a ton, frozen concentrated orange juice for September slumped 0.8% to $1.429 a pound and December cotton fell 0.3% to 66.69 cents a pound.</p>
<p>Write to Julie Wernau at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 18, 2017 11:28 ET (15:28 GMT)</p> | Coffee Drops Lower, Erasing August Gains | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/18/coffee-drops-lower-erasing-august-gains.html | 2017-08-18 | 0 |
<p>According to Santiago Calatrava, there is a Communist conspiracy against him in the Valencia City Council.</p>
<p>The hometown of the world-famous engineer-architect is littered with his structures, which have become tourist calling cards — here he has designed the City of Arts and Sciences, a multi-building arts complex, along with metro stations and bridges. The conspiracy, if it is one, has emerged because of the huge expense involved in the upkeep of those structures, which a cash-strapped council is no longer able to undertake to the architect’s exacting specifications.</p>
<p>While most “icon” buildings are demonstratively useless — often galleries and museums whose form is of far greater importance than their functions — what Calatrava specializes in is infrastructure, or rather, making things that should be entirely functional utterly useless. He is not a particularly original designer. His railway stations are visibly inspired by the faintly kitsch futurism of the high Cold War era, evoking especially the “organic” concrete structure of Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal for JFK Airport. Calatrava’s railway stations in Zurich and Lisbon, or the incongruously immense (and frankly, breathtaking) Guillemins Station in the Belgian steel town of Liège, are intended to give the effect of an immense organism into whose concrete ribs you are plunged in order to buy your ticket and get your train.</p>
<p>The organic metaphor is ubiquitous and deliberately played upon by the architect — the concept is the metaphor, and the metaphor is an advert, an easily remembered cliché. Here, Calatrava is a truly heinous offender — his description of the new station for the World Trade Center site in New York as “a dove released from a child’s hand” deserves pride of place in the annals of architects’ bullshit. There’s also no doubt his stations need a huge amount of maintenance to keep their sheen. Although his designs make great play of their structure, making a spectacle of their bone-like frames, these are invariably painted a gleaming white, as nothing is loathed — especially by urban regenerators — so much as bare concrete.</p>
<p>But that constant maintenance is only one of the problems with Calatrava’s work. For a trained engineer, he has notoriously little interest in economy of structure. As a rule, since the mid nineteenth century, the aim in bridge design has been to achieve the greatest structural feats with the scarcest of means — to do “more with less,” in Buckminster Fuller’s phrase. That line probably reached its peak in recent years with Norman Foster’s Millau Viaduct, which spans a vast canyon with little more than thin spindles of concrete and steel. For Calatrava, though, organic metaphor trumps all, and the structural purpose of his bridges — in Dublin, Salford, Dallas, Venice and elsewhere — is subordinated to their rhetorical purpose, as sweeping statements of the transformation of industrial docks and canals into showpieces of real-estate speculation. They must billow, swoop, and spiral, because otherwise they wouldn’t be eye-catching as advertisements. The preference for shiny cladding leads to some literal pitfalls — his bridges in Venice and Bilbao both have tiles which, it’s been claimed, are too slippery to walk on. The resultant lack of interest in economy is now rebounding on the architect, although he could fairly plead this is what he was hired for.</p>
<p>The city of Valencia evidently has very good reasons for wanting to prosecute Calatrava. But as the monuments to the neoliberal boom become white elephants, we should not get too carried away with schadenfreude (though come to think of it, one can easily imagine Calatrava designing an airport “inspired by the form of the bones of a white elephant”).</p>
<p>The UK, for instance, now faces the question of what to do with a legacy of large and dramatic arts centers, galleries, and museums built in post-industrial cities outside the capital. Like Calatrava’s work, they are a matter of rhetoric and regeneration, obvious signs that “something” was “being done” for these stricken towns: the National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield by Nigel Coates; The Public in West Bromwich by Will Alsop; the New Art Gallery in Walsall by Caruso St John; the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art by Erick van Egeraat; and Urbis in Manchester by Ian Simpson, among many others.</p>
