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<p><a href="" type="internal" />You know the wheels are coming off when Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is referencing Charlie Sheen and “winning,” as if he’s just now catching up to 2011. &#160;Because that’s <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/rand-paul-republicans-charlie-sheen-97108.html" type="external">exactly what he did</a> during an&#160;appearance before an audience of the Liberty Political Action Committee.</p>
<p>After a week where the Republican party has been in absolute turmoil over their child-like antics to try to defund the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) Rand Paul just came off as very desperate:</p>
<p>“Does anybody remember Charlie Sheen when he was kind of going crazy and he was going around, jumping around saying ‘Winning, winning, we’re winning.’ &#160;Well I kind of feel like that, we are winning. &#160;And I’m not on any drugs.”</p>
<p>Well, he might not be on cocaine, but he definitely seems to be on&#160;Koch&#160;if he believes the Republican party is “winning” in their futile attempt to defund Obamacare.</p>
<p>After all,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">someone&#160;had to be on something to make these ridiculous anti-Obamacare ads</a>.</p>
<p>I guess the fact that our nation would blame Republicans more than Democrats if our government were to get shutdown (or if we were to default on our debt) doesn’t factor into his “winning” position.</p>
<p>He went on to say Americans “are with us on these issues.”</p>
<p>Elections apparently mean nothing to Republicans. &#160;Less than a year ago the American people overwhelmingly re-elected President Obama while giving more power back to Democrats in Congress—that’s the complete opposite of the American people being with Republicans on the issues.</p>
<p>Especially when Republicans are caught lying time after time about the Affordable Care Act. &#160;Of course millions of Americans are going to have fear and uncertainty about a law which Republicans have spent years&#160;creating fear and&#160;uncertainty over.&#160;</p>
<p>But if this is what Rand Paul considers “winning,” I would sure love to see what the guy considers losing.</p>
<p>Because while people like him and Texas Senator Ted Cruz spent the better part of the summer pushing for a government shutdown, in a pointless attempt to try to defund Obamacare, neither apparently understood the negativity&#160;that kind of rhetoric would have on the GOP.</p>
<p>That, or they just didn’t care. &#160;Let’s face it, the only reason Paul and Cruz are even in the Senate is to try to use that position to propel themselves into the White House. &#160;So they’re far more concerned with positioning themselves to win a Republican presidential primary than they are acting like rational Senators.</p>
<p>So while Paul might believe Republicans are “winning” and claims he’s saying that without the influence of drugs, when looking at the irrational and radical policies he supports—he’s definitely under the influence of Koch. &#160;And when it comes to making rational decisions for the “good of the people,” that’s just as dangerous as any drug known to humanity.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">It's Become Apparent that Republicans see the Government Shutdown as Some Kind of Game</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Bill Clinton Schools Republicans on Facts About Obamacare</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">The Republican "Plan" for Our Nation: Using Extortion and Blackmail to Get Their Way</a></p>
<p>0 Facebook comments</p> | Koched-out Rand Paul says Republicans are “Winning” Like Charlie Sheen | true | http://forwardprogressives.com/koched-out-rand-paul-says-republicans-are-winning-like-charlie-sheen/ | 2013-09-22 | 4 |
<p>Richard Sennott/Minneapolis Star Tribune/ZUMAPress</p>
<p />
<p>A Republican effort to strip Planned Parenthood of its federal funding came up short in the Senate Monday, with a Democratic filibuster leaving the bill from Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) seven votes shy of the 60 needed for passage. But the failure of the measure, which&#160;aimed to take away more than $500 million in federal funding from the&#160;organization, is likely just a prelude to a fiercer debate to come.</p>
<p>Republican presidential candidates such as&#160;Paul and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are threatening another government shutdown if federal money for the reproductive health and abortion service provider is not eliminated. Cruz told <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/government-shut-down-planned-parenthood-120787.html" type="external">Politico</a>that Ernst’s bill was nothing more than a “show vote,” and that when it comes to the real fight, he is willing to do whatever it takes to defund Planned Parenthood.</p>
<p>The recent conservative attacks on Planned Parenthood follow the July 14 release&#160;of two <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/07/30/the-fourth-video-attacking-planned-parenthood-i/204693" type="external">heavily&#160;edited</a> <a href="http://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/cmp/investigative-footage/" type="external">video clips</a> in which Planned Parenthood officials appear to be negotiating the sale of aborted fetuses. The videos, part of a conservative campaign against Planned Parenthood,&#160;were produced by a little-known anti-abortion activist named <a href="http://www.zoominfo.com/CachedPage/?archive_id=0&amp;page_id=-175741194&amp;page_url=//www.liveactionfilms.org/about/david-daleiden&amp;page_last_updated=2010-09-28T10:45:44&amp;firstName=David&amp;lastName=Daleiden" type="external">David Daleiden</a>, whose group, the Center for Medical Progress, is associated with the anti-abortion organization&#160;Live Action. The video was <a href="http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/07/31/mission-accomplished-planned-parenthood-attacks-coordinated-high-ranking-republican-operatives/" type="external">circulated</a> by Groundswell, a conservative strategy group, which Mother Jones’ David Corn <a href="" type="internal">reported</a> on back in 2013. Groundswell includes such players as Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and conservative journalists and commentators from outlets like Breitbart News, which broke the news of the first sting video.</p>
<p>A day after the first video was released, House Speaker John Boehner <a href="http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/speaker-boehner-calls-hearings-grisly-abortion-practices-says-president-obama-should" type="external">called</a> for Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and President Obama to “denounce, and stop, these gruesome practices.” Louisiana governor and GOP presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal <a href="http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/opinion/12912902-171/bobby-jindal-launches-investigation-after;" type="external">promised</a> a state investigation, and Gov. Scott Walker <a href="http://host.madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/wisconsin-legislator-calls-for-planned-parenthood-investigation-after-undercover-video/article_a4036b47-cda5-57e9-81b1-00d4595d194d.html" type="external">followed suit</a> in Wisconsin. Texas Gov. Rick Perry <a href="" type="internal">said</a> the video was “a&#160;disturbing reminder of the organization’s penchant for profiting off the tragedy of a destroyed human life.” And Florida Sen. <a href="" type="internal">Marco Rubio</a> tweeted, “Look at all this outrage over a dead lion, but where is the outrage over the Planned Parenthood dead babies.”&#160;</p>
<p>Currently, Planned Parenthood receives <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/08/03/us/politics/ap-us-congress-planned-parenthood.html?_r=0" type="external">$528 million</a> annually in government funds. Title X, a federal family-planning grant program, makes up <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/7/22/9013565/planned-parenthood-government-funding" type="external">10 percent</a> of Planned Parenthood’s federal support, and 75 percent comes from Medicaid, according to the <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contraceptive_serv.html" type="external">Guttmacher Institute</a>. The remaining funds come from a combination of state appropriations and block grants.</p>
<p>Federal funds cannot be used for abortions except in cases of incest or&#160;rape, or when the life of the mother is in danger, so the federal dollars in question are used for other services such as cancer screenings, family planning, and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.</p>
<p>Before the vote, Massachusetts Sen.&#160;Elizabeth Warren <a href="" type="internal">passionately</a> defended Planned Parenthood. “I came to the Senate floor to ask my Republican colleagues a question: Do you have any idea what year it is?” she asked. “Did you fall down, hit your head, and think you woke up in the 1950s or 1890s? Because I simply cannot believe that in the year 2015, the United States Senate would be spending its time trying to defund women’s health care centers.”</p>
<p>Republicans&#160;repeatedly brought up the grisly image of Planned Parenthood profiting from the sale of fetal body parts. “I think all Americans should be sickened by this,” said Paul. “This debate isn’t just about abortion, it’s about little babies who haven’t given their consent.”</p>
<p>While the Senate debated&#160;the measure, Jindal announced that he was <a href="http://gov.louisiana.gov/index.cfm?md=newsroom&amp;tmp=detail&amp;articleID=5061" type="external">severing</a> Louisiana’s Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood.&#160;A third Planned Parenthood clinic is being built in the state, and it is the only one that would provide abortions. In a statement, Jindal wrote, “In recent weeks, it has been shocking to see reports of the alleged activities taking place at Planned Parenthood facilities across the country. Planned Parenthood does not represent the values of the people of Louisiana and shows a fundamental disrespect for human life.&#160;It has become clear that this is not an organization that is worthy of receiving public assistance from the state.”</p>
<p>Although the measure did not pass, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards warned that the debate would continue into the fall. “Anti-abortion politicians vowed to do everything in their power to cut patients off from care,” she <a href="https://twitter.com/CecileRichards/status/628326741845614593" type="external">tweeted</a> after the bill failed. “Including forcing a government shutdown this fall.”</p>
<p /> | Planned Parenthood Survives Congressional Assault—For Now | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2015/08/senate-votes-federal-funding-planned-parenthood/ | 2015-08-04 | 4 |
<p>Sen. Rand Paul says the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion may “bankrupt” rural hospitals in Kentucky. But state health care leaders say its hospitals stand to benefit, since the expansion would provide insurance to those who otherwise wouldn’t be able to pay their hospital bills.</p>
<p>Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has introduced legislation that would <a href="http://www.paul.senate.gov/?p=press_release&amp;id=558" type="external">repeal the Medicaid expansion</a>, made his remarks on “ <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-dan-pfeiffer-sen-rand-paul-nate/story?id=20758560" type="external">This Week</a>” when host George Stephanopoulos asked about the <a href="http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20131027/NEWS/310270027/" type="external">successful launch</a> of the state health care exchange. The Kentucky website, <a href="https://kyenroll.ky.gov/" type="external">kynect</a>, had none of the problems plaguing the federal exchange. The state exchange had signed up <a href="http://governor.ky.gov/healthierky/Pages/default.aspx" type="external">32,485 people</a> in the first month of operation — about 5 percent of the state’s 640,000 uninsured residents.</p>
<p>Stephanopoulos, Nov. 3: What do you make of that fact that so many Kentuckians are signing up? And does that tell you that this program can be a success?</p>
<p>Paul: Well, nearly 90 percent of them are signing up for Medicaid, free health insurance from the government. My concern is not that we shouldn’t help people. I do want to help these people to get insurance. But there is going to be a cost.</p>
<p>And in my state, we have a lot of rural hospitals that teeter in the balance. My fear is that these hospitals may be bankrupt by overwhelming them with Medicaid patients.</p>
<p>We asked Paul’s office about the senator’s concerns about the impact of the Medicaid expansion on rural hospitals, but we received no response.</p>
<p>The state’s health care officials, however, have uniformly supported Medicaid expansion in part because it is expected to financially help, not hurt, state hospitals — particularly because the law also gradually reduces federal funding to hospitals for uncompensated care.</p>
<p>The Affordable Care Act cuts the federal Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) program by <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/09/18/2013-22686/medicaid-program-state-disproportionate-share-hospital-allotment-reductions" type="external">$18.1 billion over seven years</a>, beginning in fiscal year 2014, to help pay for the cost of expanding Medicaid. The cuts were predicated on the assumption that all states would expand Medicaid, but <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/us/supreme-court-lets-health-law-largely-stand.html?_r=0" type="external">the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2012</a> that states could opt-out of the expansion. That meant that states could decide not to expand Medicaid and, so far, <a href="http://kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/state-activity-around-expanding-medicaid-under-the-affordable-care-act/" type="external">only half of the 50 states have agreed to the expansion</a>.</p>
<p>Shortly after the Supreme Court ruling, Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky President/CEO Susan Zepeda <a href="http://www.healthy-ky.org/news-events/newsroom/fact-check-which-%E2%80%9Cpoor-people%E2%80%9D-have-medicaid-already" type="external">wrote a blog post</a> urging Kentucky state officials to expand Medicaid. She wrote that not expanding Medicaid would financially hurt hospitals in the state.</p>
<p>Zepeda, July 31, 2012: [O]ther pieces of the law were developed with the assumption that all states would expand Medicaid coverage. Because of this assumption, cuts to other federal health funding are built into the continuing roll out of the Affordable Care law: For example, nationally Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) funding has provided an average of 95% of uncompensated care costs for state-owned hospitals; 69% of uncompensated care for local public hospitals; and 38% of uncompensated care for private hospitals. The law will reduce DSH funding by $14 billion over 10 years (starting in 2014). This funding decrease to key providers was supposed to be offset by the increase in Medicaid coverage, as the number of uninsured individuals seen at hospitals would drop significantly under the Medicaid expansion. If Kentucky opts out of the Medicaid expansion, however, state, local, and private hospitals could be faced with sharp increases in uncompensated care (care provided but not paid).</p>
<p>Michael Rust, past president of the Kentucky Hospital Association, agreed. He <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/blog/2013/02/kentucky-hospitals-closely-watching.html?page=all" type="external">told the news website Business First in February</a> that the state’s hospitals provided $718 million worth of uncompensated care in 2009. In a Q&amp;A with Rust, Business First wrote that “the Kentucky Hospital Association supports universal insurance coverage, be it through Medicaid or other means. And expanding Medicaid is step toward that.”</p>
<p>Business First, Feb. 26: Question: What would it mean for Kentucky hospitals if Medicaid were to be expanded?</p>
<p>“It just provides another source of coverage,” which is important because hospitals care for patients who can’t afford to pay, he said.</p>
<p>“They’re good people, and they try to make payment but just can’t,” he said.</p>
<p>The total cost of uncompensated care in all Kentucky hospitals was $718 million during 2009, he said, the most recent year that data was available.</p>
<p>Question: Have you worked with the state, communicating what expansion could mean for providers?</p>
<p>“We work very closely with the state,” Rust said, noting that the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services has been receptive to the issue. “Our main bullet point is we do support universal coverage, everyone should have coverage.”</p>
<p>Most of Kentucky’s hospitals are located in rural areas.&#160;In 2007, 75 of Kentucky’s 123 hospitals were in rural areas, according to a <a href="http://chfs.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/F5A3C9DB-E94D-4425-9A15-8E5B8DA62BC2/0/KYHospitalStatistics2009.pdf" type="external">2009 Kentucky Hospital Association report</a>.</p>
<p>The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services issued a <a href="http://governor.ky.gov/healthierky/Documents/MedicaidExpansionWhitePaper.pdf" type="external">29-page report</a> that recommended expanding Medicaid in part because “our hospitals will suffer” without the expansion. The report estimates that the state’s hospitals will see a cut in DSH payments of about $287.5 million over eight years, beginning in fiscal year 2014 through fiscal 2021. It said, “[S]tates that do not implement the Medicaid expansion risk losing substantial resources that will be needed by hospitals that serve large numbers of low income, uninsured patients, without the intended reduction in the number of uninsured in the state.”</p>
<p>Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, accepted the report’s recommendation and <a href="http://www.kentucky.com/2013/05/09/2634096/beshear-says-kentucky-will-join.html" type="external">issued an executive order in May</a> to expand Medicaid.</p>
<p>Under the Affordable Care Act, states may expand Medicaid coverage to residents with incomes <a href="http://kff.org/health-reform/fact-sheet/who-benefits-from-the-aca-medicaid-expansion/" type="external">up to 138 percent</a> of the federal poverty level, which is <a href="http://chfs.ky.gov/dms/medicaid+expansion.htm" type="external">$15,856 for individuals and $32,499 for a family of four</a>. The state estimates that an additional 308,000 Kentuckians will be eligible for the joint federal-state medical program, beginning Jan. 1.</p>
<p>The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute issued a <a href="http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/2013/rwjf405040" type="external">report in March</a> that assessed the impact of Medicaid expansion on hospitals nationwide. That report said opponents of the Affordable Care Act have made the argument that “hospitals will not gain from Medicaid expansion, since it undermines more generously reimbursed private coverage.” But the report found that “for each dollar in private revenue that a Medicaid expansion eliminates, hospitals’ Medicaid revenue rises by $2.59.”</p>
<p>Its conclusion: Medicaid expansion “greatly favors hospitals.”</p>
<p>Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Urban Institute, March 2013: Put simply, a Medicaid expansion increases the number of patients for whom hospitals are paid, but some patients shift from private to more poorly reimbursed public coverage. The net result of these two factors greatly favors hospitals. Altogether, for each dollar in private revenue that a Medicaid expansion eliminates, hospitals’ Medicaid revenue rises by $2.59. … Whether the ACA creates net economic pain or gain for hospitals will depend significantly on whether states add Medicaid expansion to the remainder of the federal legislation.</p>
<p>That’s not to say there are no concerns in Kentucky about expanding Medicaid.</p>
<p>Kentucky already does not have enough medical providers to serve its population. In an <a href="http://healthy-ky.org/sites/default/files/Rural%20Healthcare.pdf" type="external">August 2012 report</a>, the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky said that in 2008 “80 of Kentucky’s 120 counties were designated as Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Bureau of Primary Care.”</p>
<p>Kentucky Auditor Adam Edelen said the shortage has been exacerbated by the state’s new Medicaid Managed Care system, which took effect in November 2011. Edelen issued a <a href="http://apps.auditor.ky.gov/Public/Audit_Reports/Archive/2013medicaidmanagedcarereport.pdf" type="external">report in July</a> that found an 8 percent decline in Medicaid providers.</p>
<p>“Overall, the reduction in the number of providers under the managed care program is troubling, especially in light of the more than 300,000 new Medicaid members estimated to join the program when the Commonwealth implements the Medicaid expansion portion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA),” the report said.</p>
<p>The auditor’s report also said the Medicaid Managed Care system has caused a cash-flow problem for rural hospitals in particular. Edelen blamed a “quick transition” to the new system, delays and errors in processing claim payments, and additional reporting requirements.</p>
<p>“I am concerned about the long-term viability of some of our rural hospitals and in turn, even more worried about access to health care by all rural Kentuckians,” Edelen said in a <a href="http://apps.auditor.ky.gov/Public/Audit_Reports/Archive/2013MedicaidManagedCare-PR.pdf" type="external">press release</a>.</p>
<p>In an email, Zepeda of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky said her organization “remains very concerned about the capacity of KY’s existing health care system — particularly in rural areas — to cost effectively care for a much larger number of patients.” She said that’s why her organization is funding “demonstration projects around ways to ‘do care differently,’ ” such as “redesign care delivery to include telemedicine, nurse-managed clinics, community care workers, etc.”</p>
<p>The foundation is an <a href="http://www.healthy-ky.org/about-us/history" type="external">independent charitable organization</a> funded as part of a court-approved agreement that resulted from a state investigation into the merger of Anthem Inc. and Blue Cross &amp; Blue Shield. It launched in 2000 to “address the unmet health care needs of Kentuckians.”</p>
<p>In an interview, Zepeda also told us that the cash-flow problems caused by a rapid and rocky transition to Medicaid Managed Care are being addressed. <a href="http://auditor.ky.gov/about/Pages/ExecutiveStaff.aspx" type="external">Stephenie Hoelscher</a>, a spokeswoman for the auditor, agreed.</p>
<p>“Progress has been made and continues to be made in easing the cash-flow burdens of rural hospitals, but I don’t think these hospitals would say the problems have been sufficiently addressed at this point,” Hoelscher said.</p>
<p>On balance, Zepeda said her organization still believes the state’s residents and hospitals will benefit from the expansion.</p>
<p>“The opportunity to insure a large proportion of presently uninsured Kentuckians who seek medical services is likely to have a positive effect both on their own health (by seeking more timely care, when the illness or injury they present is more likely to be healed effectively and at a lower cost) and on the health of institutions and providers from which/whom they seek care (who presently provide them with some level of uncompensated care),” Zepeda said in her email to us.</p>
<p>One footnote: Paul also said that nearly 90 percent of those who have signed up on the state exchange so far have enrolled in Medicaid. <a href="http://governor.ky.gov/healthierky/Pages/default.aspx" type="external">That was true as of Nov. 1</a>. The state reported that 27,854 of the 32,485 people who enrolled on the state exchange enrolled in Medicaid. But the state also reported that an additional 13,900 Kentuckians who went on the state exchange were found to be eligible for government subsidies to purchase private insurance, although they have yet to enroll. Ultimately, the state said, about half of the state’s 640,000 uninsured residents will enroll in private plans.</p>
<p>— Eugene Kiely</p> | Will Medicaid Expansion ‘Bankrupt’ Kentucky Hospitals? | false | https://factcheck.org/2013/11/will-medicaid-expansion-bankrupt-kentucky-hospitals/ | 2013-11-07 | 2 |
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<p>Jack Nusum is Daddy Warbucks, Emma Fuller is Little Orphan Annie and Sandy plays the dog, also named Sandy, in Landmark Musicals’ production of “Annie.”</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — You could say that the local Landmark Musicals’ production of the musical “Annie” is a family affair. Here’s why.</p>
<p>Three moms and their daughters are in the show:</p>
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<p>♦ Shiloh Bohman and her three daughters, Chandler, age 10, Maddie, 8 and Dakota, 7.</p>
<p>♦ Jessica Shaffer-Gant and her daughter, Ariana, who is 12.</p>
<p>♦ And Beth Paone Fuller and her 12-year-old daughter, Emma.</p>
<p>Emma was picked for the title role in the musical. Her very first time on stage was in a Growing Stages summer camp production of “Shrek the Musical.”</p>
<p>“Once I did that, I loved being on stage and wanted to do it again. (‘Annie’) was my first audition. I wanted any part they would give me,” the home-schooled Emma said. “I just wanted to be on stage again.”</p>
<p>For the audition, she sang “In My Own Little Corner” and for the callback she did a dance audition and cold readings. When she was informed she’d been chosen for the title role, Emma was ecstatic, as ecstatic as only a 12-year-old could be.</p>
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<p>“I couldn’t stop laughing and giggling and jumping up and down the whole day they told me,” she said.</p>
<p>“Annie,” a long-running Broadway musical, follows the spunky redheaded Little Orphan Annie’s adventures in New York City in 1933. She plots to escape the clutches of the mean Miss Hannigan, matron of the orphanage where she finds herself. Annie is determined to find the parents she’s convinced still want her, and eventually is adopted by the billionaire Daddy Warbucks. She finds her dog Sandy after she flees the orphanage.</p>
<p>Director Zane Barker said the decision to choose the actor who would portray Annie came down to Emma and two other girls.</p>
<p>“I just felt a warmth in her acting that really lent itself to the role,” Barker said. “And she made a beautiful connection with the people she was reading with. She was able to establish a real relationship with the other actors on stage. I felt she was a real natural for the part,” Barker said.</p>
<p>Rehearsals have been tough but rewarding for her. “It’s wonderful working with all these talented people. I have a great time every time I go to rehearsal. It’s kind of like a little support group,” Emma said.</p>
<p>Her mom, Beth Fuller, portrays Mrs. Greer, the head housekeeper for the rich Oliver Warbucks. She thinks that being with her daughter in the show is “a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”</p>
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<p>Shiloh Bohman, who’s a member of the ensemble, feels the same way about being with her daughters in “Annie.” “I don’t know if I will have that opportunity again. So it’s a great memory to have,” she said.</p>
<p>Bohman recalled that at the callback, director Barker asked her if she wanted to be in the show. Barker, she said, also was trying to find a way for all three of her daughters to be in the cast. They are.</p>
<p>Dakota is the youngest of the kids in the orphanage and is the only one of the four Bohmans who has solos.</p>
<p>Bohman said some of the history instruction she’s recently been giving her home-schooled daughters has been about the Great Depression, the period in which the musical is set.</p>
<p>“Maddie and Chandler and I are in the number ‘Hooverville.’ We sing about that, and in home school we are able to incorporate what we learn in the play,” Bohman said.</p>
<p>She said all three daughters gained great theatrical experience last summer when they attended a PLAY Conservatory intensive workshop.</p>
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<p>“It was seven hours a day, five days a week for six weeks,” Bohman said. “They studied professional skills – taking stage directions, applying makeup, learning choreography. … They had a vocal coach and were in acting class.”</p>
<p>Shaffer-Gant is in the ensemble and has two minor roles. Her daughter Ariana is the orphan July. She and Ariana also were in Landmark Musicals’ “Oliver!” a couple of years ago.</p>
<p>“I adore being on stage and I adore being on stage with my mom,” Ariana said.</p>
<p>Her mom added: “It’s a lot of fun. I even enjoy watching her in rehearsal. One of the exciting things about this show is the camaraderie. The kids get along very well.”</p>
<p>These three moms – Shaffer-Gant, Bohman and Fuller, Barker said – have all been in theatrical productions or concerts on their own.</p>
<p>“We wanted them in the show because they’re good. They’re really strong performers,” he said. “And it’s nice for them to do theater with their children. I’m looking forward to that myself.”</p>
<p>There’s yet another on-stage family connection in “Annie” – David Aubrey, who plays Rooster, and Jessica Rae Aubrey, who is Lily. The Aubreys are husband and wife.</p>
<p>Emma Fuller said she’s filled with such good thoughts when she sings the musical’s signature song “Tomorrow.”</p>
<p>“I feel the sun will come out every single day,” she said.</p> | Mothers & Daughters | false | https://abqjournal.com/147145/mothers-daughters.html | 2012-11-18 | 2 |
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<p>The California Department of Public Health released a report saying e-cigarettes emit cancer-causing chemicals and get users hooked on nicotine but acknowledging that more research needs to be done to determine the immediate and long-term health effects.</p>
<p>“E-cigarettes are not as harmful as conventional cigarettes, but e-cigarettes are not harmless” said California Health Officer Ron Chapman. “They are not safe.”</p>
<p>New generations of young people will become nicotine addicts if the products remain largely unregulated, Chapman said. Last year, 17 percent of high school seniors reported using e-cigarettes, known as vaping, according to the report.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Without action, it is likely that California’s more than two decades of progress to prevent and reduce traditional tobacco use will erode as e-cigarettes re-normalize smoking behavior,” the report says.</p>
<p>E-cigarettes heat liquid nicotine into inhalable vapor without the tar and other chemicals found in traditional cigarettes. A cartridge of nicotine can cost anywhere from $5 to $20 dollars and can be reused.</p>
<p>California banned the sale of e-cigarettes to minors in 2010, but the report raises concerns about children consuming liquid nicotine with flavors such as cotton candy and gummy bear. Reports of children under 5 with e-cigarette poisoning jumped from seven in 2012 to 154 last year.</p>
<p>The California report says e-cigarettes emit as many as 10 toxic chemicals, but advocates say there is no evidence those substances are released at dangerous levels.</p>
<p>“Despite the health officer’s false claims, there is ample evidence that vaping helps smokers quit and is far less hazardous than smoking,” Gregory Conley, president of the e-cigarette advocacy group American Vaping Association, said in an email. “Smokers deserve truthful and accurate information about the relative risks of different nicotine products, not hype and conjecture based on cherry-picked reports.”</p>
<p>The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is also proposing regulations that include warning labels and ingredient lists on e-cigarettes, although enactment could take years. California health officials are calling for restrictions on the marketing and sale of e-cigarettes and protections against accidental ingestion of liquid nicotine.</p>
<p>A state senator introduced legislation this week that would regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products and ban their use in public places such as hospitals, bars and schools. A similar bill was defeated last year over opposition from tobacco companies.</p>
<p>Chapman, the health official, would not take a position on specific legislation, but said his department would be rolling out an e-cigarette awareness campaign with possible television and radio advertisements.</p>
<p>E-cigarettes have become more visible as they grow in popularity and commercials for the products air in places where traditional cigarette ads have been banned. Businesses related to e-cigarettes, including vaping lounges, are rapidly popping up in cities across California.</p>
<p>Geoff Braithwaite, co-owner of an Oakland store that sells liquid nicotine for e-cigarettes, said he understands the need to restrict vaping in public and prevent sales to minors. He says his customers are longtime smokers who should be able to get a nicotine buzz without the harshness of a regular cigarette.</p>
<p>“Nicotine has all this stigma attached solely to the medium we used to use,” Braithwaite said. “When you try to outright ban e-cigarettes, you’re lumping in the solution with the problem.”</p>
<p>Other states, including Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arkansas, already have issued advisories cautioning the use of e-cigarettes. Legislatures have been exploring restrictions on e-cigarette marketing, adding childproof packaging requirements and imposing taxes to discourage use.</p>
<p>“Health officials want to be proactive on this important public health issue,” said Lisa Waddell, who leads community health and prevention at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “The issue of real concern here is we really don’t know everything that’s in these products, and you are seeing the rise of the use of these products in our children as well as our adults.”</p> | California declares electronic cigarettes a health threat | false | https://abqjournal.com/533118/california-declares-electronic-cigarettes-a-health-threat.html | 2 |
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<p>They better get busy fast!</p>
<p>From the prime minister to ordinary people, Japanese were shocked Sunday at a video purportedly showing one of two Japanese hostages of the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group had been killed.</p>
<p>With attention focused on efforts to save the other hostage, some also criticized Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s drive for a more assertive Japan as responsible for the hostage crisis.</p>
<p>A somber Abe appeared on public broadcaster NHK early Sunday demanding the militants release 47-year-old journalist Kenji Goto unharmed. He said the video was likely authentic, although he added that the government was still reviewing it. He offered condolences to the family and friends of Haruna Yukawa, a 42-year-old adventurer taken hostage in Syria last year.</p>
<p>Abe declined to comment on the message in the video, which demanded a prisoner exchange for Goto. He said only that the government was still working on the situation and reiterated that Japan condemns terrorism.</p>
<p>“I am left speechless,” he said. “We strongly and totally criticize such acts.”</p>
<p>Yukawa’s father, Shoichi, told reporters he hoped “deep in his heart” that the news of his son’s killing was not true.</p>
<p>“If I am ever reunited with him, I just want to give him a big hug,” he said.</p>
<p>President Barack Obama condemned what he called “the brutal murder” of Yukawa and offered condolences to Abe. Obama’s statement didn’t say how the U.S. knew Yukawa was dead.</p>
<p>While visiting India, Obama said the United States will stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Japan and called for the immediate release of Goto.</p>
<p>French President Francois Hollande said he “strongly condemned the barbaric murder” of Yukawa and praised Japan’s “determined engagement in the fight against international terrorism.”</p>
<p>Read more: <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/isis-hostage-execution-has-japan-questioning-engagement/" type="external">CBS News</a></p> | JOINING THE FIGHT? ISIS Execution has Japan Questioning Engagement | true | http://girlsjustwannahaveguns.com/joining-fight-isis-execution-japan-questioning-engagement/ | 0 |
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<p>There are clear winners and losers when it comes to life. Thankfully, the internet levels the playing field, as even some of the greatest defeats can turn out to be big buckets of win.</p>
<p>You may feel like you're losing at life, but no one loses more than Mario's oft-forgotten brother, Luigi. Luckily, Luigi has a shell game that you're sure to win! Click the video to see if you can best Luigi at his own game!</p> | In life, you're either winning or losing. These people are doing both. | false | https://circa.com/story/2017/10/14/humor/in-life-youre-either-winning-or-losing-these-people-are-doing-both | 2017-10-14 | 1 |
<p />
<p>Last week, we broke the story on the <a href="" type="internal">ties between the Qaddafi regime and a small cadre of Western intellectuals</a>. The group included foreign policy luminaries like Harvard’s Joseph Nye, Sir Anthony Giddens, and Demos’ Benjamin Barber, who visited Libya between 2006 and 2007 on a series of trips funded and organized by the Monitor Group, a Boston-based consulting firm founded by a group of Harvard professors. Monitor had been contracted by the Libyan government for a project to “Enhance the Profile of Libya and Muammar Qadhafi,” and, ostensibly, to help devise economic reforms. (Nye and Barber later wrote about their visits to Libya in the distinguished pages of the The New Republic and Washington Post, respectively, without fully disclosing that they were paid Monitor consultants.) <a href="http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/03/01/us-consulting-group-working-for-libya-did-not-register-as-foreign-agent/" type="external">Monitor’s fee</a>:&#160;$250,000 a month, plus an open expense account that maxed out at $2.5 million.</p>
<p>Smells like…lobbying. Yet Monitor failed to register with Justice Department as a “foreign agent” (a.k.a. lobbyist) for Libya. The <a href="http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act" type="external">Foreign Agent Registration Act</a> (FARA) requires registration for US&#160;firms performing, among other things, “acts in a public relations capacity for a foreign principal”—which, according to internal Monitor memos obtained by a Libyan dissident group, is primarily what the Monitor project was about. So why didn’t the company register? As NPR has reported, “after being shown the provisions of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, a spokesman said Monitor Group is examining that question in more detail.”</p>
<p>Was Monitor’s failure to disclose its business arrangement with Libya an honest oversight? Or was the firm deliberately trying to mask its ties (and the hefty amount it was being paid for its image rehabilitation services) to a dictatorial regime. If the latter, it certainly wouldn’t be the first.</p>
<p>Last month, <a href="" type="internal">Suzy Khimm reported</a> on a former Bush administration official, Randa Fahmy Hudome, who had also lobbied for Libya. Fahmy Hudome, who is unapologetic about her work for the country, did disclose her agreement with the regime, and told Mother Jones that working for shady government’s like Qaddafi’s is only problematic when US&#160;firms attempt to skirt FARA’s disclosure requirements. As Suzy reported, “Unregistered lobbyists risk working against American interests and potentially embarrassing the US government.” And, of course, themselves.</p>
<p /> | Did the Monitor Group Flout Lobbying Disclosure Rules? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/monitor-group-lobbying-libya-disclose/ | 2011-03-11 | 4 |
<p>After more than a decade of fighting in Afghanistan, the U.S. death toll in Operation Enduring Freedom has reached 2,000. Marine Cpl. Taylor J. Baune, 21, from Andover, Minn., had married just three months before shipping out. Baune died in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province on June 13, according to the <a href="http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=15368" type="external">Department of Defense</a>.</p>
<p>Operation Enduring Freedom began in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America when President George W. Bush unleashed U.S. warplanes and cruise missiles against targets in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Tracy Bloom</a></p>
<p>CNN:</p>
<p />
<p>The operation began with the invasion of Afghanistan and the toppling of the Taliban, which harbored the al Qaeda terror network that conducted the [9/11] attacks. But there were military actions and activities in other countries, nearby and far-flung.</p>
<p>Most coalition casualties have occurred in Afghanistan, but others occurred in Pakistan, Uzbekistan. Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Yemen.</p>
<p>The number of Americans who’ve died in Afghanistan itself totals 1,884.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/14/world/asia/afghanistan-enduring-freedom-deaths/index.html" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Operation Enduring Freedom Marks a Grim Milestone | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/operation-enduring-freedom-marks-a-grim-milestone/ | 2012-06-15 | 4 |
<p>WEST POINT, Ind. — It takes less than five minutes to discover that family, public service and community are the true treasures in Ron Fedler's life. And, of course, "love and respect for country," he says while sitting in his living room. This Lee County town is home to 966 people and the state's largest sweet corn festival.</p>
<p>It doesn't take much longer to realize that Fedler should be treasured by the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>Photos of his children, grandchildren, and nieces and nephews dot the walls of the modest red-brick home he built himself.</p>
<p>To the left of his easy chair is a framed black-and-white print of his parents and 11 of his 12 siblings. He notes, "My older brother had already left for Vietnam and missed the family photo."</p>
<p>Across the room, an 11-by-14-inch framed color photo of President John F. Kennedy sits atop a coffee table. It's Louis Fabian Bachrach's iconic 1961 official photograph of Kennedy at his White House desk, that innocent moment at the start of Camelot; a moment of promise before the Bay of Pigs, before the Cuban missile crisis and before his assassination.</p>
<p>Fedler says Kennedy will always be his hero.</p>
<p>He is not one of those Democrats who fled his party in 2016 to vote for Donald Trump. He thinks the president is off-putting and erratic. But he understands why fellow Lee County Democrats chose Trump.</p>
<p>"This goes beyond frustration and anger," he explains. "Experts fundamentally misread the voters' motives who went from happily supporting former president Barack Obama to equally happily supporting Trump on election night.</p>
<p>"They liked Obama, but many of his policies hurt them and their communities, and they wanted someone who they felt listened to them." Trump filled that void, he says.</p>
<p>In 2012, Lee County cast 9,428 votes for Obama and 6,787 for Mitt Romney. Four years later, the numbers were nearly reversed, with 8,762 votes for Trump and 6,195 for Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>Trump carried every precinct in a county long dominated by Democrats and unions.</p>
<p>In 2016, you had people who stopped believing in the more progressive policies of Washington Democrats, who are very different than Lee County Democrats.</p>
<p>Fedler is the perfect Lee County Democrat: born and raised there, and drafted at age 19 to serve as a radio Teletype operator with a secret crypto clearance. His clearances were so top-secret that he never told his wife where he was stationed or what he did. "I made a pledge to my country not to divulge that information, and I will forever honor that," he says.</p>
<p>The military brass were so impressed that they offered him an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. But he wanted to return to West Point, Iowa, so he respectfully declined.</p>
<p>After attending the local community college, he worked as a mason for four years, and then for an energy company, saving his money to buy Dugan's Corner Convenience Store, which he ran for 30 years. He eventually sold it and then worked as a correctional officer at Iowa State Penitentiary.</p>
<p>He won a seat on city council and served three terms as mayor. Next, he ran as a Democrat for the Iowa state House and lost. He ran again, and lost again.</p>
<p>Today, he's in his second term as a county supervisor.</p>
<p>His is a history of compromise, consensus building and accomplishing projects. He is tireless, well-liked and, more importantly, respected.</p>
<p>When he discusses the opening of the Iowa Fertilizer plant last month in Lee County, there's no "I" mentioned, and no grandstanding over it being one of the largest private-sector projects in state history and the first world-class nitrogen fertilizer facility built in the United States in more than 25 years.</p>
<p>Of the elections he lost, he sounds sensible; of the ones he won, he sounds humble. "What I do is not for me, it's for the community — we don't want our people ... our communities to fade away," he says.</p>
<p>In short, he's what Democratic leaders should covet and how the party's candidates should model themselves.</p>
<p>In reality, Democrats up and down the ballot are divided, struggling and searching for a unified message.</p>
<p>The folks at the top of the party aren't exactly role models for how to reach out to Middle America voters who fled the party in droves over the past eight years. You don't lose 1,100 down-ballot offices — state legislative, congressional and governor seats — by connecting with working-class voters.</p>
<p>According to Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, Fedler has no place in the party — not because he's white, male and over 60, but because he's anti-abortion.</p>
<p>In April, Perez drew a line in the sand against candidates who oppose abortion rights. This is not the only reason Democrats lost so many offices, but it is a big one. It's elitist and tone-deaf, and it shuts out a great amount of support that should come their way.</p>
<p>Then there's Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>As one Democratic strategist told me in an anguished email, "Won't she please go away?" This from someone who supported her.</p>
<p>Last week, in yet another speech, Clinton vaguely admitted to some mistakes in 2016. But then she accused the party of failing to raise money or back her in any meaningful manner.</p>
<p>Democrats have history on their side for 2018: Ninety percent of the time, a president's party loses congressional seats in the midterm elections.</p>
<p>What they don't have are the right people in the limelight: Clinton blames everyone else; Perez is intolerant; and the party can't adopt a simple jobs message.</p>
<p>Go on a field trip to West Point, Iowa, and learn from the Ron Fedlers of the party.</p>
<p>Fedler isn't on Twitter. He works hard. He compromises. And he gets things done. And when he loses, he takes the blame.</p>
<p>Salena Zito is a CNN political analyst, and a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.</p>
<p>COPYRIGHT 2017 CREATORS.COM</p> | ZITO: A Humble Model For Democratic Politicians In Small-Town Iowa | true | https://dailywire.com/news/17195/zito-humble-model-democratic-politicians-small-salena-zito | 2017-06-06 | 0 |
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<p>The new airline has no name yet, and it’s not clear which destinations it would serve. But the plan is a sign that new CEO Jean-Marc Janaillac is determined to claw back market share after years of painful job losses and restructuring.</p>
<p>Parent company Air France-KLM said in a statement Thursday that the new airline would focus on long-distance routes that it sees as strategically important — but where Air France is currently struggling against cheaper competition.</p>
<p>It said the airline would offer economy and business travel and start flights in late 2017 from its hub at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport.</p>
<p>It would use Air France pilots who volunteer to work under new rules “adapted to its competitive position,” while cabin crew would be recruited under a new system “allowing this company to operate at the level of market costs,” the statement said. The company will save money on ground staff by relying increasingly on digitalization, it said.</p>
<p>French employers face among the world’s highest labor costs, and Air France staff have gone on strike repeatedly to protest job cuts and other cost-cutting in recent years.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Janaillac presented the plan Thursday to the Air France works council. “We are battling on all fronts,” he said in a statement. “The status quo is not an option.”</p>
<p>Christophe Pillet of the SNPNC cabin crew union expressed concern that the new airline’s staff wouldn’t have the same labor benefits, and that the new company could eventually “supplant” Air France.</p>
<p>“The new company will not really be low-cost for customers, because they will find the classic fee conditions in different classes that they already see at Air France. However it will be low-cost for the cabin crew,” he said on Europe-1 radio.</p>
<p>Janaillac insisted the new company would represent a small part of Air France-KLM’s activity.</p>
<p>In quarterly results Thursday, Air France-KLM noted a “highly uncertain” global context and “special concern about France as a destination” as tourism has slumped after deadly extremist attacks.</p> | Air France creates lower-cost airline to better compete | false | https://abqjournal.com/881122/air-france-creating-lower-cost-airline-to-better-compete.html | 2016-11-03 | 2 |
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<p>San Pedro Sula (Honduras) City Hall (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)</p>
<p />
<p>Martínez was a “well-known” member of President Juan Orlando Hernández’s ruling National Party when he disappeared on June 1, 2016. Martínez’s relatives identified his body in San Pedro Sula’s morgue two days later.</p>
<p>“We worked a lot together,” Allysson Hernández, a transgender rights activist who lives outside of San Pedro Sula, told the Washington Blade on Friday during a telephone interview. “He gave me the space to work on my projects.”</p>
<p>Martínez’s murder underscores the very real risks that San Pedro Sula’s LGBT activists face in one of the world’s most dangerous cities.</p>
<p>San Pedro Sula in 2015 had 171.2 murders per 100,000 people, which made it the most dangerous city in the world that it is not in a war zone. This figure dropped to 111.03 murders per 100,000 people in 2016.</p>
<p>San Pedro Sula is Honduras’ second-largest city with 719,064 people, according to the <a href="http://www.ine.gob.hn/images/Productos%20ine/censo/Tomo%20municipales%20pdf/05Cortes/63San%20Pedro%20Sula.pdf" type="external">country’s 2013 Census.</a> The city generates more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.</p>
<p>Honduras — which borders Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua — is among the most violent countries in the world.</p>
<p>The State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security <a href="https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=19281" type="external">notes</a> the Central American nation in 2011 had 86.5 murders per 100,000 people in 2011. The Honduran government indicates this figure dropped to 66.4 murders per 100,000 people in 2014, but advocates have questioned these statistics.</p>
<p>Maras and pandillas (street gangs) and drug traffickers are largely responsible for the violence that is concentrated in Chamelecón and other poor neighborhoods in San Pedro Sula. Cattrachas, an advocacy group based in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, and activists with whom the Blade spoke said members of the country’s military and Policia Militar (Military Police) routinely commit human rights abuses.</p>
<p>LGBT people are the frequent targets.</p>
<p>“Sometimes the worst violations that we have are with the government,” a San Pedro Sula-based activist told the Blade during a Feb. 10 interview.</p>
<p>The activist, who has been the target of two assassination attempts over the last year, asked the Blade not to publish their name.</p>
<p>“Police officers, soldiers are the ones who violate our rights,” said the activist.</p>
<p>The activist said police officers frequently target trans sex workers for extortion and violence. The activist told the Blade that gangs also force them to pay “daily or weekly rent to do their work on the street” and force them to sell drugs.</p>
<p>The activist said those who publicly criticize the gangs and the police and file formal complaints against them receive threats and often go into hiding. Freddy Funez, an LGBT activist who worked closely with Martínez, largely echoed these accounts.</p>
<p>Funez told the Blade on Feb. 10 during an interview at his office in San Pedro Sula that police officers often extort money from LGBT sex workers in order to allow them to work. He said they also extort money from their clients in exchange for not detaining them and telling their families.</p>
<p>“We are much more afraid of the police,” said Funez.</p>
<p>Funez told the Blade that police officers are responsible for “a great number of” murders of LGBT people in San Pedro Sula. He cited a case in which officers cut off a gay man’s penis before they dismembered him.</p>
<p>“The police can carry out more atrocities and violence than the gang members,” said Funez.</p>
<p>The Blade has reached out to the Honduran government for comment.</p>
<p>Funez, Hernández and the activist with whom the Blade spoke all said the lack of employment, education and health care and poverty have made San Pedro Sula’s LGBT community particularly vulnerable to violence and discrimination from the police and gangs. Many feel as though they have no choice but to flee the country.</p>
<p>“They kill them; they assault them,” said the activist. “This, therefore, forces them to migrate. We have a forced migration. They don’t do it because they want to. They are doing it because the situation in which we are living in our country is very difficult.”</p>