<p>Most of them were at least partly funded by the National Lottery, and a tax on the poor to fund the arts is not admirable. Many, if not all of them, are as architecturally vacuous as Calatrava — one-line architectural blipverts. Some, like Sheffield’s “pop centre,” were abandoned within a couple of years of their opening. Others, like Urbis or The Public, are shifting their functions toward something less arty. Though there’s truth to the argument that this money could have been better put toward, say, an industrial policy, or research and development, rather than buildings that offer few tangible benefits to the towns in question other than jobs serving coffee and “outreach” to local schools, it is conservatives who see no reason why provincial cities should have arts centers in the first place. Such things are for London — why should the plebes want to see installations?</p>
<p>But that same argument is used against public infrastructure spending. During the boom, Spain — in great contrast to Britain — poured money into public transportation, with a post-industrial city like Bilbao building a Foster-designed Metro system. The exorbitance of the Athens Metro, extended for the purposes of the Calatrava-designed Olympic complex, is often used as an exemplar of the foolishness with which Greece spent before its financial collapse.</p>
<p>The Left should be very careful here, as this is an austerity argument — an argument against public space and the public good. An argument, essentially, that we cannot have nice things — that bridges, railway stations, and art galleries are somehow dubious means of spending “taxpayers’ money.” The twisted right-wing mutation of social democracy that dominated Europe during the boom seldom had the public interest at heart, and every concession to it had to be balanced by something profit-making. But for its conservative successors, the public interest is entirely nonexistent.</p>
<p>Public buildings and structures that are luxurious, dramatic, even excessive — if hopefully less whimsical and egotistical than those of Calatrava — should be ours as a right, not as a reservation for the wealthy.</p> | In Praise of White Elephants | true | https://jacobinmag.com/2014/01/in-praise-of-white-elephants/ | 2018-10-04 | 4 |
<p>I congratulate Ken Burns on the first episode of his documentary. I really do. It takes great diligence to be able to wade through the mountain of simplified, Howard Zinn-style propaganda put out by former anti-war activists who pose as historians of the conflict. For half a century, the academic narrative of the war has been: "The imperialist Americans were the sinister puppet masters that brought the French back to power in the third world to oppress patriotic national liberation democrats, and then stepped in to replace the French in a racist campaign of genocide."</p>
<p>This first episode showed that:</p>
<p>There were, however, two omissions worth noting.</p>
<p>The first is that, after the end of World War II and the end of the Japanese occupation, according to a 1966 North Vietnamese propaganda pamphlet entitled President Ho-Chi-Minh: Beloved Leader of the Vietnamese People:</p>
<p>The Central Committee and President Ho strove to safeguard peace so that the country, which had been ruined by eighty years of colonial domination and years of war, could be reconstructed. A preliminary convention was signed on March 6, 1946 between President Ho and the French representative Sainteny. In this accord, Vietnam recognized herself [as] a member of the French Union and agreed to the landing of 15,000 French troops in North and Central Vietnam to replace the Chiang Kai-shek troops [Chinese anti-comminist Nationalists], as well as to a cease-fire in South Vietnam, etc.</p>
<p>You read that right. It was the Communists who brought France back to Indochina with open arms.</p>
<p>Vietnamese Communist Party First Secretary Le Duan would explain in his 1970 publication The Vietnamese Revolution: Fundamental Problems, Essential Tasks that they were simply following the "shrewd recommendation of Lenin": "We would at one time reach a temporary compromise with ... the French in order to drive out the Chiang Kai-shek troops and to wipe out the reactionaries, their agents, thus gaining time to consolidate our forces and prepare for a nationwide resistance to French colonialist aggression, which the party knew was inevitable."</p>