<p>Many trans women who migrate to Mexico with the hope of entering the U.S. do so with the assistance of coyotes (smugglers) who frequently force them into prostitution or target them for human trafficking. Gangs that operate along the Mexico-U.S. border also force them into sex work and drug smuggling.</p>
<p>“They are a great danger for them,” said the activist.</p>
<p>Funez told the Blade that eight out of 10 LGBT people in San Pedro Sula still want to migrate to the U.S., in spite of the risks.</p>
<p>“I am in this country; I am LGTB; I don’t have employment opportunities; I don’t have a quality education that I am going to migrate,” he said, speaking hypothetically. “For us and for the community in Honduras in general and for the LGTB community, it has always seen the United States as the best, as the safest country, as the country that respects human rights a lot.”</p>
<p>“For someone in the community to say I am going to go to the United States and not return to this country is common,” added Funez.</p>
<p />
<p>Freddy Funez, a Honduran LGBT rights activist, at his office in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on Feb. 10, 2017. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)</p>
<p />
<p>Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have detained hundreds of undocumented immigrants in raids across the country. The White House on Friday <a href="" type="internal">denied an Associated Press report</a> that said it planned to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to roundup undocumented immigrants in 11 states.</p>
<p>Mara Salvatrucha other street gangs that are responsible for the majority of the violence in San Pedro Sula and across Honduras and in neighboring El Salvador can trace their roots to Los Angeles.</p>
<p>The U.S. in the 1990s began to deport large numbers of foreign-born criminals. Many of them were gang members who ended up in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.</p>
<p>Funez told the Blade that many people “don’t understand” why Trump wants to build the wall. He also noted remittances from the U.S. account for a fifth of Honduras’ gross national product.</p>
<p>“For the majority of LGTB Hondurans who have gone, they are people who have dignified work in the United States,” said Funez. “They are feeling productive in the United States.”</p>
<p>The activist who asked the Blade to remain anonymous said LGBT migrants “are going to face more risk” because of the wall.</p>
<p>In spite of pervasive violence and discrimination, San Pedro Sula’s LGBT activists insist they have seen progress.</p>
<p>Claudia Spellman, a trans woman who directed an HIV/AIDS service organization in San Pedro Sula, and Josué Hernández, an openly gay man from the Cortés Department in which the city is located, ran for the Honduran Congress in 2012.</p>
<p>Spellman resettled in the D.C. area with her now wife after she received death threats. Erick Martínez, a prominent gay activist in Tegucigalpa, <a href="" type="internal">is running for Congress</a> as a candidate from the left-leaning Liberty and Refoundation and Anti-Corruption Parties.</p>
<p>Trans advocacy groups and their supporters organized a march to the Congress on May 17, 2016 — the International Day Against Homophobia an Transphobia — in support of a bill that would allow trans Hondurans to legally change their names on legal documents. The Honduran government a few weeks later condemned the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that left 49 people dead and more than 50 others injured.</p>
<p>The massacre took place less than two weeks after René Martínez’s murder.</p>
<p>“There has been a very big opening in this country in the political arena,” Funez told the Blade, noting San Pedro Sula is Honduras’ most LGBT tolerant city.</p>
<p>Hernández was equally as optimistic, if not defiant.</p>
<p>“I am going to continue this fight,” Hernández told the Blade.</p>
<p>The activist with whom the Blade spoke on Feb. 10 said emphatically they have no plans to leave San Pedro Sula.</p>
<p>“My work is here,” said the activist. “When I go to another country, my fight ends.”</p>
<p>“I want to keep fighting until it is possible that there is a gender law, until trans women don’t face human rights violations,” they added.</p>
<p>The cathedral in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Allysson Hernández</a> <a href="" type="internal">bisexual</a> <a href="" type="internal">Central America</a> <a href="" type="internal">Comunidad Gay Sampedrana</a> <a href="" type="internal">El Salvador</a> <a href="" type="internal">Freddy Funez</a> <a href="" type="internal">gay</a> <a href="" type="internal">Guatemala</a> <a href="" type="internal">Honduras</a> <a href="" type="internal">Juan Orlando Hernández</a> <a href="" type="internal">lesbian</a> <a href="" type="internal">Rene Martínez</a> <a href="" type="internal">transgender</a> <a href="" type="internal">Youth Alliance Honduras</a></p> | Activists forge ahead in violence-plagued Honduras city | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2017/02/20/activists-forge-ahead-violence-plagued-honduras-city/ | 3 |
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<p><a href="" type="internal" />Due of the overwhelming success of our last two tweet chats, we’re hosting a third one, to be held next&#160;Thursday, August 9th at 11am PST, 2pm EST. While our&#160; <a href="" type="internal">first tweet chat</a>&#160;focused on independent voters, and our&#160; <a href="" type="internal">second one</a>&#160;on independent candidates, our third tweet chat will look for answers to the hyper-partisanship we see in government today.</p>
<p>To help us discuss these issues, we’ve invited members of the non-partisan organization&#160;No Labels,&#160;the authors of&#160; <a href="http://www.nolabels.org/work" type="external">12 Ways to Make Congress Work</a>&#160;and&#160; <a href="http://www.nolabels.org/presidency-work" type="external">11 Ways to Make the Presidency Work</a>.&#160;We’ve been covering the progress of No Labels for a while here at IVN, paying close attention to their&#160; <a href="" type="internal">No Budget, No Pay campaign</a>&#160;and their&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Make Congress Work!&#160;initiative</a>. Their message resonates with us:</p>
<p>“The parties have organized themselves into warring clans that value defeating the other side over even the most basic acts of governing, like passing a budget on time or confirming competent people to staff our courts and the president’s Cabinet.”&#160;–&#160; <a href="http://nolabels.org/whoweare" type="external">No Labels</a></p>
<p>There’s been a lot of frustration, aggression, and bickering among politicians and voters alike at the lack of bipartisan cooperation we’ve recently seen from lawmakers. Members of Congress have failed to come together in compromise, and solution-making takes the back seat to partisan gridlock. Congressional approval ratings are at an all time low, and the&#160;Washington Post’s Ezra Klein went so far as to argue that this is the&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/07/13/13-reasons-why-this-is-the-worst-congress-ever/" type="external">worst Congress ever</a>. But with all this bickering, where are the solutions? That’s why we want to come together and have an open discussion about solutions to hyper-partisanship and Congressional gridlock.</p>
<p>To be clear, the purpose of this tweet chat is&#160;not&#160;to point fingers, rather our goal is to come together as a community and discuss real policy options, solutions, and ways in which we can fix the polarized nature of our government.</p>
<p>What is a tweet chat?&#160;</p>
<p>A tweet chat is an online conversation surrounding a specific topic. This pre-arranged chat takes place on Twitter and usually has a moderator and a hashtag. In our case, we will be moderating the event and we have chosen the hashtag&#160;#indyvote&#160;(as in independent voter). For this month’s tweet chat, we will be joined by the folks at&#160; <a href="http://www.nolabels.org/" type="external">No Labels</a>&#160;to discuss independent solutions to partisan gridlock. Get a head start and check out their Twitter account here:&#160; <a href="https://twitter.com/NoLabelsOrg" type="external">@NoLabelsOrg</a>.</p>
<p>Before the chat we will compile a series of questions for you, the independent voter, and for No Labels. We will provide you ample time to ask your own questions as well. The chat will last an hour, but&#160;do not feel as though you have to commit a full hour to the chat! Any correspondence will help move the discussion along.</p>
<p>Remember, because it’s on Twitter, all responses must be 140 characters or less.</p>
<p>How do you participate?&#160;</p>
<p>The first step is to follow us on Twitter at&#160; <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/IVNetwork" type="external">@IVNetwork</a>. From there, you have two options on how to participate:</p>
<p>(1) TweetChat:&#160;I would recommend using the client&#160; <a href="http://tweetchat.com/" type="external">TweetChat</a>, which allows you securely log-in, enter a hashtag to follow, and then converse in real-time with other participants. We have chosen the hashtag&#160;#indyvote, and if you are using TweetChat, each tweet will automatically add the hashtag&#160;#indyvote&#160;at the end. TweetChat also allows you to pause the chat, making it easier for you to respond to tweets.</p>
<p>(2) Twitter:&#160;Sound complicated?&#160;You can also just sign in to your Twitter account and enter in the hashtag&#160;#indyvote&#160;in the search bar at the top right. This will let you follow the conversation without signing into a third party service like TweetChat, but it might have a delay. When you see a question or response you want to “tweet” about, just compose a new tweet and add the hashtag&#160;#indyvote&#160;at the end. Your tweet will then be part of the conversation!</p>
<p>Date: Thursday, August 9th</p>
<p>Time: 11am – 12pm PST/2pm – 3pm EST</p>
<p>Guest:&#160; <a href="www.nolabels.org" type="external">No Labels Org&#160;</a></p>
<p>Topic: Independent solutions to hyper-partisanship</p>
<p>Hashtag: #indyvote</p>
<p>Any questions? Feel free to contact us at [email protected], or&#160; <a href="www.twitter.com/ivn" type="external">send us a tweet</a>.</p> | Tweet Chat: Let’s Talk Solutions with No Labels | false | https://ivn.us/2012/08/02/tweet-chat-lets-talk-solutions-with-no-labels/ | 2012-08-02 | 2 |
<p>It was Groundhog Day in the Senate Wednesday.</p>
<p>Just minutes after an attempt to end a filibuster of a bill to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 was thwarted by a vote of 54-42 (falling short of the 60 votes needed to end debate), senior Democrats vowed that they would try to lift the pay of American workers "again and again and again" in the words of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA).</p>
<p>The Democrats insisted that while they were willing to compromise to achieve their goal of raising the minimum wage, the number $10.10 was sacrosanct and they would not accept a lesser increase. Instead, they would continue to force votes on a wage increase throughout the summer and into the fall.</p>
<p>Not coincidentally, the midterm elections will be held in the fall when less well-to-do Democratic leaning voters are less likely to turn out than in a presidential year. Needless to say, Democrats are hoping to use the issue to motivate their base.</p>
<p>The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 and has not been raised since 2009. Democrats both made moral arguments for raising the minimum pay rate. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) bewailed the plight of a worker at JFK Airport who had issues raising her children on minimum wage. Harkin noted the effect raising the wage would have in increasing aggregate demand and boosting the economy in a floor speech. Majority Leader Harry Reid blamed the Koch Brothers for the vote's failure as well. In other words Democrats made the same arguments they have been making for years on the matter.</p>
<p>Republicans followed the script too. They pointed to Democratic inflexibility. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) complained that the GOP wasn't allowed to offer any amendments while Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), a key swing vote, was upset that Democrats weren't considering what she believed would be "a more reasonable increase." The Maine senator bewailed that "this is clearly a political vote because everyone knows its not going to pass and if you really care about working people, you would allow alternatives." Only one Republican, Bob Corker of Tennessee voted to end debate.</p>
<p>While "a more reasonable increase" would be much more likely to pass the Senate, it's hard to imagine any minimum wage increase passing in the House. Instead, this is all about election year posturing for both sides. Raising the wage to $10.10 is a popular issue and Democrats want to take as many votes as possible to do so while Republicans would rather avoid it altogether.</p> | Groundhog Day With Minimum Wage On Capitol Hill | true | https://thedailybeast.com/groundhog-day-with-minimum-wage-on-capitol-hill | 2018-10-04 | 4 |
<p>The Western media can’t admit they were wrong in their portrayal of the White Helmets, Guy Mettan, head of the Swiss Press Club, told RT, explaining why Reporters Without Borders demanded to cancel the club’s press conference featuring critics of the controversial Syrian group.</p>
<p>“It was very surprising and very disappointing to see a journalists’ association asking for a kind of censorship,” Mettan told RT. He commented that Reporters Without Borders (RSF) are “supposed to protect the freedom of speech and the freedom of the media… and they just wrote to me and to all the committee members of the Swiss Press Club to ask for cancelling the press conference about the White Helmets, which is completely in contradiction with their charter; with their goal.”</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/411116-reporters-white-helmets-censorship/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The Swiss Press Club head said that he replied to RSF, specifying that their demands were in violation of the country’s principal law. “We’re here in Switzerland, a country, which is democratic; which believes in the freedom of the press. It’s written in our Constitution,” he said, adding that in the letter he was “asking them (RSF) to respect the freedom of speech and the Swiss Constitution.”</p>
<p>According to Mettan, the Swiss Press Club is “accustomed to get pressures from everywhere in the world and mainly from dictatorial countries – like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and others – because they don’t accept that we give the floor to political opponents or to human rights’ defenders.” However, it was “the first time in 20 years” when such calls were coming from a journalists’ association, he said.</p>
<p>“But I never was tempted to cancel [the press conference] because I never cancel any press conference, whatever the demands for doing it,” the Swiss Press Club head said. The event, entitled, “They don’t care about us: About White Helmets true agenda” was held in Geneva on Tuesday as scheduled and saw Independent journalist Vanessa Beeley, who has done extensive reporting from inside Syria, French journalist Richard Labeviere and Marcello Ferrada de Noli, chair of Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR), speaking on the topic.</p>
<p>In their letter, Reporters Without Borders “attacked the speakers” and presented the topic of the event as “pro-Russian propaganda; propaganda in favor of [Syrian President Bashar] Assad,” Mettan said. The issue was “disturbing” to RSF because “the Western media have described the White Helmets as a neutral, fully independent humanitarian organization, which isn’t exactly the case… Now they can’t admit they were wrong and that the reality isn’t exactly as what they’ve written or said in the past years,” he explained.</p>
<p>A documentary describing the White Helmets as heroes and saviors in Syria won an Oscar in February. But witnesses have accused the controversial group of links with terrorists, filming fake reports of their rescue work, engaging in looting and other criminal activities.Reporters Without Borders also warned that the press conference on the White Helmets could damage the Swiss Press Club’s image, but Mettan turned the notion down. “In my view, what’s damaging my image is to succumb to the censorship demands, because the real goal of the Press Club is to give the floor to anybody, any organization, which wishes to express its concerns,” he said.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/393809-white-helmets-mutilated-bodies/" type="external">READ MORE: White Helmets member caught on camera disposing of Syrian soldiers’ mutilated bodies (GRAPHIC VIDEO)</a></p>
<p>The journalist stressed that over the years he invited to the Swiss Press Club “many people, criticizing Russia – for instance, [opposition figure and former chess champion] Garry Kasparov; Mrs Nemtsova [the wife of murdered opposition figure, Boris Nemtsov]. But I have also the right to accept people, who are supporting Russia. That’s a goal of every press club and not politically correct association.”</p>
<p>Mettan also said that received “dozens of messages from all around the world – from Sweden, the US, UK, Australia, Canada,” supporting the Swiss Press Club for “staying firm” to the ideals of free speech and hosting the press conference about the White Helmets, regardless of the pressure.</p> | Swiss Press Club gives floor to White Helmets’ critics, despite Reporters Without Borders pressure | false | https://newsline.com/swiss-press-club-gives-floor-to-white-helmets-critics-despite-reporters-without-borders-pressure/ | 2017-11-29 | 1 |
<p>Scientists have wondered for decades how female sea turtles can cross thousands of miles of open ocean and still find their way back to the same beach to lay eggs, and researchers think they may finally have an answer: magnetics.</p>
<p>The sea turtle’s ability has been baffling because the open ocean where the sea turtle spends its time is vast and without features, but the turtle still finds a way to get back to the same location every two or three years — called “natal homing.”</p>
<p>Scientists have long thought that the Earth’s geomagnetic field may help explain the phenomenon, but now there is some hard evidence ot support it, according to a <a href="http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-sea-turtle-mystery-partially-solved-20150114-story.html" type="external">Los Angeles Times report</a>.</p>
<p>Researchers published a paper in Current Biology this week that shows that small changes in the Earth’s magnetic field will affect where a loggerhead sea turtle buries its eggs on the coast of Florida, which suggests the hypothesis is correct.</p>
<p>The magnetic field around Earth is strongest at the poles and weakest at the equator, and intersects the Earth at different angles called “inclincation angles.” It appears that turtles have evolved in such a way to use these inclination angles as an internal GPS, according to the paper, which was put together by a team from the University of North Carolina.</p>
<p>The researchers studies 19 years of data from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on sea turtle nesting sites on the Atlantic Coast of the state.</p>
<p>Since the Earth’s magnetic field is constantly changing, researchers hypothesized that when magnetic signatures of neighboring beaches were closer together, there would be more nest on that stretch of beach, and they found that that was indeed the case: there was an avrerage increase of 35 percent in nesting density in places where the magnetic signatures converged, whereas it decreased by 6 percen twhen the signatures diverged.</p>
<p>There is more work to be done, as scientists don’t know how the sea turtle detects the geomagnetic field, although they suspect it may have tiny magnetic particles in their brains or inside their bodies that act as a compass. However, there is not yet any hard evidence for this theory.</p>
<p /> | How do sea turtles find their way home? Scientists finally have an answer: magnetics | false | http://natmonitor.com/2015/01/16/how-do-sea-turtles-find-their-way-home-scientists-finally-have-an-answer-magnetics/ | 2015-01-16 | 3 |
<p>Poland Spring's parent company on Friday asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit that accuses the company of providing water that's sourced from wells, not springs.</p>
<p>Stamford, Connecticut-based Nestle Waters North America contends the matter was already litigated in 2003 in Illinois and that a federal court can't pre-empt a state court. That case ended with a $12 million settlement and Poland Spring continuing to tout "100 percent natural spring water."</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The corporate parent also says the plaintiffs should take up the matter with the Food and Drug Administration instead of turning to the courts.</p>
<p>The original lawsuit filed in Connecticut and a similar one in Maine contend the water that's bottled by Poland Spring comes from wells or municipal sources, not the bubbling springs depicted on the label.</p>
<p>Poland Spring says its product meets the FDA's definition that allows a bottling company to call its product "spring water" if it is drawn from the same source as a natural spring and meets certain requirements for chemical composition.</p>
<p>A letter from the state's senior environmental hydrologist in August confirmed that all eight of Poland Spring's water sources meet the FDA definition of spring water. The Maine Drinking Water Program implements the FDA rules governing spring water.</p>
<p>Alix Dunn, spokesperson for Nestle Waters, said consumers can be confident "in the accuracy of the labels on every bottle of Poland Spring."</p> | Poland Spring throws cold water on class-action lawsuit | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/10/06/poland-spring-throws-cold-water-on-class-action-lawsuits.html | 2017-10-06 | 0 |
<p>MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — A grand jury indicted 17 alleged members and associates of the notoriously violent MS-13 gang on charges including murder and drug trafficking following a seven-month investigation that spanned several states, officials announced Thursday.</p>
<p>Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas said the county and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency started the investigation into the gang's activities in May, identifying activities that stretched from New York to New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Texas.</p>
<p>It started with a focus on narcotics trafficking but expanded to encompass murder and other acts of violence, including the killing of a 15-year-old Long Island boy, and focused on the "Hollywood" and "Sailors" cliques, or cells, of MS-13 on Long Island.</p>
<p>Officials said the Long Island clique leaders answered to leaders in El Salvador, and sent them proceeds from criminal activity.</p>
<p>"This massive multi-agency investigation laid bare the global size, complexity and brutality of MS-13, and these indictments strike a heavy blow to the gang's operations on Long Island," Singas said. "These alleged gang members have terrorized vulnerable immigrant communities (and) trafficked deadly heroin into our neighborhoods."</p>
<p>Federal prosecutors believe MS-13, or the Mara Salvatrucha, has thousands of members across the U.S., mostly Central American immigrants.</p>
<p>The gang, believed to be behind 25 killings on Long Island in the past two years, has become a prime target of President Donald Trump, with both the Republican president Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions coming to Long Island to speak on efforts to fight it. The gang originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s, though it's now led from Central America.</p>
<p>The indictment includes the murder of Angel Soler, who was 15 when he disappeared in July. His body was discovered in mid-October in a wooded lot in the hamlet of Roosevelt. Soler's remains were one of three sets found close to each other over the course of nine days.</p>
<p>Authorities have said Soler was attacked by a group of people and hacked to death with a machete, and a 26-year-old man was charged in November with his murder.</p>
<p>The criminal complaint in that case said the suspect acted with others who had not yet been arrested. The indictment announced Thursday names another alleged MS-13 member as a suspect in Soler's death.</p>
<p>Officials said the investigation also helped thwart murders that were being planned. Investigators also passed on information that led to arrests of individuals in Maryland suspected of being gang members in connection to murders in that state.</p>
<p>MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — A grand jury indicted 17 alleged members and associates of the notoriously violent MS-13 gang on charges including murder and drug trafficking following a seven-month investigation that spanned several states, officials announced Thursday.</p>
<p>Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas said the county and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency started the investigation into the gang's activities in May, identifying activities that stretched from New York to New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Texas.</p>
<p>It started with a focus on narcotics trafficking but expanded to encompass murder and other acts of violence, including the killing of a 15-year-old Long Island boy, and focused on the "Hollywood" and "Sailors" cliques, or cells, of MS-13 on Long Island.</p>
<p>Officials said the Long Island clique leaders answered to leaders in El Salvador, and sent them proceeds from criminal activity.</p>
<p>"This massive multi-agency investigation laid bare the global size, complexity and brutality of MS-13, and these indictments strike a heavy blow to the gang's operations on Long Island," Singas said. "These alleged gang members have terrorized vulnerable immigrant communities (and) trafficked deadly heroin into our neighborhoods."</p>
<p>Federal prosecutors believe MS-13, or the Mara Salvatrucha, has thousands of members across the U.S., mostly Central American immigrants.</p>
<p>The gang, believed to be behind 25 killings on Long Island in the past two years, has become a prime target of President Donald Trump, with both the Republican president Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions coming to Long Island to speak on efforts to fight it. The gang originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s, though it's now led from Central America.</p>
<p>The indictment includes the murder of Angel Soler, who was 15 when he disappeared in July. His body was discovered in mid-October in a wooded lot in the hamlet of Roosevelt. Soler's remains were one of three sets found close to each other over the course of nine days.</p>
<p>Authorities have said Soler was attacked by a group of people and hacked to death with a machete, and a 26-year-old man was charged in November with his murder.</p>
<p>The criminal complaint in that case said the suspect acted with others who had not yet been arrested. The indictment announced Thursday names another alleged MS-13 member as a suspect in Soler's death.</p>
<p>Officials said the investigation also helped thwart murders that were being planned. Investigators also passed on information that led to arrests of individuals in Maryland suspected of being gang members in connection to murders in that state.</p> | Alleged MS-13 gang members indicted on murder, drug charges | false | https://apnews.com/amp/dae4ce07d7864641b19fe76f3d65beec | 2018-01-11 | 2 |
<p>LONDON — Usain Bolt ended his stellar career in excruciating pain.</p>
<p>The Jamaican great crumpled to the track with a left-leg injury as he was chasing a final gold medal for the Jamaican 4×100-meter relay team on Saturday at the world championships.</p>
<p>Having to make up lots of ground on the anchor leg, Bolt suddenly screamed and stumbled as he came down with his golden farewell shattered by the first injury he has experienced at a major competition.</p>
<p>That wasn’t the only surprise. Britain went on to beat the United States in a tight finish.</p>
<p>The 60,000-capacity stadium was primed for one last Bolt show, one last “To the World” pose after a victory, but the injury made it blatantly clear why Bolt is ready to retire. His body can no longer hold up.</p>
<p>His teammates on the once-fabled Jamaican sprint squad were far from unmatchable, too. Bolt had just too much to make up in the final 100 meters as both Britain and the United States were ahead and even Japan was even.</p>
<p>As Bolt fell to the ground, the leg with the golden shoe giving way, the crowd still went wild because the home team went on to win gold in 37.47 seconds, .05 seconds ahead of the United States.</p>
<p>It was yet another amazing upset in a championship of so many.</p>
<p>Before Bolt came onto the track, he was consoling Mo Farah, his long-distance equivalent who had just lost his first major race since 2011 when he failed to get gold in the 5,000 meters.</p>
<p>Farah also was bidding farewell to the track, coming up short of his fifth straight 5,000-10,000 double at major championships in a sprint against Muktar Edris Ethiopia.</p>
<p>“I gave it all,” Farah said. “I didn’t have a single bit left at the end.”</p> | Usain Bolt Ends Career with Injury | false | https://newsline.com/usain-bolt-ends-career-with-injury/ | 2017-08-12 | 1 |
<p />
<p>The topic of how much money you need to retire is of great interest to me - and, presumably, many of you. Can you retire with a million dollars in the proverbial bank? More? Less? As with many things, the answer is usually “it depends.”</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A popular approach to estimating how much you need to retire is to estimate your annual post-retirement living expenses and then multiply by 25. That's the amount of money you'd need to have socked away if you were willing to assume a 4% “safe withdrawal rate” (SWR).</p>
<p>In other words, if you need $40k/year, you'll need an investment portfolio of roughly $1M. And if you need $100k/year, you'll need a $2.5M nest egg. Simple enough, assuming that your portfolio will actually support 4% withdrawals without getting depleted early, and that you've accurately estimated your needs.</p>
<p>According to a recent study by benefits consulting firm Aon Hewitt, an alternative way of expressing your retirement needs is as a multiple of your final working salary.</p>
<p>Based on their results, an average worker retiring at age 65 needs to have eleven times their final salary stashed away (in addition to Social Security benefits) to be able to maintain their current standard of living. This analysis takes into account both inflation and anticipated post-retirement medical expenses.</p>
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<p>If 11x your final salary is too steep, you can reduce the required amount to 9.4x by delaying retirement to age 67. Or, if you'd like to accelerate your retirement to age 63, you'll need 13.5x your final salary. This is considerably less than the 25x rule of thumb based on the 4% SWR mentioned above.</p>
<p>Interesting, but also flawed. The reason I say this is that you can't reasonably expect to translate someone's salary into a required nest egg without knowing more about how they spend it. Consider the following…</p>
<p>Bob and Mike both spend identical amounts to support their lifestyle - let's say $75k/year. But when you dig deeper you learn that Bob is living paycheck-to-paycheck on an annual salary of $75k whereas make is making bank at $150k/year and living well below his means.</p>
<p>Using a whatever-number-you-choose-times-salary rule, Mike's retirement needs would appear to be twice those of Bob, but clearly that's not the case. They both spend the same to support their lifestyles so, assuming that they want to continue living at that standard, they'll both have similar needs regardless of how big their current paychecks are.</p>
<p>Anyhoo… Ignoring that (major) flaw in Aon Hewitt's reasoning… How many people are actually on track to save this much? According to survey results, the typical “full-career” employee is on track to save 8.8x their final pay. That's a bit better than a couple of year ago, but still well short of 11x - and even further short of the old school 25x rule of thumb.</p>
<p>What about you? Have you done the math and set a specific numeric goal for your portfolio? If so, are you on track for a successful retirement? If not, what are you waiting for?</p>
<p>Wherever you've set the number, if you're not on track to make it there, there are some things you can do. The simplest approach is to scale back your standard of living, which has a dual benefit. By making do with less you can save more now and you'll need less later.</p>
<p>The original article can be found at FiveCentNickel.com: Retirement: How Much is Enough?</p> | Retirement: How Much is Enough? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/07/10/retirement-how-much-is-enough.html | 2017-02-08 | 0 |
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<p>BERLIN — Munich’s city council has rejected an attempt to take the froth off beer prices at the annual Oktoberfest.</p>
<p>Deputy mayor Josef Schmid, who oversees the Bavarian capital’s annual beer extravaganza, had sought a legal cap for the next three years on the price of the traditional Mass, a one-liter (two-pint) glass of beer. He wanted to fix the maximum price at the highest figure from last year’s festival, 10.70 euros ($11.80).</p>
<p>The dpa news agency says Schmid failed to secure a majority for his plan at a council meeting Wednesday. He argued it was needed to prevent breweries passing on extra security-related costs to customers.</p>
<p>Lydia Dietrich, a Green party councilor, said she opposed a “beer price brake” because that would lead to other food and drinks becoming more expensive.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Munich council rejects Oktoberfest beer price cap plan | false | https://abqjournal.com/1004578/munich-council-rejects-oktoberfest-beer-price-cap-plan.html | 2017-05-17 | 2 |
<p>The unclarified mystery about the struggle in Syria is what it is all about. Did it begin in repercussion to the Arab uprisings elsewhere? Or is there a sinister external explanation?</p>
<p>Who began it? The story commonly offered is that children scribbled some grafitti against President Bashar al-Assad on a wall in the provinces, and the police brutally beat or tortured or killed them in reprisal, provoking not the expected fearful silence but a spontaneous popular demonstration against authority, police and regime, producing in return an even more severely brutal response from the regime.</p>
<p>Syria has been one of the stable states in the Arab Middle East despite its internal tensions, and despite having America’s enemy Iran as its neighbor on one side and on the other unstable Lebanon and dangerous Israel. Yet its fundamental problems are not international in origin. As the British Middle East expert Patrick Seale has recently written, the real problems are drought and demography. The drought — from 2006 to 2010 — was the worst in a century. Soaring population has produced huge youth unemployment.</p>
<p>But who reinforced and spread the initial popular uprising, and where did the arms and subsequent organization and promotion of protest come from? What prompted the sentiment that quickly began to be whispered from one person to another, and one town to the next, “Bashar — he’s finished!” Why, and what did anyone actually know? Bashar al-Assad actually was alive, solidly installed in Damascus, commanding — or at least his closest entourage was commanding — a serious modern army and solid security apparatus drawn from his family and clan, and other close relatives and associates, made up mainly from the Shi’ite Alawi sect which has held the government since his father, Hafez al-Assad, staged a successful coup d’etat in 1970. Why should he worry?</p>
<p />
<p>Well, he should have worried, since a dissident committee — or committees — suddenly were active abroad. The revolt was getting arms and ammunition. Turkey and then Sunni Qatar and Saudi Arabia were reliably reported to be active.</p>
<p>Assad and his government first claimed that Syria was being invaded by foreign mercenaries, “gangs,” al-Qaida and Arab enemies. Or that it was being invaded by Syrian Muslim Brothers, who fought Bashar’s father.</p>
<p>Then the story being spread outside Syria by Assad’s supporters and enemies of the United States became that NATO and Israel were behind it all, and the plan was to clear an anti-Western Syria out of the way as preliminary to attack Iran and its nuclear facilities, with permanent occupation of Syria and Iran and seizure of its oil — just as in Iraq (where, actually, that supposed NATO plan has not worked so well, handing Iraq over to implicit Iranian domination, and in recent weeks inspiring an insurrection of mounting scale by Sunnis, who once ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein).</p>
<p>This is also unconvincing since the attack on Iran will be from the air, and a land attack by Western armies to finish off an independent Syria is unnecessary, and scarcely what Barack Obama or even Benjamin Netanyahu and their electorates want to see. Another Western war against Arabs? What about those chemical weapons supposedly reserved for foreigners? And if the attack in not Western in origin, who else? Who in the Arab world wants to be America’s and Israel’s proxy in a war against Syria, where a Western-inspired attack would certainly set alight the torches of nationalism, patriotism and religious passion. It would also supply recruits for al-Qaida’s franchises elsewhere and for Hizballah.</p>
<p>What then? Syria’s may be an ethnically and religiously divided population, but the idea that it could successfully be parceled out into separate states or provinces, governed in a post-Assad condition by anything other than a foreign army of occupation recalls those neo-conservative assurances before the American invasion of Iraq that U.S. troops would be greeted like the Allies liberating France in 1944. It is inane and gravely irresponsible. In any case, the American public does not want still another war. Surely, that is clear even to the post-neoconservatives raising their heads again in Washington. (Robert Kagan comes to mind.)</p>
<p>The only peaceful end to the Syrian crisis is continued international intervention, mediation and negotiation. The Russians have indicated that they will cooperate if their economic and long-standing political interests in Syria are accommodated. Alas, Washington seems to see in this tragic situation an opportunity to force Russia out or the Middle East. That policy will fail — and eventually Barack Obama (or Mitt Romney) will be sorry.</p>
<p>Visit William Pfaff’s website for more on his latest book, “The Irony of Manifest Destiny: The Tragedy of America’s Foreign Policy” (Walker &amp; Co., $25), at <a href="http://www.williampfaff.com" type="external">www.williampfaff.com</a>.</p>
<p>© 2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.</p> | The Danger of Meddling in Syria's Turmoil | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/the-danger-of-meddling-in-syrias-turmoil/ | 2012-07-25 | 4 |
<p>As a telenovela-like script of sex-tainted scandal rivets the mainstream news in the days before the incendiary 2016 U.S. presidential election, serious coverage of many matters decisive for the future of this country and the world has apparently been relegated to another day.</p>
<p>Yet far from the sensationalist media circus, defining issues of race and class, human and civil rights, police militarization and constitutional guarantees, corporate and &#160;civic power, and the fossil fuel economy and climate change, are all being played out on a little patch of land in North Dakota called Standing Rock.</p>
<p>There, as the winter approaches on the Great Plains of North America, the Indigenous Lakota people of the Standing Rock Reservation and their allies are redoubling a watershed battle, literally and figuratively, to stop Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a project tagged at $3.7 billion designed to transport at least 470,000 barrels of shale oil every day from North Dakota along a route paralleling the Missouri River to Illinois.</p>
<p>Energy Transfer Partners contends the project will avert potentially dangerous train and truck shipments, while respecting the environment and local landowners. Unconvinced, opponents say the pipeline will desecrate sacred lands and threaten pollution of Standing Rock’s water as well as those of other communities downstream- Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike.</p>
<p>As 2016 enters its final weeks, the Standing Rock movement continues sparking the greatest outpouring of Native American activism and solidarity since the Red Power days of the late 1960s and 1970s. Hundreds of Indigenous nations from Canada, the United States, Latin America and beyond are backing Standing Rock with resolutions, demonstrations, material resources and a physical presence. Thousands have made the trek to the pipeline resistance encampments. New Mexico for one has emerged as a vital link in a long and growing chain of support.</p>
<p>“I think Standing Rock has just become part of our Indigenous collective, in our national consciousness,” Dr. Jennifer Denetdale, Dine (Navajo) professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico (UNM) told Frontera NorteSur. “It’s people on the ground who are supporting (Standing Rock) Chairman Archambault.”</p>
<p>The week surrounding the October 27 North Dakota National Guard-police assault on anti-DAPL water protectors triggered a burst of activism in Albuquerque. On multiple occasions, demonstrators gathered on Central Avenue in front of UNM, drawing supportive honks from passing motorists. &#160;At one demonstration placards variously read “Honor Our Treaties,” “Celebrate Resistance not Conquest,” “Free Peltier” and “Long Live Larry Casuse,” in honor to a historic UNM Native student leader who was killed by police in a 1973 confrontation in Gallup, New Mexico.</p>
<p>Amid corresponding chants, a little girl scurried up and down the sidewalk with a sign proclaiming: “Water is Life. Can’t Drink Oil. Can’t Eat Money.” Denetdale said the government’s October 27 raid flew in the face of national and international covenants. “It was a violation of international human rights standards, U.S. constitutional rights and treaty rights with Indigenous nations,” she insisted.</p>
<p>The government raid was directed at a camp of water and land protectors, as the Standing Rock movement defines its participants. The land where the showdown occurred is disputed between Energy Transfer Partners, which claims legal ownership, and the Standing Rock movement, which says it rightfully belongs to the Lakota people under the 1851 Ft. Laramie Treaty.</p>
<p>Equipped with the rudiments of war, the police-military action was reminiscent of the the federal siege of traditional Oglala Lakota and American Indian Movement (AIM) occupiers at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973.</p>
<p>The difference this time was that the Standing Rock movement was unarmed and confronted by a force wielding sound cannons, armored vehicles, helicopters, aerial support, automatic rifles, bean bags, Tasers, concussion grenades, tear gas, and pepper spray.</p>
<p>According to Native journalist Brenda Norrell’s Censored News, the casualty toll included two movement medics hit and injured by bean bags, two horses similarly hit (one of which was later euthanized because of the gravity of its injuries) and more than 140 people arrested, some of whom had water poured on them and were held in dog kennels with numbers written on their arms “as was done by Nazis in concentration camps.”</p>
<p>Hope Alvarado, a 20-year-old UNM student who works with the Red Nation and the UNM Kiva Club, the university’s Native American student organization, summarized the law enforcement raid as “really upsetting.” On a recent visit to Standing Rock, Alvarado told Frontera NorteSur that she saw a whole new way of protesting through ceremonials and singing.</p>
<p>During her visit to Standing Rock, Alvarado said she and her group were pestered and watched by two suspected white federal agents who claimed to be missionaries but took a lot of photos before being shooed away.</p>
<p>For Alvarado, a young woman of Dine, Mescalero Apache and Comanche heritage, Standing Rock is not a distant cause: the movement is deeply threaded into the collective and personal lives of her ancestors and contemporaries. &#160;At one time or another, all the branches of Alvarado’s family tree have suffered forced displacement.</p>
<p>The New Mexico activist said her great-great grandmother on the Dine side survived the Long Walk, the U.S. army’s forcible relocation of thousands of Dine to a concentration camp at Ft. Sumner, New Mexico, in 1864. “It may be oral history but it’s the closet factual history I have,” Alvarado said, adding that she did not even see a reference to the Long Walk in a book until she was 19.</p>
<p>More than a century after the Long Walk, Alvarado’s Dine relatives, including her great grandmother, now celebrating 104 years of life, confronted another involuntary relocation when the U.S. Congress passed Public Law 93-531 in 1974, mandating the removal of thousands of Dine from energy rich lands that were apportioned to the Hopi tribe. The modern relocation dispersed close-knit communities and created hardships for relatives who were homeless for years before receiving new replacement houses, Alvarado said.</p>
<p>What’s more, the UNM student finds many similarities between Standing Rock and developments closer to home. For instance, she cited a proposal to run a pipeline in the proximity of Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico, where the ruins of a thriving, pre-Spanish colonial civilization of cultural significance to Southwestern tribes stand. &#160;Alvarado described Chaco Canyon as “the world’s trading center.”</p>
<p>Now designated a UNESCO World Heritage site, Chaco Canyon maintained trade connections with the Paquime civilization of present-day Chihuahua state in northern Mexico and formed part of a larger exchange network extending into Mesoamerica centuries before the Spanish conquistadores used the Camino Real to link Santa Fe with Mexico City, according to the New Mexico Office of the State Historian.</p>
<p>“That’s not okay to any of the Pueblos, or the Dine,” Alvarado said of the scheme for a Chaco Canyon pipeline. “This protest is about mobilizing people for Standing Rock but also for here,” she affirmed. “Standing Rock people will be coming here to support.” Ironically, on the very same day that North Dakota officials moved against the Standing Rock encampment, tribal and U.S. officials met at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque for a federal consultation on infrastructure decision-making.</p>
<p>Not missing a beat, members of the UNM Kiva Club, Red Nation and AIM showed up and spoke out against the DAPL before they were escorted out of the building, according to Alvarado. &#160;Both Denetdale and Alvarado voiced displeasure at what they said was the silence or smirking among officials at the meeting, including a representative of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In September, the Obama Administration ordered the federal agency to not authorize DAPL construction on its land until a look at the National Environmental Policy Act and other federal laws was undertaken. The administration’s order, however, did not apply to Energy Transfer Partners and construction proceeded on non-Corps land.</p>
<p>“I was very upset and distraught that the government could want respectful consultation when that was going on at Standing Rock,” Denetdale said. “It was unreal.”</p>
<p>In perhaps another bit of ironic timing, the White House issued an October 31 proclamation commemorating November as National Native American Heritage Month, 2016, with November 25-the day after Thanksgiving-recognized as Native American Heritage Day. Lauding Native Americans for shaping U.S. history, President Obama vowed to renew “our commitment to our nation-to-nation relationships” on the path to a better future.</p>
<p>“Over our long shared history, there have been too many unfortunate chapters of pain and tragedy, discrimination and injustice,” Obama said. “We must acknowledge that history while recognizing that the future is still ours to write.”</p>
<p>The President ran down a list of federal actions related to Native Americans, including support for more representation of Indigenous peoples at the United Nations and “further implementation of the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” but did not specifically mention Standing Rock.</p>
<p>At the grassroots, where the Standing Rock struggle only keeps getting bigger, the story is different. &#160;In an op-ed published in the New York Times and on <a href="http://commondreams.org/" type="external">Commondreams.org</a>, prominent white climate activist Bill McKibben called on the movement against fossil fuels to give the struggle for Standing Rock the same priority as the battles over the Keystone pipeline and Artic Drilling, targeting the financing and permitting mechanisms of the DAPL.</p>
<p>“What’s happening along the Missouri is of historic consequences..,” McKibben wrote. “Native Americans have carried on the fight, but they deserve backup from everyone with a conscience; other activists should join the protest at bank headquarters, Army Corps offices and other sites of entrenched power…”</p>
<p>On November 1, pro-Standing Rock demonstrators rallied in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal before marching banks linked to the DAPL, including JP Morgan and Bank of America, CNN and Telesur reported. Ferrying people and supplies are other important ways Standing Rock sympathizers are advancing the movement. An October 29 benefit at Albuquerque’s El Chante: Casa de Cultura featured poetry, music, artwork, and homemade Navajo tacos to enthuse the troops.</p>
<p>Standing Rock was “asking everybody to organize and come up,” said benefit organizer Lynnette Haozous, a young Chiricahua Apache from San Carlos, Arizona. “They are saying we need more people. That’s an urgent message in the last week considering the events.” In September, Haozous herself made the journey, volunteering at a new school that’s part of a new community of nations and peoples. &#160;“It was one of the most powerful moments, the kids in that school,” Haozous told Frontera NorteSur. “It’s a school of Indigenous knowledge. They’re teaching them healing through plants, the history of Indigenous peoples that includes treaty rights. That’s basically to start off our warriors young.”</p>
<p>Reaffirming a threatened tradition, the school taught children the Round Dance and accompanying songs. “That’s kind of a lost art form these days, so we want to make sure we teach that to the kids so they can keep it going,” Haozous added. &#160;Attendees at the Albuquerque benefit also signed a petition urging freedom for AIM activist Leonard Peltier, imprisoned since 1976 for the murders of two FBI agents supporters say he did not commit.</p>
<p>Scheduled for Human Rights Week (December 4-10) in Washington D.C., a series of events sponsored by the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, Indigenous Rights Center and Amnesty International-USA will recast the spotlight on Peltier’s case in a last-ditch effort to convince President Obama to grant the elderly, ailing prisoner executive clemency.</p>
<p>Although the issues at stake in Standing Rock go back centuries, movement organizing is buzzing along with an unmistakable 21st century flavor. In an age of digital social media, the Standing Rock protectors and their supporters communicate in real time through such formats as Facebook and Twitter. Christina Rodriguez, a member of the Albuquerque-based youth media and social justice project Generation Justice, said the group’s live postings and interviews with people on the ground in Standing Rock have been garnering ample attention in recent days. “I feel the live streams from North Dakota and around the nation are the medium,” Rodriguez said.</p>
<p>Haozous and other New Mexico activists say they plan in the coming days and weeks to organize more caravans of people and supplies to Standing Rock, stage a November 20 benefit at UNM sponsored by the Kiva Club, and return to the streets to raise public awareness about the events unfolding in North Dakota.</p> | New Mexico Mobilizes for Standing Rock | true | https://counterpunch.org/2016/11/03/new-mexico-mobilizes-for-standing-rock/ | 2016-11-03 | 4 |
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<p />
<p>A: A sale of goodwill will allow you to report a capital gain. Perhaps the confusion comes from the fact that the tax law itself does not say what a capital asset is, it instead says what it isn’t.</p>
<p>A capital asset is anything other than the things the tax law says it is not. Because goodwill is not on the list of non-capital assets, it is then a capital asset.</p>
<p>Because your self-created goodwill was not amortizable by you, it is best classified as a capital asset rather than a Section 1231 asset. Both are entitled to favorable capital gain tax rates.</p>
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<p>Q: My wife and I own 7 different real estate properties, with each held in a separate S corporation. We have to file 7 different corporate tax returns every year although all income ends up on our personal tax return. We want to simplify our tax life by putting all the properties in one corporation so we have only one tax return. Can I liquidate 6 of the corporations and just transfer their assets to the one that we keep?</p>
<p>A: Well you can, but that’s not the best way to do it from a tax standpoint. The liquidation of an S corporation results in a deemed sale of the corporate assets to the shareholders, and you may create a large taxable gain.</p>
<p>There are two ways to do what you want without a tax issue. Which one you select depends on what your non-tax objectives for having multiple corporations are.</p>
<p>In general, when people do what you and your wife have done the primary motivation is to isolate different properties in different legal entities to create a liability shield. It may continue to be useful to have 7 different entities for this purpose.</p>
<p>If your greatest concern is the 7 different tax returns, you can have one S corporation serve as a holding company that owns all of the stock of the other entities. You and your wife would own the holding company.</p>