<p>Having established these facts with the Communists' own words, a succinct explanation of all this is provided by former Army Intelligence Officer Robert Turner, whose job in Vietnam was to deal with defectors and captured Communist documents and prisoners, and who after the war became a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia as well as a renowned scholar on Vietnamese Communism:</p>
<p>It was, after all, Ho Chi Minh who signed a modus vivendi with the French on March 6, 1946, point two of which declared his government’s willingness 'to welcome amicably the French Army' when it returned to Vietnam. The following day Ho Chi Minh and French Commanding General Jean Leclerc issued a joint communiqué calling on the people of Vietnam to 'welcome' the French back. When the true nationalists cried 'betrayal' and took to the hills to prepare for guerrilla war against the returning French, Ho and his colleagues fought hand-in-hand alongside the colonialist troops to 'liquidate' the 'reactionaries,' and thus virtually guarantee a Marxist-Leninist leadership of the subsequent and anti-French resistance movement. Indeed, contrary to the popular mythology that the United States supported the return of French colonialism to Indochina after the war, the late Bernard Fall noted in his classic study, The Two Viet-Nams, that French General Sainteny radioed his superiors in Calcutta that he was 'face to face with a deliberate Allied maneuver to evict the French from Indochina,' and that 'at the present time the Allied attitude is more harmful than that of the Viet Minh.' The so-called 'Pentagon Papers' provide excellent background on this period, documenting that the U.S. prohibited the French from using American arms in their campaign to return to power in Indochina, and noting that, in June 1948, the American ambassador in Paris was instructed 'to "apply such persuasion and/or pressure as is best calculated [to] produce desired result" of France's "unequivocally and promptly approving the principle of Viet independence."' It was only after the communist victory in China in 1949, and the subsequent delivery of large scale Chinese assistance to Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh, that the United States concluded it was in its national interest to provide some assistance to the French in Indochina. Even then, the U.S. continued to pressure France to commit itself to end its colonialism and provide for eventual self-government in Indochina.</p>
<p>The second omission involves the Geneva convention. By 1954, with the infusion of massive Chinese support, the communists were able to overrun a French outpost at Dien Bien Phu after a two-month siege. The debacle caused a political crisis in France that brought the socialist government of Pierre Mendès-France into power. The new French government arranged for a Conference in Geneva to negotiate the terms of French withdrawal.</p>
<p>Professor Turner explains that:</p>
<p>[N]either the United States government nor Ngo Dinh Diem's State of Vietnam signed anything at the 1954 Geneva Conference. With respect to the question of reunification, the non-communist Vietnamese delegation objected strenuously to any division of Vietnam, but lost out when the French accepted the proposal of Viet Minh delegate Pham Van Dong. Dong, who subsequently became Prime Minister of Ho Chi Minh's government, then proposed that Vietnam eventually be united by elections under the supervision of 'local commissions.' The United States countered with what became known as the "American Plan," with the support of South Vietnam and the United Kingdom. It provided for unification elections under the supervision of the United Nations. This was rejected by Soviet delegation head Molotov, with the support of the other communist delegations. In the end, over the protest of South Vietnam and the United States, the cease fire agreement (signed only by France and the Viet Minh) provided for division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel.</p>
<p>The then Republican Vice President of the United States, Richard Nixon, later recalled that "balloting conducted in Viet Minh territory in 1946 revealed just what they had in mind for 1956. ... Ho received 169,222 votes in Hanoi, a city with a population of only 119,000." True to form, "Ho's distaste for uncontrolled elections had not abated by 1956. Pham Van Dong told a reporter how Ho expected the elections to run. There would have to be a multiparty contest in South Vietnam, but the ballot in North Vietnam, where the people were 'united,' would have only the Communist party on it. This would have made the election a sure thing for Hanoi, because North Vietnam contained 55 percent of the total Vietnamese population. An election that guaranteed victory was the only kind Ho ever would accept."</p>