<p>The next step is to make elections to treat each corporation owned by the holding company as a qualified subchapter S subsidiary (“QSub” for short). This election is made by filing a Form 8869 for each entity.</p>
<p>The election allows you to pretend that the QSubs have liquidated into the holding company. Unlike the liquidation that you proposed, this liquidation is tax free because the shareholder is itself a corporation.</p>
<p>So you could keep each S corporation alive for state law purposes, yet have only one corporation that must file a tax return (since the others have been deemed to be liquidated).</p>
<p>If you really want to reduce the entities to just one, for both tax and state law purposes, you can merge 6 of the corporations into the one survivor. This will be a tax-free reorganization, either as a type “A” or an “acquisitive D.”</p>
<p>While the specifics can be complicated, the bottom line is that you can achieve what you want (simplified tax filings) but you need to consult with an attorney about what the best structure is for liability protection.</p>
<p>James R. Hamill is the director of Tax Practice at Reynolds, Hix &amp; Co. in Albuquerque. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p> | When goodwill becomes a capital gain | false | https://abqjournal.com/259877/when-goodwill-becomes-a-capital-gain.html | 2013-09-08 | 2 |
<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - Moneta Money Bank As:</p>
<p>* MONETA SAYS WILL REALISE GAIN OF APPROXIMATELY CZK 400 MILLION FROM SALE OF LOAN PORTFOLIO IN JAN 2018</p>
<p>* MONETA SAYS SOLD RETAIL UNSECURED NON-PERFORMING LOANS PORTFOLIO IN THE TOTAL NOMINAL VALUE OF 2.2 BLN TO NORWAY-BASED B2HOLDING ASA; BALANCE SHEET IFRS GROSS VALUE OF CZK 125 MILLION AND OFF-BALANCE SHEET VALUE CZK 2.1 BLN Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LIMA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Latin American leaders arrived in Lima on Friday for a summit that U.S. President Donald Trump decided not to attend, even though Washington hopes to use the gathering to counter China’s rising influence in the region.</p> U.S. Vice President Mike Pence arrives at the airport for upcoming Summit of the Americas in Lima, Peru April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Guadalupe Pardo
<p>The official theme of this year’s Summit of the Americas in the Peruvian capital, where heads of state from across the Western Hemisphere will meet through Saturday, is corruption. Several countries attending also plan to condemn Venezuela’s planned presidential election next month.</p>
<p>But a heated trade dispute between the United States and China looms over the event.</p>
<p>Late on Thursday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross took aim at Beijing’s growing trade ties with the region, saying Latin America benefitted more from value-added exports to the United States than rising sales of raw materials to China.</p>
<p>Ross told a regional gathering of business leaders in Lima that Washington had no intention of ceding leadership in Latin America to “authoritarian states.”</p>
<p>But leaders from Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and other countries will meet in Peru without Trump, after the White House said he decided to skip his first visit as president to Latin America to focus instead on the crisis in Syria.</p> U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross leaves after delivering a speech during the Americas Business Summit in Lima, Peru April 12, 2018. REUTERS/Andres Stapff
<p>In the opening speech at a joint business summit in Lima, Bolivia’s left-leaning President Evo Morales said the days when foreign powers could dictate terms to Latin America were over.</p>
<p>“Many developing countries and transnational companies think the only thing that matters is making money,” Morales said, calling instead for action on climate change. “The structural crisis of capitalism is threatening the survival of humanity itself.”</p>
<p>Morales was the sole leftist Latin American president at the summit. Cuban President Raul Castro did not show up and host Peru uninvited Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro last month to pressure him to enact democratic reforms.</p>
<p>But even in the largely U.S.-friendly and pro-business crowd in Lima, many criticized Trump’s approach to foreign policy and trade.</p>
<p>“Trump’s plan seems to be to ensure the U.S. is no longer the world’s leader,” Gustavo Grobocopatel, chief executive of Argentine agricultural group Grupo Los Grobo S.A., told Reuters.</p>
<p>Ross said on Thursday it was too early to write off Trump. “This is an administration you should judge by its end results, not by theories about what may be the results,” he told reporters.</p>
<p>In his speech, Ross urged Latin American countries to do more to reduce tariffs and red tape, saying regional economies would benefit by exporting more manufactured goods to the United States.</p>
<p>In the past week, Trump has threatened to slap more tariffs on Chinese goods, said he was in no hurry to reach a deal on the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and ordered his advisors to study rejoining the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).</p> Slideshow (12 Images)
<p>Trump withdrew the United States from the TPP in one of his first acts as president. Former President Barack Obama had pitched the agreement as a way to give the United States an edge over China in a fast-growing region that includes large swaths of Latin America.</p>
<p>So far, it has been unclear what might replace it.</p>
<p>On Thursday, Trump’s top trade official Robert Lighthizer also canceled his trip to Peru. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who will stand in for Trump at the summit, scheduled meetings that did not include a one-on-one with Mexico’s president, dimming hopes progress might be made on NAFTA.</p>
<p>“No one wants to do bilateral trade deals with the United States, and Trump had no Plan B,” said Robert Manning, an Asia expert and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.</p> VERBATIM: Nikki Haley says Syria used chemical weapons 50 times
<p>Vizcarra will meet one-on-one with Pence on Friday.</p>
<p>In a diplomatic blunder for the Trump administration, the White House initially said Pence would be dining with Peru’s disgraced former leader, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, instead of current President Martin Vizcarra.</p>
<p>The White House corrected the error on Friday.</p>
<p>Reporting By Mitra Taj in Lima and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Additional Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu in Sao Paulo; Editing by Daniel Flynn and David Gregorio</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Saturday she had authorized British forces to conduct precision strikes against Syria to degrade its chemical weapons capability.</p> Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May tours Alexander Stadium in Birmingham, April 11, 2018. Christopher Furlong/Pool via Reuters
<p>“This is not about intervening in a civil war. It is not about regime change,” May said in a statement. “It is about a limited and targeted strike that does not further escalate tensions in the region and that does everything possible to prevent civilian casualties.”</p>
<p>The strike were conducted with the United States and France.</p>
<p>May said while the strike was targeted at Syria, it sent a message to anyone who used chemical weapons. Britain has accused Russia of being behind a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in England last month, a charge Moscow has rejected.</p>
<p>“This is the first time as prime minister that I have had to take the decision to commit our armed forces in combat – and it is not a decision I have taken lightly,” she said.</p>
<p>“I have done so because I judge this action to be in Britain’s national interest. We cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalized – within Syria, on the streets of the UK, or anywhere else in our world.”</p>
<p>Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday ordered precision strikes targeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons capabilities, as explosions were heard in the Syrian capital of Damascus.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump makes a statement about Syria at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
<p>Trump said a combined operation with France and Britain was under way and that they were prepared to sustain the response until Syria stopped its use of chemical weapons. The operation by the three allies came after a poison gas attack in Syria that killed at least 60 people last week.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-missiles/u-s-wages-cruise-missile-strikes-at-syria-targets-source-idUSKBN1HL02O" type="external">U.S. wages cruise missile strikes at Syria targets: source</a>
<a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-explosions/explosions-rock-damascus-reuters-witness-idUSKBN1HL02U" type="external">Explosions rock Damascus: Reuters witness</a> U.S. President Donald Trump makes a statement about Syria at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
<p>“A short time ago, I ordered the United States Armed Forces to launch precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,” Trump said in a televised address from the White House.</p>
<p>A U.S. official told Reuters the strikes were aimed at multiple targets and involved Tomahawk cruise missiles.</p> Slideshow (7 Images)
<p>“These are not the actions of a man. They are crimes of a monster instead,” Trump said referring to Assad and his suspected role in the chemical weapons attacks.</p>
<p>“The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread and use of chemical weapons,” Trump said.</p>
<p>The U.S. president had sharply critical words for both Russia and Iran, which have backed Assad’s government.</p>
<p>“To Iran and to Russia, I ask, what kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women and children?” Trump said.</p>
<p>British Prime Minister Theresa May said she had authorized British armed forces “to conduct co-ordinated and targeted strikes to degrade the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons capability.”</p>
<p>The military action is not about intervening in Syria’s civil war or changing its government, she said.</p>
<p>Writing by Yara Bayoumy and Warren Strobel; Editing by Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump attacked James Comey as a “weak and untruthful slime ball” on Friday after the fired former FBI director castigated him as an unethical liar and likened him to a mob moss in a searing new memoir.</p>
<p>The president fired Comey last May while his agency was investigating potential collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 U.S. election in a move that led the Justice Department to appoint Special Counsel Robert Mueller to take over a probe that has hung over his presidency.</p>
<p>“This president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values,” Comey said in the book due out Tuesday, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.</p>
<p>Trump has often publicly criticized Comey since firing him, but escalated his attacks in response to the book.</p>
<p>“It was my great honor to fire James Comey!” Trump said in one of a series of scorching Twitter messages, adding that Comey - now one of the Republican president’s fiercest critics - had been a terrible FBI director.</p>
<p>The tirade followed news accounts of Comey’s book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” which paints a deeply unflattering picture of Trump, comparing him to a mob boss who stresses personal loyalty over the law and has little regard for morality or truth.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-usa-trump-comey-slimeball/trumps-slime-ball-tweet-sparks-rush-to-online-dictionary-idUSKBN1HK2QA" type="external">Trump's 'slime ball' tweet sparks rush to online dictionary</a>
<a href="/article/us-usa-comey-book-factbox/highlights-from-former-fbi-director-james-comeys-new-book-idUSKBN1HK28S" type="external">Highlights from former FBI Director James Comey's new book</a>
<p>Mueller is looking into whether Trump has sought to obstruct the Russia probe, and Comey could be a key witness on that front. Comey last year accused Trump of pressuring him to pledge loyalty and end a probe involving former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Moscow.</p>
<p>“James Comey is a proven LEAKER &amp; LIAR,” Trump wrote.</p>
<p>Trump accused Comey of lying to Congress, but did not specify was he was referring to, and said the former FBI chief should be prosecuted for leaking classified information.</p>
<p>Trump has denied any collusion and has called Mueller’s investigation a witch hunt.</p>
<p>Comey is conducting a series of media interviews before the book’s official release. Copies of the book were obtained by news outlets on Thursday.</p>
<p>The interviews are Comey’s first public comments since he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last June, when he accused Trump of firing him to undermine the FBI’s Russia investigation. Just days after Trump fired Comey, the president said he did it because of “this Russia thing.”</p>
<p>Trump has launched a series of attacks since last year against U.S. law enforcement leaders and institutions as the Russia probe pressed forward, in addition to Comey and Mueller.</p>
<p>“People will rot in hell for besmirching the reputation the integrity and the professional history of these two men,” Democratic U.S. Representative Jim Himes said on CNN, referring to Comey and Mueller, himself a former FBI director.</p>
<p>In an offshoot of the Mueller probe, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer’s office and home were raided by the Federal Bureau on Investigation on Monday.</p> ‘REALLY WEIRD’
<p>In an interview broadcast on Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Comey discussed his initial encounters last year with Trump, who took office on Jan. 20, 2017.</p>
<p>He described Trump as volatile, defensive and concerned more about his own image than about whether Russia meddled in the presidential election.</p>
<p>American intelligence agencies last year said Russia interfered in the election through a campaign of propaganda and hacking in a scheme to sow discord in the United States and help get Trump elected. Moscow has denied meddling.</p>
<p>Comey said he cautioned Trump against ordering an investigation into a salacious intelligence dossier alleging an 2013 encounter involving prostitutes in Moscow.</p>
<p>The dossier was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele about Trump’s ties to Russia and included an allegation that involved prostitutes urinating on one another in a hotel room while Trump watched.</p>
<p>Trump denied the allegations and said he might want the FBI to investigate allegations in the dossier to prove they were untrue, Comey told ABC.</p> A combination of file photos show U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House in Washington, DC, U.S. April 9, 2018 and former FBI Director James Comey on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria, Jonathan Ernst/File Photos
<p>“I said to him, ‘Sir that’s up to you but you want to be careful about that because it might create a narrative that we’re investigating you personally and, second, it’s very difficult to prove something didn’t happen,’” Comey said.</p>
<p>Asked to describe that Jan. 6, 2017 meeting two weeks before Trump took office, Comey said: “Really weird. It was almost an out-of-body experience for me.”</p>
<p>Comey was asked if he believed the dossier’s allegations.</p>
<p>“I honestly never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” Comey told ABC. “It’s possible, but I don’t know.”</p>
<p>Comey said the dossier’s allegations had not been verified by the time he left the FBI.</p>
<p>Before Trump and Comey met alone, U.S. intelligence chiefs briefed Trump and his advisers about the Russian election meddling. What struck him most, Comey told ABC, was that the conversation moved straight into a public relations mode, what they could say and how they could position Trump.</p> A copy of former FBI director James Comey's book "A Higher Loyalty" is seen in New York City, New York, U.S. April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Soren Larson
<p>“No one, to my recollection, asked, ‘So what’s coming next from the Russians, how might we stop it, what’s the future look like?’” Comey said.</p>
<p>(GRAPHIC: Major milestones in the Mueller probe - <a href="https://tmsnrt.rs/2GTgtnX" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2GTgtnX</a>)</p>
<p>Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington and Angela Moore in New York; Additional reporting by Justin Mitchell in Washington; Editing by Frances Kerry and Will Dunham</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | BRIEF-Moneta says will book CZK 400 mln profit from sale of loan portfolio U.S. seeks to outshine China at Latam summit, without Trump UK PM May says British forces conduct targeted strike against Syria Trump orders strikes against Syria over chemical weapons attack Trump, called an unethical liar in book, blasts ex-FBI chief as 'slime ball' | false | https://reuters.com/article/brief-moneta-says-will-book-czk-400-mln/brief-moneta-says-will-book-czk-400-mln-profit-from-sale-of-loan-portfolio-idUSL8N1PD5QK | 2018-01-18 | 2 |
<p>Nearly 40 percent of the CEOs on the highest-paid lists from the past 20 years were eventually "bailed out, booted, or busted."</p>
<p>This 20th anniversary&#160; <a href="http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/executive-excess-2013" type="external">Executive Excess report</a>&#160;examines the "performance" of the 241 corporate chief executives who have ranked among America’s 25 highest-paid CEOs in one or more of the past 20 years.</p>
<p>The lavishly compensated CEOs we spotlight here should be exemplars of value-added performance. After all, sky-high CEO pay purportedly reflects the superior value that elite chief executives add to their enterprises and the broader U.S. economy.</p>
<p>But our analysis reveals widespread poor performance within America’s elite CEO circles. Chief executives performing poorly — and blatantly so — have consistently populated the ranks of our nation’s top-paid CEOs over the last two decades.</p>
<p>The report’s key finding: nearly 40 percent of the CEOs on these highest-paid lists were eventually "bailed out, booted, or busted."</p>
<p>The Bailed Out</p>
<p>CEOs whose firms either ceased to exist or received taxpayer bailouts after the 2008 financial crash held 22 percent of the slots in our sample. Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers enjoyed one of Corporate America’s largest 25 paychecks for eight consecutive years — until his firm went belly up in 2008.</p>
<p>The Booted</p>
<p>Not counting those on the bailed out list, another 8 percent of our sample was made up of CEOs who wound up losing their jobs involuntarily. Despite their poor performance, the “booted” CEOs jumped out the escape hatch with golden parachutes valued at $48 million on average.</p>
<p>The Busted</p>
<p>CEOs who led corporations that ended up paying significant fraud-related fines or settlements comprised an additional 8 percent of the sample. One CEO had to pay a penalty out of his own pocket for stock option back-dating. The other companies shelled out payments that totaled over $100 million per firm.</p>
<p>Over the past 20 years, we have seen no shortage of creative and practical proposals for reining in excessive executive compensation. Three pending reforms strike us as particularly urgent:</p>
<p>CEO-worker Pay Ratio Disclosure</p>
<p>Three years after President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank legislation, the SEC has still not implemented this commonsense transparency measure. The reform would discourage both large pay disparities that can harm employee morale and productivity and excessive executive pay levels that can encourage excessively risky behavior.</p>
<p>Pay Restrictions on Executives of Large Financial Institutions</p>
<p>Within nine months of the enactment of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, regulators were supposed to have issued guidelines that prohibit large financial institutions from granting incentive-based compensation that “encourages inappropriate risks.” Regulators are still dragging their feet on this modest reform.</p>
<p>Limiting the Deductibility of Executive Compensation</p>
<p>At a time when Congress is debating sharp cuts to essential public services, corporations are able to avoid paying their fair share of taxes by deducting unlimited amounts from their IRS bill for the cost of executive compensation. Two bills, the Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act (S.1746) and the Income Equity Act (H.R. 199) would fix this outrageous loophole and significantly reduce taxpayer subsidies for excessive CEO pay.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/executive-excess-2013" type="external">Originally published by Institute for Policy Studies</a></p>
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<p /> | Executive Excess 2013: Bailed Out, Booted and Busted | true | http://occupy.com/article/executive-excess-2013-bailed-out-booted-and-busted | 4 |
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<p>The ACA has enacted a variety of other new taxes, some of which, such as the investment surtax, begin in 2013, and others with effective dates delayed as late as 2018. In the past, individuals could claim an itemized deduction for qualified medical expenses that exceeded 7.5 percent of their AGI. This was a fairly high threshold that meant that only those with unreimbursed medical costs that were significant in relation to their income could get any tax benefit.</p>
<p>Beginning in 2013, no deduction is allowed for most individuals unless medical costs exceed 10 percent of AGI. This has been the threshold for the alternative minimum tax, and it will now also apply for regular tax.</p>
<p>If you are age 65 by the end of 2013, you get a four-year reprieve from the new threshold. Your medical costs will continue to be deductible based on the 7.5 percent of AGI threshold until the 2017 tax year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In theory, this new deduction limit will be mitigated if the individual has expanded health insurance benefits that cover “essential” medical care. There will then be less unreimbursed costs.</p>
<p>New Mexico allows a percentage of unreimbursed costs to be deducted for state purposes without regard to the relationship between the costs incurred and AGI. The state has not changed its rules for medical cost deductions.</p>
<p>Some employees, typically those employed by larger companies, participate in a health- care flexible spending account (FSA). An FSA allows the employee to designate a portion of his or her pay to go to an individual account that can be used to reimburse qualified health-care costs.</p>
<p>By using a FSA, the employee effectively can deduct 100 percent of medical costs reimbursed by the FSA, because contributions to the FSA are made with pre-tax dollars, and the reimbursements are not taxable.</p>
<p>Employers have been able to set limits on amounts that could be contributed to a health-care FSA, and many did so because the employer was required to reimburse the full amount that the employee designated for the year, even if the costs were incurred early in the year when only a fraction of the annual commitment had been contributed.</p>
<p>Beginning in 2013, health-care FSA contributions are limited to $2,500 by law. Also beginning in 2013, employers who offer a retiree prescription-drug plan subsidized by HHS will be forced to reduce any tax deduction for their plan costs by the subsidy received from HHS.</p>
<p>A company that receives 25 percent or more of its revenue from offering essential health insurance will, beginning in 2013, no longer be able to deduct more than $500,000 of compensation paid to designated officers. This limitation can also apply to compensation earned after 2009 that was tax-deferred until 2013. The sale of certain medical devices used by individuals and sold beginning in 2013 will now be subject to a 2.3 percent excise tax. This new tax does not apply to items sold at retail for general use by the public, such as eyeglasses and hearing aids.</p>
<p>Next year, 2014, is the big year for ACA tax changes. Large employers must offer essential health coverage to full-time employees or face a penalty, and individuals with income above a threshold will face a penalty if they do not have some insurance coverage that provides minimum essential coverage.</p>
<p>Various subsidies and tax credits will also spring into existence to make coverage affordable for lower-income individuals. Large employers will have new reporting requirements to demonstrate compliance with the ACA provisions.</p>
<p>Beginning in 2018 a hefty 40 percent excise tax will apply to employer-provided “Cadillac” health-insurance coverage. An employer’s plan is a Cadillac if it requires premiums of more than $10,200 for single coverage or $27,500 for family coverage.</p>
<p>The 2018 effective date allows employers time to scale back the Cadillac coverage. But for those who like fireworks shows, 2014 should be the year for political entertainment.</p>
<p>James R. Hamill is the director of Tax Practice at Reynolds, Hix &amp; Co. in Albuquerque. He can be reached at <a href="" type="external">[email protected].</a></p> | Bracing for health care tax fireworks | false | https://abqjournal.com/198375/bracing-for-health-care-tax-fireworks.html | 2013-05-13 | 2 |
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<p>You can feel elements of all three descending around President Obama as he fends off attack after attack from his conservative foes who vary the subject depending on the day, the circumstance and the opportunity.</p>
<p>Obama and his party are in danger of allowing the Republicans to set the terms of the 2014 elections, just as they did four years ago. The fog of nasty and depressing advertising threatens to reduce the electorate to a hard core of older, conservative voters eager to hand the president a blistering defeat.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>American politics has been shaken by two recent events that hurt first the Republicans and then the Democrats. Republicans have recovered from their blow. Democrats have not.</p>
<p>Last fall's government shutdown cratered the GOP's standing with the public and confirmed everything Democrats had been saying about a House majority in thrall to a far right uninterested in governing. Then the Obama administration threw their adversaries a lifeline with the disasters that befell HealthCare.gov, empowering Republicans to remount their favorite hobbyhorse.</p>
<p>House Speaker John Boehner used the foolishness of the shutdown to insist that there would be no more tea party adventures this year, no matter what Ted Cruz said.</p>
<p>And Republicans have broadened the assault whenever possible. Shamefully but effectively, many of them made Obama, not Vladimir Putin, the prime culprit in Putin's invasion of Crimea, hanging the word "weak" around the president's neck.</p>
<p>Democrats thought the killing of Osama bin Laden would forever guard Obama from comparisons with Jimmy Carter. They did not reckon with the GOP's determination to Carterize and McGovernize any Democrat who comes along.</p>
<p>Despite the large strides in the health care website's performance and despite Obama's efforts to regain the initiative with executive action, Republicans remain on offense. Executive actions - even helpful ones like last week's aimed at keeping workers from losing overtime pay by being falsely reclassified as supervisory - cannot transform the political agenda or mobilize a movement.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The most telling fact about the Democrats' defeat in Florida's special House election last week was the party's failure to get its voters to the polls. This owed to many factors, but one of them is disaffection in Democratic ranks.</p>
<p>The recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll pegged Obama's approval rating at 41 percent, his disapproval at 54 percent. But the most disturbing finding to him ought to have been the 20 percent disapproval he registered among Democrats. Winning back three-quarters of those discontented Democrats would, all by itself, bump his overall approval rating up by more than six points. It's where he needs to start.</p>
<p>With more than two and a half years left in his term, Obama has already begun to convey a sense of resignation that his largest achievements (except, perhaps, for immigration reform) are behind him.</p>
<p>His cool composure disinclines him to expressions of anger over how conservatives are foiling progress on job creation, education, the minimum wage and infrastructure investment. And the difficulty of getting anything through the House and past Republican filibusters in the Senate is limiting the Democrats' policy imagination.</p>
<p>Going on offense means, first, building on what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is undertaking in his campaign against the Koch brothers and other right-wing millionaires trying to buy themselves a Congress.</p>
<p>This is not just a tactical effort to turn tens of millions of dollars in negative advertising into a boomerang by encouraging voters to ask why the ads are appearing in the first place. It is also about drawing a sharp line between the interests and policy goals of those fronting that money and the rest of us.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>And by the way, Republicans denouncing Reid were perfectly happy back in the day to condemn George Soros for his spending on behalf of liberals.</p>
<p>It also means embracing the Affordable Care Act, promising to keep and improve it, and laying out what repeal would actually mean: to seniors enjoying additional prescription drug benefits, to consumers protected from losing insurance because of pre-existing conditions, to adults now on their parents' health plans. It means counting the cost of what state-level Republicans are doing in blocking 4 million to 5 million needy people from the Medicaid expansion.</p>
<p>Above all, it means lifting the debate from the hopelessness and exhaustion that are turning millions of Americans away from political engagement. The hope and change guy needs to have one more act in him.</p>
<p>Copyright, Washington Post Writers Group; email: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p /> | Dispirited Democrats need to reclaim initiative | false | https://abqjournal.com/370317/dispirited-democrats-need-to-reclaim-initiative.html | 2 |
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<p>The future of Atlantic City's former Revel Casino Hotel is murkier than ever following one court ruling and the lack of another one.</p>
<p>U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Gloria Burns refused Wednesday to extend the deadline for the casino to be sold to Florida developer Glenn Straub now that Monday's deadline has passed.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>But she did not rule on a request by the casino's owners, Revel AC, to approve their termination of the $95.4 million sale and their intention to keep Straub's $10 million deposit.</p>
<p>The judge says she'll decide next Tuesday whether to grant that request.</p>
<p>Revel attorney John Cunningham says it's time to seek other buyers for the casino, which shut down last September and has had two sale attempts since then.</p> | Future of Atlantic City's closed Revel casino murky as judge refuses to extend sale deadline | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/02/11/future-atlantic-city-closed-revel-casino-murky-as-judge-refuses-to-extend-sale.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>Like a lot of immigrants in the United States, Meklit Hadero’s family arrived to a place unknown, with a single connection drawing them. For Hadero, that place was Iowa, where her dad knew a professor.</p>
<p>It was the early ‘80s, and Ethiopia was still feeling the aftermath of the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13351397" type="external">1974 revolution</a>.</p>
<p>“There was a lot of kindness and community,” says Hadero, a singer and songwriter now based in San Francisco. “We were adjusting to living in this country. At the same time it was very challenging. There weren’t many immigrants at all, let alone immigrants from East Africa or Ethiopia.”</p>
<p>In fact, she remembers, there was one other Ethiopian family in town. “They heard through the grapevine that we had moved there and people said, ‘Oh, they live in that apartment complex.’ And they knocked on every door until they found us and we’re still friends today.”</p>
<p>Her parents were physicians who had to redo their residencies in the US in order to work. It took a long time. Five years. And the jobs they got brought the Hadero family to Brooklyn.</p>
<p>She returned to Ethiopia when she was 21 with her mom, carrying with her a body of stories, those highs and lows her family had talked about for years regarding life back in Ethiopia. Hadero says when she got to Ethiopia, she started to “see the holes” in her parents’ memories.</p>
<p>Malagasy: <a href="http://mg.globalvoicesonline.org/2015/08/05/72700/" type="external">Ho an'ilay Ethiopiana-Amerikana Mpihira Meklit Hadero, ‘Miova Hatrany ny Trano Hodiana’</a></p>
<p>Magyar: <a href="http://hu.globalvoicesonline.org/2015/08/8021" type="external">Kemekem: a tökéletes afro</a></p>
<p>Español: <a href="http://es.globalvoicesonline.org/2015/08/16/para-la-cantante-etiope-norteamericana-meklit-hadero-su-hogar-esta-en-constante-cambio/" type="external">Para la cantante norteamericana de origen etíope Meklit Hadero su “hogar está en constante cambio”</a></p>
<p />
<p>“I started to see the people who were maybe only hinted at filled into whole three-dimensional personalities,” she says. She also remembers her mom shifting between what she called “home” or “back home,” toggling between Ethiopia and the United States.</p>
<p>“Home is always in flux,” Hadero says.</p>
<p>Those journeys,&#160;and discovering more about Ethiopian music, have influenced Hadero’s music and can be heard in <a href="http://www.meklitmusic.com/" type="external">“We are Alive,”</a> her latest album. It includes&#160;“I Like Your Afro," Hadero's&#160;modern twist on a traditional Amharic-language Ethiopian love song called “Kemekem,” which means “the perfect Afro.”</p>
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<p>“This is a very flirtatious love song, where the lyrics say, ‘Oh, my dear, with the perfect Afro, you live at the top of the hill, I live at the bottom of the hill, just roll on down and meet me there.’”</p>
<p>She calls it her version of a “countryside song that, at the core of it, is something that people all over the world can connect with.”</p>
<p>She also sees how people don’t always know how to classify her. “When I play my music for the world music, they say, ‘Well, this is too jazz.’ When I play it for the jazz people, they say, ‘Well, this is kind of pop.’ And when I play it for the pop people they say, ‘What is this?’”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.meklitmusic.com/" type="external">Listen for yourself</a>.</p> | To this Ethiopian American singer, 'home is always in flux' | false | https://pri.org/stories/2015-07-24/ethiopian-american-singer-home-always-flux | 2015-07-24 | 3 |
<p>Back in November I was <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-mcbride-of-calculated-risk-2012-11" type="external">interviewed</a> by Joe Weisenthal at <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/business-insider" type="external">Business Insider</a>. One of my comments during our discussion on state and local governments was:</p>
<p>"I wouldn’t be surprised if we see, all of a sudden, a report come out, 'Hey, we’ve got a balanced budget in California.'"</p>
<p>And today from Reuters: <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/governor-brown-unveil-california-budget-141509838.html" type="external">California governor's budget has surprise: a surplus</a></p>
<p>The state expects $98.5 billion in revenues and transfers and plans [on] spending $97.7 billion, according to the proposal published on the state Department of Finance website.</p>
<p>That leaves a surplus of $851 million for the year, in addition to a projected $785 million surplus for the current fiscal year, which ends in June, allowing the state to put $1 billion toward a rainy day fund.</p>
<p>Brown said he saw a balanced budget for the next four years.</p>
<p>Spending in the upcoming year is set to rise 5 percent, or $4.7 billion, from the current 2012-13 budget. Schools and universities will see a $4 billion boost, health care spending will rise $1.2 billion, while transfers to local government will drop $2.1 billion.</p>
<p>This is a tentative surplus, and there is plenty of debt, but this is another small positive step. The plan in California is to increase spending slightly in the upcoming year after several years of budget cuts.</p>
<p>As I mentioned in the previous post, moving from state and local budget cuts to some small increases will be a plus for the economy.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/" type="external" /></p>
<p>More from our partners at <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/" type="external">Business Insider</a>:</p> | California on track for budget surplus, spending increases | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-01-11/california-track-budget-surplus-spending-increases | 2013-01-11 | 3 |
<p>At the 1947 Los Angeles funeral of that genius of urbane film comedy, Ernst Lubitsch, fellow émigré Billy Wilder said mournfully, “No more Lubitsch.” The director William Wyler, yet another German-born expatriate, responded, “Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures.”</p>
<p>The rejoinder appears even more bittersweet when the movie business’s ineluctable corollary is added to the exchange: there will always be remakes. Accordingly, Lubitsch’s The Little Shop Around the Corner of 1940 with central Pennsylvanian Jimmy Stewart as a central European leather goods salesman conducting a personal-ad romance in Budapest is transplanted in You’ve Got Mail of 1998 onto the island Manhattan and into the latter-day all-American form of Tom Hanks, with AOL email and on-line chat-rooms replacing Old World modes of loving and lurking.</p>
<p>The latest reels to be exhumed from Lubitsch’s cavernous crypt are those of his early sound film, Broken Lullaby of 1932. The movie marked a rare—indeed, never-repeated—departure for the director from his native habitat of briskly joyful and often provocative irony into the cloying climes of melodrama. While the film forsakes the quickness and quirk that were Lubitsch’s trademarks, the great director does not renounce his vaunted stylistic virtuosity, as in a shot taken from street level in which French troops marching down the Champs-Élysées in celebration of their victory in World War I are seen through the gap in the bystanders provided by the missing leg of a maimed veteran. Yet the succession of titles for the movie—from The Man I Killed to The Fifth Commandment to the over-sentimental and basically irrelevant Broken Lullaby insisted on by Paramount—speaks to the extent of the story’s debilitating sentimentality. Still, its anti-war message was ardently projected and prescient: the picture’s release came almost exactly one year before Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor in January of 1933.</p>
<p>The latest Lubitsch tomb raider is François Ozon, the prolific filmmaker whose creations span an impressive range. Woody Allen-like, he cranks out a new movie almost every year. The quality, however, remains robust, though Ozon is more than thirty years younger than Allen, and if he keeps on at this pace it’s hard to imagine that he won’t succumb to routine and the seductions of place—from swank Upper West Side apartments to vintage Barcelona amusement parks.</p>
<p>Elegantly shot mostly in somber, antiqued black-and-white (the cinematographer Pascal Marti deservedly won a French Oscar this year for his work), the remake itself to the stylized anguish of Lubitsch’s “lullaby.” Disastrously miscast in the original in the person of Phillips Holmes, the role of the French soldier (in search of forgiveness for his own war deeds from the parents and fiancée (rendered with a compelling mixture of poise and fragility by Paula Beer) of a young German killed just two months before the armistice, is taken up by Pierre Niney. As Adrien, Niney has an archetypal Gallic visage fitted with a Proustian moustache and dark bangs that dangle and mourn on the pale skin of his high forehead. In the spirit &#160;of homage, Ozon accords Niney his fair share of sighings and faintings.</p>
<p>But unlike late-model Woody Allen, Ozon remains the master of architectural spaces and landscape, from the cobbled alleyways of the ancient cathedral city of Quedlinburg in central Germany, to the wood-paneled Ratskeller and German Imperial interiors of home and office of the doctor and his wife who’ve lost their son in the war, to the fields of the Marne as seen from the train, to the soaring and riotously convoluted vaults of the foyer of the Paris Opera, to the endless grey-blue vistas stretching before the grieving fiancée and the mysterious French visitor as they look out from the foothills of the Harz mountains over the Westphalian countryside, the view transformed fleetingly into muted color photography to suggest the reawakening of life and perhaps love in the damaged characters.</p>
<p>Why has Ozon chosen this unlikely Lubitsch movie to be— as we learn in the credits— “loosely inspired by”? Certainly the task of commenting on, and adding to, a Lubitsch film is a worthy challenge for a cineaste, especially one of Ozon’s talent and ambition. The topic of cross-border reconciliation is always timely, but again now in the age of endless war and the increasing frailty of the European Union, a project that was launched in order to put an end to the continent’s continual wars.</p>
<p>The film is about the survivor standing in for the vanished. The overabundance of guilt must be reapportioned. When compared with Christian Petzold’s Phoenix of &#160;2015, a film set in the immediate aftermath not of the First World War, but of the Second, and similarly—but far more devastatingly—concerned with both the necessity of forgetting and not-forgetting, Ozon’s remake of Broken Lullaby is a stilted affair, even while it captivates as an exercise in style.</p>
<p>Ozon jettisons the awful title of his model in favor of Frantz, the name of the fallen soldier at whose grave the bereaved fiancée first spies the mysterious French visitor, Adrien also leaving flowers there. Coupled with the investigation of transferred love and identity, the movie’s title and themes made me think of that silly joke about the German officer who arrives in the sodden trenches to announce&#160; to his beleaguered and filthy regiment that “The finally will be a change of underwear today. Fritz you change with Fran(t)z, Fran(t)z you change with Fritz.”</p>
<p>In spite of the avowed looseness of his inspiration by Lubitsch’s film, Ozon retains much from the original, including the French visitor’s musicality.&#160; Before the war in Paris, he was a member of the opera orchestra but has given up playing because he “can no longer hear the notes.” It is not deafness, but psychological trauma that causes this condition. Nonetheless, he is convinced by his German hosts to take up the violin of the dead son and thus bring the departed fleetingly back to life. ETA Hoffmann was an expert in this particular line of uncanniness two centuries earlier, as in his story Councillor Krespel in which a violin conjures the voice of a vanished child, and a Strad is dismembered and ultimately consigned to the grave with the deceased. Persuaded by the family to overcome his reluctance, the Frenchman&#160;launches into Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.</p>
<p>For a moment the parents escape reality and seem to grope towards happiness—a fine metaphor for the promise of cinema. This impromptu performance offers the opportunity for excessive emotional display and nerve-fraying vibrato, while making knowing allusion to the narrator of A Thousand and One Nights and the necessity of fictions—often very elaborate ones—for survival. Needless to say, Adrien’s playing is too much for him, and an ardent Romantic phrase sends him crumpling to the Biedermeier carpet.</p>
<p>In one of several dreamy interludes, Adrien gives the dead German (Anton von Lucke) tips on his violin playing, lovingly touching his hands to correct flaws of technique. Here it is jarringly obvious to musicians and non-musicians alike that neither Lucke nor Niney are violinists. Unfazed, Oxon screens the equivalent of Florence Foster Jenkins giving a voice lesson. The result in Frantz is not the intended one evoking the candlelit glow of memory, but rather a surreal, awkward representation of the subtlety and intimacy of musical movement.</p>
<p>Having non-musicians flounder around at musical instruments has been a cinematic convention since Lubitsch’s day, but such awkward moments require more than merely the suspension of disbelief on the part of viewers.&#160; They demand that we reject the truth of our perceptions, that we ignore what we see. In the ham hands of these actors the sentimentality of the scene threatens to suffocate the whole story, proving yet again that rather than saving a movie, music often illuminates its greatest failings.</p> | Raiding the Tomb of Lubitsch | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/04/21/raiding-the-tomb-of-lubitsch/ | 2017-04-21 | 4 |
<p>"Ask Brianna" is a column from NerdWallet for 20-somethings or anyone else starting out. I'm here to help you manage your money, find a job and pay off student loans — all the real-world stuff no one taught us how to do in college. Send your questions about postgrad life to [email protected].</p>
<p>Q: I'm trying to eat better and exercise more, but I don't have a ton of money in my budget to spare. How can I live healthily on the cheap?</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A: Committing to wellness doesn't have to be the pricey endeavor that leggings retailers and fancy salad shops want you to think it is. Cooking dinner at home instead of eating out, for example, was associated with healthier diets and lower spending on food overall, according to a recent study from the University of Washington School of Public Health.</p>
<p>If you're used to springing for fast food or ordering a lot of takeout, it'll take dedication to start planning meals and cooking for yourself. Working out cheaply or for free will also require researching options and discovering what you enjoy. But you'll feel stronger and more in control of your health — and budget — so give these strategies a try.</p>
<p>KNOW WHAT 'HEALTHY' MEANS</p>
<p>First, understand what counts as "healthy." Working within guidelines can help you realistically build exercise and a nutritious diet into your lifestyle. That will prevent you from overspending on boutique gyms and organic produce you don't need and can't afford.</p>
<p>The MyPlate Checklist Calculator from the U.S. Department of Agriculture offers personalized guidelines for the amount of fruit, vegetables, grains, protein and dairy to eat per day. Use the nonprofit Environmental Working Group's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce to decide which fruits and vegetables to splurge on. The "Clean Fifteen" lists foods least likely to contain pesticides, which means you can select their cheaper, non-organic versions.</p>
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<p>Adults should do aerobic exercise (like walking, swimming, biking or running) at moderate intensity for a total of 150 minutes per week or at vigorous intensity for 75 minutes per week, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Two or more days of muscle-strengthening activities, such as push-ups, c runches or yoga, are also recommended.</p>
<p>START SMALL AND SHOP WITH INTENTION</p>
<p>You probably won't develop a suitable, convenient and cheap eating and exercise regimen overnight, so start small. Look for ways to add fruits and vegetables to meals you already eat, says Jessica Matthews, senior adviser for health and fitness education at the American Council on Exercise. If you eat eggs every morning, she says, throw in some chopped mushrooms or spinach.</p>
<p>To save money on groceries , start by planning two dishes for the week, says Erin Chase, founder of the blog $5 Dinners. She recommends looking at grocery store sales and building your meals around a protein — a meat or meat alternative — that's on sale that week. Write a shopping list with your daily basics plus the ingredients for your two recipes, and minimize impulse buys.</p>
<p>"Give yourself enough structure so you're not wildly overspending, but allow yourself three or four new things to try — as long as you know you'll eat them," she says.</p>
<p>CRAFT YOUR OWN WORKOUTS</p>
<p>Gym memberships cost an average of $54 a month in 2015, according to the most recent data from the International Health, Racquet &amp; Sportsclub Association, a fitness club trade group.</p>
<p>But you may not have that much to spare, or maybe the gym isn't your thing. Opt for at-home or other do-it-yourself workouts using free resources. The website for the American Council on Exercise has a library of step-by-step workout tutorials you can search by muscle group or experience level. If you enjoy fitness classes, you can find free online classes at sites like DoYogaWithMe.</p>
<p>To stay motivated, add workout blocks to your personal or work calendar; set specific, attainable goals; and make a plan to stay accountable with a friend. Maybe you and a work colleague will train for a 5K run together and do muscle-strengthening exercises twice a week.</p>
<p>If 30-minute workouts don't fit your schedule, try for three 10-minute bursts of exercise throughout the day, Matthews says. Whether you choose hiking or at-home Pilates videos, make it something you like, not what you think you're supposed to do, and stick with it.</p>
<p>"What is it that interests you most?" Matthews says. "The way that people see the best results is by doing something consistently."</p>
<p>________________________________________________________________________________</p>
<p>This article was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. Email staff writer Brianna McGurran: [email protected]. Twitter: @briannamcscribe.</p>
<p>RELATED LINKS</p>
<p>U.S. Department of Agriculture: MyPlate Checklist Calculator</p>
<p>https://www.choosemyplate.gov/MyPlate-Daily-Checklist-input</p>
<p>Environmental Working Group: Shoppers' Guide to Pesticides in Produce</p>
<p>https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php</p>
<p>NerdWallet: 12 Ways to Save Money on Groceries</p>
<p>https://nerd.me/save-on-groceries</p>
<p>American Council on Exercise: Fitness Programs</p>
<p>https://www.acefitness.org/acefit/fitness-programs/</p> | Ask Brianna: How can I eat well and stay fit on a budget? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/07/11/ask-brianna-how-can-eat-well-and-stay-fit-on-budget.html | 2017-07-11 | 0 |
<p>The international Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia on Middle East peace and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) seem set on an agenda that perceives September 2011 as an historical political watershed deadline. Among the partners to the Quartet – sponsored Palestinian – Israeli “peace process,” practically deadlocked since the collapse of the US, Palestinian and Israeli trilateral summit in Camp David in 2000, only the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu seems adamant to set a completely different agenda that renders any endeavor by the Quartet to revive the process a non – starter, thus dooming the September deadline beforehand as another missed opportunity for peace making.</p>
<p>Denying they are containment measures aimed at political survival to avert potential Palestinian simulation in the aftermath of the regime changes in Egypt and Tunisia, the PLO is bracing for what it declares as indeed “the” watershed deadline in September 2011 that would make or break its decision to resume as a partner to the “peace process.” The PLO is reshuffling its negotiations department as well as the cabinet of the self-ruled Palestinian Authority (PA) and has called for presidential, legislative and local elections by next September to empower itself with electoral legitimacy ahead of that deadline, encouraged by what the Quartet perceives as a “really important moment of opportunity,” in the words of the Quartet’s representative the former UK prime minister Tony Blair, which is an “opportunity” created by the Arab popular uprisings that so far have swept to the dustbin of history the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes, both considered for decades major pillars of the Middle East “peace process.”</p>
<p>Blair’s “moment of opportunity” (Sky News on Feb. 14) was voiced also the next day by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who told the London School of Economics that, “Time is a factor, and urgent progress in the Palestinian-Israeli settlement is necessary.” On the same day while on a visit in Israel and the PA, the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, citing the “significant changes in Tunisia and of course in Egypt,” said “there is an opportunity for us to try and engage better and more quickly on resolving the issue” of the peace process. On Feb. 12 the UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, citing the “one of the good things that might come from the events in Egypt and Tunisia,” joined the “peace opportunity” choir to urge that “it is vital now to take this (the peace process) forward” because “in a few years time a two – state solution will be much, much more difficult to achieve.” Citing the same “changes,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy told the annual dinner of the Jewish organizations (CRIF) in Paris on Feb. 9 that “it is urgent to revive direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.” Three days earlier, on Feb. 6, even the Israeli President, Shimon Peres, addressing the 11th annual Herzliya security conference and similarly citing the regional “dramatic events of the recent period” which make it “necessary for us to take the Israeli – Palestinian conflict off the regional agenda,” urged Netanyahu that it is a “must” Israel does “this as soon as possible.” It was also noteworthy that the secretary-general of the NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, found it necessary to contradict the official Israeli statements that the recent change in Egypt and Tunisia proves that Arab – Israeli conflict is NOT the source of instability in the Middle East. “The lack of a solution to the Israel – Palestinian conflict continues to undermine the stability of the region,” he told the Herzliya security conference.</p>
<p>TIMETABLE</p>
<p>To “do this,” it seems that all those who see in the collapse of the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt a “moment of opportunity” have set a timetable throughout the September deadline. In addition to the PLO’s measures, the UN Secretary General, in a press conference on Feb. 8, reminded that the Quartet will meet at the ministerial level in mid – March and decided at its latest meeting in Munich earlier this month “to step up its search for comprehensive Middle East peace,” adding the Quartet “expects to meet with Israeli and Palestinian officials separately in Brussels at the beginning of March.” Meanwhile, Paris will host a new international donor conference in June. Ahead of her meeting in Ramallah with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas earlier in the week, the EU’s Ashton sounded affirmative on the Palestinian make – it – or – break – it September deadline, thus raising Palestinian expectations to the highest level possible without revealing whatever she might conceal of Israeli forthcoming to vindicate it. “It is a timeframe that everybody has signed up to,” she said, and while admitting it would be “challenging,” she added: “I think we have to try and reach it.” In Munich, the Quartet’s statement on Feb. 5 similarly reiterated its support for “concluding these (Palestinian – Israeli) negotiations by September 2011,” when the PLO negotiators hope to see international recognition of their aspired state come true.</p>
<p>This deadline was initially set by U.S. President Barak Obama when he, on last September 2, re-launched Palestinian – Israeli “direct” talks declaring they should be concluded a year later and, in his speech delivered to the UN General Assembly later that month expressed his hope that, “when we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations — an independent, sovereign state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel.”</p>
<p>In spite of their bitter “disappointment,” which was expressed on record by Abbas, with U.S. and European repeatedly broken past promises, PLO presidency and negotiators wishfully continue to make believe and insistently opt to being held hostage to renewed similar promises, hoping their “peace partners” would, by a miracle, commit to their words. Building on these “promises,” the PLO mandated its Palestinian Authority’s cabinet of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad with a two – year plan for building the institutions of a “state” that is scheduled to be completed by September.</p>
<p>However, Obama’s re-launched “direct” talks were suspended three weeks later, collapsing on Obama’s helplessness vis – a – vis Israel’s challenge to his on record call for the extension of the suspension of the ongoing expansion of the Israeli illegal colonial settlements on the area designated for a Palestinian state. Accordingly there are no negotiations to be “concluded” by September.</p>
<p>WHAT ‘MOMENT OF OPPORTUNITY’?</p>
<p>Suddenly, the Quartet sees a “moment of opportunity” to re–launch the negotiations and possibly to meet the September deadline. Ironically, the opportunity is found in the demise of the regional pivotal Egyptian pillar of the “peace process,” which could not help the process out while it was still in power. The reader is owed an explanation.</p>
<p>True the post – Mubarak military transitional regime had already pronounced its commitment to the treaties signed by its predecessor “regionally and internationally,” implicitly including the peace treaty with Israel, but committing to this treaty is one thing and committing to the previous active Egyptian role in the “peace process” is another. At least for a year and for the near future thereafter the new regime will be too preoccupied internally to spare time for a role in a process that has proved futile over the past two decades, let alone that the foreign policy of the new emerging regime, especially in the regional arena, is still a guess.</p>
<p>Both Israel and the PLO are obvious losers of the absence of the Egyptian role in the process, and consequently weaker. Obviously, the Quartet perceives a weaker PLO – – which has just lost its Egyptian major Arab backer, and saw its U.S. backer renege on its promises and its European advocates of a two – state solution helplessly following in the footsteps of their U.S. leader – – would be in a position to be more receptive of a Quartet pressure to resume direct negotiations with its Israeli protagonist, which the Quartet failed to influence.</p>
<p>Readers may be reminded that a weaker PLO which lost its Iraqi backer following the Kuwait war in 1991 was unmercifully pressured to accept the historical concession of recognizing Israel on four fifths of its historical homeland, which in turn paved the way for convening the 1991 Madrid Middle East peace conference and later the Oslo accords to which the PLO has been held hostage ever since, wishfully believing that the international community which sponsored both events would ultimately deliver on its promises on a Palestinian state in return.</p>
<p>PLO peace credentials could only be challenged by its own people. 1600 documents revealed recently by Aljazeera satellite TV station and British The Guardian show how far the PLO negotiators have gone in their concessions for peace; Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat has resigned in consequence, his department is now being reshuffled and he went on record to say that the leaked documents endangered his life. Never in PLO history its leadership was so isolated and its legitimacy and credibility challenged internally as it is now, thanks to the broken promises of the U.S. – led sponsors of the “peace process.”</p>
<p>Obviously, next September is the moment of truth for the PLO. Then, it has no choice but to deliver on its own promises to its people or face Palestinian waves of the Tsunami of the revolt of Arab masses against the status quo, which would become impossible to sustain even for the shortest period of time unless the PLO is empowered with the long promised and long awaited Palestinian state. The PLO has no interest whatsoever in sustaining the status quo; Israel is the only beneficiary. This unbalanced political equation is a recipe for disaster, not for peace making.</p>
<p>The alternative was predicted by the Arab – Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, Hanin Zoubi, who declared recently that “maybe we can free ourselves of (Israeli) occupation as well,” citing the example of the Egyptian Intifada and noting: “Israel has been relying on the weakness of the Arab people, but now this has been changed.”</p>
<p>Taken by the overwhelming surprise of the Intifada of the Arab masses in Tunisia and Egypt, the world public opinion seems to forget that “Intifada” is an Arab word coined for the first time in a Palestinian context to describe a civil and peaceful revolt and uprising against the Israeli military occupation that brought the PLO officially into the occupied territories and the “peace process.”</p>
<p>The current status quo is ripe for another Intifida that would certainly take the PLO out of both, unless the Quartet takes immediate action to avert such a drastic shift of events, but the Quartet action is no more urgent than in Israel. Squeezed between external and internal pressures, the PLO as a peace partner is at its weakest breaking point and could not afford the slightest additional pressure.</p>
<p>NICOLA NASSER is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.</p>
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<p /> | Palestinian Deadline Doomed | true | https://counterpunch.org/2011/02/18/palestinian-deadline-doomed/ | 2011-02-18 | 4 |
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<p>Our campus was shut down from Tuesday through Friday and most of our residential students left campus to either travel to homes out of danger or to assist families in harm’s way.</p>
<p>Athletes and band members remained on campus throughout the storm so that they could make the trip to Albuquerque, even though weather conditions prevented any opportunity to practice. Fortunately, Friday brought much-needed relief, the airports in Baton Rouge and New Orleans were reopened, the team was able to make flight adjustments, and the band departed by bus one day behind schedule.</p>
<p>Our reception in Albuquerque was beyond our expectations.</p>
<p>Everyone was friendly and genuinely excited to welcome us. From the friendly Lobos fan manning the counter at the car rental counter, who was happy that he was on duty when we returned the car on Sunday to tell us how much he enjoyed our band, to the staff at the hotel, to the personnel at the stadium happy to give us restaurant suggestions, to UNM President Bob Frank and his wife, Janet, and his staff, we can only say thank you.</p>
<p>Our team gave its all on the field, and we extend congratulations to Coach Bob Davie and the Lobos for a great performance and outstanding sportsmanship.</p>
<p>We especially thank the members of the community who came together to raise the funds necessary to support the band’s travel.</p>
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<p>Our band has played Super Bowls, presidential inaugural parades, NFL games and traveled abroad. The band’s Dancing Dolls performed with Madonna at halftime of this year’s Super Bowl, at her invitation.</p>
<p>They were overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response received from your fans and all said that the sacrifices made to get to Albuquerque were worth it.</p>
<p>Finally, we are a small but proud university with a rich tradition and a strong alumni base across the country and abroad. We count 10 graduates who have distinguished themselves in the U.S. Army and Marines by attaining the rank of general, including retired Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, who distinguished himself by leading the recovery effort in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.</p>
<p>We normally would have had a much larger contingent of fans with us, but several groups canceled plans due to the storm. We proudly call ourselves the Jaguar Nation.</p>
<p>So, on behalf of the Southern University Jaguar Nation, I say thank you, Albuquerque. You are truly a great city.</p> | Jaguar Nation Says Thank You, Lobos | false | https://abqjournal.com/128219/jaguar-nation-says-thank-you-lobos.html | 2012-09-05 | 2 |
<p>For Mariam Matiashvili, Georgia's crumbling tourist trade is a health risk.</p>
<p>The 64-year-old woman spends much of her meager pension of 150 lari ($68) a month on medicine and has long lived off selling cheap jewelry at a flea market to tourists, mainly from Russia and Ukraine. Now, the number of visitors is shrinking due to the economic crisis in those countries and people like her in this former Soviet republic are feeling the pain.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"There were some signs of life in January, when suddenly some tourists from Russia, Ukraine and Poland appeared, but since then it's been a complete catastrophe," said Matiashvili. Some days she makes five lari from tourists, sometimes only one.</p>
<p>Georgia, a mountainous nation in the South Caucasus, relies heavily on wine exports and on tourists attracted to the mountains and beaches that for decades made the country a favored holiday destination for the Soviet elites. While tourists might ordinarily be enticed as Georgia's currency sinks, making travel cheaper, many of those who visit Georgia come from countries facing their own economic problems.</p>
<p>Georgia's currency, the lari, has lost more than 20 percent of its value against the dollar since August — but Ukraine's hryvnia currency has lost about 60 percent against the dollar and the Russian ruble roughly 50 percent.</p>
<p>Due to the economic tensions, tens of thousands are expected at an opposition-led protest Saturday in the capital, Tbilisi. There are fears the march could turn violent, due to the bitter political divide between the government team formed by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili's party and supporters of former President Mikhail Saakashvili, whose party has been in opposition since losing the 2012 election.</p>
<p>The government, led by Ivanishvili ally Irakli Garibashvili, insists the crisis has been talked up by political opponents and sensationalist media and is not the result of policy failings.</p>
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<p>"I think that really an artificial hysteria has been created, especially by the media," Prime Minister Garibashvili said last month in a notably pugnacious response. "We have to calm, normalize and stabilize the situation. I want to say that we're doing everything to correct the situation as quickly as possible."</p>
<p>While it has been 24 years since Georgia voted for independence from the Soviet Union, the country retains close business links to Russia and Ukraine. As the war in eastern Ukraine, international sanctions against Russia and the sinking price of oil price worldwide have ravaged the economies of those two countries, Georgia has become collateral damage.</p>
<p>While the falling lari has made many imports more expensive, it has fallen by less than the Russian ruble over the last year, making exports to that key market more difficult. One affected industry is Georgian wine, long renowned in neighboring countries, and which has started to attract the attention of European and American connoisseurs in recent years. Despite producers branching out, Russia and Ukraine remain the top two wine export markets. In January and February this year, exports to Russia were down 85 percent and those to Ukraine fell by two-thirds.</p>
<p>Paata Sheshelidze, director of the Institute of Economic Freedom, said the economic difficulties have been made worse by government policies, including regulations and taxes that he said have restricted development of the private sector. The weakening of Georgia's currency, he said, was largely due to an increase in the money supply to cover budget expenses.</p>
<p>The currency turbulence has also had a devastating effect on those Georgians who took out foreign-currency loans in search of lower interest rates. Igor Khuchua mortgaged his apartment to fund a bakery, but now, at 66, he faces being made homeless. Despite getting help from the bank to restructure his debt, Khuchua sees no way out.</p>
<p>"I've basically lost my apartment. I took out a loan on it to open my business, but the lari's fall has had a negative effect," he said. "I can't blame anyone. I took the risk myself, but the situation's objectively worsened with the fall of the national currency."</p> | Georgians suffer fallout from trouble in Russia, Ukraine; opposition calls for mass protest | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/03/21/georgians-suffer-fallout-from-trouble-in-russia-ukraine-opposition-calls-for.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
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<p>Image source: Big Lots.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Discount retailer Big Lots (NYSE: BIG) posted mixed second-quarter earnings results on Friday, Aug. 26, 2016. Sales ticked lower, but profits jumped as the company attracted steady customer traffic in an overall soft industry.</p>
<p>Here's how the headline results stacked up against the prior-year period:</p>
<p>Data source: Big Lots' financial filings. YOY = year over year.</p>
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<p>Sales growth slowed from the prior quarter's 3% boost (which was a four-year high) to just barely meet the low end of management's May forecast. Comps rose by 0.3%, extending the retailer's growth streak to 10 consecutive quarters -- but only by the smallest of margins.</p>
<p>Here are the other key highlights of the quarter:</p>
<p>"We are pleased to report comps increased for the 10th consecutive quarter and our earnings were above the high end of our guidance range, increasing 27% over Q2 last year," CEO David Campisi said. Speaking of its core customer, which executives refer to as "Jennifer," Campisi noted that Big Lots' marketing and merchandising initiatives resonated with shoppers this quarter.</p>
<p>"Jennifer is responding positively to our strategic focus on ownable and winnable merchandise categories, improved merchandise presentations and more consistent in-store execution," he said. By "ownable" categories, Big Lots means retailing segments like furniture, where its market share is significantly higher than other areas of the store like food and electronics.</p>
<p>Campisi and his executive team forecast no real change in sales growth trends over the next two quarters as comps should increase by just a small margin. The key fourth quarter will have "flattish" comps, they said, which leaves the door open for a slight decline. Big Lots hasn't posted negative comps since its last two-year slump ended in Q4 of 2013.</p>
<p>Image source: Big Lots.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, management narrowed their overall 2016 projection to between 1% and 2% gains, compared to the "low single digits" growth that was their last official forecast.Big Lots expects to produce slightly higher cash flow than originally thought, and earnings are now seen rising by as much as 18% to mark a boost over last quarter's 16% target.</p>
<p>Longer term, the company's biggest strategic initiative involves ramping up its e-commerce presence now that its website is taking orders but carries just a limited portion of its selection. Online sales are worth between 3% and 5% of total revenue for many national retailers, and so Big Lots has its work cut out for it to raise its e-commerce contribution up from zero right now.</p>
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<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSigma/info.aspx" type="external">Demitrios Kalogeropoulos Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Big Lots. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Big Lots Inc. Extends Its Growth Streak as Sales Gains Slow | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/08/26/big-lots-inc-extends-its-growth-streak-as-sales-gains-slow.html | 2016-08-26 | 0 |
<p>Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has announced that he will inform supporters on May 5 during a visit to his hometown of Hope — which is also the hometown of former President Bill Clinton — whether or not he plans to run for president.</p>
<p>Huckabee last ran for president in 2008, and enjoyed plenty of grassroots support but ultimately lacked the funding to beat out better-financed rivals including eventual 2008 and 2012 GOP nominees Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor, according to an <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2015/0418/Huckabee-poised-to-jump-into-GOP-primary" type="external">Associated Press report</a>.</p>
<p>Huckabee stepped down from his show on Fox News earlier this year in order to consider a White House bid, and he has been attempting to put the financial structure in place that would allow him to make a deep run in the GOP nomination fight.</p>
<p>In an interview with Fox News yesterday, he said that he would make his decision official while visiting Hope on May 5.</p>
<p>“There’s going to be an announcement that day, and everyone will know after then for sure whether Mike Huckabee is in the race or not,” he said.</p>
<p>Before the interview with Fox News, he met with reporters in Washington, D.C., to talk about his potential campaign and what lessons he took from his 2008 bid. He said that cash would be the necessary factor that could put his campaign over the top, and he needed to make sure he had the structure in place to raise the necessary capital to compete with the big dogs, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, widely presumed to be the frontrunner.</p>
<p>Huckabee was one of the lower-funded candidates in 2008, spending just $1 million and becoming a contender for a little while before he ceded the nomination to McCain. He said his 2016 campaign will need “a whole lot more money,” according to the report.</p>
<p>In the meantime, he’s been reaching out to donors to figure out how much funding he could raise in order to keep the campaign from running out of steam, saying that he doesn’t want to “jump in a pool that doesn’t have any water in it.”</p>
<p>Huckabee said he would likely rely on a super PAC, which can raise and spend unlimited money, although it cannot coordinate with his campaign after he declares his candidacy.</p>
<p /> | Mike Huckabee is about to run for president — and a declaration is coming May 5 | false | http://natmonitor.com/2015/04/18/mike-huckabee-is-about-to-run-for-president-and-a-declaration-is-coming-may-5/ | 2015-04-18 | 3 |
<p>Investing.com – The pound rallied on Monday, gaining ground against the dollar and the euro following reports that Britain and the European Union are close to a breakthrough in phase one of Brexit talks.</p>
<p>was up 0.42% to 1.3528 by 07:07 AM ET (12:07 GMT), from around 1.3426 earlier.</p>
<p>The pound strengthened following reports that Britain made a key concession over the Irish border, offering no divergence between Northern Ireland and the Republic over single market and customs union rules.</p>
<p>Ireland, backed by the EU, is seeking assurances that Britain will commit to keeping business regulations in Northern Ireland the same as in the EU, to avoid a ‘hard border’ that could disrupt peace on the island.</p>
<p>British Prime Minister is hoping that talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier on Monday can persuade EU leaders that “sufficient progress” has been made on divorce terms for them to agree next week to open talks on their future trade relationship.</p>
<p>With the clock ticking down to the March 2019 exit date, May is under pressure to start talks on its future trade ties by the end of the year to remove uncertainty for companies that do business in the EU.</p>
<p>Sterling was also higher against the euro, with down 0.82% to 0.8757.</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> | Forex – Sterling Rallies on Hopes for Brexit Breakthrough | false | https://newsline.com/forex-sterling-rallies-on-hopes-for-brexit-breakthrough/ | 2017-12-04 | 1 |
<p>LONDON (Reuters) – Negotiations over future border arrangements between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland after Brexit have made progress but there is no agreement yet, Ireland’s European Affairs Minister Helen McEntee said on Monday.</p>
<p>What will happen to the border between the republic and Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, is one of three issues on which the European Union wants to see “sufficient progress” before it will move on to talks about trade with the UK after Brexit.</p>
<p>“I do believe we are nearing closer progress, and the sufficient progress, we are not there yet and that is why we are meeting as a cabinet this morning to look at where we are,” McEntee said during an interview with BBC Radio 4.</p>
<p>“If there is not enough that has been given to us in written format, it is up to the UK government to produce that.</p>
<p>“I would hope, and I think we all want to hope, that we can move on to phase two as quickly as possible and particularly in time for the December council on the 14th of December.”</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> | Irish minister sees progress on border issue but no agreement with UK yet | false | https://newsline.com/irish-minister-sees-progress-on-border-issue-but-no-agreement-with-uk-yet/ | 2017-12-04 | 1 |
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<p>This came in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, which has claimed over 50 lives and injured over 400 people thus far. National tensions were at an all-time high after ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, as millions of Americans feared that there may be more bullets in store for innocent civilians.</p>
<p>It should come as no surprise then that the students completely freaked out after their teacher began yelling “active shooter,” and telling her students to close the doors and get on the floor. They frantically began texting their friends, calling their parents, and alerting 911 as to the situation.</p>
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<p>Once LAPD officers arrived on the scene, they scoured the building for any hints of a mass shooting, and they found none. The teacher has since been put in LAPD custody according to <a href="http://abc7.com/lapd-investigates-reports-of-possible-shots-fired-at-usc/2480006/" type="external">ABC 7</a>, and several students even managed to catch a recording of the whole thing.</p>
<p>LOS ANGELES (KABC) — A USC professor suffered “some sort of an episode” that caused students to believe there was an active shooter at school, triggering the campus scare and police response on Monday, police said.</p>
<p>LAPD Deputy Chief Phillip Tingirides said the professor, who was not identified, told her students to lock the doors and get on the floor. Then, she began yelling, “active shooter.”</p>
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<p>LAPD officers and officials with the USC Department of Public Safety searched the campus, focusing mainly on Fertitta Hall.</p>
<p>The search netted no evidence of a shooting or a shooter at school, authorities said. An all-clear was subsequently declared.</p>
<p>Tingirides said the professor was in LAPD custody.</p>
<p>“We’re trying to figure out what our best course of action is going to be with her,” he said.</p>
<p>Tingirides said he does not believe this was some kind of test or drill.</p>
<p>Some surrounding streets were shut down due to the investigation.</p>
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<p>The University of Southern California has since confirmed that the teacher was arrested in order to determine her psychological health. No other information has been released, but we will update this site as more information comes to light.</p>
<p>H/T – <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/10/watch-usc-professor-arrested-making-students-report-fake-active-shooter/" type="external">Gateway Pundit</a></p> | WATCH: Demented USC Professor Forces Students to Call in Fake “Active Shooter” | true | http://silenceisconsent.net/watch-demented-usc-professor-forces-students-call-fake-active-shooter/ | 2018-05-03 | 0 |
<p>Editor &amp; Publisher Harper's publisher John R. MacArthur says he expects the Arab TV network to be "knocked out in the first 48 hours, like what happened in Kabul." He also tells Barbara Bedway: "The Pentagon is expecting a kind of Panama-style war, over in three days. Nobody has time to see or ask any questions. I think if embedded reporters see anything important -- or bloody -- the Pentagon will interfere. Same result, different tactic: the truth gets distorted." &gt; <a href="http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=37403" type="external">NYT considering separate section for war news (AdAge.com)</a></p> | Harper's boss predicts al-Jazeera will be knocked out fast | false | https://poynter.org/news/harpers-boss-predicts-al-jazeera-will-be-knocked-out-fast | 2003-03-18 | 2 |
<p>An American-led military coalition has confirmed that a U.S. airstrike in Mosul, the last standing Islamic stronghold in Iraq, caused hundreds of civilian deaths. The FBI has also acknowledge that there is a current investigation underway into the incident. This is the largest loss of civilian life by American military in Iraq since the invasion.</p>
<p>Over 200 men, women, and children, including the elderly, were killed hours after the U.S. bombed an area in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cJRoA40uR8" type="external">Mosul</a> by request of the Iraqi security forces. The area was suspected to be hiding Islamic terrorists but also happened to be a large civilian housing complex. The coalition is now investigating whether the explosions caused the collapse or if it was a cover up for Islamic militant bombings. The coalition’s statement <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/25/us/politics/us-led-coalition-confirms-strikes-hit-mosul-site-where-civilians-died.html?_r=0" type="external">read:</a></p>
<p>The coalition respects human life, which is why we are assisting our Iraqi partner forces in their effort to liberate their lands from ISIS brutality.&#160;Our goal has always been for zero civilian casualties, but the coalition will not abandon our commitment to our Iraqi partners because of ISIS’s inhuman tactics terrorizing civilians, using human shields, and fighting from protected sites such as schools, hospitals, religious sites and civilian neighborhoods.&#160;Coalition forces work diligently and deliberately to be precise in our airstrikes. Coalition forces comply with the Law of Armed Conflict and take all reasonable precautions during the planning and execution of airstrikes to reduce the risk of harm to civilians.</p>
<p>The area targeted was a recently liberated neighborhood in Mosul. It took six days to begin hearing about the casualties due to the delay of rescue services from Baghdad. Lisa Grande, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/25/us/politics/us-led-coalition-confirms-strikes-hit-mosul-site-where-civilians-died.html?_r=0" type="external">stated:</a></p>
<p>We are stunned by this terrible loss of life and wish to express our deepest condolences to the many families who have reportedly been impacted by this tragedy. Parties to the conflict — all parties — are obliged to do everything possible to protect civilians. This means that combatants cannot use people as human shields and cannot imperil lives through indiscriminate use of firepower.</p>
<p>Over 3,800 civilians have died so far in the six month fight over Mosul. We send our prayers and thoughts to the victims of this tragedy.</p>
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<p>Featured image via&#160;By Voice of <a href="http://www.voanews.com/a/eastern-mosul-ruins-islamic-state-militants-retreat/3692032.html" type="external">America</a>, Public <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55377394" type="external">Domain</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | U.S. – Led Coalition Confirms Strikes Left Hundreds Of Men, Women, And Children Dead (VIDEO) | true | http://offthemainpage.com/2017/03/25/u-s-led-coalition-confirms-strikes-left-hundreds-of-men-women-and-children-dead-video/ | 2017-03-25 | 4 |
<p>By Chris Hughes</p>
<p>There is power in stories, especially in ministry. Stories define us and help us navigate our way through times of change. Having hope for the future of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship means we remember our story and think of ways to tell a better story.</p>
<p>The 2012 CBF Task Force has hosted listening sessions to gather stories that can make CBF thrive. The 14-member team of clergy, professors and lay leaders is asking for our stories about why CBF is important and how the organization can better affirm its Baptist principles. In other words, “How can we tell a better Baptist story for the next 20 years?”</p>
<p>In many ways, the Fellowship was birthed as a dream for a better Baptist story – a new story that reflected historic ways of being Baptist. This new story paved the way for a Baptist body united around the idea that we could do more together than we could separately; that together we could tolerate a great deal of openness and that together we could welcome more and more people. This is the better Baptist story that all of us hope for in CBF, and it is one worth passing on to the children that come after us.</p>
<p>But even carefully told stories can venture off path. In 2000, the CBF Coordinating Council issued a policy statement for its national hiring and funding that many in this Baptist movement are having trouble reconciling. In short, the statement declared that CBF would not support the staff hiring or support as field personnel someone who is a “practicing homosexual.” (Read the entire statement <a href="http://www.thefellowship.info/About-Us/FAQ" type="external">here</a>.)</p>
<p>It is time for us to be honest with ourselves about this issue. In our Fellowship, there are people at this very moment who are discovering their own sexual identity – an identity that may be challenged by this standard. There are churches in our Fellowship who welcome and affirm these individuals. And there are a growing number of people young and old whose consciences can no longer allow them to sit idly by while these churches and individuals are kept out of full participation in this Fellowship.</p>
<p>How can we hope to pass on this story if the creative, young people needed to tell it are all gone, either because they do not fit this standard or because conscience compels them to move on?</p>
<p>If CBF continues to uphold this policy, then we will have to face questions like, “What about the children who grow up in CBF churches that discover they are gay or lesbian?” “What happens when a gay or lesbian person senses a call to the mission field and considers CBF to be his or her home?” “Are churches that welcome and affirm gay and lesbian persons not allowed into full participation in CBF life?”</p>
<p>More importantly, CBF will have to face the growing number of people young and old who love Jesus and love people and want to share a story that carries us beyond this policy.</p>
<p>We do so much to make CBF a story worth sharing. We make it about openness and inclusion. We tolerate questions and differences of opinions. We focus on justice, peacemaking and racial reconciliation. We reach out in the name of Jesus and care for people’s livelihoods as well as their souls. We make CBF a better Baptist story worth passing on in many ways — save for this one policy.</p>
<p>So let’s stop saving it. Before this policy gets tucked away in the annals of “This is the way we’ve always done it,” let’s set our consciences free and rewrite this chapter. Before any more CBF children grow up and realize they are not entirely welcome here and before any more Jesus-and-people-loving Christians move on to another home, let’s tell our 2012 Task Force we need to remove this policy.</p>
<p>The 2012 Task Force is still accepting input through their online <a href="http://www.thefellowship.info/About-Us/Who-We-Are/2012taskfoce/Feedback-Form" type="external">survey</a> and will make recommendations to the Coordinating Council in February for improving the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.</p>
<p>This is just one of several opportunities in the coming year where we have the chance to tell this new story through our Fellowship. Let’s tell it as loudly as we can, and let’s start telling it now.</p> | Telling a better Baptist story | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/telling-a-better-baptist-story/ | 3 |
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<p>Washington attorney Clark Kent Ervin resigned in September after serving a little over a year as lead monitor overseeing the consent agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice and Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb where Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer in 2014. Boston attorney Natashia Tidwell, who has been with the Ferguson monitor team since its start, now leads it.</p>
<p>Concerns over the cost of monitoring were detailed in exclusive interviews with The Associated Press.</p>
<p>The money spent on monitoring is costly in Ferguson, paid for entirely with city funds. The community of 20,000 is much smaller, with far less money, than most cities subject to Justice Department consent agreements. Money is so tight that Ferguson voters twice in 2016 approved tax increases to keep the budget balanced.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Mayor James Knowles III said Ervin failed to follow through on some projects, including opening an office in Ferguson and surveying residents. City Attorney Apollo Carey said his departure slowed a court audit and other reforms.</p>
<p>“It begs the question: What are residents getting out of (monitoring)?” Knowles said. “They’re supposed to be getting transparency. They’re supposed to be getting regular updates and engagement from the monitor. They haven’t gotten any of it.”</p>
<p>City Manager De’Carlon Seewood said “there were a lot of concerns on both sides,” which led to Ervin stepping down. “The thought was it was best to depart,” Seewood said.</p>
<p>Ervin did not respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.</p>
<p>Ferguson fell under Justice Department scrutiny after Brown was killed by Ferguson officer Darren Wilson during an Aug. 9, 2014, confrontation on a neighborhood street. A St. Louis County grand jury and the Justice Department declined to charge Wilson, who resigned in November 2014.</p>
<p>But the shooting of the black, unarmed 18-year-old by the white officer drew attention to allegations about mistreatment of African-Americans by Ferguson’s police and court system. A Justice Department investigation led to a civil rights lawsuit that was settled in 2016 with the consent agreement.</p>
<p>The agreement calls for reforms such as hiring more black officers, requiring diversity training for police, and court reforms that include easing financial burdens for minor offenses such as traffic violations. The process is expected to take up to three years with oversight by a team of independent monitors.</p>
<p>Nine teams applied to perform the monitor duties. In July 2016, the Justice Department and Ferguson leaders chose the team led by Ervin, a former inspector general for the State Department and Homeland Security.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The agreement called for paying the eight-member monitor team up to $350,000 a year, with the total amount to be capped out at $1.25 million over five years. Ferguson paid $350,000 for the first 12-month period, and has paid another $145,000 since July of this year, its records show.</p>
<p>Of the initial $350,000, $291,192 was paid to Ervin’s law firm, Squire Patton Boggs, according to Ferguson records. It isn’t clear if Ervin received all of that money or if some was shared with other monitors or assistants, Seewood said. The agreement called for Ervin to be paid $685 per hour and work up to 30 hours a month on the monitoring, which would amount to $246,600 over a full year.</p>
<p>Since July of this year, an additional $108,000 has been paid out to a data collection firm, along with $21,000 to Tidwell and $15,000 split between two other monitor team members, Knowles said.</p>
<p>At a community meeting last December, Ervin pledged to conduct a survey of residents and to open an office in Ferguson. The survey never happened, and no office ever opened.</p>
<p>Knowles said the survey “should have been done in the first year and it wasn’t done. You can’t have a baseline survey of the community to see how it feels about progress if you don’t know what the baseline is.”</p>
<p>The proposal to open an office, Seewood said, was aimed at adding transparency to the reform process.</p>
<p>“I offered to give him an office at City Hall,” Seewood said of Ervin. “For some reason he was never able to make that commitment that he should be here.”</p>
<p>Carey, the city attorney, said during a town hall meeting last week that Ervin’s resignation has slowed reform efforts. He cited a court audit performed in August that remains incomplete.</p>
<p>Justice Department attorney Jude Volek said at the meeting that progress is being made despite Ervin’s resignation, aided by the fact that Tidwell has been involved in the process since day one.</p>
<p>“You can see her commitment,” Volek said.</p>
<p>Tidwell, who is a former police officer and federal prosecutor, declined comment through a spokeswoman.</p>
<p>Seewood also has high hopes for the team’s new leadership.</p>
<p>“She’s awesome,” he said of Tidwell. “I’m very optimistic.”</p> | Ferguson leaders wonder if monitor worth cost | false | https://abqjournal.com/1096513/ferguson-leaders-wonder-if-monitor-worth-cost.html | 2017-11-22 | 2 |
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<p>Donald Trump is a big part of the Megan Kelly nightly FOX News program lately. Could it be a mutually obsessive relationship with these two? Political Cartoon by A.F.Branco ©2016.</p>
<p>To see more Legal Insurrection Branco cartoons, <a href="http://legalinsurrection.com/tag/a-f-branco/" type="external">click here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://paypal.me/AntonioBranco" type="external">Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated</a>&#160;– &#160;$1.00 – $5.00 – $20 – $100 – &#160;it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. –&#160;THANK YOU!</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Mutually Assured Obsession | true | http://comicallyincorrect.com/2016/03/21/trump-and-megan-kelly/ | 2016-03-21 | 0 |
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<p>Several New Mexico Lobos celebrate their third straight win in the NMSU series with Lobo fans on Saturday night at Aggie Memorial Stadium. (Andres Leighton/For the Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>LAS CRUCES — To the surprise of many and to the satisfaction of the folks up north, the last team to have the ball did not win the annual showdown between the New Mexico Lobos and the New Mexico State Aggies.</p>
<p>But it might be a stretch to say defense won it.</p>
<p>Redshirt freshman quarterback Lamar Jordan hit tight end Reece White with a 5-yard touchdown with 27 seconds left in the game Saturday, giving the Lobos an exciting 38-35 victory over NMSU at Aggie Memorial Stadium.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The two offenses combined for 987 yards — 488 for NMSU, 499 for UNM.</p>
<p>The much-needed win makes UNM 1-2 entering its Mountain West Conference opener Friday against Fresno State in Albuquerque.</p>
<p>New Mexico State drops to 2-2. The Aggies play a “money game” at LSU on Saturday.</p>
<p>Given his defense’s struggles against NMSU, Lobos coach Bob Davie admitted he was holding his breath during those final 27 seconds.</p>
<p>UNM tight end Reece White (80) reaches back to snag the 5-yard touchdown pass from Lobo quarterback Lamar Jordan with 27 seconds to play that gave the Lobos their 38-35 lead. New Mexico State’s Kawe Johnson closes in on the play. (Andres Leighton/For the Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>“I thought we’d have a good opportunity to go and move the ball and potentially score,” Davie said of the Lobos’ game-winning, 65-yard drive. “All my focus was on, can we stop them if they get the ball back.”</p>
<p>The Aggies advanced to the UNM 33-yard line before time ran out.</p>
<p>Jordan played most of the second half after starter Cole Gautsche left at halftime. Gautsche aggravated the strained hamstring that kept him out of the Arizona State game Sept. 6, though Davie said he expects the junior quarterback to be ready for Fresno State.</p>
<p>On the winning drive, Jordan rushed for 8 yards and a first down on a third-and-8 from the NMSU 46. Six plays later, he found White in the end zone for the game-winner.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Lobos had gotten the ball, trailing 35-31, on their 35 with 4:41 left.</p>
<p>“I just told the offense, ‘We’ve got to get the job done,’ ” Jordan said. “This is for the whole state. It’s not just for our program; it’s not just for our university. It’s for the whole state.”</p>
<p>The Lobos led at halftime, 21-14, but lost control in third quarter. The Aggies scored back-to-back touchdowns, sandwiched around a 28-yard Zack Rogers field goal for UNM, to take a 28-24 lead. The first of those NMSU scores was set up by a Teriyon Gipson fumble, recovered by the Aggies at the Lobos 12.</p>
<p>The Lobos regained the lead at 31-28 on an eight-play, 54-yard drive, set up by a rare defensive stop. Senior running back Crusoe Gongbay, who rushed for a career-high 134 yards, got the touchdown from 17 yards out.</p>
<p>Gongbay is one of 12 current Lobos, and one of only six who played in the game, that remain from the last time UNM lost to New Mexico State in 2011.</p>
<p>Jhurell Pressley runs past the diving Adaryan Jones for New Mexico’s first touchdown. (Andres Leighton/For the Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>“It feels great,” Gongbay said. “… We’ve won three straight (in the series). It’s a really good feeling.</p>
<p>“I love it when the pressure’s on. That’s when we excel.”</p>
<p>The Lobos used a couple of turnovers and a pair of trick plays to grab a 21-14 halftime lead.</p>
<p>New Mexico State mounted the game’s first scoring threat, driving 73 yards before UNM linebacker Dakota Cox intercepted a Tyler Rogers pass. But the Lobos failed to cash in when Zack Rogers missed a 30-yard field goal try.</p>
<p>New Mexico got a break when Tyler Rogers missed a wide, wide-open receiver on the Aggies’ next possession, then broke on top when running back Jhurell Pressley dashed 47 yards up the middle for a touchdown.</p>
<p>The Aggies responded with a 67-yard drive, finished by Tyler Rogers with a 18-yard run.</p>
<p>Then, the Lobos got tricky.</p>
<p>After a 46-yard drive stalled, the Lobos lined up for a 43-yard field-goal attempt. But holder Quinton McCown took the ball 26 yards up the middle for a TD to give UNM a 14-7 lead.</p>
<p>New Mexico State quarterback Tyler Rogers outruns New Mexico’s Brandon Branch for a second-quarter touchdown. (AP Photo/Victor Calzada)</p>
<p>New Mexico State responded with a 13-play, 75 yard drive, aided by a UNM pass interference penalty. Joseph Matthews outleaped Lobos cornerback SaQwan Edwards — who also had been flagged for the pass interference — to snag a 9-yard scoring pass from Rogers.</p>
<p>But UNM had one more trick up its sleeve. After a 26-yard run by Gautsche, running back David Anaya took a pitch, pulled up and hit wide-open wide receiver Jeric Magnant for an 18-yard touchdown.</p>
<p>Edwards got a measure of revenge on NMSU’s final possession of the half, picking off a Tyler Rogers pass at the UNM 20-yard line.</p>
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<p /> | Lobos top Aggies 38-35 (w/ video) | false | https://abqjournal.com/465856/lobos-win-38-35-thriller-at-new-mexico-state.html | 2 |
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<p>Prompted by an American expat, Chinese authorities in Kunming launched a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14503724" type="external">crackdown</a> on knockoff Apple stores and ended up discovering 22 businesses in the city using Apple iconography to sell their wares. Some of these shops re-created Apple's cash vacuums perfectly, right down to the badges hanging from exployees' necks.</p>
<p>Chinese officials have ordered the stores to drop their acts out of respect for Apple's brand identity. Those communists can be so touchy about capitalism. - PZS</p>
<p>BBC:</p>
<p>The shops have been told to stop using the logos as Chinese laws prohibit copying the "look and feel" of another company without permission.</p>
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<p>It is not clear whether the shops being reprimanded were selling products sourced from Apple distributors in the country or grey market imports.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14503724" type="external">Read more</a></p>
<p /> | 22 Fake Apple Stores in 1 Chinese City | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/22-fake-apple-stores-in-1-chinese-city/ | 2011-08-15 | 4 |
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<p>Erik Brayman/MDC.</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - An Albuquerque couple's argument over the "validity of what church can do for them" turned violent last month, ending with the boyfriend behind bars facing an attempted murder charge, among others, according to the criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.</p>
<p>Erik Brayman, 34, allegedly began screaming violently at his girlfriend before attempting to strangle her after they had gotten ready for church, according to the complaint. He then pressed his fist against her head and put all his weight on it before she talked him out of continuing, according to the complaint.</p>
<p>The girlfriend waited until Brayman fell asleep to run away with her 4-year-old daughter and call police, who noted marks on her neck and a broken blood vessel in her eye, according to the complaint.</p>
<p>The 4-year-old saw the battery and was crying throughout, according to the complaint.</p>
<p>Brayman had been arrested a few weeks ago for domestic violence against, her according to the complaint, and had "murdered" the family dog a few days earlier, according to the complaint.</p>
<p>He was charged with attempt to commit a felony: murder, kidnapping and child abuse according to the complaint, and booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center Friday.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Man charged in domestic violence case | false | https://abqjournal.com/390206/man-charged-in-domestic-violence-case.html | 2 |
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<p>ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Bills rookie receiver Sammy Watkins is confident Buffalo’s stingy defense can contain Peyton Manning and the highly potent Denver Broncos.</p>
<p>It’s up to him and the Bills’ offense to carry its fair share of the load Sunday.</p>
<p>“We look like a complete team when we take the burden off of them,” Watkins said this week. “The defense has been holding up the whole year. Now it’s time to come together as an offense and help those guys out. And I think if we can put up 28, 35 points a game, it’s going to be hard to beat us.”</p>
<p>That has been easier said than done as Buffalo (7-5) attempts to stay in the thick of a jumbled AFC playoff picture in preparing to play at Denver (9-3).</p>
<p>While the defense ranks as one of the NFL’s best units, the offense has struggled with consistency, and faces the daunting prospect of having to keep pace with the Broncos.</p>
<p>Offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett is more concerned about the Broncos’ defense than about Manning.</p>
<p>“Peyton’s an amazing player,” Hackett said. “For me, it’s about offense versus their defense, and it’s about what we can do well to be able to put points on the board versus their defense no matter who their quarterback is.”</p>
<p>Putting up points has been an issue for Buffalo, which has topped 30 just twice this season. Both were against the New York Jets in games Buffalo’s defense combined to force seven turnovers and had 11 sacks. Special teams also contributed by recovering a blocked punt for a touchdown.</p>
<p>Red-zone production has been the Bills’ biggest deficiency. Buffalo has 18 touchdowns and 19 field goals in 44 trips inside an opponent’s 20. That translates into a 41 percent red-zone touchdown rate ,which ranks 30th in the NFL.</p>
<p>And don’t expect Buffalo to succeed at playing “keep-away” from Manning by chewing up the game clock. Hackett acknowledged that ball control is not among the Bills’ strengths.</p>
<p>“We need to score points and be efficient,” Hackett said, when asked about a ball-control approach. “When you look at things and try to change your way because of that, sometimes it messes you up more than it helps you. So I think it’s about doing what we do.”</p>
<p>The Bills have struggled generating first downs. They’ve topped 20 only three times, with a season-high 22 coming in a 17-16 win over Minnesota on Oct. 19. As for time of possession, Buffalo’s season-best was a 4-plus minute edge in a 17-14 win over Detroit on Oct. 5.</p>
<p>The numbers reflect how the offense remains a work in progress due to injuries, youth at several positions and a switch at quarterback. Kyle Orton took over after EJ Manuel was benched following a 2-2 start.</p>
<p>Buffalo’s running attack has been pedestrian, averaging 90 yards per game since racking up 193 in a season-opening 23-20 overtime win at Chicago.</p>
<p>And the passing numbers are slipping now that opponents have begun keying on Watkins.</p>
<p>At midseason, the first-round draft pick was a leading offensive rookie of the year contender with 39 catches for 595 yards and five touchdowns. In his past four games, Watkins has 12 catches for 105 yards and no scores.</p>
<p>“I’ve got to play better. I’ve got to be more physical. I’ve got to dominate my opponent,” Watkins said.</p>
<p>Aside from defensive double teams, coach Doug Marrone said there’s a combination of factors, including pass protection and play design, that have led to the drop in Watkins’ numbers.</p>
<p>Asked if another issue is Watkins hitting a rookie wall, Marrone paused, and said: “I hope not.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</p>
<p>ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Bills rookie receiver Sammy Watkins is confident Buffalo’s stingy defense can contain Peyton Manning and the highly potent Denver Broncos.</p>
<p>It’s up to him and the Bills’ offense to carry its fair share of the load Sunday.</p>
<p>“We look like a complete team when we take the burden off of them,” Watkins said this week. “The defense has been holding up the whole year. Now it’s time to come together as an offense and help those guys out. And I think if we can put up 28, 35 points a game, it’s going to be hard to beat us.”</p>
<p>That has been easier said than done as Buffalo (7-5) attempts to stay in the thick of a jumbled AFC playoff picture in preparing to play at Denver (9-3).</p>
<p>While the defense ranks as one of the NFL’s best units, the offense has struggled with consistency, and faces the daunting prospect of having to keep pace with the Broncos.</p>
<p>Offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett is more concerned about the Broncos’ defense than about Manning.</p>
<p>“Peyton’s an amazing player,” Hackett said. “For me, it’s about offense versus their defense, and it’s about what we can do well to be able to put points on the board versus their defense no matter who their quarterback is.”</p>
<p>Putting up points has been an issue for Buffalo, which has topped 30 just twice this season. Both were against the New York Jets in games Buffalo’s defense combined to force seven turnovers and had 11 sacks. Special teams also contributed by recovering a blocked punt for a touchdown.</p>
<p>Red-zone production has been the Bills’ biggest deficiency. Buffalo has 18 touchdowns and 19 field goals in 44 trips inside an opponent’s 20. That translates into a 41 percent red-zone touchdown rate ,which ranks 30th in the NFL.</p>
<p>And don’t expect Buffalo to succeed at playing “keep-away” from Manning by chewing up the game clock. Hackett acknowledged that ball control is not among the Bills’ strengths.</p>