<p>Nixon's future opponent for the presidency, Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy, agreed. On June 1, 1956, he told the American Friends of Vietnam that "in the councils of the world, we must never permit any diplomatic action adverse to this, one of the youngest members of the family of nations — and I include in that injunction a plea that the United States never give its approval to the early nationwide elections called for by the Geneva Agreement of 1954. Neither the United States nor Free Vietnam was a party to that agreement — and neither the United States nor Free Vietnam is ever going to be a party to an election obviously stacked and subverted in advance, urged upon us by those who have already broken their own pledges under the Agreement they now seek to enforce."</p>
<p>This event would later be distorted and become a centerpiece of pro-Hanoi mythology. In 1971, when Senator George McGovern was running for president against Nixon, he had this revealing exchange with columnist Milton Viorst in Playboy magazine:</p>
<p>VIORST: If we make a historical allegory out of this, what similarities do you see with the American Revolution, where we Americans were trying to keep a foreign power, Britain, and its sympathizers, the Tories, from running the country?</p>
<p>McGOVERN: I think they're very close. I think that Ho Chi Minh has copied our Declaration of Independence. He was really trying to throw the French out, not invite the Chinese in and as Eisenhower said: "If there had been an election after they threw the French out he would have had 80 percent of the vote at least, in both North and South Vietnam." Similarly, George Washington was overwhelmingly elected once he kicked the British out of our country.</p>
<p>VIORST: I suppose that Nixon would like to make the late Ho Chi Minh into the Vietnam Hitler. Are you suggesting he might be the North Vietnamese George Washington?</p>
<p>McGOVERN: That's right.</p>
<p>First of all, this stuff about Ho copying our founding fathers (he is shown quoting the Declaration of Independence in the film) is a classic Communist ploy to get us to lower our guard. Castro also quoted the founders, a few years before he asked the Soviets to nuke us. The Chinese Communists used to run pro-American editorials in their newspaper before they came to power and went to war with us in Korea. But more important is McGovern's misquoting of President Eisenhower's book “Mandate for Change.” The passage of Eisenhower’s book that he refers to reads:</p>
<p>I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than the Chief of State Bao Dai. Indeed, the lack of leadership on the part of Bao Dai was a factor in the feeling prevalent amoung Vietnamese that they had nothing to fight for.</p>
<p>The passage does not say what McGovern claims it says. Robert Turner, then an activist who supported the American effort in Vietnam, wrote in December 1967 that what President Eisenhower meant was that he was told if elections were held in 1954, which was “the time of the fighting,” then Ho Chi Minh would have defeated the French puppet leader Bao Dai. This statement had nothing to do with the Geneva Accords or the prospect of a nationwide 1956 election between Ho and the nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem, as McGovern implies was the subject.</p>
<p>Turner wrote to Eisenhower about the misquotes and in February of 1968 Eisenhower’s representative and publisher, writing on behalf of the former President, responded:</p>
<p>A quick review of MANDATE FOR CHANGE indicates that your quotation is correct. And the quotation should be taken for neither more nor less than the statement itself. What is to be understood is that at that time, it was reported to President Eisenhower that Ho would have defeated Bao Dai by the 80% mentioned. No further great conclusion should be drawn from the statement.</p>
<p>(Professor Turner was kind enough to send me a copy of the letter.)</p>
<p>Turner's 1967 article continues:</p>
<p>There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Ho would have won such an election. Why? Because there were no provisions for effective supervision. Since North Vietnam had a population of 16 million, compared to 14 million in the South, and since Ho Chi Minh consistently polls 99.8% of North Vietnamese "elections", Diem – or anyone else for that matter – would be foolish to agree to such elections without effective supervision.</p>
<p>The argument that Diem violated the Geneva Agreements by refusing to hold unsupervised elections is ridiculous. South Vietnam refused to sign the Agreements, and strongly protested against them at Geneva. Even Pham Van Dong, Premier of North Vietnam, observed as far back as January 1, 1955 that "… it is you, the French, who are responsible, for it is with you that we signed the Geneva Agreement, and it is you who will have to see that it is respected." Great Britain, as co-chairman of the 1954 Geneva Conference, gave additional support to South Vietnam’s position in a diplomatic note sent to the Soviet Union, the other co-chairman at Geneva. The note recognized that South Vietnam was not legally bound by the armistice agreements since it had not signed them and had protested against them at Geneva</p>
<p>These omissions aside, however, this first episode is very well done. I hope upcoming episodes will be just as good.</p> | Ken Burns' Vietnam: Episode 1. Very Good, But 2 Omissions | true | https://dailywire.com/news/21236/ken-burnss-vietnam-episode-1-very-good-2-omissions-spyridon-mitsotakis | 2017-09-18 | 0 |
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<p>The Minnesota man emptied his bank accounts in May and planned to fly to Syria via San Diego, but his family confronted him and he set his plans aside. In November, he tried to board a flight in Minneapolis but was stopped by the FBI.</p>
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<p>Even while under investigation, authorities say, Omar and five other men kept trying to make their way to Syria, coming up with a plot to secure false passports.</p>
<p>Omar is among six Minnesota men charged with terrorism-related offenses in a criminal complaint unsealed Monday.</p>
<p>Authorities described the men as friends in Minnesota's Somali community who recruited and inspired one another and met secretly to plan their travels. They are charged with conspiracy to provide material support and attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.</p>
<p>The men charged on Monday were identified as Omar, 20; brothers Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 21, and Adnan Abdihamid Farah, 19; Abdurahman Yasin Daud, 21; Zacharia Yusuf Abdurahman, 19; and Hanad Mustafe Musse, 19.</p>
<p>Andrew Luger, U.S. attorney for Minnesota, says the suspects in the terrorism-related case engaged in "peer-to-peer" recruiting. (The Associated Press)</p>
<p>Luger said that in this case, there was no "master recruiter" in Minnesota's Somali community, but rather this group of family and friends engaged in "peer-to-peer" recruiting. They also helped one another with funding - taking money out of their own accounts or, in one case, trying to sell a car.</p>
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<p>They had help from Abdi Nur, another friend who was successful in getting to Syria in May and had become a "de facto foreign fighter recruiter for those in Minnesota," U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Andy Luger said Monday.</p>
<p>"What this case shows is that the person radicalizing your son, your brother, your friend, may not be a stranger," Luger said. "It may be their best friend, right here in town."</p>
<p>He said Nur, who was charged late last year, had regular contact with the men in the group and served as a source of inspiration for those who wanted to follow his path.</p>
<p>All six were arrested Sunday. Adnan Farah, Abdurahman, Musse and Omar were arrested in Minneapolis. They entered no plea, as is standard, during an initial court appearance Monday and were ordered held pending detention hearings Thursday.</p>
<p>Mohamed Farah and Daud were arrested Sunday in San Diego and appeared in court there. They were ordered held pending hearings Friday and are expected to be returned to Minnesota to face charges.</p>
<p>Minneapolis FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard Thornton said the two had gone to San Diego to pick up fraudulent travel documents with the intent of going to Mexico, and then on to Syria.</p>
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<p /> | 6 accused of trying to join Islamic State | false | https://abqjournal.com/572520/6-accused-of-trying-to-join-islamic-state.html | 2 |
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<p>This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (October 6, 2017).</p>
<p>Boeing Co. on Thursday said it plans to acquire Aurora Flight Sciences Corp., a maker of aerial drones and pilotless flying systems in a move the company said could pave the way for fleets of small flying taxis.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Virginia-based Aurora is a specialist in autonomous systems that allow military and commercial aircraft to be flown remotely, including technology that automates many functions, and has been working with Uber Technologies Inc. on a new vehicle that would take off and land like a helicopter.</p>