<p>“We need to score points and be efficient,” Hackett said, when asked about a ball-control approach. “When you look at things and try to change your way because of that, sometimes it messes you up more than it helps you. So I think it’s about doing what we do.”</p>
<p>The Bills have struggled generating first downs. They’ve topped 20 only three times, with a season-high 22 coming in a 17-16 win over Minnesota on Oct. 19. As for time of possession, Buffalo’s season-best was a 4-plus minute edge in a 17-14 win over Detroit on Oct. 5.</p>
<p>The numbers reflect how the offense remains a work in progress due to injuries, youth at several positions and a switch at quarterback. Kyle Orton took over after EJ Manuel was benched following a 2-2 start.</p>
<p>Buffalo’s running attack has been pedestrian, averaging 90 yards per game since racking up 193 in a season-opening 23-20 overtime win at Chicago.</p>
<p>And the passing numbers are slipping now that opponents have begun keying on Watkins.</p>
<p>At midseason, the first-round draft pick was a leading offensive rookie of the year contender with 39 catches for 595 yards and five touchdowns. In his past four games, Watkins has 12 catches for 105 yards and no scores.</p>
<p>“I’ve got to play better. I’ve got to be more physical. I’ve got to dominate my opponent,” Watkins said.</p>
<p>Aside from defensive double teams, coach Doug Marrone said there’s a combination of factors, including pass protection and play design, that have led to the drop in Watkins’ numbers.</p>
<p>Asked if another issue is Watkins hitting a rookie wall, Marrone paused, and said: “I hope not.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</p> | Bills’ offense pressed to keep pace with Peyton | false | https://apnews.com/c1f338d5c4e64bc680201924db5f2297 | 2014-12-05 | 2 |
<p>A Congressman from California makes the logical connection that the Justice Department has been obtaining records of calls made from telephone located in the House of Representatives’ cloakroom, a “members only” area of the Capitol Building.</p>
<p>Talk radio host Hugh Hewitt. Photo credit <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=images&amp;cd=&amp;cad=rja&amp;docid=oSs6yGA6KRnTwM&amp;tbnid=fbmF5qyZHs5LCM:&amp;ved=0CAQQjB0&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.last.fm%2Fmusic%2FHugh%2BHewitt&amp;ei=hNKUUarhKofm8wSWyYCoAg&amp;bvm=bv.46471029,d.eWU&amp;psig=AFQjCNHFRJFAtb02U_r7r2S2AZJcIrisfw&amp;ust=1368794113405061" type="external">www.last.fm</a></p>
<p>Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., discussed a number of issues on the <a href="http://www.hughhewitt.com/congressman-devin-nunes-previews-ways-and-means-hearing-friday-plus-a-bombshell-on-the-ap-scandal/" type="external">Hugh Hewitt radio program</a> Wednesday evening, beginning with the scandal involving the IRS. Eventually, Hewitt steered the conversation to the scandal involving the Justice Department’s warrantless searches of Associated Press reporters’ telephone records, according to <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/congressman-justice-dept-wiretapped-house-representatives-cloak-room_724606.html#" type="external">The Weekly Standard</a>.</p>
<p>“I don’t trust the Department of Justice on this,” said Hewitt. “Do you, Congressman Nunes?”</p>
<p>“No, I absolutely do not, especially after this wiretapping incident, essentially, of the House of Representative. I don’t think people are focusing on the right thing when they talk about going after the AP reporters. The big problem that I see is that they actually tapped right where I’m sitting right now, the cloakroom,” Nunes replied.</p>
<p>Although the congressman used the word “tapped,” he makes it clear later in the conversation that he actually means that the Justice Department secured records of many of the phone calls coming in and out of the House cloakroom.</p>
<p>Hewitt was taken aback. “Wait a minute, this is news to me,” he said.</p>
<p>“The cloakroom in the House of Representatives,” Nunes repeated.</p>
<p>Hewitt again expressed surprise. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said the radio host.</p>
<p>Devin Nunes photo credit <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=images&amp;cd=&amp;cad=rja&amp;docid=08KqHnRRi5OHHM&amp;tbnid=ZNPRUlKBI6DFoM:&amp;ved=0CAQQjB0&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.heritage.org%2F2010%2F09%2F29%2Fcalifornia-congressman-offers-blueprint-for-americas-future%2F&amp;ei=j9SUUY-GHojm8gTN7IGADA&amp;bvm=bv.46471029,d.eWU&amp;psig=AFQjCNH6foP2MKKG463YqWDQZiQrp1JwUw&amp;ust=1368794594897963" type="external">blog.heritage.org</a></p>
<p>“So when they went after the AP reporters, right? Went after all of their phone records, they went after the phone records, including right up here in the House Gallery, right up from where I’m sitting right now. So you have a real separation of powers issue that did this really rise to the level that you would have to get phone records that would, that would most likely include members of Congress, because as you know …”</p>
<p>Hewitt interjected, “Wow.”</p>
<p>“… members of Congress talk to the press all the time,” Nunes continued.</p>
<p>Hewitt replied, “I did not know that, and that is a stunner.”</p>
<p>Although Nunes incorrectly used the word “tapped” in place of “logged” with reference to congressional phone calls, he nonetheless made a valid point. If the Justice Department has been logging calls made to and from AP reporters, then by extension, the calls at the other end are also being logged — including those going in and out of the House cloakroom as well as lawmakers’ personal phones.</p> | Congressman alleges DOJ ‘tapped’ House cloakroom | true | http://bizpacreview.com/2013/05/16/congressman-alleges-doj-tapped-house-cloakroom-69769 | 2013-05-16 | 0 |
<p>One of the aspects of teaching that I have most enjoyed over the past decade is working with students from around the world. While spending the day teaching large groups of children can be sometimes stressful and even isolating, sharing the experiences and cultural knowledge of immigrant students from Australia, Cambodia, Ireland, Liberia, and Sierra Leone (just to name a few countries) has expanded the world view of everyone working and studying in our schools.&#160;To say that the conversations we have are richer for their presence and contributions is an understatement.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, teaching students new to the country can also come with its own set of challenges and there are just a few things, mostly learned from experience, that I wish I had known as a young teacher about how to connect with students who are new to the country.&#160;</p>
<p>Interacting with students outside of the classroom</p>
<p>Luckily, a lot of what helps me to connect with recently immigrated students works with everyone else too. Sometimes, attending a basketball game or recital can make a world of difference.&#160;For my students who are getting inundated with services to help get them caught up academically, a casual game can be a really nice break from all that.&#160;And, of course, when students are more relaxed, then they are more likely to be open about what is going on in their lives. All students should feel like there are adults who know them and care about them, and students new to the country are still building connections here and in their local community.&#160;I feel like it is such a privilege to be one of the first adults in the country with whom students connect.&#160;</p>
<p>Recognize that each immigrant child has unique needs that need to be acknowledged</p>
<p>Every student I have taught has had a unique background, and this is especially so for my immigrant students. Just to illustrate the diversity of immigrant students I have taught over the last 12 years, here are three examples:</p>
<p>Sophie was an Australian student here in the US for a year while her father was working at the local university. She had learned everything in a different order, so sometimes she was very bored in class and sometimes very lost.</p>
<p>James was from Liberia and hadn’t had much formal schooling as his family had mainly just been trying to survive the ruins left from a civil war.&#160; He was whipsmart and loved computers, but also didn’t know his times tables so it was hard to know in what program to place him in school.</p>
<p>Aevar was from Norway and living with his father’s family and his step-siblings in the US for the first time. He could be broody and wanted to go back home.&#160;</p>
<p>Related:&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Global Nation Education</a></p>
<p>While each of these students had very different needs, by listening to what their needs were, we were able to tailor their schooling to best meet these.&#160;Sophie took electives while topics she had already covered were in session, James caught up on some preliminary material through computer tutorials and educational games and Aevar helped to organize a cultural fair where he introduced his classmates and teachers to some of the things he loved about his home country. All of them ended up feeling more connected and invested in their schools than if they had been pigeon-holed into a standard curriculum.&#160;&#160;</p>
<p>Their immediate families are everything</p>
<p>Building relationships with their families early on is crucial to connecting with them, as is approaching conversations with an open, non-judgmental perspective.&#160;And cultural misunderstandings can be pre-empted by making it clear early on that you have their children’s best interest at heart. After all, lots of my students come through multiple school systems before they arrive in our building and the experiences they had previously weren’t always ideal. Language can be a barrier to reaching out to parents at times, but involving them in ways that enable them to feel comfortable enough to share their time and talents can make a big difference to how connected the students feel to the school community.&#160;</p>
<p>Be understanding</p>
<p>Ultimately, we have to be aware of students who are navigating a significant change in their lives.&#160;Many immigrant students, for example, have significant responsibilities at home that might differ from some of their classmates and take away from time they might otherwise devote to learning.&#160;Their comfort with typical expectations of active class participation in the US may sometimes be evolving too, as some students are more used to being expected to listen quietly and not look directly at teachers and other authority figures.&#160;We connect with students by starting from a place of compassion and demonstrating our respect through the high expectations to which we hold them.&#160;</p>
<p>There is so much more to know, but these are just a few of the things that I have learned along the way about connecting with immigrant students.</p>
<p>Ramla Gabriel teaches math and engineering at Newcastle College in England. Before becoming an immigrant herself, she taught middle and high school math and science in the US for over 10 years.&#160;Share your thoughts and ideas on Facebook at our&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/globalnation/" type="external">Global Nation Exchange</a>, on Twitter&#160; <a href="https://twitter.com/globalnation" type="external">@globalnation</a>, or contact us&#160; <a href="" type="internal">here</a>.</p> | Teaching teachers to better connect with their immigrant students | false | https://pri.org/stories/2015-12-05/teaching-teachers-better-connect-their-immigrant-students | 2015-12-05 | 3 |
<p>He just can’t help himself. He can’t get out of campaign mode.</p>
<p>After his absurd “I’m Mr. Reaonsable” speech earlier today, his campaign has taken to Twitter urging his supports to send tweets to Republicans in Congress:</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>This is laughable and childish.&#160; But it’s what passes for presidential leadership these days.</p>
<p>What a <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/twit" type="external">twit</a>.</p>
<p>Update:&#160; Brilliant, Obama’s campaign spamming has caused him to <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/barack-obama-twitter-spams-the-nation-loses-10000-followers-and-counting/" type="external">lose 10,000 followers</a>in a matter of hours.&#160; (h/at <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/michellemalkin/status/97049160389373952" type="external">@MichelleMalkin</a>)</p> | President twit | true | http://legalinsurrection.com/2011/07/president-twit/ | 2011-07-29 | 0 |
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<p>The trend-setting company unveiled its newest twists on technology Wednesday in San Francisco before the usual packed house that turned out for a glimpse at a product line that Apple is counting on to retain its faithful disciples and win new converts.</p>
<p>As expected, Apple's next iPhone is making relatively minor improvements to the model last year that generated more excitement because it boasted a larger screen. The iPhone 6S hews to Apple's recent strategy of releasing major redesigns of its top-selling device every other year.</p>
<p>The iPhone 6S will go on sale on Sept. 25 in the U.S., China, the U.K. and nine other countries at prices starting at $200 with a commitment to a two-year wireless contract. Pre-orders begin starting Saturday.</p>
<p>Perhaps just as importantly to the millions of consumers who still own older iPhone models with smaller screens, the price for last year's iPhone 6 model is dropping to $99 with a two-year contract. Some analysts believe that price reduction will unleash a wave of sales to consumers who stayed on the sidelines because they didn't want to spend so much for the bigger screen.</p>
<p>A new tablet coming out in November may also give more people a reason to buy an iPad. Called the iPad Pro, it features a nearly 13-inch, diagonal screen and is designed to appeal to corporate customers and government agencies.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Since releasing its original iPad, Apple Inc. has confined the screen size to 10 inches and focused on selling the tablet to consumers. But iPad sales have been falling since 2013 amid competition from lower-priced tablets and consumers' reluctance to upgrade from earlier models.</p>
<p>Prices for the iPad Pro will range from $799 to more than $1,000. A stylus for the tablet will cost $100 and a detachable keyboard will sell for an additional $170.</p>
<p>The redesigned Apple TV box relies on a system that revolves around apps and voice controls. Its price will start at $150, more expensive than competing devices from competitors such as Roku, Amazon's Fire TV and Google's Chromecast that already have been offering some of the same features that will now be available in the new Apple TV box.</p>
<p>Investors seemed unimpressed with Apple's line-up. The company's stock dipped $1.20 to $111.10 in Wednesday's late afternoon trading them, leaving the shares 17 percent below their peak reached earlier this year.</p> | Apple unveils latest iPhone, bigger iPad, revamped TV box | false | https://abqjournal.com/641585/apple-unveils-bigger-ipad-revamped-online-video-box-for-tv.html | 2015-09-09 | 2 |
<p>The long-speculated romance has been confirmed: Morning Joe co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough are engaged to be married. Scarborough, 54, asked his co-host to marry him this past weekend while the couple was celebrating Brzezinski's 50th birthday in Monaco and the south of France.</p>
<p>According to sources at <a href="https://pagesix.com/2017/05/04/joe-scarborough-and-mika-brzezinski-are-engaged/" type="external">Page Six</a>, Scarborough "got down on one knee and proposed at the scenic Bar Bellini at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, which has a breathtaking moonlit outdoor terrace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea."</p>
<p>"Joe got down on one knee and proposed old-fashioned-style with a ring. Of course, Mika accepted. They came back from the trip on Cloud Nine," said a source. "There are no wedding plans as of yet, they are just telling their families the happy news."</p>
<p>Another source close to Brzezinski told the outlet, "Mika turned 50 and realized she wanted to move forward with her life and spend every minute with Joe, and not just at work."</p>
<p>"[Joe's] had a rough few years with his divorce and the passing of his father, but he’s been the happiest he’s ever been these last few months with Mika," added a source close to Scarborough.</p>
<p>There are no wedding plans as of yet.</p>
<p>As <a href="" type="internal">noted</a> by The Daily Wire, rumors of the duo's romance seriously surfaced back in June, soon after Mika finalized her divorce to her husband of 23 years. Mika and her ex James have two teenage daughters.</p>
<p>"Mika’s divorce was finalized in the past year," said an MSNBC spokesperson in June. "She’s really grateful that it was done amicably and in private. This has, of course, been a painful time for her family. So right now she is focused on her two teenage daughters, and on continuing to heal."</p>
<p>Last month, Scarborough all but confirmed the dating rumors during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter: "We have a crackling on-air chemistry, and a crackling off-air chemistry, too," <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/rambling-reporter/did-morning-joes-hosts-just-admit-theyre-dating-we-have-a-crackling-air-chemistry-" type="external">said</a> Scarborough. "I think that pretty much says it, doesn’t it?"</p>
<p>Scarborough will be bringing four children of his own to the marriage. The Morning Joe co-host has been single for some time, but had a 12-year marriage to former Republican aide Susan Waren.</p> | Morning Joe: Mika And Joe Are Engaged | true | https://dailywire.com/news/16047/mika-and-joe-morning-joe-are-engaged-amanda-prestigiacomo | 2017-05-04 | 0 |
<p>A new study suggests U.S. colleges still have a lot of growing to do before they can be considered the best; the Texas judge who ruled on the teenage drunk driver’s “affluenza” has decided not to give him any jail time for the deadly crash; meanwhile, pedestrians may be evolving to survive in a car-plagued world. These discoveries and more below.</p>
<p>On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that have found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.</p>
<p><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/A-New-Kind-of-Study-Seeks-to/144621/?cid=at&amp;utm_source=at&amp;utm_medium=en" type="external">A New Kind of Study Seeks to Quantify Educational Quality</a> Much of the debate about educational quality tends to pull toward extremes: Either America’s colleges are the envy of the world, or they’re of questionable worth.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2014/02/07/samuragochis-scurrilous-symphony-between-fraud-and-collaboration/" type="external">Samuragochi’s Scurrilous Symphony: Between Fraud and Collaboration</a> Mamoru Samuragochi’s original claim to fame lay in composing video game soundtracks.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/as-the-price-of-art-rises-is-its-value-plummeting/2014/02/06/54b585e8-7190-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html#" type="external">As the Price of Art Rises, Is Its Value Plummeting?</a> As 2013 came to an end, the art world took stock of its remarkable fortunes: Leading auction houses announced records for total sales, as new wealth and new collectors clamored for art and collectibles.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/mystery-surrounds-theft-of-stradivarius-violin/2014/02/05/962da6b6-8ed9-11e3-878e-d76656564a01_story.html" type="external">Art Thief Among 3 Held in Violin Heist</a> The mystery of what happened to a multimillion-dollar Stradivarius violin stolen in a stun gun attack was answered Thursday when Milwaukee police recovered the instrument and blamed the heist at least in part on an art thief who once stole a statue from a gallery and then tried to sell it back.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article02061401.aspx" type="external">Do We Have a Genetic Preference for Where We Walk?</a> Cars are the primary predators of the modern urban ecosystem.</p>
<p><a href="http://rt.com/news/two-earthquakes-fukushima-coast-167/" type="external">Two Earthquakes Strike Near Fukushima Nuclear Plant</a> Two magnitude-5 earthquakes struck off the coast of Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/02/05/texas_judge_again_declines_to_send_texas_affluenza_teen_to_jail.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content&amp;mc_cid=d6a4fa5a1f&amp;mc_eid=888cdfef75" type="external">Texas Judge Again Rules Jail Time Isn’t Remedy for “Affluenza”</a> Texas teenager Ethan Couch was back in court last Wednesday for his role behind the wheel of the drunk-driving crash that killed four people last year.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/avi-shlaim/perils-and-pitfalls-of-patriotic-history" type="external">The Perils and Pitfalls of Patriotic History</a> War is said to be too serious a business to be left to the soldiers.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/nina-l--khrushcheva-calls-russia-weak--tawdry--and-corrupt---and-underserving-as-an-olympic-host" type="external">Russia’s Potemkin Olympic Village</a> Remember the year 2007? Russia was starting to look like a world power again.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/07/us-israel-palestinians-demolitions-idUSBREA160N620140207" type="external">Israeli Demolition of Palestinian Homes at Five-Year High: Aid Groups</a> Aid agencies working in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem expressed alarm on Friday at a spike in Israeli demolitions of Palestinian property coinciding with renewed U.S.-backed peace negotiations.</p> | Is American Higher Education Truly the Envy of the World? | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/is-american-higher-education-truly-the-envy-of-the-world/ | 2014-02-10 | 4 |
<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Voters will fill two vacancies in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on the same day as the spring primary.</p>
<p>Republican House Speaker Mike Turzai announced the May 15 special elections on Monday.</p>
<p>The Washington County seat was held until Dec. 31 by Democrat <a href="http://www.pahouse.com/neuman" type="external">Brandon Neuman</a> , who’s been elected judge.</p>
<p>The Bucks County district was represented until Jan. 1 by Republican <a href="http://www.reppetri.com/" type="external">Scott Petri</a> . He’s now heading the Philadelphia Parking Authority.</p>
<p>The parties will pick candidates.</p>
<p>A separate special election is Jan. 23 for the Allegheny County seat held most recently by Democrat Mark Gergely. He was sentenced to house arrest last month after pleading guilty to misdemeanor conspiracy and campaign finance violation counts.</p>
<p>Republicans hold a 120-to-80 majority in the House, with the three vacancies.</p>
<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Voters will fill two vacancies in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on the same day as the spring primary.</p>
<p>Republican House Speaker Mike Turzai announced the May 15 special elections on Monday.</p>
<p>The Washington County seat was held until Dec. 31 by Democrat <a href="http://www.pahouse.com/neuman" type="external">Brandon Neuman</a> , who’s been elected judge.</p>
<p>The Bucks County district was represented until Jan. 1 by Republican <a href="http://www.reppetri.com/" type="external">Scott Petri</a> . He’s now heading the Philadelphia Parking Authority.</p>
<p>The parties will pick candidates.</p>
<p>A separate special election is Jan. 23 for the Allegheny County seat held most recently by Democrat Mark Gergely. He was sentenced to house arrest last month after pleading guilty to misdemeanor conspiracy and campaign finance violation counts.</p>
<p>Republicans hold a 120-to-80 majority in the House, with the three vacancies.</p> | Special elections for 2 state House seats planned for May 15 | false | https://apnews.com/933142ad751d4ef1b6b2a288cb545392 | 2018-01-08 | 2 |
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<p>CASSELTON, N.D. – A fiery oil train derailment’s near-miss of this small North Dakota town had its mayor angrily calling for federal officials to do more to guarantee the safety of the nation’s growing shipment of oil by rail.</p>
<p>Government regulators defended their record on moving hazardous materials by rail, noting that 2012 was the safest year in the industry’s history. But oil trains have bucked that trend, thanks in part to the massive amount of oil being moved out of western North Dakota, where the industry’s rapid growth is far outpacing pipeline development.</p>
<p>No one was hurt when the mile-long BNSF Railway train derailed Monday afternoon, but the overturned tankers – exploding and engulfed in flames and black smoke for more than 24 hours – burned so hot that emergency crews didn’t even attempt to put out the blaze. Most of the town’s roughly 2,400 residents agreed to temporarily evacuate due to concerns about unsafe air.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“This is too close for comfort,” Casselton Mayor Ed McConnell said Tuesday.</p>
<p>While the overall rate of oil train accidents remains low – less than one-tenth of 1 percent of crude-carrying tank cars have suffered accidental releases this year – there’s been a sharp increase in number of releases over the past several years driven by a surge in drilling.</p>
<p>Through November, crude releases were reported from 137 rail cars in 2013, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal accident records. By comparison, there was only one release reported in 2009, before the boom got well underway.</p>
<p>The rail tracks in eastern North Dakota run through the middle of Casselton, about 25 miles west of Fargo. McConnell estimated that dozens of people could have been killed if the derailments had happened within the town and said it was time to “have a conversation” with federal lawmakers about the dangers of transporting oil by rail.</p>
<p>He told The Associated Press. “It’s almost gotten to the point that it looks like not if we’re going to have an accident, it’s when.”</p>
<p>Gov. Jack Dalrymple visited Casselton, his hometown, to view the scene. He called it a “major catastrophe” that would prompt concern no matter where it happened. “People will be asking a lot of questions about the safety of equipment, the safety of railroad operations and why did the derailment occur in the first place,” Dalrymple said.</p>
<p>The National Transportation Safety Board, which is heading the investigation, said it would examine the train recorder, the signal system, the condition of the train operators, train and tracks, as well as the response to the derailment. NTSB member Robert Sumwalt said the tankers involved were older-model DOT-111s, which have shown a tendency to rupture in other accidents.</p>
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<p /> | Safety questions after fiery ND derailment | false | https://abqjournal.com/329267/safety-questions-after-fiery-nd-derailment.html | 2 |
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<p>Ken Burn’s interminable documentary Jazz starts with a wrong premise and degenerates from there. Burns heralds jazz as the great American contribution to world music and sets it up as a kind of roadmap to racial relations across the 20th century. But surely that distinction belongs to the blues, the music born on the plantations of the Mississippi delta. Indeed, though Burns underplays this, jazz sprang from the blues. But so did R&amp;B, rock-and-roll, funk and hip hop.</p>
<p>But Burns is a classicist, who is offended by the rawer sounds of the blues, its political dimension and inescapable class dynamic. Instead, Burns fixates on a particular kind of jazz music that appeals to his PBS sensibility: the swing era. It’s a genre of jazz that enables Burns to throw around phrases such “Ellington is our Mozart.” He sees jazz as art form in the most culturally elitist sense, as being a museum piece, beautiful but dead, to be savored like a stroll through a gallery of paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.</p>
<p>His film unspools for 19 hours over seven episodes: beginning in the brothels of New Orleans and ending with the career of saxophonist Dexter Gordon. But in the end it didn’t cover all that much ground. The film fixates on three figures: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and the young Miles Davis. There are sidetrips and footnotes to account for Sidney Bechet, Billie Holliday, Bix Beiderbecke, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, and John Coltrane.</p>
<p>But the arc of his narrative is the rise and fall of jazz. For Burns, jazz reached its apogee with Armstrong and Ellington and its denouement with Davis’ 1959 recording, Kind of Blue. For Burns and company it’s been all downhill since then: he sees the avant guarde recordings of Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Cecil Taylor and the growth of the fusion movement as a form artistic degeneracy. When asked to name his top ten jazz songs, Burns didn’t include a single piece after 1958. His film packs in everything that’s been produced since Kind of Blue (40 years worth of music) into a single griping episode. Even Kind of Blue-the most explicated jazz session in history-gets shoddy treatment from Burns in the film, who elides any mention of pianist Bill Evans, the man who gave the record its revolutionary modal sound.</p>
<p>This is typical of the Burns method. His films all construct a pantheon of heroes and anti-heroes, little manufactured dramas of good and evil. Armstrong and Ellington are gods to be worshipped (despite their fllirtations with Hollywood glitz), but Davis and Coltrane (both at root blues musicians to our ears) are fallen idols–Coltrane into the exquisite abstractions of Giant Steps and Love Supreme and Miles into the funk and fusion of Bitches Brew, On the Corner and his amazing A Tribute to Jack Johnson. Coleman, the sonic architect of the Free Jazz movement, is anathema.</p>
<p>It’s easy to see why. Burns boasts that his American trilogy-the Civil War, Baseball and Jazz-is at bottom a history of racial relations. But it’s not a history so much as a fantasy meant for the white suburban audiences who watch his movies. For Burns, it’s a story of a seamless movement toward integration: from slavery to emancipation, segregation to integration, animus to harmony. For every black hero, there is a white counterpart: Frederick Douglas/Lincoln, Jackie Robinson/Branch Rickey, Louis Armstrong/Tommy Dorsey. In other words, a feel-good narrative of white patronage and understanding.</p>
<p>This, in part, explains why Burns recoils from the fact that Davis, Coltrane, Coleman and their descendents have taken jazz not toward soft, white-friendly swing sound but deeper into the urban black experience. When Davis went electric, it was as significant a move as Dylan coming out on with a rock-and-roll band (and not just any band, but the Hawks). In 1966. Dylan was jeered by the folkie elites as a “Judas”; and, despite the fact that Bitches Brew went on to be one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time, Davis is still being slammed. Burns includes a quote in his film denouncing Davis’s excursions into fusion as a “denaturing” of jazz.</p>
<p>The Burns style-drilled into viewers over his previous films, the Civil War, Baseball and Frank Lloyd Wright-is irritating and as condescending as any Masterpiece Theatre production of a minor novel by Trollope: episodic, monotonous, edgeless. By now his technique is as predictable as the plot of an episode of “Friends”: the zoom shot on a still photo, followed by a slow pan, a pull back, then a portentous pause-all the while a monotonous narration explains the obvious at length.</p>
<p>The series is narrated by a troika of neo-cons: Wynton Marsalis, the favorite trumpeter of the Lincoln Center patrons; writer Albert Murray, who chastised the militant elements of the civil rights and anti-war movements with his pal Ralph Ellison; and Stanley Crouch, the Ward Connerly of music critics. This trio plays the part that Shelby Foote did for Burns’ previous epic, the Civil War-a sentimental, morbid and revisionist take on what Foote, an unrepentant Southern romanticist, wistfully referred to as the war between the states.</p>
<p>Instead of interviewing contemporary jazz musicians, Burns sought out Marsalis, a trumpeter who is stuck in the past. “When Marsalis was 19 he was a fine jazz trumpeter,” says Pierre Sprey, president of <a href="http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/" type="external">Mapleshade Records</a>, a jazz and blues label. “But he was getting his ass kicked every night in Art Blakey’s band. I don’t think he could keep up. And finally he retreated to safe waters. He’s a good classical trumpeter and thus he sees jazz as being a classical music. He has no clue what’s going on now.”</p>
<p>Crouch brings similar baggage to the table. “Crouch started out as a modern jazz drummer”, a veteran of the New York jazz scene tells CounterPunch. “But he wasn’t very good. And finally he was booted from a lot of the avant garde sessions. He’s had a vendetta ever since.”</p>
<p>The excessive emphasis in the series on Louis Armstrong, often featuring very inferior work, no doubt stems from the fact that Gary Giddins, another consultant for the series, wrote a book on Armstrong.</p>
<p>Burns’ parting shot is the story of Dexter Gordon, a tenor saxophonist whose life is more compelling than his playing. Typically Burns transforms Gordon’s life into a morality play, a condensation of his entire film: born in L.A. Gordon mastered to the Parker/bebop method and when it passed him by, he battled depression and heroin addiction, fled to Copenhagen, and finally returned to the US in the late 1970s enjoying a brief renaissance in high priced jazz clubs in New York and DC, starred in Bernard Tavernier’s tribute to bebop ‘Round Midnight and died in 1990.</p>
<p>How different Burns’ film would have been if, instead of Gordon, he had trained his camera on Sonny Rolllins, who, like Coltrane, learned much from Gordon but ultimately surpassed him. Of course, Rolllins is still alive and still making strikingly innovative music. His latest album, This Is What I Do, is one of his best. But this, of course, would have undermined the Burns/Marsalis/Crouch thesis that the avant garde and Afro-centric strains, which began about the same time Gordon left the states, killed jazz.</p>
<p>After enduring Jazz in its entirety, there’s only one conclusion to be reached: Burns doesn’t really like music. In the 19 hours of film, he never lets one song play to completion, anywhere near completion. Yet there is a constant chatter riding on top of the music. It’s annoying and instructive, as if Burns himself were both bored of the entire project and simultaneously hypnotized by the sound of his own words interpreting what he won’t allow us to hear.</p>
<p>This may be the ultimate indictment of Burns’ Jazz: the compulsion to verbalize what is essentially a nonverbal artform. It’s also insulting; he assumes that the music itself, if allowed to be heard and felt, wouldn’t be able, largely on its own volition, to move and educate those who (unlike Burns) are willing open their ears and really listen. In a film supposedly about music, the music itself has been relegated to the background, as a distant soundtrack for trite observations on culture and neo-Spenglerian notions about the arc of American cap-H History. In that sense, Burns and his cohorts don’t even demonstrate faith in the power of the swing-era music they offer up as the apex of jazz.</p>
<p>There are some great documentaries on popular music. Three very different ones come to mind: Bert Stern’s beautiful Jazz on a Summer’s Day, which integrates jazz, swing, avant guard, gospel and rock-n-roll all into one event, Robert Mugge’s Deep Blues, a gorgeously shot and recorded road movie about the blues musicians of the Mississippi Delta, and Jean-Luc Godard’s One+One, which documents the recording of the Rolling Stones Sympathy for the Devil. All are vibrant films that let the music and musicians do the talking. But Ken Burns learned nothing from any of them. Watching his Jazz is equivalent to listening to a coroner speak into a dictaphone as he dissects a corpse. CP</p>
<p><a href="feedback.html" type="external">See the response of Chuck D from Public Enemy to this article on the CounterPunch feedback page.</a></p> | Now, That’s Not Jazz | true | https://counterpunch.org/2001/03/31/now-that-s-not-jazz/ | 2001-03-31 | 4 |
<p>Bush’s budget proposal for FY 2008 is emblematic of the social crisis unfolding inside the U.S. Empire, its ramifications still largely ignored in mainstream politics. Coupled with whopping military expenditures and permanent tax cuts for the extraordinarily wealthy, Bush’s budget shreds what little remains of the tattered social safety net for the most downtrodden members of the world’s richest society.</p>
<p>The Iraq war marks the first major war in the last century fought in the interests of America’s ruling elite without even the pretense of “shared sacrifice.” During the First World War, the tax rate for top income earners stood at 77 percent; during the Second World War, at 94 percent. Even during Vietnam, the wealthiest taxpayers faced a rate of 70 percent on personal income. Yet, as the bloodletting in Iraq has been proven a war for nothing more than U.S. control over Middle Eastern oil, the corporate class continues to enjoy an income tax rate that has been capped at only 35 percent since 2003–the year the U.S. invaded Iraq.</p>
<p>Bush’s plan to permanently extend these tax cuts, which are set to expire in 2010, would cost an estimated $211 billion in 2012 and $1.6 trillion over the next decade. Added to their profit windfalls and soaring executive salaries, the corporate class has every reason to celebrate.</p>
<p>Bush’s budget makes clear that the growing numbers of economically disadvantaged Americans–already supplying the cannon fodder to kill and die in Iraq and Afghanistan–must also continue to shoulder the suffocating financial burden for U.S. imperialism’s twenty-first century follies. Bush’s budget proposal brazenly takes aim at veterans themselves, nearly doubling their out-of-pocket fees from $8 to $15 for prescription medications when they return home from a war zone battered and traumatized, and often looking for work.</p>
<p>In this war, only the working class is expected to sacrifice. On January 14, the New York Times interviewed the family of Sgt. Andrew DeBlock, a 41 year-old member of the New Jersey National Guard who recently learned that his stay in Iraq was extended by four months due to Bush’s troop surge. His wife. Heidi DeBlock, told Times reporters that, due to the her husband’s lost income, she “has had to battle her heating-fuel company, which wanted cash up front, and her husband’s cellphone provider, which will not let him out of his contract even though he is off fighting a war.”</p>
<p>Bush’s budget reduces Medicare and Medicaid spending by $102 billion over the next five years. Food stamps would be slashed to the bone, dropping some 300,000 currently eligible recipients. The Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides food for more than 450,000 low-income seniors, would be completely eliminated. Bush also proposes gutting $300 million in funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and over $3.6 billion from special education programs in public schools. And these are just the highlights.</p>
<p>Bush did, however, manage to find the money to substantially increase funds for sexual abstinence education for 12-18 year-olds–rising to $191 million, an increase of $28 million from last year’s budget.</p>
<p>Becky Ogle, Senior Advisor on Disability to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), argued of Bush’s proposal: “Last November, the American people went to the polls and demanded a new direction for America. President Bush’s misplaced budget priorities represent more of the same failed leadership that the American people have already rejected. With Congress under Democratic control, we can finally have real leadership that reflects the values and priorities of all Americans.”</p>
<p>While voters’ expectations for change are high, Congressional Democrats have thus far shown reluctance to chart anything resembling the “new direction” to which Ogle refers. Senate Democrats’ inability to win even a non-binding resolution on the Iraq war does not bode well for the upcoming budget battle. Democrats blamed Republicans for maneuvering to block the resolution. In reality, Republicans called the Democrats’ bluff by insisting that the symbolic resolution be accompanied by a binding vote on continued funding for the war. War funding would have passed with Democratic votes, neutralizing the Democrats’ smoke-and-mirrors efforts to appease their antiwar supporters.</p>
<p>On the domestic front, Democrats have thus far shown no willingness to do more than tinker with the most egregious symptoms of the economic crisis facing the U.S.’ working-class majority. Roughly 45 percent of American workers now earn $13.25 an hour or less, while 58 percent work for less than $15 an hour. The fastest growing occupations in the U.S. are janitor, hospital orderly and cashier.</p>
<p>During their widely trumpeted first 100 hours, Democrats did spearhead legislation to raise the minimum wage and pledged to restore cuts from heating subsidies and Head Start programs for the poor.</p>
<p>But raising the minimum wage to $7.25, which has remained in place at $5.15 an hour for the last decade does not begin to reverse the race to the bottom in working-class wages–since the typical wage is worth less today than it was in 1972, and real wages have fallen steadily over the last four years of economic “recovery”.</p>
<p>Similarly, Democrats proposed raising Pell Grants for low-income college students from $4.050 (frozen for the last five years) to $4,300. Bush’s own budget proposal surpasses the Democrats’, raising Pell grants to $4,600 in fiscal year 2008 and to $5,400 by 2012.</p>
<p>As the Times commented on February 5, “While Democrats criticized Mr. Bush for what the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, called ‘wrong priorities,’ they conceded privately that Mr. Bush was correct in warning that the unchecked growth of entitlement programs would eventually break the federal bank.”</p>
<p>Congressional Democrats have yet to confront the elephant in the room: Bush’s massive tax cuts for the wealthy during an imperial war. Why are they so timid in the face of a seismic shift in popular opinion, winning them a majority in both Houses of Congress in November? The answer is straightforward: the 2008 presidential campaign is already underway, and Democrats plan to continue their centrist path to victory, focusing on would-be Republican voters secure in the knowledge that the overwhelming majority of progressives will vote Democrat however little they get in return.</p>
<p>As Mike Davis argued recently in New Left Review, “In practice, this translates not simply into a Democratic reluctance to undertake new spending, but also a refusal to debate the rollback of any of Bush’s $1 trillion in tax cuts for the affluent. ‘Tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and spend’, Senator Kent Conrad (chair of the Budget Committee) told the New York Times, ‘we’re not going there.'”</p>
<p>The Times stated on February 6, “But few Democrats are expected to look for new revenues by calling for an end to Bush’s tax cuts, instead of extending them as the president proposed Monday Since 2001, Democratic leaders have made a point of saying the Bush tax cuts are unfairly weighted toward the wealthy and dangerous to American solvency. But the tax cuts expire in 2010, and Democrats acknowledge that they are not ready to move on them now.”</p>
<p>In addition, Democrats are open to negotiations with Bush on future Social Security benefits, “possibly with a curb on some benefits,” the Times added.</p>
<p>“Bipartisanship” is the watchword of the new Democratic majority in Congress. But this is not a new strategy. Democrats have been eager bipartisans for the last 30 years–enabling Reagan’s tax cuts, Clinton’s gutting of “welfare as we know it” and all of George W. Bush’s legislation, including the Patriot Act, the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan and, yes, Bush’s tax cuts.</p>
<p>The neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) remains firmly in control of the Democratic Party, personified by their presidential frontrunner, Sen. Hillary Clinton. The word “poverty” never passes her lips.</p>
<p>During a recently staged “conversation with Iowans,” Clinton asked what health insurance system her audience preferred. “Overwhelmingly the audience favored moving toward a Medicare-like system for all Americans,” the Washington Post reported.</p>
<p>Yet Clinton remained noncommittal about any forthcoming policy pledge for the nation’s 47 million uninsured. She told her Iowa audience, “I’m not ready to be specific until I hear from people.”</p>
<p>Expect no major progress from Democratic Party powerbrokers until the angry electorate that swept them into power in November begins to hold them accountable for their actions–and inactions.</p>
<p>SHARON SMITH is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931859116/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Women and Socialism</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/193185923X/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Subterranean Fire: a History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States</a>. She can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Inside the Imperial Budget | true | https://counterpunch.org/2007/02/21/inside-the-imperial-budget/ | 2007-02-21 | 4 |
<p>The&#160; <a href="http://www.aljazeera.net/news/arabic/2017/12/13/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D9%85%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%B3%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%AF%D8%B3-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B1%D9%82%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%85%D8%A9-%D9%85%D8%AD%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%81%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%B7%D9%8A%D9%86" type="external">Organization of the Islamic Conference,</a>&#160;a regular meeting of the foreign ministers of 57 Muslim-majority countries, held an extraordinary session in Istanbul on Wednesday, in which they rejected US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In a communique they called Trump’s decision “unilateral,” “illegal,” and “irresponsible” and said it was “null and void.”</p>
<p>The Muslim powers said that they now officially recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state, and they urged other countries to so recognize it.</p>
<p>They said that Trump had deliberately sabotaged all the efforts expended over the years to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace and that he had benefited extremism and terrorism, and had threatened international peace and security. They observed that Trump’s decision had the practical effect of withdrawing the US from any role as a mediator in achieving peace.</p>
<p>The Muslim leaders condemned Trump for encouraging the Netanyahu government in Israel to continue its policies of colonial settlement and of Apartheid, as well as of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.</p>
<p />
<p>The communique said that if the Security Council does not mobilize to intervene on Jerusalem, that they would take the issue to the UN General Assembly.</p>
<p>For his part, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas opined that there will be neither peace nor stability until East Jerusalem is definitively recognized as the capital of a Palestinian state.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/jjerusalem-latest-updates-mahmoud-abbas-palestinian-israel-us-middle-east-peace-process-palestine-a8107036.html" type="external">Abbas also</a> said that from now on he and his organization can never again consider the United States as honest broker in the peace process.</p>
<p>Dude, the US was never an honest broker. The US government has from the time of Harry Truman been dedicated to screwing over the Palestinians.</p>
<p>The Trump administration line on Mahmoud Abbas is now that he “walked away from the peace process.” This is like saying that Salma Hayek walked away from reconciliation with Harvey Weinstein.</p>
<p>———–</p>
<p>Related video:</p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/_pFYZkWs09U" type="external">CGTN: “OIC hold emergency meeting in wake of Trump’s Jerusalem decision”</a></p>
<p /> | Muslim Group Recognizes East Jerusalem as Palestinian Capital | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/muslim-countries-call-east-jerusalem-palestines-capital/ | 2017-12-14 | 4 |
<p>With Republican Senate victories in Montana, South Dakota, Iowa, Arkansas, Colorado, North Carolina, and West Virginia, Democrats&#160;are reeling from their worst political drubbing in decades. Things, the pundit class proclaims, will never be the same.</p>
<p>The GOP’s 2014 Senate sweep is indeed <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/republicans-sweep-the-midterm-elections/382394/" type="external">big news</a>, which is why it’s generated such massive headlines. But an even bigger story concerns the nature of the chamber the Republicans have just captured.</p>
<p>The US Senate is by now the most unrepresentative major legislature in the “democratic world.” Thanks to the principle of equal state representation, which grants each state two senators regardless of population, the great majority of people end up grossly marginalized by the body. It’s a problem that has only gotten worse over time.</p>
<p>The upshot is one of the most cockeyed systems of minority rule in history, one that allows tiny coteries to hold the entire country ransom until their demands are met. Congress is hardly the only bicameral legislature on earth. But while the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords" type="external">British House of Lords</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_%28Netherlands%29" type="external">Dutch Senate</a>, and&#160;the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesrat_of_Germany" type="external">German Bundesrat</a> are often less than fully representative, their actual power ranges from minimal to non-existent, which helps soften the blow.</p>
<p>Yet thanks to <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei" type="external">Article&#160;I</a>, which gives the Senate veto power over treaties and executive appointments, America’s upper chamber is actually more powerful than the lower and at the same time vastly more unequal.</p>
<p>It’s a double blow to democracy that feeds into American capitalism’s worst oligarchic tendencies. And yet the problem is almost completely invisible. Where one would expect millions of people in the streets protesting against US government’s resistance to one-person-one vote, the crowds are nowhere to be seen.</p>
<p>Not unexpectedly, equal state representation also turns out to be racially unrepresentative. While&#160;Hispanics&#160;and racial minorities <a href="http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk" type="external">make up</a> 44&#160;percent of the population in the ten largest states, all of which are heavily urbanized, they account for just 18&#160;percent of the ten smallest states (in which individual voting power happens to be some eighteen times greater). Non-whites wind up hugely short-changed as a consequence. Yet while minority leaders have plenty to say about individual senators, they seem to have nothing to say about the institutionalized racism of the Senate as a whole.</p>
<p>Other groups are also penalized. Although women are not affected in the same way since their population is evenly distributed, issues like abortion and equal pay are hardly well served by an arrangement that multiplies the power of rural conservatives. But the LGBT community, whose most vocal activist base is typically in urban areas, does suffer from the Senate’s reign. Yet if the Lambda Legal Defense Fund or other gay advocacy groups have anything to say about equal state representation running contrary to their members’ interests, it has been so muted that no one has noticed.</p>
<p>The same goes for socialists, labor unions, health-care activists, conservationists, and others. All suffer under an exclusionary system that deprives progressive city dwellers of their rightful representation. Yet all are strangely acquiescent.</p>
<p>If Republicans proposed stripping workers of 80&#160;percent of their voting rights, the uproar would be overwhelming. But since it is all the result of forces that the nation’s founders set in motion more than two centuries ago, there is only silence.</p>
<p>What can be the reason for such passivity? Any attempt at an answer requires a journey into the depths of American constitutionalism. As every political science student knows, Roger Sherman, a lawyer, shopkeeper, and surveyor turned politician, put forward his famous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise" type="external">Connecticut Compromise</a> midway through the 1787 Constitutional Convention in an effort to assuage fears that small states were about to be swamped by giants like Virginia and New York.</p>
<p>Instead of a unicameral system, Sherman’s modest proposal was to divide legislative responsibility between a lower house that would look after popular interests and an upper house that would attend to those of the states. American bicameralism, a variation on the British Parliament’s division between commons and lords, was born.</p>
<p>But that was not all the compromise entailed. It also required that the upper house be at least as powerful as the lower to ensure that state interests would be adequately protected, as well as modifications to the amending clause to see to it that the arrangement would be effectively immune to popular pressure. The upshot was the Senate’s enhanced power over treaties and appointments set forth in Article&#160;I, plus a clause in <a href="http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/article-v.html" type="external">Article V</a> stipulating “that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.”</p>
<p>Where other parts of the Constitution can be changed with the approval of two-thirds of each house and three-fourths of the states, any deviation from the principle of equal state representation in the Senate is forbidden without the states’ unanimous consent.</p>