<p>Flying taxi-style concepts have attracted interest and funding from technology and aerospace companies, though face big hurdles including regulations that would allow fleets to operate alongside commercial airliners and other air traffic, as well as batteries to keep them aloft for several hours.</p>
<p>The purchase of Aurora would also expand Boeing's reach in the new field of electric-powered aircraft.</p>
<p>Boeing's venture capital arm also this year invested in Zunum Aero, a Washington state-based startup that on Thursday unveiled its plan for an electric-hybrid regional passenger jet.</p>
<p>"These types of technology are helping pilots today and are a steppingstone to pilotless aircraft," said John Langford, Aurora's founder and chief executive, in a live-streamed interview.</p>
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<p>Greg Hyslop, Boeing's chief technology officer, said the work on autonomous systems also had potential benefits for a host of other industries looking to leverage the potential of so-called machine learning, where computers improve from experience.</p>
<p>The proposed Aurora deal marks Boeing's second acquisition in less than a year involving autonomous systems following last December's purchase of Liquid Robotics Inc., a maker of ships and undersea vehicles, and adds to a portfolio that includes aerial drone maker Insitu.</p>
<p>Terms for the proposed purchase of Aurora weren't disclosed. The firm has more than 550 staff and will be run as an independent unit in Boeing's engineering and technology business.</p>
<p>Aurora also produces composite parts for aircraft and other vehicles. Boeing is looking to produce more of its own parts as part of an insourcing strategy to reduce costs and potential disruption in its supply chain.</p>
<p>Boeing has been considering further acquisitions as part of the push to expand sales at its newly formed services arm to $50 billion over the next several years from around $14 billion at present.</p>
<p>Write to Doug Cameron at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>October 06, 2017 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)</p> | Boeing Expands Its Drone, Pilotless Aircraft Business -- WSJ | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/06/boeing-expands-its-drone-pilotless-aircraft-business-wsj.html | 2017-10-06 | 0 |
<p>On Thursday, the Supreme Court <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-981_4g15.pdf" type="external">ruled 4-3</a> that the University of Texas could continue to discriminate against white students in order to preserve “diversity.” University of Texas utilizes two admissions systems. The first allows everyone graduating in the top 10 percent of their high school class admission to UT. The second uses an “academic index” – actual measures of performance – with race-based admissions for everyone else.</p>
<p>Clearly, this second admissions path is discriminatory. It’s especially discriminatory when combined with the first path, given that some schools are significantly better than others – it’s easier to graduate in the top 10 percent of your high school class in a low achieving school, for example, than it would be in a high achieving school.</p>
<p>But the Supreme Court didn’t seem to care. Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote, apparently didn’t have his Metamucil the morning he made his decision; our freedoms now live and die at the behest of Kennedy’s bowel movements.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court ruled just three years ago, 7-1 in favor of the notion that the University of Texas had to demonstrate that it was using the most narrowly-tailored policy to achieve a compelling government interest. Today, they gave the university the benefit of the doubt, repeating tried-and-true nonsensical arguments about how diversity “promotes cross-racial understanding, helps to break down racial stereotypes, and enables people to better understand persons of different races,” then saying that so long as the university used a mushy standard to push it, they’d be fine. In the end, Kennedy says, UT has to ensure more minority students go to school without explicitly admitting minority students on the basis of their race. That, he says, would be unconstitutional</p>
<p>This is rubbish, and Justice Samuel Alito tore it apart with alacrity in his dissent. Alito pointed out, “The University has still not identified with any degree of specificity the interests that its use of race and ethnicity is supposed to serve.” Justice Clarence Thomas, as always, was clearest of all, simply stating that affirmative action violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution.</p>
<p>But no matter. Explicit racial discrimination lives on at our nation’s universities, even as campus leftists lecture everyone else about “white privilege.”</p> | Supreme Court APPROVES Racial Discrimination In College Admissions | true | https://dailywire.com/news/6869/supreme-court-approves-racial-discrimination-ben-shapiro | 2016-06-23 | 0 |
<p>Originally from Connecticut, Lela Edgar has spent the last 10 years in Los Angeles working in the entertainment industry. Her work as appeared in Huffington Post and The Sun Magazine."I find the full expression of the demonstrators to be freeing and I find the sacrifice many are willing to make to make a statement, noble," she said of her decision to photograph Occupy Wall Street. "I have always identified with the activist condition in that I know all things are possible. Change is possible, and when you look at this history of our country, you see that change does come when people stand up."</p> | Lela Edgar image Gallery | true | http://occupy.com/article/lela-edgar-image-gallery | 4 |
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<p>By Jemimah NoonooMissourian (Columbia, Mo.)Published: Sept. 16, 2005</p>
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<p>Excerpt:</p>
<p>"Some news organizations took a reasoned decision and decided it’s not the best use of the word," said Scott Libin, a former news director and a faculty member at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. <a href="http://columbiamissourian.com/news/story.php?ID=16047" type="external">More of this article...</a> <a href="http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&amp;ned=us&amp;q=%22Scott+Libin%22" type="external">Search Google News for more quotes by Scott Libin...</a></p> | Refugee vs. evacuee sparks protests | false | https://poynter.org/news/refugee-vs-evacuee-sparks-protests | 2005-09-26 | 2 |
<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California authorities have arrested a 22-year-old man on suspicion of killing his housemate after workers discovered human bones buried in a backyard.</p>
<p>The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department says Michael Christopher Sager was taken into custody Friday. It wasn't immediately known if he has an attorney.</p>
<p>Sgt. Shaun Hampton says investigators believe Sager fatally stabbed a man living at the home after the two argued in 2015.</p>
<p>Workers found the bones Dec. 26. The <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article193350694.html" type="external">Sacramento Bee</a> reports sheriff's investigators spent almost two days unearthing an entire human skeleton.</p>
<p>Hampton says no missing persons report was made for the victim, who was in his 20s.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Sacramento Bee, <a href="http://www.sacbee.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.sacbee.com" type="external">http://www.sacbee.com</a></p>
<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California authorities have arrested a 22-year-old man on suspicion of killing his housemate after workers discovered human bones buried in a backyard.</p>
<p>The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department says Michael Christopher Sager was taken into custody Friday. It wasn't immediately known if he has an attorney.</p>
<p>Sgt. Shaun Hampton says investigators believe Sager fatally stabbed a man living at the home after the two argued in 2015.</p>
<p>Workers found the bones Dec. 26. The <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article193350694.html" type="external">Sacramento Bee</a> reports sheriff's investigators spent almost two days unearthing an entire human skeleton.</p>
<p>Hampton says no missing persons report was made for the victim, who was in his 20s.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Sacramento Bee, <a href="http://www.sacbee.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.sacbee.com" type="external">http://www.sacbee.com</a></p> | Man arrested after skeleton found in California backyard | false | https://apnews.com/9f606d42c3964b90bcca9c181d8bc6bb | 2018-01-07 | 2 |
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<p>Bonds have regained their momentum this year, but after a multi-year run, many traditional fixed-income assets look pricey or overvalued. Alternatively, investors may consider opportunities in exchange traded funds that track emerging market debt.</p>
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<p>Investors may be attracted to the cheaper valuations and wider yield premiums that emerging market bonds offer over safe-haven government debt, especially with yields on benchmark 10-year Treasuries dipping back toward historical lows this year.</p>