<p>This was enough to render the Senate all but untouchable back in 1790 when Delaware was less than a twelfth the size of Virginia. But as the number of states has grown and population disparities have widened, the guarantees have only grown more ironclad. Today, a demographic microstate like Wyoming derives so much benefit from the system that the chances of it ever saying yes to reform approach zero. The very idea is unspeakable.</p>
<p>Given such obstacles, Americans have made the pragmatic decision to concentrate on what they can change and ignore what they can’t. But the problem involves not only specific legal impediments, but the very nature of the Constitution and its place in larger society.</p>
<p>Americans think of their Constitution as a document towering over society, hardly surprising since it preceded the nation and essentially gave rise to it, a process that continued through the Civil War and even after.</p>
<p>The Declaration of Independence said nothing about a nation-state, referring instead only to “the good people of these colonies,” which “of right ought to be free and independent states.” The Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781, were equally chary, specifying that “each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence” and characterizing the new union as no more than “a firm league of friendship.”</p>
<p>“We the people,” the 1787 Constitution’s famous opening phrase, was the first official reference to Americans as anything approaching a single entity.</p>
<p>Americans view this as perfectly natural. After all, the Constitution created the federal government, which then laid the basis for the first stirrings of a unified society. But elsewhere the process was different. Beginning in the spring of 1789, the French convened the first national assembly, issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and stormed the Bastille, all without drafting a constitution until more than two years later.</p>
<p>The Constitution gave rise to the nation in America, the nation gave rise to the constitution in France.</p>
<p>As a result, the American nation was above the Constitution in one instance and below it in another. The preamble seemingly establishes “we the people” as the highest authority in the land since it describes them as ordaining one plan of government and, in the process, implicitly tossing out another, the ill-fated Articles of Confederation.</p>
<p>But the Constitution then goes&#160;on to subordinate the people by severely limiting their ability to change a document made in their name and in at least one instance, that of equal state representation, eliminating it altogether. The Constitution established the people as sovereign and non-sovereign in virtually the same breath.</p>
<p>It is tempting to dismiss the results as little more than a muddle. If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then the Constitution, the product of four months of labor by fifty-five merchants, planters, and lawyers, is a multi-humped dromedary straight out of Dr&#160;Seuss.</p>
<p>But one could also describe it in more modern terms as a kind of early computer program, one that switches on a processor, powers it up, and then orders it to perform certain specific tasks. The Constitution invests the people with just enough power to carry out the functions that it dictates.</p>
<p>If so, this explains a good deal about the American political system — its low ideological level, its narrowness of debate, its all-around thoughtlessness. Instead of freely thinking through the problems before them, Americans are required — programmed, actually — to think only in ways dictated by the founders.</p>
<p>They are creatures of a pre-ordained democracy that limits their role to filling in certain blanks. They will argue endlessly about the “necessary and proper” clause in Article&#160;I or the meaning of the Second Amendment, but never about why, after more than two centuries, they should remain bound by such precepts in the first place. They debate what the Constitution allows them to debate and disregard the rest.</p>
<p>Hence the silence over the undemocratic&#160;nature of the Senate. Since equal state representation is the single most immovable part of the political structure, it is the feature most resistant to popular pressure and therefore the one most off-limits to debate.</p>
<p>Americans campaign for and against various Senate candidates, they spend millions on political ads, and they beat their breasts when the wrong side wins. But they never pause to ask themselves why they play the game at all or what purpose it is serving in a democratic society.</p>
<p>Since they’re not programmed to think about such issues, they’re no more inclined to do so than a laptop is inclined to think about the merits of Microsoft Word.</p>
<p>This is the equivalent of what the Scottish New Left political theorist Tom Nairn <a href="http://www.versobooks.com/books/1036-the-enchanted-glass" type="external">once described</a> as “royal socialism,”&#160;the notion that Labor MPs can nationalize industry, expand the welfare state, and promote equality all while kneeling before the queen and praying for a peerage. It assumes that progress can continue indefinitely within certain fixed parameters, whether those of an unwritten constitution in the United Kingdom or a 227-year-old written document in the United States that is all but unamendable.</p>
<p>But it can’t. Rather than a workers’ state, royal socialism in Britain led to the grotesque hypocrisy of the Tony Blair years and the growing financial dictatorship of the City of London. The American version has resulted in even worse, the eclipse of organized labor and a dramatic surge in income polarization, not to mention economic crisis, unemployment, and war in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Constitutional strictures thus have a way of turning on their supporters and biting them in the derriere when they least expect it. What seems generous and accommodating in one era becomes suffocating and restrictive in another. In the United States, an entire generation came of age thinking of the Supreme Court as the key to social progress. The deep freeze might continue on Capitol Hill while Ike continued to putter around the golf course, but “the Supremes” would return the Bill of Rights to all its glory.</p>
<p>But that was so last century. With the court restored to its normal historical conservatism and the executive branch likely to lurch to the right in 2016 as well, the strategy is by now exhausted. In Congress, the trench warfare meanwhile grows more and more dangerous.</p>
<p>Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn labored to put a positive spin on gridlock. “We like it,” <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/best-all-possible-worlds" type="external">he wrote</a>&#160;in 2000, because it prevents conservatives from ramming through such initiatives as Social Security privatization and school vouchers. But that was wrong then and even more wrong now.</p>
<p>In the long run, it is plain that gridlock plays into the hands of the know-nothing right who want Americans to believe that democracy equals mob rule and that government is a dead end. The more democracy is made to tie itself in knots, the more frustrated working people grow and the more corporate interests have the field to themselves.</p>
<p>The Senate is now the center of the conspiracy. Republicans are rejoicing over what is likely to be a fifty-four to forty-six majority. But since their forces are concentrated in less populous states in the West and South, they actually represent fewer Americans than most people realize — just 46 percent.</p>
<p>In democratic terms — the only terms, of course, that count — they are still the minority party. But that will not stop them from making the utmost of their constitutional prerogatives.</p>
<p>Next year’s GOP freshmen include such troglodytes as software executive Steve Daines of Montana, who <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okFe5s_M3tE" type="external">maintains</a> that solar cycles cause global warming; millionaire “turnaround specialist” David Perdue of Georgia, who <a href="http://www.macon.com/2014/11/01/3397147_david-perdue-stumps-in-perry-with.html?&amp;rh=1" type="external">told</a> a campaign rally, “I believe in the good Lord, I believe in the Bible, and I believe in our Constitution”; and IBM executive Thom Tillis of North Carolina, <a href="http://votesmart.org/public-statement/852101/#.VHyzSGTF8Vl" type="external">who is</a> anti-abortion, anti-birth control, and a global warming <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd-blt-HKI8" type="external">skeptic</a> to boot.</p>
<p>An increasingly undemocratic structure fuels a growing anti-democratic assault. Yet the problem can only grow worse. Over the next decade or so, the white portion of the ten largest states is <a href="http://www.census.gov/population/projections/files/stateproj/stpjrace.txt." type="external">projected</a> to&#160;continue ticking downward,&#160;while the opposite will occur in the ten smallest.</p>
<p>By 2030, the population ratio between the largest and smallest state is estimated&#160;to increase from sixty-five to one to nearly eighty-nine to one. The Senate will be more racist as a consequence, more unrepresentative, and more of a plaything in the hands of the militant right.</p>
<p>If you want to know what the future looks like, to paraphrase Orwell, imagine the old pre-reform Mississippi state legislature stamping on democracy — forever. Reformers will face an uphill fight even in defending existing gains. Yet there will not be a thing that liberals will be able to do about it without going contrary to rules that they previously extolled. Their options will be either to stand by and watch as democracy rapidly unravels or somehow strike off into a radical new direction.</p>
<p>With growing income polarization and an increasingly rigid Constitution, the US political structure is more brittle than most people realize. Americans have not had a chance to vote on the Constitution as a whole since the ratification battles of 1787–8. And since only white male property owners were allowed to vote — with only a quarter actually choosing to do so — those contests hardly qualify as a democratic.</p>
<p>“We the people” have therefore never been consulted at all. They have merely acquiesced. But the big question is: for how long?</p> | Abolish the Senate | true | http://jacobinmag.com/2014/12/abolish-the-senate/ | 2018-10-04 | 4 |
<p>In this three-part blog series, GlobalPost Special Reports explores what's at stake for Chile's embattled artisan fishermen following the passage of major new federal legislation governing one of the largest fishing industries in the world.</p>
<p>PELLUHUE, Chile — Pablo Cesar Recabal skippered his father’s boat, The Eslora, past the five-mile point reserved for artisan fisherman to a distance where the Chilean coast becomes a blur on the surface of the water.</p>
<p>Reading his handheld electronic compass, Recabal calculated that at these coordinates, 10 miles out, his crew would find fish. A decade ago, when his father Frolian was in charge, rarely would he venture further than a few miles from shore. But those days are long gone.</p>
<p>“All artisan fisherman in this region fish between 12 and 15 miles out because there aren’t fish closer in,” Recabal said.</p>
<p>What Chilean law sets aside for about 85,000 small-scale fishermen is seldom enough to fill their nets, he explained. So the prospect of a 30-foot-long by 8-foot-wide boat bobbing atop daunting swells in the South Pacific is now a reality for many of Chile’s artisanal fishermen.</p>
<p>After decades of unchecked plunder, nearly all commercial fisheries in Chile are in a state of precipitous decline, especially the once-plentiful jack mackerel. In the mid-1990s, Chile’s fishermen netted 4.5 million tons of the emblematic fish, a rich source of Omega-3, processed here mainly as fishmeal. Last year the total haul had dropped to less than 300,000 tons.</p>
<p>“To give you an idea of the dimensions of 4.5 million tons of fish, I like to use its equivalent in cattle,” said Hugo Arancibia, professor of natural and oceanographic sciences at the University of Concepcion. “Let’s to try to imagine 11 million cows in all of the pasture land in all of Chile. They don’t fit.”</p>
<p>Although the plight of the jack mackerel has captured headlines, its troubled story is by no means unique. The health of most commercial fish stock in Chile is best described as catastrophic, said Arancibia. The latest government data on fisheries found that over 70 percent of species are overfished, including jack mackerel, hake, sea bass and anchovy.</p>
<p>One of the simplest methods for identifying a troubled fishery is to compare the average size of mature stock over a period of time. In the case of hake, the median length for mature stock has shrunk from 37 centimeters a decade ago to 28 centimeters today.</p>
<p>And while overfishing has undeniably contributed to the poor health of fish stock, scientists at the government-funded Institute for Promoting Fisheries (IFOP) say natural variations due to climactic variability have also had an impact.</p>
<p>Taken as a whole, the downward trend of fish stock in the South Pacific may well signal an alarming harbinger for global fisheries.</p>
<p>“It’s true there could be a global concern for the variation in fish stock in Chile and the region because what happens here has repercussions abroad,” said Jorge Toro De Ponte, executive director of IFOP. “Together with Peru, we provide close to 20 percent of the global fish production.”</p>
<p>Artisan fishermen are quick to lay blame for depleting fish stock at the doorstep of industrial fleets, and not without substantial evidence. In contrast to their artisan counterparts, large-scale commercial operations make use of massive trawling factory ships, unfettered by the natural or climactic limitations that slow artisans. But the industry is disinclined to shoulder the blame alone, citing lax supervision for enabling smaller boats to under-report their catch.</p>
<p>The permissive fisheries law that allowed for unbridled exploitation can be traced back to 1991 when fish were still abundant and promoting growth was prioritized over environmental concerns. During this period, the Total Allowable Catch system in place sparked a free-for-all, dubbed the “Olympic Race.” A frenetic arms race ensued, characterized by rapidly expanding fleets, racing to capture as many fish as possible before competitors had the chance.</p>
<p>But the onslaught would not last. By 2002, an Individual Transferable Quota system was in place and all commercial fishermen were assigned a share of a Total Allowable Catch per year, determined by the National Fisheries Council (NFC). The law awarded the largest percentage of the lucrative fisheries to large-scale operations, based on the historic bonanza of the mid-1990s.</p>
<p>Though limits were ostensibly grounded in science, and designed to reign in unsustainable fishing practices, the system did little to stabilize declining fisheries. Quota recommendations were derived from a combination of public and private research, including the corporate-funded Research Fisheries Institute, casting doubt on accountability and transparency.</p>
<p>Although the quota system has found success in other countries, powerful economic interests have hindered its effectiveness in Chile, according to Eduardo Tarifeño, a professor of marine biology at the University of Concepcion and a long-standing NFC member.</p>
<p>By design, members of the NFC were drawn from distinct backgrounds to provide a unique and rounded perspective on sustainable fisheries management. But too often socioeconomic and political factors influenced sensible decisions, with allowable catch limits set well beyond what could feasibly be captured.</p>
<p>Tarifeño described the economic rationale as, “if your share of what’s out there is 3 percent, naturally you want the total allowable catch to be as big as possible.”</p>
<p>The congressional debate on the fisheries law focused on how to distribute fish stock and for how long a period of time, while attention to environmental safeguards was largely obscured.</p>
<p>Still, notable protections were included in the final draft of the law, including closure of all seamounts to trawling, the requirement that all fisheries implement reduction plans for species captured incidentally, and for the first time a requirement to set aside 1 percent of caught fish for human consumption.</p>
<p>“I think we have one last chance to stop the collapse of the main fisheries,” said Alex Muñoz, vice president of the environmental group Oceana in South America. "I don't think this will solve the problem on its own, but we now have enough legislative tools to ask for solutions to rebuild the fisheries."</p>
<p>Not everyone shares Muñoz’s hopeful outlook. Beyond the squabbling over distribution, critics of the new fisheries law, which took effect in February, say it offers little promise of curbing the influence of powerful business interests or healing ailing fisheries.</p>
<p>The new law counts on nearly a dozen government-appointed scientific committees to set Total Allowable Catch, but these unpaid committees are every bit as susceptible to manipulation as their NFC predecessors, according to Albert Arias Arthur, a US-based fisheries policy consultant.</p>
<p>“What we have again is a vulnerable middleman who is going to do whatever the big guys want,” said Arthur, who counts Chilean businesses among his clients. “It’s just a different pocket on the same pair of pants.”</p>
<p>Aside from the technical aspects of the fisheries law, Tarifeño added, the government made a crucial flaw in emphasizing sustainability over conservation. From a biological point of view, he concludes, recovery is unlikely.</p>
<p>“If we really want to save the resource we should stop fishing it,” Tarifeño said. “Obviously that would have an economic consequence, but if there aren’t any fish, there will still be a crisis.”</p>
<p>Set against an uncertain future at sea, competition among would-be fisherman continues to be fierce and survival requires an ability to adapt to shifting realities, the skipper Recabal says.</p>
<p>This includes a change to net fishing. Years ago, before fish stock began dropping off, 90 percent of hake was caught using sardine or anchovy as bait. But as the price of bait climbed, many artisans traded in their hooks for nets, a significantly less discerning method.</p>
<p>By late morning, the beach was populated by artisan fishermen, busy filling 30-kilo trays with hake and discarding tiny crabs into a plastic barrel. As the barrel filled with crabs, Recabal defended the use of nets as perfectly sustainable. “Besides,” he added, “we have to buy bait from the industrial companies. It’s really expensive.”</p>
<p>This is Part II of the series. Read <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/rights/chile-new-fishing-law-favors-big-business" type="external">Part I</a> and <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/groundtruth/chile-artisan-fishermen-pacific" type="external">Part III</a>.</p>
<p>This series was funded in part by the <a href="http://www.pulitzercenter.org" type="external">Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting</a>. &#160;</p> | Chile's fish supply decline 'catastrophic' after years of overfishing | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-05-22/chiles-fish-supply-decline-catastrophic-after-years-overfishing | 2013-05-22 | 3 |
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<p>Deeply personal information submitted by U.S. intelligence and military personnel for security clearances - mental illnesses, drug and alcohol use, past arrests, bankruptcies and more - is in the hands of hackers linked to China, officials say.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>In describing a cyberbreach of federal records dramatically worse than first acknowledged, authorities point to Standard Form 86, which applicants are required to complete. Applicants also must list contacts and relatives, potentially exposing any foreign relatives of U.S. intelligence employees to coercion. Both the applicant's Social Security number and that of his or her cohabitant are required.</p>
<p>In a statement, the White House said that on June 8, investigators concluded there was "a high degree of confidence that ... systems containing information related to the background investigations of current, former and prospective federal government employees, and those for whom a federal background investigation was conducted, may have been exfiltrated."</p>
<p>"This tells the Chinese the identities of almost everybody who has got a United States security clearance," said Joel Brenner, a former top U.S. counterintelligence official. "That makes it very hard for any of those people to function as an intelligence officer. The database also tells the Chinese an enormous amount of information about almost everyone with a security clearance. That's a gold mine. It helps you approach and recruit spies."</p>
<p>The Office of Personnel Management, which was the target of the hack, did not respond to requests for comment. OPM spokesman Samuel Schumach and Jackie Koszczuk, the director of communications, have consistently said there was no evidence that security clearance information had been compromised.</p>
<p>The White House statement said the hack into the security clearance database was separate from the breach of federal personnel data announced last week - a breach that is itself appearing far worse than first believed. It could not be learned whether the security database breach happened when an OPM contractor was hacked in 2013, an attack that was discovered last year. Members of Congress received classified briefings about that breach in September, but there was no public mention of security clearance information being exposed.</p>
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<p>Nearly all of the millions of security clearance holders, including some CIA, National Security Agency and military special operations personnel, are potentially exposed in the security clearance breach, the officials said. More than 4 million people had been investigated for a security clearance as of October 2014, according to government records.</p>
<p>Regarding the hack of standard personnel records announced last week, two people briefed on the investigation disclosed Friday that as many as 14 million current and former civilian U.S. government employees have had their information exposed to hackers, a far higher figure than the 4 million the Obama administration initially disclosed.</p>
<p>American officials have said that cybertheft originated in China and that they suspect espionage by the Chinese government, which has denied any involvement.</p>
<p>The newer estimate puts the number of compromised records between 9 million and 14 million going back to the 1980s, said one congressional official and one former U.S. official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because information disclosed in the confidential briefings includes classified details of the investigation.</p>
<p>There are about 2.6 million executive branch civilians, so the majority of the records exposed relate to former employees. Contractor information also has been stolen, officials said. The data in the hack revealed last week include the records of most federal civilian employees, though not members of Congress and their staffs, members of the military or staff of the intelligence agencies.</p>
<p>On Thursday, a major union said it believes the hackers stole Social Security numbers, military records and veterans' status information, addresses, birth dates, job and pay histories; health insurance, life insurance and pension information; and age, gender and race data.</p>
<p>The personnel records would provide a foreign government an extraordinary roadmap to blackmail, impersonate or otherwise exploit federal employees in an effort to gain access to U.S. secrets - or entry into government computer networks.</p>
<p>Outside experts were pointing to the breaches as a blistering indictment of the U.S. government's ability to secure its own data two years after a National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, was able to steal tens of thousands of the agency's most sensitive documents.</p>
<p>After the Snowden revelations about government surveillance, it became more difficult for the federal government to hire talented younger people into sensitive jobs, particularly at intelligence agencies, said Evan Lesser, managing director of ClearanceJobs.com, a website that matches security-clearance holders to available slots.</p>
<p>"Now, if you get a job with the government, your own personal information may not be secure," he said. "This is going to multiply the government's hiring problems many times."</p>
<p>The Social Security numbers were not encrypted, the American Federation of Government Employees said, calling that "an abysmal failure on the part of the agency to guard data that has been entrusted to it by the federal workforce."</p>
<p>"Unencrypted information of this kind this is disgraceful - it really is disgraceful," Brenner said. "We've had wakeup calls now for 20 years or more, and we keep hitting the snooze button."</p>
<p>The OPM's Schumach would not address how the data was protected or specifics of the information that might have been compromised, but said, "Today's adversaries are sophisticated enough that encryption alone does not guarantee protection." OPM is nonetheless increasing its use of encryption, he said.</p>
<p>The Obama administration had acknowledged that up to 4.2 million current and former employees whose information resides in the Office of Personnel Management server are affected by the December cyberbreach, but it had been vague about exactly what was taken.</p>
<p>J. David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a letter Thursday to OPM director Katherine Archuleta that based on incomplete information OPM provided to the union, "the hackers are now in possession of all personnel data for every federal employee, every federal retiree and up to 1 million former federal employees."</p>
<p>Another federal employee group, the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said Friday that "at this point, we believe AFGE's assessment of the breach is overstated." It called on the OPM to provide more information.</p>
<p>Former Rep. Mike Rogers, one-time chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said last week that he believes China will use the recently stolen information for "the mother of all spear-phishing attacks."</p>
<p>Spear-phishing is a technique under which hackers send emails designed to appear legitimate so that users open them and load spyware onto their networks.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.</p> | Mental illness, substance use, arrests: Officials say hackers gained deeply personal data | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2015/06/13/mental-illness-substance-use-arrests-officials-say-hackers-gained-deeply.html | 2016-03-09 | 0 |
<p>The cash-depleted America Dream Meadowlands mall project just caught a break and its second wind as Wall Street giants JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have just completed the sale of $1.1 billion in tax-exempt bonds to help boost the projects completion.</p>
<p>“We are delighted that JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have completed the full financing for American Dream. The response by the investment community to the bond offering and private financing have been exceptional, both oversubscribed, confirming strong investor confidence in our vision for American Dream. We would like to thank the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and Borough of East Rutherford for their assistance in the bond sale.” –Don Ghermezian, President, Triple Five.</p>
<p>Prior to the bond sale, the mall project’s competition was delayed for years and face tremendous financial woes.</p>
<p>The Meadowlands mall has been under construction since 2003 when The Mills Corp., the developer at the time, announced that it would create the “busiest” mall in the world.</p>
<p>The project was first named “Xanadu,” but Mills Corp ran into financially problems, the group then handed over the project to Colony Capital, who then saw their mega mall dreams collapse just as quickly as their main backer’s financial future did after the 2008 financial bubble burst.</p>
<p>Colony Capital was backed by the failed investment bank Lehman Brothers.</p>
<p>Enter Triple Five, the Canadian firm tapped by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to complete the job. Christie helped allocate taxpayer dollars to fund the mall.</p>
<p>Triple Five renamed the project “American Dream Meadowlands.”- <a href="" type="internal">Shark Tank</a></p>
<p>Because of the venture’s financial problems and construction delays, Triple Five’s American Dream Miami theme park project, which is still in the approval process, suffered from the bad press, and many questioned if it too would face those same problems.</p> | Struggling Theme Park Venture Gets Cash Infusion | true | http://shark-tank.com/2017/06/26/struggling-theme-park-venture-gets-cash-infusion/ | 0 |
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<p>Scott&#160;Prouty, the onetime bartender <a href="" type="internal">who made</a> the <a href="" type="internal">video</a> of Mitt Romney’s 47 percent remarks, has launched a fund to raise money to cover legal costs and possibly the cost of going to law school. After <a href="" type="internal">revealing himself</a> on MSNBC’s The Ed Show on Wednesday night, Prouty immediately became a subject of intense media attention. He was besieged with interview requests. And while his <a href="http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-ed-show/51170895" type="external">hourlong interview</a> with Schultz was under way, he says, strangers showed up at his Florida home and he soon became a target for hate-tweets and dirt-digging from right-wingers still angry about his role in exposing Romney’s dismissive attitude toward half the country.</p>
<p>As this furor was happening—and supporters and fans of Prouty were asking how they could help him—Prouty set up an online <a href="http://www.gofundme.com/1ix17c" type="external">“47 Percent Legal Assistance Fund</a>.” (And he assumed control of the @scottprouty Twitter handle that a supporter created for him on Wednesday evening. He had previously been tweeting as @AnneOnymous670.)</p>
<p>After taping an interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Thursday night, Prouty discussed with me his reasons for establishing this fund:</p>
<p>After going public, I’ve received a flood of physical and legal threats in emails and tweets. People have found my address and have shown up at my door. It’s possible I may have to move. And I’ve had to contact several lawyers and have incurred legal expenses. I might incur more going forward. I always knew that if I talked about this, I could become a target, and I don’t want to be melodramatic, but some of the threats I’ve received do cause me to be concerned for my safety and that of my loved ones.</p>
<p>I appreciate all the support I’ve received from the beginning—and especially now. Many people have asked how they could help. This is one way. I’ve also said in interviews that if they would like to show their support they can send donations to the <a href="http://www.spca-sofla.org" type="external">SPCA</a> and the <a href="http://www.globallabourrights.org/" type="external">Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights</a>. These are both groups that I care about.</p>
<p>I’m hoping that I don’t need to spend a lot of money on lawyers and security. If people are generous and there are any funds left over after these costs are covered, I would use the remaining money to pay for going back to school. I’ve been bartending for eight years and I’d like to move forward with a job that lets me help others. If I end up not using these funds for education, I will donate them to the SPCA and IGLHR.</p>
<p>During his media interviews the past two days, Prouty has not mentioned this fund, and so far only a handful of persons have located the website and contributed.</p>
<p>On the site, Prouty notes, “It’s always been my dream to attend&#160;law school. I’d like to be a socially responsible lawyer who can help the 47 percent navigate our legal system. Thank you for your donations!”</p>
<p /> | Scott Prouty, the 47 Percent Video Source, Opens a Legal-Assistance Fund | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/scott-prouty-47-percent-legal-assistance-fund/ | 2013-03-15 | 4 |
<p>CHARLOTTE — Despite a small sample size, the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Carolina_Panthers/" type="external">Carolina Panthers</a> found enough to digest following their first preseason game to get back to work with a more defined plan.</p>
<p>The Panthers were an incomplete operation if for no other reason it’s unclear when quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cam_Newton/" type="external">Cam Newton</a> will be back in full action as he has rested his surgically repaired throwing shoulder. But a 27-17 victory against the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Houston-Texans/" type="external">Houston Texans</a> left a lot of good tastes.</p>
<p>Defense had been a staple of Carolina’s good teams in recent years and that’s an area that the Panthers are looking to return to form. So even though the first-team unit played for only one series, there was a sense that there could be some dominance.</p>
<p>“I liked what the first unit did right off the bat,” head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ron_Rivera/" type="external">Ron Rivera</a> said.</p>
<p>There was particularly a dose of confidence because of Steve Wilks moving into his new role as defensive coordinator. Even in the sometimes-chaotic preseason, there was evidence that the defense could be coming into good order.</p>
<p>The offense could be in a slightly different situation, especially until Newton’s status is clarified. While there haven’t been indications that he won’t be ready when the season starts in September, until he’s out there in a game situation there’s bound to be that doubt.</p>
<p>So that could mean the handling of quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Derek_Anderson/" type="external">Derek Anderson</a>‘s repetitions both in practice and in preseason games might be worth tracking.</p>
<p>“You aren’t going to be perfect,” Anderson said, realizing some of the task of helping get the receiving corps up to speed has now fallen on him.</p>
<p>There might be more clarity by the time the Panthers play their second preseason game Aug. 19 at Tennessee.</p>
<p>Of course, much of the attention has been deflected from Anderson because of rookie running back Christian McCaffrey’s arrival. McCaffrey seems to understand that he’s going to receive opportunities and the attention that accompanies that.</p>
<p>“It was good to get out there and finally play again,” said McCaffrey, who played in college at Stanford. “Learn from it, get all the jitters out and now it’s time to roll.”</p>
<p>McCaffrey seemed in position to nearly break loose on a couple of plays (33 yards on seven carries), so that was an encouraging aspect of his first outing.</p>
<p>While it was new for McCaffrey, Anderson has spent quite a bit time in some seasons with the first-team unit so he knows how to handle that role.</p>
<p>Notes: Defensive end <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Vernon-Butler/" type="external">Vernon Butler</a>, who had a slow start to last season because of an injury, went down in the preseason opener with a high ankle sprain that could keep him out of action for a while during training camp. He exited in the first quarter against the Houston Texans. … Linebacker <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Luke-Kuechly/" type="external">Luke Kuechly</a>, who missed the latter part of the 2016 season as he dealt with concussion issues, has been active in training camp and he played a series in the first preseason game. He was without a tackle.</p> | Carolina Panthers: Cam Newton still on way | false | https://newsline.com/carolina-panthers-cam-newton-still-on-way/ | 2017-08-11 | 1 |
<p>Belgian intelligence services have arrested and subsequently released a man believed to be directly involved in the Brussels bombings. Police initially charged Muslim " <a href="" type="internal">migrant rights activist</a>" Faycal Cheffou with several counts of "terrorist murder" and involvement in a terror network, but released him due to lack of evidence.</p>
<p>Here’s video surveillance of the "man in the hat," courtesy of NBC News. Police apparently suspected that the man seen rolling a luggage of explosives in the Brussels airport prior to the explosions was none other than Cheffou.</p>
<p>Without detailed explanation, Belgian’s federal prosecutor announced that the suspect, labeled by security forces as “Faycal C.,” was released due to a lack of evidence.</p>
<p>Cheffou was arrested on Thursday and released on Sunday, at the same time as mourners gathered in Brussels for a prayer vigil honoring the victims lost in the terrorist attack.</p>
<p>One of two scenarios is possible. Either Cheffou didn’t do it and Belgian intelligence services are utterly incompetent, arresting and releasing Muslim men linked with jihadist networks. Or Belgium just released the man responsible for blowing up an airport, in which case...holy sh*t.</p>
<p>While this was the first arrest of a suspect believed to be directly involved in the bombing, others have been detained last week in relation to the ISIS cell that planned the attack. “Early Monday, Belgium's federal prosecutor announced that three people had been charged with participation in a terror group. It did not say whether the suspects — identified only as Yassine A., Mohamed B. and Aboubaker O. — had ties to any particular plot,” <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/brussels-attacks/belgium-ushers-new-week-raids-remembrance-brussels-n546416?cid=sm_tw" type="external">reports</a> NBC News. “That followed charges against two other people over the weekend, which prosecutors similarly did not explicitly link to any plot or the Brussels bombings.”</p>
<p>So far, the intelligence gathering capabilities of Belgian’s security forces hasn’t inspired much confidence. After capturing Salah Abdeslam, one of the terrorists involved in the Paris massacre, just days before the Brussels bombings, interrogators failed to even ask the jihadist about future ISIS plans. Shockingly, they only questioned him for one hour before the Brussels attack.</p>
<p>Politico Europe <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-terror-attacks-questioned-salah-abdeslam-for-only-one-hour-before-terror-attacks/" type="external">reports</a>:</p>
<p>Despite the discovery of detonators, weapons, and Abdeslam’s fingerprints in a safe house days earlier and growing evidence that the Brussels terror network was stronger than previously understood, law enforcement officials only briefly questioned Abdeslam because he was still recovering from surgery after being shot in the leg during his apprehension, according to a senior Belgian security official, who asked for anonymity to speak about the investigation.</p>
<p>“He seemed very tired and he had been operated on the day before,” the official said, adding that law enforcement officials did not question him again before Tuesday.</p>
<p>“They were not thinking about the possibilities of what happened on Tuesday morning,” said a second source with knowledge of the process.</p>
<p>Negligently, investigators only focused on the details of the January Paris attack. Already, US, French, and Turkish officials have blasted Belgium’s intelligence failures, rightly arguing that the <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/19/isis-is-just-one-of-a-full-blown-global-jihadist-insurgency.html" type="external">global jihadist insurgency</a> makes every Western-oriented country vulnerable to terror threats.</p>
<p>As ISIS sleeper cells communicate and send orders across the European continent, gaps in intelligence sharing and security surveillance will be further exposed. Belgium’s security failures may very well create a domino effect across the region, allowing ISIS guerillas the latitude needed to carry out more heinous attacks against civilians.</p> | Suspected Brussels Terrorist Freed By Authorities; Belgium Compounds Security Failures | true | https://dailywire.com/news/4461/suspected-brussels-terrorist-freed-authorities-joshua-yasmeh | 2016-03-29 | 0 |
<p>A few years ago, a series of photos by the French photographer Guillaume Herbaut were widely posted on blogs and feminist news-sites on the internet.</p>
<p>In the photos, a group of young women pose with swords, hatchets and nun-chucks in the woods of Ukraine. In some of the photos they are wearing black t-shirts and loose karate-style pants. In some they are wearing flowing white shirts embroidered with flowers, a traditional Ukrainian outfit. The captions described these women as new Amazons, as in the mythical tribe of warrior women.</p>
<p>The group is run by a woman named Katerina Tarnovska. By day, she is a pre-school gym teacher, leading groups of wiggly four-year-olds in a circle around a gym.</p>
<p>In her spare time, the 34-year-old is the leader of Asgarda, a female martial arts group that claims to be a new tribe of Amazons.</p>
<p>Amazons are the mythical all-female warriors that are said to have fought in the Trojan War and worked alongside Alexander the Great. They're famously said to have cut off their left breasts so they could aim their arrows more accurately.</p>
<p>Tarnovska doesn't believe that. But she does believe that the Amazons are the direct ancestors of Ukrainian women.</p>
<p>"If you read the histories, you see that on the territory of the Ukraine lived a group of young women, who came together to support each other in war, it was like a women's school, where women who liked to fight, they could learn and lead such a life," Tarnovska said.</p>
<p>And it was high time, Tarnovska said, for Ukrainian women to reconnect with their warrior past.</p>
<p>So in 2002, Katerina began to develop an all-female martial art. It's based on another recently-created form of fighting called "Fighting Hopak," but with a special emphasis on self-defense. She pasted fliers all over Lviv, inviting girls to train in the Carpathian Mountains. Word spread and dozens of girls joined.</p>
<p>And they still come, a couple dozen every summer. It's like camp, Katerina said. Girls do arts and crafts, sing songs around a campfire, and practice martial arts. And Katerina gives lectures about Ukrainian history and women's role in society.</p>
<p>"We talk about who are women and girl warriors, why do they exist? What kind of laws they should follow? How does one become a true warrior? And what kind of women and heroines have lived in the past, and what role they played in our history?" Tarnovska said.</p>
<p>But, Tarnovska stressed that Asgarda is not out to claim anything for women. It's not a group of feminists. Ukrainian women, she said, have always been equals. Like in mythology, as Amazons, they fought alongside men.</p>
<p>Oksana Kis, an anthropologist and historian in Lviv, said she also doesn't believe in the Amazon myth.</p>
<p>"But… whether or not there is proof of Amazons in Ukraine or matriarchs in Ukraine, if this helps these women to feel better, and develop their self esteem and confidence, why not do it?"</p>
<p>Kis said when Ukraine was part of the USSR, Soviet propaganda instructed women that they were equal to men. In today's Ukraine, the laws are progressive and in favor of women.</p>
<p>"What Ukrainians always try to do, they always try to find the unique Ukrainian way to do everything, you know, for women's liberation, for martial arts, for whatever, you know," she said.</p>
<p>But policy and practice in Ukraine are different.</p>
<p>Kis said women make up only 10 percent of the Ukrainian parliament. They're paid 30 percent less than men with the same jobs. And in some fields, like computers, even men and women study the subject at roughly the same rate, there are hardly any women working in IT.</p>
<p>And this is where Tarnovska thinks her warrior training can help.</p>
<p>In a church basement across town fat blue gym mats pad the floor. A group of 13 guys and two girls practice hurling each other onto the mats. Tarnovska changes from gold-sparked jeans to thigh-length boxing shorts emblazoned with a hissing viper. She suits up in gloves.</p>
<p>Tarnovska is training in kickboxing and Muay Thai. She spars with her trainer in preparation for an upcoming match.</p>
<p>She'll teach the moves she learns to her Amazons, she said. And that will help them be better, tougher people regardless of what they do in life.</p>
<p>"You can be a warrior businessman, you can be a warrior politician, a warrior trolleybus operator," Tarnovska said.</p>
<p>Or, a pre-school gym teacher.</p> | Ukraine's Asgarda: Reinventing the Amazon Warrior Women | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-05-15/ukraines-asgarda-reinventing-amazon-warrior-women | 2013-05-15 | 3 |
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<p>WIN QUIGLEY’S UpFront column (“Looking for answers on poverty in New Mexico ,” Sept. 25) recently outlined several underlying causes of the stubborn persistence of poverty in our state, one of which was the lack of capital for small businesses. Luckily, on the same day the Journal also printed an op-ed that contained a practical and proven way to address that particular obstacle to economic growth: Craig Barnes’ excellent overview of the potential for public banking (“Public bank can make sense for NM,” Sept. 25).</p>
<p>The problem, according to Quigley, is that the big banks aren’t equipped to do the relatively small loans needed by entrepreneurs. Community banks are extremely tightly regulated and often can’t provide big enough loans to help those same entrepreneurs.</p>
<p>Enter the public bank, investing state money in the state to serve state interests and back up the small community banks as they respond to local needs.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>This idea has been successful in North Dakota for almost a century. I applaud Santa Fe for seriously considering the creation of a city bank and call on the state, counties and other cities to follow their example.</p>
<p>LOUISA BARKALOW</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p>
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<p>Gila Wilderness is a gem worth protecting</p>
<p>THIS YEAR, the Wilderness Act is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a conference in Albuquerque. This is fitting, as New Mexico is home to the landscape that inspired iconic conservationist Aldo Leopold to launch the wilderness movement.</p>
<p>Just three hours southwest of Albuquerque, a half-dozen 10,000-foot peaks rise above the northern edge of the Chihuahuan desert. Here, amongst nearly 600 species of plants and animals and along the banks of one of the Southwest’s last free-flowing rivers, lies the birthplace of American wilderness. Here lies the Gila.</p>
<p>The Gila is not just (the) birthplace of American wilderness. It is the next great wild place. With existing wilderness areas and wilderness-quality roadless areas totaling an area larger than Yellowstone, the Gila bio-region is the future of the wilderness movement and worth our every effort to protect. New Mexico has a rich wilderness tradition and the Gila is our opportunity to honor it.</p>
<p>MADELEINE CAREY</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Santa Fe</p>
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<p>Carbon fee, dividend legislation needed</p>
<p>ON SUNDAY, Sept. 21, more than 400,000 people (according to organizers) participated in the People’s Climate March in New York City to draw attention to the issue of global warming as world leaders gathered for the United Nations Climate Summit. Many more people participated in their own communities across the country, including right here in Albuquerque.</p>
<p>These climate marchers exemplify the attitude revealed in a recent survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which found that over 70 percent of Americans believe climate change is either a critical or an important threat to the vital interests of the country. It also found that more than 80 percent said that combating climate change is either a very important or a somewhat important goal for our country.</p>
<p>Similarly, a New York Times/CBS poll found that about 60 percent of Americans said that protecting the environment should be a priority “even at the risk of curbing economic growth.”</p>
<p>We at Citizens Climate Lobby completely agree that protecting the environment must be a priority, but we have the research to prove that, through Carbon Fee and Dividend legislation, we can both protect the environment and actually boost economic growth. In fact, based (on) the analysis done by the highly respected economic analysis firm Regional Economic Models Inc., we would say that not enacting Carbon Fee and Dividend will rob the country of vital economic benefits.</p>
<p>Taxing the approximately 3,000 major sources of carbon pollution and returning 100 percent of the revenues to American households will transition the country away from carbon-based fuels, thereby helping to bring down greenhouse gases to a safe level. According to REMI’s analysis, Carbon Fee and Dividend will, in the process, create 2.1 million jobs after 10 years, 2.8 million after 20 years and will grow the national economy by an estimated $1.375 trillion over 20 years.</p>
<p>It’s time for the U.S. to show leadership in addressing global warming and to enact Carbon Fee and Dividend legislation. We’ll all be much better off when we do!</p>
<p>HEIDI TOPP BROOKS</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p>
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<p>Misleading message wrapped in plastic</p>
<p>“DAVID KOCH WANTS you to use more plastic bags.”</p>
<p>That would have been a more accurate headline for the recent op-ed article titled “Plastic bag bans not a panacea for environmental ills” (Sept. 22). That is because the author is vice president of research for the Reason Foundation that is funded, in part, by the Koch Family Foundations. In fact, right-wing billionaire David Koch serves as a trustee of the foundation.</p>
<p>The absurd argument that the article puts out is that reusable bags are ” the worst” because households are told to wash the bags “regularly.” Who is he kidding? Reusable bags are mostly used for pre-packaged groceries, so why would anyone wash these bags regularly as opposed to when they are visibly soiled?</p>
<p>Our environment is already choking in plastic bags but this apparently must be good for the petroleum and other environment-trashing industries that the Koch brothers support and control. Of course the Koch brothers are major funders of the climate change deniers as well.</p>
<p>The Koch brothers should be spending their time and big bucks on more important pursuits such as buying politicians, and leave the rest of us to do our grocery shopping with our environmentally friendly reusable sacks.</p>
<p>Special note must be made that this foolish article appeared in the Journal on the day after the largest worldwide global environmental protests in history.</p>
<p>BRUCE G. TRIGG</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p>
<p>LAWYERS FOR taxi companies Lyft and Uber continue to duke it out in the courts, but for me, this conflict isn’t about arcane questions of what constitutes a cab: It’s about the safety of people I love, living in a city with all-too-dangerous roads.</p>
<p>I’m a driver for Lyft, which is to say I’m part of a team that is taking a giant bite out of Albuquerque’s DWI statistics. Many people use my ride-sharing service to get to and from parties, bars and restaurants. Many choose to drink and should be commended for also choosing a convenient and affordable option to get home without driving.</p>
<p>A friend of mine lost her daughter to an alcohol-related crash, and I saw firsthand the devastation brought to her, her son, and the rest of her family. Everyone wants to put an end to senseless tragedies like this, and one simple, practical way to (do) that is to let me do my job.</p>
<p>Lyft is not some fly-by-night vigilante parachuting into the state, as taxi company attorney Michael Cadigan implies (“Taxi firms clash with Uber, Lyft in court,” Sept. 23). It’s a boldface brand, to be sure, but one made possible only by normal New Mexicans like me. I’m a single mom and needed a job with flexible hours, plus I prefer getting out and interacting with people to sitting in front of a computer all day.</p>
<p>Lyft does a thorough background check, makes sure I have gold-plated insurance and an up-to-date car, then it’s up to me to get my customers where they need to go.</p>
<p>I’m so grateful to have Lyft in my life. It helps me make a living, and it quite literally helps Albuquerque residents get home alive.</p>
<p>JENNIFER WALTERS</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p>
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<p>Tune out on political phone calls, ads</p>
<p>TO THE PEOPLE doing surveys for political purposes – I will not answer your phone calls, as I block them as they come in!</p>
<p>You call in the evening when people are either preparing dinner, eating dinner, relaxing to watch a favorite TV show, etc.! I will not talk to you!</p>
<p>I zap off political ads on TV and Democrats in general. These surveys are unnecessary, rude and asinine! People already have their minds made up as to who they are going to vote for and no amount of surveys, ads, phone calls or money will change the outcome.</p>
<p>Don’t call me, I’ll call you, but don’t hold your breath!</p>
<p>DORRIS MCKINNEY</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p>
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<p>Headlines reflected poorly on fundraiser</p>
<p>AS A SUPPORTER of Cuidando Los Ninos’ extraordinary mission and programs and a Journal subscriber, I was nonetheless deeply unsettled by the language and headlines included in Sunday’s story about an upcoming CLNKids Silent Auction (“Community leaders on the auction block,” Sept. 28).</p>
<p>I recognize the intention and value of having opportunity to “win” time with respected community leaders at this fundraiser. That said, the headlines “Locals on block for fundraiser” and “Community leaders on auction block” are appallingly offensive, given the historical realities these seemingly simple, yet searing, words reflect.</p>
<p>Surely there are more appropriate ways to communicate something as worthwhile as an effort to support our community’s homeless children and families. Thank you.</p>
<p>CHRISTINA GRIFFITH</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p>