<p>Moreover, emerging market assets as a whole remain depressed to developed markets. Consequently, the unloved area may have already priced in most of the negatives that have previously pressured the market.</p>
<p>While many emerging markets have a bad reputation for spiraling debt defaults in face of rapid currency depreciation, the developing economies are more resilient than many would expect. The developing economies are typically associated with greater risks, but many emerging countries hold investment-grade debt ratings through sound financial management.</p>
<p>Additionally, emerging market governments have accumulated less dollar debt than the spendthrift U.S., built up their foreign reserves and adopted flexible exchange rates to obviate mistakes made during the 1980s and 1990s crisis.</p>
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<p>The emerging market bond asset category also provides a good diversifer for traditional bond and stock investment portfolios. Emerging market debt has exhibited low correlations to both U.S. equities, Treasuries and corporate debt.</p>
<p>The attractive emerging debt yields, though, are not without their risks. Many fixed-income observers are closely watching the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy.</p>
<p>A Fed rate hike could cause a large exit out of emerging market assets in favor of safer returns in the U.S. Fixed-income investors can diversify into emerging market through a number of ETF options. For instance, the iShares J.P. Morgan USD Emerging Markets Bond ETF (NYSE:EMB) and PowerShares Emerging Markets Sovereign Debt Portfolio (NYSEA:PCY) provide exposure to U.S. dollar-denominated emerging debt securities, or developing country bonds issued in U.S. dollars. The USD denomination can help support these funds in case of a sudden appreciation in the greenback.</p>
<p>EMB, the largest and most liquid emerging market bond ETF, tracks the J.P. Morgan EMBI Global Core Index, a market-cap-weighted index. Potential investors should note that since it is a cap-weighted index, countries with greater debt will have a larger position in the portfolio. The ETF, though, employs country constraints to ensure diversification and moderate exposure to heavily indebted countries.</p>
<p>Top country weights include Mexico 6.9%, Russia 5.4%, Indonesia 5.3%, Turkey 5.1% and Philippines 5.1%. Investors may also be surprised to find that the majority of credit issued is investment-grade, including AA 2.2%, A 12.4% and BBB 42.2%, along with some speculative-grade BB 19.2%, B 16.1%, CCC 5.3% and D 2.6%. EMB has a 7.1 year duration and a 4.98% 30-day SEC yield.</p>
<p>Alternative to EMB's cap-weighted indexing methodology, PCY tracks the DB Emerging Market USD Liquid Balanced Index, which equally weights bonds so that each country has an equal weighting. Top country weights include Brazil 3.6%, Colombia 3.6%, Indonesia 3.6%, Mexico 3.5% and Peru 3.4%. Credit quality includes AA 6%, A 10%, BBB 37%, B 17% and CCC 3%. The ETF has a 8.43 year duration and a 5.39% 30-day SEC yield.</p>
<p>With many emerging market central banks cutting interest rates amid lower inflation, the loose monetary policies should help support many local rates markets. Consequently, investors may also take a look at local currency-denominated ETFs, or emerging market bond ETFs that are issued in their local currencies, including the VanEck Vectors Emerging Markets Local Currency Bond ETF (NYSE:EMLC) and actively managed WisdomTree Emerging Markets Local Debt Fund (NYSE:ELD). EMCL, which tracks the J.P. Morgan GBI-EMG Core Index, tracks local bond markets in emerging economies, including Poland 9.2%, Mexico 8.9%, Brazil 8.4%, Malaysia 8.2% and Indonesia, among others. Credit quality is also higher, with AAA 6.6%, AA 3.1%, A 29.7%, BBB 32.3% and BB 16.3%. The ETF comes with a 4.83 year duration and a 5.85% 30-day SEC yield.</p>
<p>ELD is an actively managed ETF that focuses on local debt denominated in currencies of emerging market countries, including Brazil 12.0%, Poland 9.9%, Mexico 9.8%, Russia 7.3% and Colombia 7.0%. Credit breakdown includes AAA 5.7%, AA 12.6%, A 39.9%, 40.6% BBB and 0.5% B. The actively managed component may also help the ETF more quickly adapt to changes in central bank policies or currency fluctuations. ELD has a 4.84 duration and a 5.75% 30-day SEC yield.</p>
<p>Visit <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/" type="external">ETFtrends.com</a> for more ETF news, strategy and commentary.</p> | Emerging Markets Looking Good, Maybe Better Than the U.S. | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/05/13/emerging-markets-looking-good-maybe-better-than-u-s.html | 2016-05-13 | 0 |
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