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<p>Two wrongs don’t make argument right</p>
<p>LETTER WRITER Barry Simon (“Some poll responders need a brain scan,” Sept. 30) attributes the paraphrase “you can never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people” to P.T. Barnum. As far as I know, P.T. Barnum never said or wrote anything remotely like this.</p>
<p>However, Bartlett’s has documented that H.L. Mencken wrote: “No one in this world, so far as I know … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”</p>
<p>The lesson? Writers, don’t be a sucker for a weak argument: research carefully.</p>
<p>PHILIP DAVIS</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p>
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<p>Where’s payoff for mental health bucks?</p>
<p>THE LEGISLATIVE Finance Committee reported that 114,314 people received behavioral health services in the last budget year, funded with $209 million of our state taxpayers’ money. We also know that Bernalillo County gives $90 million of our money to UNM Hospital for medical, mental, and behavioral health services.</p>
<p>Neither the Human Services Department nor UNMH can provide meaningful accounting of effectiveness or extent of services provided. I can’t even guess how many of our federal tax dollars flow from Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare programs for behavioral care.</p>
<p>The Albuquerque City Council has … proposed a tax increase to provide an additional (roughly) $16 million in taxpayers’ money for mental health services (and capital expenditures for mental health), a clear case of throwing money at an undefined problem. The state, county and city collaborated in forming a task force to define the problem, examine options to provide effective mental health services, and propose solutions for consideration by voters and their elected representatives.</p>
<p>Taxpayers can attend and observe meetings of the mental health services task force, and we have been invited to voice our concerns to that group. Those who attend largely seem to ask for more funding, while facts about the currently funded program effectiveness are simply unknown.</p>
<p>The (City) Council ducked its responsibility to decide to raise our taxes, calling for a public vote in the 2014 general election. The (County) Commission tied that idea into a complex knot, revising the question into an opinion poll. Both bodies could have reallocated existing funds or imposed higher taxes in an effort to improve mental health services if that’s what is needed – and the need is still undetermined. The ensuing legal brawl results in an open barn door to hold opinion polls via ballot, distracting voters from the real purposes of electing responsible representatives and deciding major issues in the general election.</p>
<p>… (Pollster) Brian Sanderoff should conduct yet another poll to determine what people think about paying more taxes for unknown solutions to an undefined problem.</p>
<p>ROGER MICKELSON</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p>
<p>EDITOR’S NOTE: On the November ballot, the Bernalillo County Commission is asking voters if the county should impose a new gross receipts tax to fund mental health services. County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley has said one-eighth of 1 percent gross receipts tax could generate about $16 million a year.</p>
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<p>Patrol car needed at Paseo roadwork site</p>
<p>IS IT TOO much to ask? Would it be possible for the police to station a patrol car on the eastbound lanes of Paseo del Norte approaching the construction over I-25?</p>
<p>Every day, I see cars being driven at 50-65 miles an hour in the 35 mph construction zone. The patrol car might not even need an officer in it all the time. Hopefully, just the possibility of a ticket might slow the drivers down.</p>
<p>CLINTON CAMPBELL</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p>
<p /> | Talk of the town | false | https://abqjournal.com/475658/talk-of-the-town-145.html | 2014-10-07 | 2 |
<p>Once upon a time, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his political protégé, Marco Rubio, were once real close amigos, and seemed prideful in talking about their ongoing political bromance.</p>
<p>But those days of gushing over one another are gone, as both men continue to take shots at each other in the hotly contested 2016 Republican presidential primary race.</p>
<p>It is no secret that Bush is upset that Rubio decided to enter the presidential race, draining his donor base of support, as well as draining much of the grassroots support Bush was counting on.</p>
<p>When Bush fell from atop the GOP field of presidential candidates, Rubio, who also dropped as a result of the rise of Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, has been able stay at a respectable 3rd and 4th place in most of the state and national polls conducted.</p>
<p>Both Bush and Rubio, as well as Chris Christie, Jon Kasich, are all vying for the same establishment Republican base of support in New Hampshire, as the upcoming Granite State primary election could prove to be the last stand for some, or possible all four of these candidates.</p>
<p>Here is Jeb Bush’s Right To Rise PAC’s latest attack against Senator Marco Rubio, where he makes fun of Rubio’s shiny new black boots.</p>
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<p>You have to give Rubio credit for wearing such spiffy shoes. His wife Jeanette must have picked them out because anyone who know Rubio, knows that his fashion sense is not all that up to par.</p>
<p>Dale!</p>
<p>Conservatives Solutions PAC, which supports Rubio, counters Jeb Bush’s “Booty” video with their own campaign “Train wreck” attack video:</p>
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<p>When the 2016 election cycle is over and the political dust settles, will the Rubio-Bush&#160;love affair stand the test of time, or is the damage done to their bromance irreparable?</p> | The Rubio-Bush Bromance Is Over, For Now | true | http://shark-tank.com/2016/01/14/the-rubio-bush-bromance-is-over-for-now/ | 0 |
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<p>Marcus Williams never left.</p>
<p>And here they both are.</p>
<p>Williams, a freshman tight end from Cleveland, and Molina, a junior wide receiver from Valley, are two of eight in-state scholarship players on the University of New Mexico 2017 football roster.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Their stories are similar in some respects, different in others, and the endings are yet to be written. But they’re where they want to be.</p>
<p>“This is home,” Molina said after Tuesday’s practice. “… I think that’s the biggest part, being able to play in front of the people who’ve watched me play since I was little.”</p>
<p>Williams is sensitive to the Cleveland tradition at UNM. Three players from the Storm’s 2011 state champions, Cole Gautsche, Reece White and Romell Jordan, became Lobos. Willliams and Gabe Ortega, from the 2015 state champs, followed suit.</p>
<p>Besides, Williams said, a scholarship offer from UNM was too valuable to pass up.</p>
<p>“Education was the biggest part, coming here to get a free education. … That was one of the biggest things.”</p>
<p>At Cleveland, Williams caught 104 passes for 1,868 yards and 29 touchdowns in three varsity seasons. At Valley, Molina once had 351 yards receiving in a single game.</p>
<p>Despite those sterling résumés, neither player was highly recruited out of high school. Some thought Williams, a two-sport star at Cleveland, would opt for basketball in college. Molina weighed just 165 pounds, soaking wet, coming out of Valley.</p>
<p>But the Lobos wanted them both. Molina signed with UNM in February 2014, Williams two years later.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Neither player, though, enrolled in the same year they signed.</p>
<p>Williams, by mutual agreement with the coaching staff, sat out the 2016 season as a “grayshirt” and enrolled in January. A wide receiver at Cleveland, he’s now an off-the-ball tight end in the fashion of White, his fellow Cleveland grad.</p>
<p>“Reece was a great player, so it would be an honor to live up to his standards,” Williams said. “The stuff he did, the things he accomplished here (at UNM) and in high school.”</p>
<p>The potential, UNM tight ends coach Clay Davie said, is there.</p>
<p>“It’s really exciting, because you look at how young he is and how little he’s actually played so far,” said Davie, the son of head coach Bob Davie. “We’ve really just had him in the spring; that was his entry into college football, so the sky’s the limit.”</p>
<p>In any offense, a tight end’s first responsibility is to block in the run game — something Williams wasn’t often called upon to do at Cleveland. He doesn’t shrink from that responsibility.</p>
<p>“I’ve got to know my role and get my job done,” he said. “It’s going pretty good.”</p>
<p>For Molina, the 6-mile trip from Valley to University Stadium took a 1,000-mile detour (there and back).</p>
<p>After not qualifying academically in 2014, Molina headed to Mesa (Ariz.) Community College. He grayshirted that fall, then caught 60 passes for 1,028 yards and 10 touchdowns in 2015-16.</p>
<p>Last year, he considered an offer from Utah State. But the assistant coach who was recruiting him was fired, and USU stopped recruiting him. “Fortunately,” Molina said.</p>
<p>Why fortunately? UNM, he said, was always where he wanted to be.</p>
<p>And the Lobo coaching staff never lost touch.</p>
<p>“UNM’s the only school that’s been with me the past three years,” he said. “… They’ve shown the most love.”</p>
<p>Bob Davie loves Molina’s long frame (6-foot-2, 191 pounds) and his ability to win contested balls, comparing him in that regard to Lobos junior Delane Hart-Johnson.</p>
<p>Williams and Molina both have redshirt years available, and there’s no guarantee they’ll see the field this fall. If they have to wait, they will.</p>
<p>“I’m gonna make the most of it,” Molina said. “I’m just glad to be a Lobo.”</p> | Lobos Molina, Williams glad to be home | false | https://abqjournal.com/1045195/lobos-molina-williams-glad-to-be-home.html | 2 |
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<p>It's hard to find much fault with the performance of tobacco giant Altria Group (NYSE: MO) in 2016, as the cigarette stock has climbed double-digit percentages over the course of the year. Yet there are always things that companies can improve on, and in Altria's case, it has been interesting to see how it has dealt with the rise of interest in alternatives to traditional cigarettes. In particular, even former subsidiary Philip Morris International (NYSE: PM) has been far more aggressive about stating its commitment to reduced-risk products than Altria has, with the global tobacco giant going so far as to say that it can envision a world in which traditional cigarettes will disappear entirely. It's easy to understand why Altria hasn't been quite as outspoken about its stance on cigarette alternatives, but if you believe that the long-term future of smoking is in doubt, then it's disappointing not to see Altria take a stronger position in helping to push the industry forward. Let's look more closely at this issue to see how Altria can improve in 2017 and beyond.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Philip Morris International has an aggressive view of how reduced-risk product portfolios will work. Image source: Philip Morris.</p>
<p>In November, <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/30/philip-morris-internationals-bold-bet-will-cigaret.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Philip Morris CEO Andre Calantzopoulos made a bold statement Opens a New Window.</a>. "I believe there will come a moment in time," Calantzopoulos said, "where I would say we have sufficient adoption of these alternative products to start envisaging ... a phase-out period for cigarettes." Moreover, the CEO stated his belief that that moment should come sooner rather than later.</p>
<p>One reason why Philip Morris has been so outspoken about reduced-risk products is that it has achieved impressive early success with the products. Early testing of its iQOS heat-not-burn technology and its related HeatSticks tobacco product has been extremely encouraging. In Japan, market share has reached mid-single digits in just a couple of years since its initial adoption. Test markets in Europe have also seen strong initial results, and Philip Morris has responded by working to build up its manufacturing capacity to meet the extremely high demand for iQOS systems and HeatSticks.</p>
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<p>Indeed, Philip Morris is even working toward getting <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/12/09/what-philip-morris-internationals-fda-application.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">U.S. approval from the Food and Drug Administration for iQOS Opens a New Window.</a>. That is likely to be a long process, but if it's successful, it could pay off in two ways. First, it will prove to the entire world market that iQOS has serious advantages over conventional cigarettes, further boosting demand and making it more likely that other government regulators will follow suit. Moreover, under the terms of its deal with Altria, Philip Morris should be able to get licensing revenue in exchange for the exclusive marketing arrangement that Altria will have for iQOS within the U.S. market.</p>
<p>Yet in press releases concerning the reduced-risk product, Altria hasn't gone nearly as far to accentuate its future potential as Philip Morris has. In connection with the FDA application, for example, the only thing that Altria said was that it will have an exclusive license to sell the heated-tobacco product in the U.S. if it gains approval.</p>
<p>Altria executives have made general comments about reduced-risk products, but they suggest that the two companies aren't on the same page from a long-term strategic sense. At an industry conference in September, CFO Billy Gifford noted that while Altria is excited about having iQOS in its product portfolio, the company still has to be committed to its core cigarette business. In Gifford's words, "We really have to focus on our core premium tobacco businesses and grow those while using some of the funds that are generated from that growth to fund the innovative tobacco space."</p>
<p>CEO Marty Barrington has also been supportive but in a general sense. For instance, in October, the CEO said that "on the Altria side, what we have is our plans with respect to commercialization and branding and go-to-market and the like" for iQOS, assuming that Philip Morris' FDA application eventually gains approval.</p>
<p>Of course, Altria does have some other reduced-risk products of its own that it wants to highlight. The MarkTen XL product has gained substantial adoption, with a marketing effort that has put the full power of Altria's distribution network to use. Other ideas on the reduced-risk spectrum could also contribute to growth.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Altria has been very careful to look pragmatic rather than visionary in its view of the balance in the revenue and profits that traditional tobacco generates compared to alternative products. That's smart in the short run, but the danger is that if the industry pushes forward more quickly, Altria will have to play catch-up in a way that might not lead to the best results for the Marlboro maker in the long run.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Altria Group When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=2e161951-9fc5-4f4d-aeb0-73880f32cade&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Altria Group wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=2e161951-9fc5-4f4d-aeb0-73880f32cade&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of Nov. 7, 2016</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Altria Group Inc.'s Worst Move in 2016 | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/12/28/altria-group-inc-worst-move-in-2016.html | 2016-12-28 | 0 |
<p>The list of the 25 leading content-selling sites in the U.S. (according to the <a href="http://www.online-publishers.org/" type="external">Online Publishers Association</a>, reported by comScore) make their money mainly in 1) Personal/Dating, 2) Business/Investment, and 3) Entertainment/Lifestyle. To a newspaper executive, this must sound an awful lot like classifieds. Here they are: 1. <a href="http://www.yahoo.com" type="external">yahoo.com</a>; 2. <a href="http://www.match.com" type="external">match.com</a>; 3. <a href="http://www.real.com" type="external">real.com</a>; 4. <a href="http://www.classmates.com" type="external">classmates.com</a>; 5. <a href="http://www.wsj.com" type="external">WSJ.com</a>; 6. <a href="http://www.weightwatchers.com" type="external">weightwatchers.com</a>; 7. <a href="http://www.ancestry.com" type="external">ancestry.com</a>; 8. <a href="http://www.consumerinfo.com" type="external">consumerinfo.com</a>; 9. <a href="http://www.matchmaker.com" type="external">matchmaker.com</a>; 10. <a href="http://www.1800ussearch.com" type="external">1800ussearch.com</a>; 11. <a href="http://www.consumerreports.org" type="external">consumerreports.org</a>; 12. <a href="http://www.espn.com" type="external">espn.com</a>; 13. <a href="http://www.carfax.com" type="external">carfax.com</a>; 14. <a href="http://www.thestreet.com" type="external">thestreet.com</a>; 15. <a href="http://www.bluemountain.com" type="external">bluemountain.com</a>; 16. <a href="http://www.playboy.com" type="external">playboy.com</a>; 17. <a href="http://www.kiss.com" type="external">kiss.com</a>; 18. <a href="http://www.msn.com" type="external">msn.com</a>; 19. <a href="http://www.egreetings.com" type="external">egreetings.com</a>; 20. <a href="http://www.ieee.org" type="external">ieee.org</a>; 21. <a href="http://www.arttoday.com" type="external">arttoday.com</a>; 22. <a href="http://www.pressplay.com" type="external">pressplay.com</a>; 23. <a href="http://www.britannica.com" type="external">britannica.com</a>; 24. <a href="http://www.astrology.com" type="external">astrology.com</a>; 25. <a href="http://www.smartmoney.com" type="external">smartmoney.com</a>.</p> | 25 Best-Selling Sites | false | https://poynter.org/news/25-best-selling-sites | 2003-03-05 | 2 |
<p><a href="http://www.culturecapital.com" type="external" /></p>
<p>(Courtesy of Woolly Mammoth)</p>
<p>Guards at The Taj Thru Feb 28. Woolly Mammoth. Find more info <a href="http://www.culturecapital.com/event/40276/guards-at-the-taj" type="external">HERE</a>. Guards at the Taj—from playwright Rajiv Joseph and director John Vreeke, the team that brought us Gruesome Playground Injuries—is a tragicomic fable as hilarious as it is horrifying. Beauty has a price.</p>
<p>(Courtesy of GMU Center for the Arts)</p>
<p>Mummenschanz Feb 5. GMU Center for the Arts. Find more info <a href="http://www.culturecapital.com/event/39315/mummenschanz" type="external">HERE</a>. These unique artists perform in complete silence on a blackened stage with common household objects and simple forms to create ingenious illusions and amusing narratives that provide light-hearted insights on life.</p>
<p>(Courtesy of Sixth &amp; I Historic Synagogue)</p>
<p>Brooklyn Rider &amp; Gabriel Kahane Feb 6. Washington Performing Arts at Sixth &amp; I Historic Synagogue. Find more info <a href="http://www.culturecapital.com/event/40567/brooklyn-rider-gabriel-kahane" type="external">HERE</a>. The four virtuoso chamber musicians of Brooklyn Rider return this season with fellow Brooklynite and composer/pianist/singer/songwriter Gabriel Kahane, whose music has been described as “all-around dazzling” (The Los Angeles Times).</p>
<p>(Courtesy of Howard Theatre)</p>
<p>George Clinton &amp; Parliament Funkadelic Feb 6. Howard Theatre. Find more info <a href="http://www.culturecapital.com/event/43611/george-clinton-parliament-funkadelic" type="external">HERE</a>. George Clinton &amp; Parliament Funkadelic revolutionized R&amp;B during the ’70s, twisting soul music into funk by adding influences from several late-’60s acid heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and Sly Stone. The Parliament/Funkadelicmachine captured over 40 R&amp;B hit singles.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Brooklyn Rider</a> <a href="" type="internal">CultureCapital</a> <a href="" type="internal">Gabriel Kahane</a> <a href="" type="internal">George Clinton</a> <a href="" type="internal">GMU Center for the Arts</a> <a href="" type="internal">Guards at The Taj</a> <a href="" type="internal">Hot Hits</a> <a href="" type="internal">Howard Theatre</a> <a href="" type="internal">Mummenschanz</a> <a href="" type="internal">Sixth &amp; I Historic Synagogue</a> <a href="" type="internal">Woolly Mammoth</a></p> | This Week’s Arts Hot Hits & Hidden Jewels (Feb. 3) | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2016/02/03/this-weeks-arts-hot-hits-hidden-jewels-feb-3/ | 3 |
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<p>Seattle TimesKay McFadden has a few tips "for the media to get it right the next time around." Under "Get religion," she writes: "To ignore Bush's faith was to miss a huge factor in the election. ...With the confidence of a second term and such looming issues as the likely appointment of a Supreme Court justice ahead, journalists need to understand religion on a far more intimate basis than they do now." (See the <a href="" type="internal">Romenesko Letters</a> discussion on journalists and religion.)</p> | Journos need to do a better job with religion, says TV critic | false | https://poynter.org/news/journos-need-do-better-job-religion-says-tv-critic | 2004-11-04 | 2 |
<p>A look at the 10 biggest volume gainers on Nasdaq at the close of trading:</p>
<p>American National Insurance Co. : Approximately 255,100 shares changed hands, a 1,268.1 percent increase over its 65-day average volume. The shares fell $8.83 or 8.4 percent to $96.46.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Authentidate Holdings Corp. : Approximately 1,359,200 shares changed hands, a 2,475.4 percent increase over its 65-day average volume. The shares fell $.29 or 47.3 percent to $.33.</p>
<p>Carver Bancorp : Approximately 49,500 shares changed hands, a 1,999.3 percent increase over its 65-day average volume. The shares fell $.65 or 11.5 percent to $5.00.</p>
<p>1st Constitution Bancorp : Approximately 97,600 shares changed hands, a 1,613.5 percent increase over its 65-day average volume. The shares rose $.11 or .9 percent to $11.80.</p>
<p>Heat Biologics Inc. : Approximately 594,400 shares changed hands, a 1,421.9 percent increase over its 65-day average volume. The shares rose $.95 or 12.9 percent to $8.30.</p>
<p>Meru Networks Inc. : Approximately 1,729,400 shares changed hands, a 1,628.2 percent increase over its 65-day average volume. The shares fell $.76 or 32.2 percent to $1.60.</p>
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<p>Pendrell Corp. : Approximately 4,376,500 shares changed hands, a 2,002.6 percent increase over its 65-day average volume. The shares rose $.01 or 1.0 percent to $1.00.</p>
<p>RMG Network Holding Corp. : Approximately 8,874,500 shares changed hands, a 33,806.8 percent increase over its 65-day average volume. The shares rose $.69 or 65.7 percent to $1.74.</p>
<p>Recro Pharma Inc. : Approximately 480,800 shares changed hands, a 2,334.9 percent increase over its 65-day average volume. The shares rose $1.21 or 36.8 percent to $4.50.</p>
<p>Seneca Foods Corp. : Approximately 893,200 shares changed hands, a 4,759.8 percent increase over its 65-day average volume. The shares rose $.50 or 1.9 percent to $26.54.</p> | Top 10 Nasdaq-traded stocks posting largest volume increases | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/06/26/top-10-nasdaq-traded-stocks-posting-largest-volume-increases.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) _ These North Dakota lotteries were drawn Sunday:</p>
<p>2 By 2</p>
<p>Red Balls: 19-26, White Balls: 6-24</p>
<p>(Red Balls: nineteen, twenty-six; White Balls: six, twenty-four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $22,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $343 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $440 million</p>
<p>BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) _ These North Dakota lotteries were drawn Sunday:</p>
<p>2 By 2</p>
<p>Red Balls: 19-26, White Balls: 6-24</p>
<p>(Red Balls: nineteen, twenty-six; White Balls: six, twenty-four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $22,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $343 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $440 million</p> | ND Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/d5e7259851444af8b289ad1e6c6be7d3 | 2018-01-01 | 2 |
<p>In 1729 Jonathan Swift published “A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden on their parents or country and for making them beneficial to the publick”.&#160; Swift proposed that Irish parents fatten their infants and export them for the delectation of wealthy English gentlemen.&#160; “A young healthy child well nursed is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled…”</p>
<p>Swift argues that fattening infants for consumption would not only reduce poverty in Ireland, it would have the added benefits of reducing the frequency of abortion and inducing husbands to have greater solicitude for their pregnant wives. And, most importantly, it would obviate the need for the obvious but unthinkable solution: taxing landowners to relieve the poverty of the underclass that was enriching them.</p>
<p>“Modest proposals” are called for when vexing, horrific circumstances defy ordinary or even extraordinary solutions.&#160; They are “out-of-the box” solutions that run outrageously counter to prevailing norms and what passes as common sense.” &#160;They put on display the ineffectiveness of political orthodoxy and the hypocrisy of its adherents.</p>
<p>I offer out-of-the-box solutions to two seriously vexing and intractable problems in the Middle East: (1) lethal military attacks on civilians in Syria; (2) political rivalry between Iran and Israel morphing into military conflict.</p>
<p>Part I: A modest proposal to end the slaughter in Syria.</p>
<p>The Syrian situation worsens by the day.&#160; Ideological control, economic growth, corruption and repression no longer work to maintain political quiescence.&#160; In resorting to lethal attacks on the popular opposition, the Baathist regime is down to the last arrow in its quiver.&#160; The slaughter will continue because the regime has nothing else to fall back on.</p>
<p>However, Baathist retention of power through military violence is unacceptable to everybody but the Baathists.&#160; The international “community” is straining to roll out the standard nostrum of sanctions, isolation, and condemnation to force Bashar Assad to rein in the army and to institute democratic reforms.&#160; It is plain as day that the Baathist regime will not be dislodged by armies of the “coalition of the willing”.&#160; It is equally clear that the regime will not survive serious democratization.</p>
<p>Bashar knows how ruthlessly his father crushed a revolt in 1982.&#160; Estimates of the slaughter range from eight to twenty thousand.&#160; Chunks of the city of Hama, which was a focal point of rebellion, were obliterated.&#160; This time around it looks like Homa will suffer the destruction visited on Hama. The regime has just passed the 5400 mark.&#160; Bashar may have to surpass his father’s brutality to save the regime. &#160;The Baathists will have to fight to the bitter end because yielding power will lead to ruin or death.</p>
<p>In the 1970s and 1980s, pere Assad was in a much stronger position. He didn’t have to contend with international sanctions or pressure from Turkey, and he had the Soviet Union at his back.&#160; So while Bashar mobilizes his forces to crush the revolt, he must also concern himself with what the loss of power would mean for himself, his men and their dependents, and for his clan.</p>
<p>Lately, exit routes for dictators have not been very inviting.&#160; Qaddafi’s televised summary execution was obscene. Saddam was captured hiding in a hole, put on display in a show trial and mocked at his execution. The military ousted Mubarak to halt the spiral down into destabilizing levels of violence in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria. His reward for this act of “statesmanship” is being wheeled into a Cairo courtroom on a gurney to defend himself against a charge of murder and possibly a trip to the gallows.&#160;&#160; Lawrence Mgambo, the former president of Ivory Coast, was captured after a particularly vicious civil war and has just been shipped to The Hague for prosecution by the International Court.&#160;&#160; Milosovic died in a Dutch prison in midst of an interminable trial.&#160;&#160; Augusto Pinochet was arrested while visiting London eight years after relinquishing power.</p>
<p>With this scorecard of dictators’ falling from power, Assad and the Baathist leadership have little incentive to give up the fight.&#160; The ruthless suppression of the opposition has the potential for transformation into a full scale civil war.&#160; Sectarian militias and military defectors supplied with arms coming through Turkey and Iraq will start to launch meaningful military assaults on the regime which will then pull out all the stops on the lethality of its suppression. While the violence in Libya is fresh in memory, it pales in comparison to the 200,000 deaths in the Algerian civil war sparked in 1991 by the military’s cancelling elections to block the Islamic Salvation Front from taking power.</p>
<p>In the face of this carnage and mayhem, I offer a modest proposal to curtail political violence, avoid a protracted civil war, and save thousands of lives.&#160; The international “community” should approach Bashar with an offer of safe passage, exile and sanctuary. When the regime begins to sprout serious worries about its longevity, the possibility of exile and sanctuary could incline them to surrender power and leave the country with their kinsmen and their wealth.&#160; Northern Michigan or North Dakota would do just fine.</p>
<p>Not so long ago, the baddest of the bad could get a pretty good deal. Idi Amin, famed for cannibalizing children in the basement of the presidential palace (shades of Swift!), lived out his days in luxury in Saudi Arabia.&#160; Francois “Baby Doc” Duvalier lived comfortably in France for 15 years until he stupidly returned to Haiti for what he supposed would be a brief visit after the earthquake.</p>
<p>A generation ago, the idea of exile and sanctuary for Bashar and the Baathist leadership would have been a diplomatic no brainer.&#160; Now it is off limits.&#160; Swift’s cannibalism violates a deep, ancient taboo.&#160;&#160; My modest proposal violates a taboo of recent vintage:&#160; you can’t do business with evil.&#160; It runs afoul of a principle of political morality newly installed as a fixed point on the moral compass of the new world order.&#160; The international “community” has ordained the principle, in ideology and law, that political leaders must be prosecuted law for violations of human rights and that punishment for their crimes is a moral imperative.&#160; Granting exile and sanctuary to Bashar Assad and the Baathist leadership would leave human rights ideologists aghast.&#160; Imagine the outcry if Qaddafi had been given sanctuary in the American Midwest, but also calculate the lives that would have been saved if the civil war had been shortened.</p>
<p>There are three ironic twists to this.&#160; Standing on principle would be an impediment to abbreviating the slaughter.&#160; Second, no government or international institution can grant and assure sanctuary.&#160; The International Court would compromise its legitimacy by pardoning the Baathists in a political deal.&#160; And, unless the principle of universal jurisdiction is revoked, a prosecutor somewhere can issue arrest warrants at some future time.&#160; Prosecutors like Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzon, who issued the warrant for Pinochet, can strike out of the blue.</p>
<p>Third, rejection of this modest proposal because it violates a grand moral principle displays the hypocrisy of the powerful.&#160; Governments that would refuse to negotiate exile because it would be morally wrong to allow Bashar to escape trial have a history of exempting themselves from prosecution for their own wrongdoing. This familiar hypocrisy is paid for in Syrian blood.</p>
<p>Like raising Irish children for the market, exile and sanctuary for Assad is an idea whose day is never to come.&#160; And the killing will continue until…</p>
<p>Part II. How to Deal with Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East</p>
<p>The war against Iran has been heating up for several years.&#160; The current battle plan includes isolation, economic sanctions, covert action against military and industrial facilities, cyber sabotage, and assassinations. The critical escalation lies ahead.&#160; The war parties in Israel and the United States are lusting to launch a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.&#160; No doubt for Iran this is the Rubicon.&#160; An attack will provoke a military response and in all likelihood will lead to Iran’s playing its trump card– closure of the Strait of Hormuz.&#160; No less a folly than the war in Iraq, an attack on Iran will unleash hostilities that are as destructive and far reaching as they are unpredictable.</p>
<p>The mantra in the west is that Iran’s possession of a nuclear weapon is “unacceptable.”&#160; Unsurprisingly, the way in which generals, pundits, and politicians in Israel and the United States draw their “redlines” reflects their particular strategic perspectives. Those who are wary of escalation, like the Obama administration, define the red line as serious evidence that the Iranian government is actually building a weapon or actually possesses one.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the Likud and neocons who are hell bent on a military attack have a much more flexible idea of the red line. They define it as achieving “nuclear capability”: the Iranians have learned all they need to know to do build a warhead in no time at all if and when they decide to.&#160; Knowing how crosses the red line. Whether Iran intends to go for a bomb let alone whether it is actually building one is irrelevant.&#160; “Nuclear capability” is a politically convenient casus belli because it is very much in the eye of the beholder.&#160; Iran will be deemed “nuclear capable” when the war party decides it is opportune to attack Iran.</p>
<p>The current situation is dangerous and unstable.&#160; Setting aside the bellicose rhetoric and political machinations swirling around Washington and Tel Aviv, two structural, objective features of the situation make it intrinsically volatile.&#160; The first factor is uncertainty about Iran’s intentions.&#160;&#160; The second is Israel’s military superiority and stockpile of nuclear weapons.&#160; The uncertainty legitimates attack on Iran; the latter makes it feasible. The principal constraint on an Israeli attack is the opposition of the Obama administration which is obviously not protection on which Iran can rely.</p>
<p>There is, however, a simple, sure fire way to eliminate the uncertainty and the instability which arises from it and eliminate the dominance which pushes Iran toward developing a nuclear arsenal. The United States and Russia have a ridiculously large store of nuclear warheads. If these nuclear powers were to give twenty or thirty warheads to Iran, uncertainty about its intention or ability to produce one would be taken out of the strategic equation. The risk of military escalation would be sharply reduced.</p>
<p>A donation of warheads would establish the arrangement that prevailed for fifty years between the United States and the Soviet Union: mutual assured destructions, lovingly known as MAD in those days.&#160; The hawks of the cold war proclaimed the rationality, wisdom, and effectiveness of nuclear parity.&#160; For good or for ill, the great powers played out their rivalries with the assurance that neither would launch a nuclear attack.</p>
<p>The acute problem in the Middle East is that Israel has nuclear weapons and Iran does not. Iran cannot leap from zero bombs to twenty (or whatever number establishes strategic parity) in one fell swoop.&#160; If Iran were supplied with a small arsenal, an attack of either nation on the other would be as unthinkable as it was for the United States to threaten an attack on the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>So, in the spirit of Jonathan Swift, my modest proposal is for the United States to make a charitable contribution to peace in the Middle East by supplying Iran with a nuclear arsenal.&#160; Since nuclear weapons degrade over time, Iran would still have to develop its nuclear capability in order not to be dependent on the United States for protection.&#160; But building its own bomb would threaten no one because nuclear parity is already in place.</p>
<p>Arming an enemy is, of course, a preposterous idea. But so too is the idea that an attack on Iran’s well protected facilities would lead to anything but greater instability and violence in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Michael Teitelman&#160;lives in New York City.&#160; He can be reached at&#160; <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p> | Two Modest Proposals for the Middle East | true | https://counterpunch.org/2012/02/01/two-modest-proposals-for-the-middle-east/ | 2012-02-01 | 4 |
<p>Congress’ 12-member “Super Committee,” charged with crafting a plan to cut $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit in the next decade, is up and running. The bipartisan panel of veteran lawmakers first convened on Sept. 8, and is plowing ahead so as to meet its Nov. 23 deadline to deliver its budget-slashing recommendations.</p>
<p>As the fiscal fighting ramps up, fourteen good-government and transparency groups <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/65114462/14-Groups-Call-for-Super-Committee-Transparency" type="external">are calling for</a> Super Committee members to publicize any campaign donations received and any lobbyist meetings while the committee does its work. The reasoning here is obvious: If committee members are meeting behind closed doors with, say, oil industry lobbyists at the same time they’re debating deficit-cutting measures, they could be swayed to oppose closing tax loopholes for oil companies, worth an <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/breaking-it-down-oil-industry-tax-breaks-20110512" type="external">estimated $4.4 billion a year</a>—and the public would never know about it.</p>
<p>Failing to disclose donations and interactions with lobbyists, the DC-based Sunlight Foundation <a href="http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/09/15/groups-call-for-super-committee-members-to-make-avenues-of-influence-transparent/" type="external">argues</a>, “will reinforce the public’s mistrust of the deficit reduction process and risk delegitimizing the Committee’s work.”</p>
<p>At least one lawmaker, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/12/john-kerry-super-committee_n_958420.html" type="external">has said</a> he won’t fundraise and will limit contact with lobbyists during his time on the Super Committee, which is made up of six House members and six Senators, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.</p>
<p>Here’s the letter from good-government and transparency groups to the Super Committee:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/65114462/14-Groups-Call-for-Super-Committee-Transparency" type="external">14 Groups Call for Super Committee Transparency</a></p> | Will Deficit-Fighting Super Committee Reveal Campaign Cash and Lobbyist Ties? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/super-committee-congress-lobbyist-donation-fundraiser/ | 2011-09-16 | 4 |
<p>Sony Corp's (NYSE:SNE) board voted unanimously not to sell its entertainment unit, rejecting a proposal from hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, the company said in a statement on Monday.</p>
<p>Sony sent a letter to Loeb's Third Point LLC giving the result of the vote, saying the board believed that "continuing to own 100 percent of the company's entertainment businesses is fundamental to Sony's success."</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>(Reporting by Lisa Richwine)</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Sony Votes to Keep Entertainment Unit, Rejects Loeb Proposal | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2013/08/05/sony-votes-to-keep-entertainment-unit-rejects-loeb-proposal.html | 2016-03-02 | 0 |
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<p>Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to give a speech at University of California Berkeley when furious, violent protests broke out forcing the conservative right-wing personality to evacuate the campus and cancel his event as the school comes to a complete lockdown.</p>
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<p>Yiannopoulos was waiting at the student union ahead of his speech when at around 6 p.m. on Wednesday when a group of demonstrators opposing the editor turned violent as they emerged from the crowd and started dismantling the security defenses, knocking down barriers and cutting through zip ties. The protesters all dressed in black and wearing masks soaked in milk as protection from tear gas then tore down barricades and began throwing fencing at Yiannopoulos' waiting area, shattering the glass.</p>
<p />
<p>Yiannopoulos also said in a social media post that aside from left-wing protesters tearing down barricades, throwing rocks and candles at the windows, they also lit fires.</p>
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<p>Police responded with smoke bombs and by shooting non-lethal bullets during the uproar. University officials also asked for reinforcement to manage the violent demonstrators. They also tweeted that the Milo event was cancelled and that all campus buildings were on lockdown. They advised students to seek cover if they happen to be anywhere in the campus.</p>
<p />
<p>Yiannopoulos assured his followers and supporters that he and his team are safe after their swift evacuation from the campus. He also said that he is still gathering more information about the violence that broke out, but what is clear to him is that the left-wing protesters are terrified of free speech.</p>
<p />
<p>The Breitbart editor also claimed that one supporter wearing a Make America Great Again cap was assaulted and kicked while on the ground. A student-supporter of Yiannopoulos also condemned the violence and decried "this is what tolerance looks like at UC Berkley".</p>
<p />
<p>University officials stressed that they did not invite Yiannopoulos to the campus and do not endorse his ideas as well, but that UC Berkeley is committed to free speech. Milo's talk was sponsored by the university's Republican Club, and was supposed to be the last stop to "Milo's Dangerous F****t Tour aimed at defying what he describes as an " epidemic of political correctness on college campuses".</p>
<p />
<p>The Republican Club deplores the violence perpetuated by left-wing demonstrators leading to the cancellation of Milo's speech with a stinging statement: "The free speech movement is dead."</p> | Left-wing Demonstrators Spread Vicious Violence At Milo's Speech In UC Berkeley | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/1244-Left-wing-Demonstrators-Spread-Vicious-Violence-At-Milo-s-Speech-In-UC-Berkeley | 2017-02-02 | 0 |
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<p>In this Nov. 23 photo, members of the Barzetti family, Johnny, 6; Grace, 2; Dave and Carla, stand in their property in Newtown, Conn. In the wake of the Dec. 14, 2012, mass shooting, Dave Barzetti spoke against an ordinance to restrict target shooting. (Craig Ruttle/The Associated Press)</p>
<p>In the moment, Newtown’s children became our own.</p>
<p>Staring at photographs of their freckled faces, hair tucked into barrettes and baseball caps, a country divided by politics, geography, race, class and belief was united in mourning. And as their deaths confronted Americans with vexing questions about guns and violence, there were calls to turn that shared grief into a collective search for answers.</p>
<p>“These tragedies must end,” President Barack Obama said, two nights after the mass shooting left 20 first-graders and six educators dead. “And to end them, we must change.”</p>
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<p>Now, a year has passed. But the unity born of tragedy has given way to ambivalence and deepened division.</p>
<p>Today, half of Americans say the country needs stricter gun laws – down since spiking last December, but higher than two years ago. And the ranks of those who want easier access to guns – though far fewer than those who support gun control – are now at their highest level since Gallup began asking the question in 1990. Even when the public found some common ground, widely supporting expanded background checks for gun purchases, lawmakers could not agree.</p>
<p>In our towns, in our neighborhoods, the discord is striking.</p>
<p>In Webster, N.Y. – where two firefighters were shot and killed last Christmas Eve – an advocate of gun control is discouraged by the hostile response to his effort to get people to rethink old attitudes. In Nelson, Ga., each of two men who took opposite sides in the debate over a local law requiring everyone to own a gun says the other side won’t listen to reason. In Newtown, itself, a gun owner says the rush to bring the town together has left people like him marginalized.</p>
<p>People are digging in.</p>
<p>“I wish people could come to a table and say we all want the same thing. We want our kids to be safe. Now how are we going to do that?” says Carla Barzetti of Newtown, who backs her husband’s support of firearms ownership, yet feels personally uncomfortable around guns. “I don’t think the grown-ups are setting a very good example.”</p>
<p>This Jan. 17, 2013 photo provided by Paul Libera shows him with the sign he raised in his yard in Webster, N.Y., a few weeks after a gunman shot and killed two firefighters in the town and after the Dec. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Courtsey of Paul Libera)</p>
<p>Gun requirement</p>
<p>With 1,300 people in Nelson and so little crime that officials have debated whether it needs a full-time police officer, the north Georgia town was an unlikely flashpoint for the gun debate.</p>
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<p>Then Bill McNiff, a retired accountant and local tea party activist, suggested to councilman Duane Cronic that the town should have a law requiring everyone to own a gun. By the time council members unanimously approved, news cameras jockeyed for position in the chambers.</p>
<p>The spotlight didn’t last. After the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence sued the town in support of Lamar Kellett, the law’s most vocal critic, the council agreed in late August to revise the measure to make clear that gun ownership is a choice and that a requirement could not be enforced.</p>
<p>But the disagreements that breached the small-town quiet haven’t gone away. Instead, they’ve added to tensions on a wooded bend in Laurel Lake Drive, where McNiff and Kellett live two doors apart. Coming and going, they’re apt to pass Cronic, the councilman, who lives in the house between them. Edith Portillo, a councilwoman who also backed the ordinance, lives across the street.</p>
<p>“He’s my neighbor and he knows my feelings,” McNiff says of Kellett. “We go to city council meetings regularly and I see him there. I chat with him and we see our neighbors, there’s conversation … or as I’m prone to say, he’s an idiot, so I just put up with him.”</p>
<p>Asked about his neighbor, Kellett declines to use McNiff’s name or give credence to his argument.</p>
<p>Most people in this old marble quarrying center – itself named for a long-ago farmer and rifle maker – believe in a right to own guns, McNiff and Kellett agree. But Nelson’s gradual redevelopment as an outlying bedroom community for metro Atlanta has drawn families with different attitudes, they say. Each sees the outcome of Nelson’s debate as a mix of victory and disappointment.</p>
<p>McNiff says the ordinance declares values ignored by gun control advocates in big cities.</p>
<p>“They don’t go through and say I need a rifle, I need a gun because I have 55 acres and occasionally a coyote walks through,” he says. Critics “looked at (Nelson’s law) from their ideological point of view, which is that they’re anti-gun. They didn’t look at it from the point of view that we wanted to prevent the government” from taking away people’s guns.</p>
<p>Kellett, meanwhile, says the outcome did little to reshape a debate that leaves many people cowed into keeping quiet.</p>
<p>As in many other civic discussions, “a small percentage of the people make a lot of the noise,” he says.</p>
<p>“I talked to people who had not owned a gun in 50 years and didn’t intend to get one and I talked to people who had always had a gun forever. … That’s why I didn’t want the city of Nelson to be blown out of proportion, like we’re some sort of an armed camp.”</p>
<p>In this Nov. 26 photo, playwright Frank Higgins holds a copy of his play titled “Gunplay” at the Metropolitan Ensemble Theater in Kansas City, Mo. (Charlie Riedel/The Associated Press)</p>
<p>Opposing views</p>
<p>More than 20 years ago, Frank Higgins delved into the debate over guns by trying to thread the middle.</p>
<p>After a former University of Iowa graduate student shot and killed four faculty members and a rival student in 1991 before killing himself, a local theater company hired Higgins to write a play about guns. He devised a series of vignettes populated by characters with clashing views.</p>
<p>When “Gunplay” opened in 1993, a few gun rights activists protested outside. The director invited them in to talk; they approved of some scenes and disapproved of others, he says. The company spent a year staging the play around Iowa, mostly in small towns, where audiences were largely receptive.</p>
<p>After that, though, Higgins’ play drew little interest. He recalls that a Florida director wanted to produce it and take it to local schools. A year earlier she’d done the same thing with a play about AIDS. But school board members deemed the gun play too incendiary.</p>
<p>After Newtown, though, the Kansas City, Mo., resident got a call from a friend in Boston who wanted to stage a reading. The play’s renewed relevance led to a call from The Kansas City Star, which ran a story in its arts section in late April.</p>
<p>By 9 a.m. that Saturday, Higgins’ home phone started ringing. Over the next couple of hours, he answered a dozen calls, all about the play.</p>
<p>“About half the people who read this article ripped me to pieces because the play should be fervently anti-gun … and the others were exactly the opposite,” Higgins says.</p>
<p>Some were just “30 seconds of rant and hanging up,” Higgins says. Others were longer, including one from a woman who told him her husband had been shot to death a few years earlier during a mugging.</p>
<p>Higgins’ number is listed. But none of his plays – including “Gunplay” – had ever prompted strangers to look him up. Something has changed.</p>
<p>“It seems as if part of what Newtown did is that there’s a greater sense of ‘We’re not going to back down, we’re going to speak out more.’ So what does that do? It just amps it up more.”</p>
<p>At the end of Higgins’ play, as many 10 actors take the stage, all talking over each other, until the debate is cut by a single gunshot. It was supposed to be a dramatization. Now, though, Higgins has to wonder.</p>
<p>‘Raised with guns’</p>
<p>Paul Libera went to college on the money his state-trooper dad earned in the gun-and-fishing-tackle store he ran on the side. Libera was “raised with guns under my bed and in my closet and with bird shot coming out of the food we were eating,” he says. He grew up duck hunting on Lake Ontario.</p>
<p>When Libera moved away from upstate New York, he also left behind his father’s love for guns. But the lake eventually drew Libera back. Each summer he gathered area kids for a water skiing camp at a friend’s yard on the waterfront in Webster.</p>
<p>That peace was broken early last Dec. 24 when an ex-con, William Spengler, set his own house on fire and sprayed gunfire at responding firefighters, killing Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka. The blaze destroyed seven homes, including the one where Libera’s campers met.</p>
<p>Webster grieved. But to Libera, that wasn’t enough.</p>
<p>In January, he spent $600 for an 8-foot-wide sign, lettered in red, and planted it in the frozen ground next door to the site of the ambush.</p>
<p>“How many deaths will it take ’til we know too many people have died?” the sign asked.</p>
<p>Soon after, he heard that the message had sparked a week of class discussion at the local high school.</p>
<p>“It made me feel really grateful that there was intellectual dialogue going on,” he says.</p>
<p>But when a photo of the sign was posted to a Facebook page honoring the firefighters, it drew more than 70 comments, many critical. There were those who said the sign was “repulsive,” that it politicized the firefighters’ deaths. Officials told him the sign had to be removed because he lacked a permit; he took it down in the spring.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, signs sprouted in some yards demanding repeal of the new state gun control law pushed through by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And in October, American Tactical Imports, a firearms importer and manufacturer based in nearby Chili, announced it was moving to South Carolina, a “state that is friendly to the Second Amendment rights of the people.”</p>
<p>The pro-gun response discouraged Libera, who worried fighting to keep his sign up would distract from its message and the memory of the firefighters. And he was troubled when parents of some of the children he instructs, not knowing he was responsible for the sign, remarked that its message was so horrible they avoided driving by.</p>
<p>“I think they just want to shut it out and pretend it didn’t happen and hope it goes away,” he says.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Year after Newtown, gun rift deeper | false | https://abqjournal.com/316270/year-after-newtown-gun-rift-deeper.html | 2 |
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<p>Barnes &amp; Noble&#160;(NYSE: BKS)&#160;released disappointing fiscal first-quarter 2018 results on the morning of Sept. 7, underscored by continued revenue declines despite improved book trends, and narrower losses thanks to cost cutting.</p>
<p>Let's take a closer look at how Barnes &amp; Noble kicked off its new fiscal year, as well as what investors can expect from the book retailer in the coming quarters.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"Our first-quarter earnings results improved over the prior year, as we were able to mitigate the sales decline through expense reductions," stated Barnes &amp; Noble CEO Demos Parneros. "We expect to improve our performance in the back half of the year, which, coupled with our focus on expense reduction, will enable us to achieve EBITDA of&#160;$180 million."</p>
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<p>To be clear, that full-year EBTIDA outlook is in line with the guidance Barnes &amp; Noble <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/06/22/barnes-noble-jumps-as-sales-fall-less-than-expecte.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=be2e5f80-940b-11e7-b0df-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">provided Opens a New Window.</a> along with its fiscal Q4 2017 report three months ago. Barnes &amp; Noble also reiterated its expectation for fiscal 2018 comparable-bookstore sales to decline in the low-single-digit percentage range.</p>
<p>During the subsequent conference call, Parneros stated that the company is working on several initiatives to improve its value proposition and drive sales higher. Among them are a number of price tests for its membership program to improve enrollment and visits, improving visual merchandising and signage, and streamlining inventory management. Barnes &amp; Noble is also reviewing its entire store portfolio in an effort to identify potential markets for new stores and relocations as leases expire.</p>
<p>In addition, in June, Barnes &amp; Noble launched a phased implementation of its redesigned website, which focuses on improving its shopping experience and advancing its omnichannel capabilities.</p>
<p>Finally, Parneros noted the company's "goal for this year is to maintain our current level of profitability while planting the seeds for future growth."</p>
<p>With the crucial holiday season fast approaching, we can be sure Barnes &amp; Noble is looking forward to proving its has what it takes to survive and thrive over the long term. Nonetheless, investors hate being effectively told to "hurry up and wait." It's clear that the market wanted more.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Barnes &amp; NobleWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
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<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=0d92b706-3108-4c68-b0f5-9554a0dbb6fd&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=be2e5f80-940b-11e7-b0df-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of September 5, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSymington/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=be2e5f80-940b-11e7-b0df-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Steve Symington Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Barnes &amp; Noble. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=be2e5f80-940b-11e7-b0df-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | With Narrowing Losses, Barnes & Noble Eyes Long-Term Growth | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/09/07/with-narrowing-losses-barnes-noble-eyes-long-term-growth.html | 2017-09-07 | 0 |
<p>U.S. consumer borrowing rose in October, according to new data from the Federal Reserve.</p>
<p>Outstanding consumer credit, a measure of non-real estate debt, rose by $20.52 billion in October from the prior month, climbing at a 6.51% seasonally adjusted annual rate, the Fed said Thursday. Total outstanding credit increased a revised $19.21 billion in September.</p>
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<p>Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected a $17.2 billion increase in October.</p>
<p>Revolving credit outstanding, mostly credit cards, increased at a 9.9% annual pace in October. Nonrevolving credit outstanding, mainly student and auto loans, rose at a 5.3% annual pace.</p>
<p>Household debt totaled $12.955 trillion in the third quarter, up 0.9% from the spring, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said last month. That was the most on record, though the figure wasn't adjusted for inflation.</p>
<p>The Federal Reserve's latest report on consumer credit can be accessed at: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/current/</p>
<p>Write to Sarah Chaney at [email protected] and Sharon Nunn at [email protected]</p>
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<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>December 07, 2017 15:15 ET (20:15 GMT)</p> | U.S. Consumer Credit Increased by $20.52 Billion in October | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/12/07/u-s-consumer-credit-increased-by-20-52-billion-in-october.html | 2017-12-07 | 0 |
<p>Osama bin Laden once told me that Americans did not understand the Middle East. Last week, in a little shuttle bus shouldering its way through curtains of rain across the Iowa prairies, I opened my copy of the Des Moines Register and realised that he might be right. “BIG HOG LOTS CALLED GREATER THREAT THAN BIN LADEN,” announced the headline. Iowa’s 15 million massive pigs, it seems, produce so much manure that the state waterways are polluted. “Large-scale hog producers are a greater threat to the United States and US democracy than Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, says Robert F Kennedy Junior, president of… a New York environment group… ‘We’ve watched communities and American values shattered by these bullies,’ Kennedy said…” I took out my pocket calculator and did a little maths. Cedar Rapids, I reckoned, was 7,000 miles from Afghanistan. Another planet, more like.</p>
<p>I’ve been travelling to the United States for years, lecturing at Princeton or Harvard or Brown University, Rhode Island, or San Francisco, or Madison, Wisconsin. God knows why. I refuse all payment and take just a business-class round trip from Beirut because I can’t take 14 hours of screaming babies in each direction. American college students are tough as nails and bored as cabbages, and in some cities – Washington is top of the list – I might as well talk in Amharic. If you don’t use phrases like “peace process”, “back on track” or “Israel under siege”, there’s a kind of computerised blackout on the faces of the audience. Total Disk Failure. Why should my latest bout of Americana have been any different?</p>
<p>Sure, there were the usual oddballs. There was the old black guy whose first “question” on the Middle East in a Chicago University lecture theatre was a long and proud announcement that he hadn’t paid taxes to the IRS since 1948 – a claim so wonderful that I forbore the usual threat to close down on him. There were the World Trade Centre conspiracists who insisted that the US government had planted explosives in the twin towers. There was the silver-haired lady who wanted to know why God couldn’t be made to resolve the hatred between Israelis and Palestinians. And a Native American Indian in Los Angeles who ranted on about a Jewish plot to deprive his people of their land. A bespectacled man with long white hair in a ponytail shut him up before declaring that the Israeli-Palestinian war was identical to the American-Mexican war that deprived his own people of… well, of Los Angeles. I began to calculate the distance between LA and Jenin. A galaxy perhaps.</p>
<p>And there were the little tell-tale stories that showed just how biased and gutless the American press has become in the face of America’s Israeli lobby groups. “I wrote a report for a major paper about the Palestinian exodus of 1948,” a Jewish woman told me as we drove through the smog of downtown LA. “And of course, I mentioned the massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin by the Stern Gang and other Jewish groups – the massacre that prompted 750,000 Arabs to flee their homes. Then I look for my story in the paper and what do I find? The word ‘alleged’ has been inserted before the word ‘massacre’. I called the paper’s ombudsman and told him the massacre at Deir Yassin was a historical fact. Can you guess his reply? He said that the editor had written the word ‘alleged’ before ‘massacre’ because that way he thought he’d avoid lots of critical letters.”</p>
<p>By chance, this was the theme of my talks and lectures: the cowardly, idle, spineless way in which American journalists are lobotomising their stories from the Middle East, how the “occupied territories” have become “disputed territories” in their reports, how Jewish “settlements” have been transformed into Jewish “neighbourhoods”, how Arab militants are “terrorists” but Israeli militants only “fanatics” or “extremists”, how Ariel Sharon – the man held “personally responsible” by Israel’s own commissioner’s inquiry for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre of 1,700 Palestinians – could be described in a report in The New York Times as having the instincts of “a warrior”. How the execution of surviving Palestinian fighters was so often called “mopping up”. How civilians killed by Israeli soldiers were always “caught in the crossfire”. I demanded to know of my audiences – and I expected the usual American indignation when I did – how US citizens could accept the infantile “dead or alive”, “with us or against us”, axis-of-evil policies of their President.</p>
<p>And for the first time in more than a decade of lecturing in the United States, I was shocked. Not by the passivity of Americans – the all-accepting, patriotic notion that the President knows best – nor by the dangerous self-absorption of the United States since 11 September and the constant, all-consuming fear of criticising Israel. What shocked me was the extraordinary new American refusal to go along with the official line, the growing, angry awareness among Americans that they were being lied to and deceived. At some of my talks, 60 per cent of the audiences were over 40. In some cases, perhaps 80 per cent were Americans with no ethnic or religious roots in the Middle East – “American Americans”, as I cruelly referred to them on one occasion, “white Americans”, as a Palestinian student called them more truculently. For the first time, it wasn’t my lectures they objected to, but the lectures they received from their President and the lectures they read in their press about Israel’s “war on terror” and the need always, uncritically, to support everything that America’s little Middle Eastern ally says and does.</p>
<p>There was, for example, the crinkly-faced, ex-naval officer who approached me after a talk at a United Methodist church in the San Diego suburb of Encinitas. “Sir, I was an officer on the aircraft carrier John F Kennedy during the 1973 Middle East war,” he began. (I checked him out later and he was, as my host remarked, “for real”.) “We were stationed off Gibraltar and our job was to refuel the fighter jets we were sending to Israel after their air force was shot to bits by the Arabs. Our planes would land with their USAF and Marine markings partly stripped off and the Star of David already painted on the side. Does anyone know why we gave all those planes to the Israelis just like that? When I see on television our planes and our tanks used to attack Palestinians, I can understand why people hate Americans.”</p>
<p>In the United States, I’m used to lecturing in half-empty lecture halls. Three years ago, I managed to fill a Washington auditorium seating 600 with just 32 Americans. But in Chicago and Iowa and Los Angeles this month, they came in their hundreds – almost 900 at one venue at the University of Southern California – and they sat in the aisles and corridors and outside the doors. It wasn’t because Lord Fisk was in town. Maybe the title of my talk – “September 11: ask who did it, but for heaven’s sake don’t ask why” – was provocative. But for the most part they came, as the question-and-answer sessions quickly revealed, because they were tired of being suckered by the television news networks and the right-wing punditocracy.</p>
<p>Never before have I been asked by Americans: “How can we make our press report the Middle East fairly?” or – much more disturbingly – “How can we make our government reflect our views?” The questions are a trap, of course. Brits have been shoving advice at the United States ever since we lost the War of Independence, and I wasn’t going to join their number. But the fact that these questions could be asked – usually by middle-aged Americans with no family origins in the Middle East – suggested a profound change in a hitherto docile population.</p>
<p>Towards the end of each talk, I apologised for the remarks I was about to make. I told audiences that the world did not change on 11 September, that the Lebanese and Palestinians had lost 17,500 dead during Israel’s 1982 invasion – more than five times the death toll of the international crimes against humanity of 11 September – but the world did not change 20 yearsago. There were no candles lit then, no memorial services. And each time I said this, there was a nodding of heads – grey-haired and balding as well as young – across the room. The smallest irreverent joke about President Bush was often met with hoots of laughter. I asked one of my hosts why this happened, why the audience accepted this from a Briton. “Because we don’t think Bush won the election,” she replied.</p>
<p>Of course, it’s easy to be fooled. The first local radio shows illustrated all too well how the Middle East discourse is handled in America. When Gayane Torosyan opened WSUI/KSUI for questions in Iowa City, a caller named “Michael” – a leader of the local Jewish community, I later learnt, though he did not say this on air – insisted that after the Camp David talks in 2000, Yasser Arafat had turned to “terrorism” despite being offered a Palestinian state with a capital in Jerusalem and 96 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza. Slowly and deliberately, I had to deconstruct this nonsense. Jerusalem was to have remained the “eternal and unified capital of Israel”, according to Camp David. Arafat would only have got what Madeleine Albright called “a sort of sovereignty” over the Haram al-Sharif mosque area and some Arab streets, while the Palestinian parliament would have been below the city’s eastern walls at Abu Dis. With the vastly extended and illegal Jerusalem municipality boundaries deep into the West Bank, Jewish settlements like Maale Adumim were not up for negotiation; nor were several other settlements. Nor was the 10-mile Israeli military buffer zone around the West Bank, nor the settlers’ roads, which would razor through the Palestinian “state”. Arafat was offered about 46 per cent of the 22 per cent of Palestine that was left. I could imagine the audience of WSUI/KSUI falling slowly from their seats in boredom.</p>
<p>Yet back at my folksy, wooden-walled hotel, the proprietor and his wife – P Force volunteers in the Kennedy era – had listened to every word. “We know what is going on,” he said. “I was a naval officer in the Gulf back in the Sixties and we only had few ships there then. In those days, the Shah of Iran was our policeman. Now we’ve got all those ships in there and our soldiers in the Arab countries and we seem to dominate the place.” Osama bin Laden, I said to myself, couldn’t put it better.</p>
<p>How odd, I reflected, that American newspapers can scarcely say even this. The Daily Iowan – there are no fewer than four dailies in Iowa City, press freedom being represented by the number of newspapers rather than their depth of coverage – had none of my hotel landlord’s forthrightness. “The situation in the Middle East is one that many Americans do not adequately understand,” it miserably lamented, “nor can they be reasonably articulate about it.” This rubbish – that Americans were too dumb to comprehend the Middle East bloodbath and should therefore keep their mouths shut – was a pervasive theme in editorials. Even more instructive were the reports of my own lectures.</p>
<p>The headline, “Fisk: Who really are the terrorists?” in the Daily Iowan last week at least caught the gist of my message, and included my own examples of American press bias in the Middle East, although it failed on the facts, wrongly reporting that it was the United Nations (rather than the far more persuasive Israeli Kahan Commission) which concluded that Sharon was “personally responsible” for the Sabra and Chatila massacre. The Des Moines Register’s account of one of my talks was intriguing. It concentrated on my interviews with Osama bin Laden – which I had indeed mentioned in my lecture – and then referred to my account of how an Afghan crowd beat me up last December. I had told the American audience that the Afghans were outraged by US bombing raids that had just killed their relatives around Kandahar and how important it had been to include this fact in my own report of the fray – to give context and reason to the Afghan attack on me. The Register used my words to describe the attack but then itself made no mention of the reasons. Long live, I thought, the Iowa City Press-Citizen, whose own headline – “Middle East reporter slams media” – got the point.</p>
<p>It’s not that Iowans have any excuse to be unaware of the Middle East. In the small town of Davenport, Israelis have been trained in the systems of the Apache AH-64 attack helicopters used to assassinate Palestinians on Israel’s wanted list. According to one local journalist, several Iowa companies, including the regional office of Rockwell, have been involved in military contracts worth millions of dollars with Israel. CemenTech of Indianola supplies equipment to the Israeli air force. The day I arrived in Iowa City, John Ashcroft, the US Attorney General, was telling Iowans that a hundred foreign nationals “from countries known as home to terrorists” had been interrogated in the state. Another hundred were likely to be “interviewed” soon. There was no editorial comment on this.</p>
<p>So Iowa University classes were absorbing. One young woman began by announcing that she knew the American media were biased. When I asked why, she said that “it has to do with America’s support for Israel…” and then, red-faced, she dried up. Not so the student in Rex Honey’s global studies class. After I had outlined the military trap into which the Americans had been lured in Afghanistan – the supposed “victory” followed by further engagements with al-Qa’ida and then, inevitably, daily battles with Afghan warlords and sniping attacks on Western troops – he put his hand up. “So how do we beat them?” he asked. There was a gentle ripple of laughter through the room. “Why do you want to ‘beat’ the Afghans,” I asked? “Why not help them build a new land?” The student came up to me afterwards, hand outstretched. “I want to thank you, sir, for all you told us,” he said. I had a suspicion he was a military man. Are you planning to join the army, I asked? “No, sir,” he replied. “I’m going to join the Marines.”</p>
<p>I advised him to stay clear of Afghanistan. In its own way, the American national press was doing the same. Two days later, the Los Angeles Times, in a remarkable dispatch from its correspondent David Zucchino, reported on the bitterness and anger among Afghans whose families had been killed in United States B-52 bomber raids. The recent American battle in Gardez, the report said, had left “bitterness in its wake”.</p>
<p>If only the same bluntness was applied to the Palestinian-Israeli war. Alas, no. On the freeway past Long Beach on Friday, I opened the LA Times to be told that Israel “mops up [sic] in the West Bank”, while the syndicated columnist Mona Charen was telling readers in other papers that “98 per cent of Palestinians have not been living under occupation since Israel pulled out under the Oslo accords” and that the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Ehud Barak, had offered Arafat “97 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza”. This was 1 per cent higher even than the statistic from “Michael” on WSUI/KSUI radio. Arafat – “this murderer with the deaths of thousands of Jews and Arabs on his hands” – was to blame. The issue between Israel and her neighbours, Charen contended, “is not occupation, it is not settlements and it certainly is not Israeli brutality and aggression. It is the Arabs’ inability to live peacefully with others”.</p>
<p>Maybe California is organically different from the rest of the United States, but its journalists as well as its students seemed a tad smarter than the Midwest of America. The Orange County Register, a traditionally conservative newspaper in an area that is now 50 per cent Latino, has been trying to tell the truth about the Middle East and was carrying a tough feature by Holger Jensen, which warned that if President Bush didn’t rein in Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister “will succeed where Osama bin Laden failed: forcing us into a war of civilisations against 1.2 billion Muslims”. When I lunched with senior editorial staff, they invited three members of the Orange County Muslim community to join them.</p>
<p>Cocktails with friends of the Methodist church revealed a sane grasp of the Middle East – one of them was deeply disturbed by a recent remark by Israel’s Internal Security Minister, Uzi Landau, who had said that “we’re not facing human beings, but rather beasts”. A black guest commended the UN secretary general Kofi Annan’s criticism of Israel. Yet when I flipped on Fox News, there was Benjamin Netanyahu out-Sharoning Sharon, declaring that Palestinian suicide bombers would soon be prowling America’s streets, meeting Congressmen to enlist their help in Israel’s “war on terror”, even while the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was in Israel.</p>
<p>“Why Israel’s Mission Must Continue,” the New York Times’s comment page shouted on Friday. A long and tedious article on Israel’s crusade against “terror” by an Israeli army colonel, Nitsan Alon, included several of my favourite cop-out phrases, including the stock reference to “a large number of civilians” who were – yes – “caught in the crossfire”.</p>
<p>By the time I was addressing the more bohemian denizens of an art club in Los Angeles, the newspapers I was attacking were beginning to turn up. Mark Kellner arrived to report for The Washington Times. “He’s going to stitch up everything you say,” a friend remarked. “The Washington Times is to the right of the Republican Party.” We shall see.</p>
<p>But if my audiences had been largely made up of Americans without any Middle East roots, the same could not be said of Sunday’s cocktails at the home of Stanley Sheinbaum, the philanthropist, art collector and libertarian – we shall forget the period in which he helped to run the Los Angeles Police Department – where my little speech was to set off some verbal hand-grenades. Sheinbaum it was who met Syria’s President Hafez el-Assad at President Jimmy Carter’s request, arranging Assad’s extraordinary summit with Carter in Geneva. “Tell me something good about yourself,” he said to me. Have you heard nothing good from anyone else, I enquired? “Nope,” he said.</p>
<p>But I liked Sheinbaum, a crusty, humorous man in his eighties who encourages every liberal Jewish American to have his say about the Middle East. As the lunchtime fog embraced the rose gardens and villas and swimming pools and hills of Brentwood, up stepped Rabbi Haim dov Beliak to explain how he intends to close down the bingo and gambling operations of one of America’s greatest Jewish settlement builders. “Call me when you get back to Beirut – by all means write about it.” As we scoffed Stanley Sheinbaum’s strawberries and sipped his fine Californian red wine, another rabbi approached. “You’re gonna have some hostile people in your audience,” he said. “Just let ’em hear the truth.”</p>
<p>So I did. I talked about the cowardice of Secretary Powell, who dawdled his way around the Mediterranean to give Sharon time to finish destroying the Jenin refugee camp. I talked about the rotting bodies of Jenin and the growing evidence that back in 1982 Sharon’s troops handed the survivors of the Sabra and Chatila massacre back to their Phalangist tormentors to be killed. I said that Arafat was never offered 96 per cent of the West Bank at Camp David. I advised the 100 or so people in the room to read the Israeli journalist Amira Haas’ courageous reports in Haaretz. I talked about the squalor of the Palestinian camp. I talked of suicide bombings as “evil” but suggested that Israel would never have security until it abided by UN Security Council Resolution 252; that Israel would never have peace until it abandoned all of the West Bank, Gaza, Golan and East Jerusalem.</p>
<p>“I find it very difficult to ask you a question, because what you said made me so angry,” a woman began afterwards. Why did I not realise that the Palestinians wanted to destroy all of Israel, that the right-of-return would destroy the state? For an hour I explained the reality I saw in the Middle East; an all-powerful Israel fighting an old-time colonial war. I talked about the 1954-62 Algerian war, its brutality and cruelty, the French army’s torture and killings, the Algerians’ slaughter of civilians, the frightening parallels with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I talked about the Palestinians who wanted, at the least, an admission of the injustice their people had suffered in 1948, adding that there were Palestinians aplenty who realised that financial compensation would have to suffice for most of those refugees whose homes were in what is now Israel. I talked about Sharon and his bloody record in Lebanon. And about the pressures of the Israeli lobby in America, the fear of being labelled an anti-Semite, and the feeble reporting of the Middle East.</p>
<p>A rabbi was the first to tell me afterwards that the Palestinians were victims, that they should be given a real state. An old lady asked me for the name of the best book on the Algerian war. I gave it to her; Alastair Horne’s A Savage War of Peace . A card was pushed into my hand. “Insightful talk!” the owner had written at the bottom and – hate though I do the word “insightful” – I couldn’t help noticing that the name on the card was Yigal Arens, the son of one of Israel’s most ruthless right-wing ministers, who had once informed me – in Beirut, back in 1982 – that Israel would “fight forever” against Palestinian terror.</p>
<p>On the freeway to LAX afterwards, the terminals and control tower looming through the Californian haze, I looked over Saturday’s LA Times. A report on page 12 revealed that the BBC’s award-winning film on Sharon’s involvement in the Sabra and Chatila massacres had been dropped from a Canadian film festival after protests from Jewish groups. The organisers had explained that The Accused “could invite unwanted attention from interest groups” – whatever that means. But a paragraph at the end of the report caught my attention. “Sharon, who was the Israeli defence minister at the time, allegedly facilitated the assault on the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps…” There it was again. Allegedly? How many angry letters was that little lie supposed to avoid? Allegedly indeed.</p>
<p>But on reflection, I didn’t think the Americans I met would be fooled by this. I didn’t think my hotel proprietor would accept “allegedly”. Nor the old naval officer from the John F Kennedy. Nor the listeners to KSUI. Nor even Stanley Sheinbaum. Yes, Osama bin Laden told me he thought Americans didn’t understand the Middle East. Maybe he was right then. But not any more.</p> | Fear and Learning in America | true | https://counterpunch.org/2002/04/16/fear-and-learning-in-america-2/ | 2002-04-16 | 4 |
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<p>LANL scientist was fired on this day seven years ago.</p>
<p>The Taiwanese-American scientist was accused of leaking nuclear secrets to China in a story that appeared March 8, 1999, in The New York Times, and although those dark allegations were later dropped, Wen Ho Lee was later accused of improper handling of restricted data.</p>
<p>After his arrest in December 1999, Lee was held without bail in solitary confinement for 278 days until his release on Sept. 13, 2000, after he pleaded guilty to one count of improperly downloading restricted data.</p>
<p>Government prosecutors dropped the remaining 58 counts of illegally downloading classified data, leading to a sharp and unprecedented <a href="http://cicentre.com/Documents/DOC_Judge_Parker_on_Lee_Case.htm" type="external">rebuke</a> of government prosecutors by U.S. District Judge James A. Parker and an apology to Lee.</p>
<p>There’s a roundup of the whole affair in the online encyclopedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee" type="external">Wikipedia</a>, including a link to an <a href="../../../../news/state/370653nm07-10-05.htm" type="external">Albuquerque Journal</a>article about suggestions that current Gov. Bill Richardson, who was then Energy Secretary in the Clinton administration, was the source of the leak to The New York Times on that day seven years ago.</p>
<p>Richardson acknowledged in his autobiography ("Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life" released last fall) that Lee was "badly treated."</p>
<p>The story has sunk below the headlines and the national consciousness, but it continues to burn up the electrons in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wen_Ho_Lee" type="external">Blogosphere</a>. There’s a heated discussion on the LANL blog —&#160; <a href="http://lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com/2005/09/richardson-wen-ho-lee-was-mistreated.html" type="external">LANL: The Real Story</a>&#160;— that suggests some real disagreement about the case. And maybe some uncomfortable moments ahead if a certain New Mexico governor decides to seek national office.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 6:35am — Remember Wen Ho Lee? | false | https://abqjournal.com/22339/635am-remember-wen-ho-lee.html | 2 |
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<p>Aug. 27 (UPI) — The death toll increased to at least five people as Tropical Storm Harvey remained over the Houston area Sunday morning.</p>
<p>The storm, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm late Friday night and was downgraded to a tropical storm hours later, had dumped more than <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/08/27/harvey-causes-catastrophic-flooding-in-houston-shuts-down-airport.html" type="external">20 inches in the region</a>. And up to 40 inches was forecast to drench the area over the next few days.</p>
<p>The entire Texas Gulf Coast — with a metro population of 6.6 million — was under “life-threatening catastrophic flood warning” by the <a href="http://forecast.weather.gov/wwamap/wwatxtget.php?cwa=hgx&amp;wwa=flash%20flood%20warning" type="external">National Weather Service</a> in Houston-Galveston.</p>
<p>“It’s catastrophic, unprecedented, epic — whatever adjective you want to use,” Patrick Blood, a NWS meteorologist, said to the <a href="http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Harvey-impacts-Texas-Latest-tropical-weather-11953474.php" type="external">Houston Chronicle</a>. “It’s pretty horrible right now.”</p>
<p>Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Brock Long it will take years for the region to recover.</p>
<p>“FEMA is going to be there for years,” administrator Brock Long said on <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/27/politics/fema-harvey-brock-long-cnntv/index.html" type="external">CNN’s</a> State of the Union. “This disaster is going to be a landmark event.”</p>
<p>His agency was “pushing forward” teams for recovery housing and flood insurance programs.</p>
<p>Harris County Judge Ed Emmett estimated bout 1,000 water rescues had taken place from homes and cars.</p>
<p>The following dire warning was <a href="https://twitter.com/NWSHouston/status/901765351960190976" type="external">posted on Twitter</a> at 4:16 a.n. Sunday:</p>
<p>“EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT HAS REQUESTED: IF HIGHEST FLOOR OF YOUR HOME BECOMES DANGEROUS…GET ON THE ROOF.”</p>
<p>Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo warned people on <a href="https://twitter.com/ArtAcevedo/status/901723767537324032" type="external">Twitter</a> said there were reports of people getting in to the attic to “not do so unless you have an ax or means to break through onto your roof.”</p>
<p>Acevedo told Fox &amp; Friends Weekend the city’s 911 system has been “overwhelmed” since Harvey struck.</p>
<p>“It breaks your heart,” Acevedo said via a livestream on Twitter while standing in waist-high water in north Houston. “But, it’s Texas, we’ll get through it.”</p>
<p>The Harris County Sherif’s Office said people should only use 911 in dire emergencies, as dispatchers struggled to keep up with the calls.</p>
<p>Houston TranStar’s updated list had 181 high-water locations on the roads, and Hobby Airport was closed while Metropolitan Transit Authority suspended all service.</p>
<p>“I know for a fact this is the worst flood Houston has ever experienced,” NWC’s Blood said. “Worse than [tropical storm] Allison. It’s so widespread.”</p>
<p>The Coast Guard rescued at least 32 people from several boats since the storm began.</p>
<p>The heaviest rainfalls in the Houston area over the past 12 hours were around Webster, where 19.3 inches were recorded since 5:30 p.m. on the Galveston-Harris county line.</p>
<p>Maximum sustained winds decreased to near 45 mph with higher gusts and tropical-storm-force winds up to 115 miles away from the eye of the storm.</p>
<p>Winds and flooding weren’t the only problem.</p>
<p>CenterPoint said more than 65,000 people in their Houston coverage area were without power at 7 a.m., and number that was steadily rising.</p>
<p>For nearly one day the one reported death was a woman who died in a fire in Rockland.</p>
<p>The second death reported was in Houston, where a woman drove her vehicle into high water, city police said. The car had became inoperable or the water was too high to drive through. She got out of her vehicle and drowned.</p>
<p>Aransas County Sheriff Bill Mills said additional fatalities were feared in Rockport. An estimated 5,000 residents didn’t evacuate from the storm, which landed between Port Aransas and Port O’Connor.</p>
<p>Rockport Mayor Charles Wax <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/27/us/harvey-landfall/index.html" type="external">told CNN</a> emergency workers were going house to house to check on residents and assess damage.</p>
<p>“There’s been widespread devastation,” Wax said. “We’ve already taken a severe blow from the storm, but we’re anticipating another one when the flooding comes.”</p>
<p>Residents had evacuated in San Antonio — about 200 miles from Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city. About 950 people were in shelters in the city, Woody Woodward, a spokesman for the city fire department, told CNN.</p>
<p>Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth took in 10 critically ill babies from a hospital in Corpus Christi.</p> | Tropical Storm Harvey death toll climbs to at least 5 | false | https://newsline.com/tropical-storm-harvey-death-toll-climbs-to-at-least-5/ | 2017-08-27 | 1 |
<p>At his confirmation hearings two weeks ago, Gen. Stanley McChrystal said reducing civilian deaths from air strikes in Afghanistan was “strategically decisive” and declared his “willingness to operate in ways that minimise casualties or damage, even when it makes our task more difficult.”</p>
<p>Some McChrystal supporters hope he will rein in the main source of civilian casualties: Special Operations Forces (SOF) units that carry out targeted strikes against suspected “Taliban” on the basis of doubtful intelligence and raids that require air strikes when they get into trouble.</p>
<p>But there are growing indications that his command is preparing to deal with the issue primarily by seeking to shift the blame to the Taliban through more and better propaganda operations and by using more high-tech drone intelligence aircraft to increase battlefield surveillance rather than by curbing the main direct cause of civilian casualties.</p>
<p>U.S. officials at a NATO conference in Brussels last Friday were telling reporters that “public relations” are now considered “crucial” to “turning the tide” in Afghanistan, according to an AFP story on Jun 12.</p>
<p>CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus also referred to the importance of taking the propaganda offensive in a presentation to the pro-military think tank Centre for a New American Security (CNAS) Jun. 11. “When you’re dealing the press,” he said, “when you’re dealing the tribal leaders, when you’re dealing with host nations… you got to beat the bad guys to the headlines.”</p>
<p>The new emphasis on more aggressive public relations appears to respond to demands from U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan to wrest control of the issue of civilian casualties from the Taliban. In a discussion of that issue at the same conference, Gen. David Barno, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, said, “We’ve got to be careful about who controls the narrative on civilian casualties.”</p>
<p>U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan “see the enemy seeking to take airstrikes off the table” by exaggerating civilian casualties, Barno said. He objected to making civilian casualties an indicator of success or failure, as a CNAS paper has recommended.</p>
<p>The U.S. command in Afghanistan has already tried, in fact, to apply “information war” techniques in effort to control the narrative on the issue. The command has argued both that the Taliban were responsible for the massive civilians casualties in a U.S. airstrike on May 4 that killed 147 civilians, including 90 women and children, and that the number of civilian deaths claimed has been vastly exaggerated, despite detailed evidence from village residents supporting the casualty figures.</p>
<p>Col. Greg Julian, the command’s spokesman, said in late May that a “weapon-sight” video would show that the Taliban were to blame. However, Nancy A. Youssef reported Jun. 15 in McClatchy newspapers that the video in question shows that no one had checked to see if women and children were in the building before it was bombed, according to two U.S. military officials.</p>
<p>The Afghan government has highlighted the problem of SOF units carrying out raids which result in airstrikes against civilian targets. Kai Eide, the chief of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, has now publicly supported that position, saying in a video conference call from Kabul to NATO defence ministers meeting in Brussels Jun. 12 that there is an “urgent need” to review raids by SOF units, because the civilian casualties being created have been “disproportionate to the military gains”.</p>
<p>But McChrystal hinted in his confirmation hearing that he hoped to reduce civilian casualties by obtaining more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. Petraeus confirmed that approach to the problem in remarks at the CNAS conference last week, announcing that he was planning to shift some high-tech intelligence vehicles from Iraq to Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Petraeus referred to “predators, armed full motion video with Hellfire missiles”, “special intelligence birds”, and unmanned intelligence vehicles called Shadows and Ravens, which fly 24 hours a day.</p>
<p>Although such intelligence aircraft may make U.S. battlefield targeting more precise, Petraeus’s reference to drones equipped with Hellfire missiles suggests that U.S. forces in Afghanistan may now rely more than previously on drone strikes against suspected Afghan insurgents. Given the chronic lack of accurate intelligence on the identity of insurgent leaders, that would tend to increase civilian casualties.</p>
<p>Petraeus’s past reluctance to stop or dramatically reduce such SOF operations, despite the bad publicity surrounding them, suggests that high level intra-military politics are involved.</p>
<p>The Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MarSOC) has been involved in the most highly publicised cases of massive civilian casualties in Afghanistan. It was established by the Marine Corps only in February 2006, and the first MarSOC company arrived in Afghanistan just a year later.</p>
<p>MarSOC was unable to recruit the more mature officers and troops needed for cross-cultural situations, and its recruits had only a few months of training before being sent to Afghanistan.</p>
<p>The unit’s commanding officer had been warned by one participant in the training before the unit had arrived in Afghanistan that his troops were too young and too oriented toward killing to serve in Afghanistan, according to Chris Mason, a former U.S. official in Afghanistan familiar with the unit’s history.</p>
<p>In March 2007, a company of MarSOC troops which had only arrived in the country the previous month were accused of firing indiscriminately at pedestrians and cars as they sped away from a suicide bomb attack, killing as many as 19 Afghan civilians. Five days later the same unit reportedly fired on traffic again.</p>
<p>As a result, a powerful Pashtun tribe, the Shinwari, demanded to the governor of Nangahar province and Afghan President Hamid Karzai that U.S. military operations in the province be terminated. Within a month, the 120-man MarSOC company was pulled out of Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Significantly, however, a new MarSOC unit was sent back to Afghanistan only a few weeks later, assigned to Herat province. Last August, a MarSOC unit launched an attack against a preplanned target in Azizabad that combined unmanned drones, attack helicopters and a Spectre gunship. More than 90 civilians were killed in the attack, including 60 children, but not a single Taliban fighter was killed in the attack, according to Afghan and U.N. officials.</p>
<p>Karzai said the operation had been triggered by false information given by the leader of a rival tribe, and no U.S. official contradicted him.</p>
<p>When Petraeus took command at CENTCOM just a few weeks later, Afghans were still seething over the Azizabad massacre. That would have been the perfect time for him to take decisive action on MarSOC’s operations.</p>
<p>But Petraeus took no action on MarSOC. Meanwhile, other SOF units were continuing to carry out raids that did not get headlines but which regularly killed women and children, stirring more Afghan anger. Petraeus may have been confronted with the necessity of stopping all the operations if he wished to discipline MarSOC, which would have been too serious a blow to the reputation of U.S. Special Operations Forces.</p>
<p>For two weeks, from mid-February to early March, the rate of SOF raids was reduced. But in early March, they were resumed, despite the near certainty that there would be more embarrassing incidents involving SOF operations. The worst case of massive civilian deaths in the war would come just two months later, and involved the MarSOC unit.</p>
<p>GARETH PORTER is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “ <a href="" type="internal">Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam</a>“, was published in 2006.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Spinning Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/06/19/spinning-civilian-deaths-in-afghanistan/ | 2009-06-19 | 4 |
<p>This poem was enfolded in a book that was sent to our International Writing Program in the late 1970s, Karadzic clearly wanted to be a part of this program and he sent us a signed copy of this book along with another Serbian writer, we presume. The book was eventually found by a Bosnian student in our program and inside the book was the text of this poem. (Another professor translated the poem for us, and what do you make of the translation?) He's trying to be a serious poet, and with some success. I showed the poem to a colleague in Croatia without telling him who wrote it and he guessed it was from a fairly well known Croatian poet. If he thought it was lousy, I think he would've told me as such. (CM agrees with that interpretation). CM: there is a lot of innovative material in it and that's what's most eerie. There are so many lines that prefigure the worst of what was going to come. (What does �morning bomb� mean to you in the poem?) It reminds me of in Sarajevo during the siege you'd be awakened very early in the morning by what sounded like thunder in the distance but was really artillery fire raining down shells from around the city. (In 1992 you were able to interview Karadzic.) Yes, I met him on New Year's Eve in 1992 when a British filmmaker introduced me to Karadzic as a fellow poet. He was willing to open up to me because I was not a regular journalist. It was strange. (If you had been the Director, would you have welcomed him based on this poem?) Tough question, there's enough interesting material in the poem to think one could be seduced. (What does that tell you about both the person and the process of writing?) Well we hope what survives us is the best of what's on the page but the fact of the matter is a lot of terrible people have written excellent poems and novels. Poets contradict themselves.</p> | The poetry of Radovan Karadzic | false | https://pri.org/stories/2008-07-31/poetry-radovan-karadzic | 2008-07-31 | 3 |
<p>Monrovia is feeling the calm after the storm.</p>
<p>Yesterday saw <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/africa-emerges/liberia-election-riots-turn-deadly" type="external">political riots that turned deadly</a>, claiming the first lives of Liberia's election season.</p>
<p>Today <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15633697" type="external">polling stations are quiet</a>, the good-natured queues that marked the first round last month nowhere to be seen.</p>
<p>Opposition candidate <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/liberians-vote-disputed-run-off-polls-030358564.html" type="external">Winston Tubman is boycotting</a> the run-off against incumbent Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. So perhaps the slow pace of voting is proof of the popularity he claims, that his boycott call was heeded.</p>
<p>Equally, fear might be keeping voters away. Liberians know how violence can spiral out of control, and they know what war looks like and what damage it can do.</p>
<p>Tubman's gamble on calling a boycott may well backfire, however, with most election observers saying the first round of the elections was free and fair. Unopposed for round two, <a href="http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE7A700320111108" type="external">Johnson-Sirleaf is set to claim victory,</a> winning a second term as president.</p> | Slow votes in Liberia's run-off | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-11-08/slow-votes-liberia-s-run | 2011-11-08 | 3 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/63056358@N07/5736128537/"&gt;Syria-Frames-of-Freedom&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p>UPDATE: The State Department is <a href="" type="internal">investigating</a> the use of Blue Coat technology in Syria.&#160;</p>
<p>UPDATE 2: Blue Coat <a href="/mojo/2011/10/blue-coat-admits-syria-connection" type="external">has admitted</a> that its technology was used in Syria.</p>
<p>As the autocratic regime in Syria brutally cracks down on a pro-democracy opposition, it&#160;is using technology developed by an American company, <a href="http://www.bluecoat.com/" type="external">Blue Coat Systems</a>, to suppress dissent and block access to the internet, tech experts say.</p>
<p>Two weeks ago, <a href="http://tcxsyria.ceops.eu/95191b161149135ba7bf6936e01bc3bb" type="external">Telecomix</a>, a tech activist group, <a href="http://streisand.trollab.org/OpSyria/Logs/" type="external">released</a>&#160;information from the Syrian government-run Syria Telecommunications Establishment. The release revealed gigabytes of electronic records, called log files, dating back to late July and early August of this year, and the material indicates that&#160;Syria’s government is using Blue Coat’s <a href="http://www.bluecoat.com/sites/default/wp-content/uploads/products/datasheets/bcs_ds_fullproxy_900-9000_v5l.pdf" type="external">devices</a> to <a href="http://hellais.github.com/syria-censorship/" type="external">prevent</a> its citizens from accessing social media, video-sharing, and other websites. By using the devices, the Syrian regime can block information about its abuses from getting out of the country and monitor web activity. (Peter Fein, a hacktivist with Telecomix, says the information came from “publicly accessible, completely unsecured servers which were found using traditional network scans.”)&#160;Selling most US-manufactured goods to Syria has been <a href="http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Pages/Programs.aspx" type="external">forbidden</a> by US law since 2004.</p>
<p>Jacob Appelbaum, a tech expert and computer science researcher at the University of Washington who was dubbed “The Most Dangerous Man in Cyberspace” by&#160; <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-most-dangerous-man-in-cyberspace-20100818" type="external">Rolling Stone</a>, said in an email that “the log files are direct evidence” that Syria is utilizing Blue Coat’s technology. “Every IP address in all of the information released is registered in Syria,” Appelbaum added. “Every IP address routes from Syria or from known Syrian equipment with the expected latency of machines run in Syria.”&#160;Appelbaum&#160;believes that the Syrian government uses Blue Coat’s device to monitor citizens’ internet activity, record it for future reference, and then take action against dissidents. “That is to say that it’s a super policeman with a general warrant who spies on every person, records everything about that person and their activities and then it acts as the judge, jury and executioner,” he wrote.</p>
<p />
<p>The sample log file above clearly states that a Blue Coat device is being used. (You can view the rest of the log files <a href="http://streisand.trollab.org/OpSyria/Logs/" type="external">here</a>.)</p>
<p>A Blue Coat spokesman says Blue Coat had not sold its products to Syria.</p>
<p>Blue Coat technology has been used for at least a year&#160;by&#160;other nondemocratic regimes, including&#160;Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE,&#160;according to the&#160; <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704438104576219190417124226.html" type="external">Wall Street Journal</a>. Other foreign regimes use western technology to block internet access; for&#160; <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/2011329113450125509.html" type="external">years now</a>, companies like Netsweeper (based in Canada) have sold software to countries like the UAE and Yemen. Other Middle Eastern <a href="http://opennet.net/west-censoring-east-the-use-western-technologies-middle-east-censors-2010-2011" type="external">countries</a>—including Kuwait,&#160;Oman,&#160;Qatar, and Saudi Arabia—also use western-developed filtering technology. China reportedly&#160; <a href="http://www.cfr.org/china/us-internet-providers-great-firewall-china/p9856" type="external">uses</a> technology from the American-based Cisco to power its filter, which is referred to as the “Great Firewall” for its ability to block websites.</p>
<p>But none of those other countries is subject to the harsh sanctions the US has leveled against Syria.</p>
<p>It is against the law for US-based companies to <a href="http://damascus.usembassy.gov/sanctions-syr.html" type="external">export</a>&#160;“most goods containing more than 10 percent US-manufactured component parts to Syria,” according to the US embassy there.&#160;George A. Lopez, a professor of peace studies at Notre Dame University and an expert on sanctions, said in an email that any direct sale to Syria would be in violation of US law. But if Syria acquired the technology through an intermediary, Blue Coat is legally protected—provided that their direct sales of the technology were accompanied by end-user agreements prohibiting any resale to Syria. “Blue Coat has no legal liability beyond their original sale providing they acquired this and can produce it,” Lopez said. Blue Coat says it does not permit its customers to sell to embargoed countries.</p>
<p>Companies that sell their internet-filtering technologies to repressive regimes “are playing a role in the national politics of the dictatorship countries where their products are being used,” Helmi Noman, an internet censorship expert at the University of Toronto, said in an email. “They are in fact taking sides against citizens and activists who are prevented from accessing and disseminating content and arrested and tortured thanks in part to the Western-built technologies.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Chinese companies like <a href="" type="internal">Huawei</a> would eagerly fill the void should Western companies cease to provide dictatorships with such technology, argues&#160;Jillian York, the director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “It’s really a tough situation for all,” she says.</p>
<p>Regardless of the technology the Syrian government is using to restrict internet access, the situation in the country is dire: The opposition <a href="http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-10/syrian-opposition-seeks-international-support-as-deaths-toll-reaches-4-000" type="external">reports</a> that Assad’s forces have killed 4,000 people. Two weeks ago, the UN <a href="http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-10/syrian-opposition-seeks-international-support-as-deaths-toll-reaches-4-000" type="external">attempted</a> to “threaten” sanctions against Syria, but vetoes from Russia and China squashed the measure.</p> | Syria Uses US Technology in Cyber Crackdown | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/blue-coat-systems-internet-blocking-syria/ | 2011-10-19 | 4 |
<p />
<p>Mortgage rates fluctuate daily, making it hard to pinpoint the perfect moment to lock. To simplify the mortgage rate-lock decision, keep these things in mind:</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Mortgage rate lock</p>
<p>A guarantee that the lender will deliver a specific combination of interest rate and points if the mortgage closes by a specified date. A point is a fee or rebate equal to 1 percent of the loan amount. Frequently, rate locks last for 30, 45 or 60 days, but they can be shorter or longer. A rate lock protects the borrower from rate fluctuations during the lock period.</p>
<p>It's all in the timing</p>
<p>When locking a mortgage rate, don't concentrate on the media frenzy or cocktail conversations on whose rate is lower. Focus on the estimated closing date, and time your rate lock with that.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>To begin, find out when your loan is expected to close and work backward to determine when to lock the rate. If you think you need 45 days to close your loan, find out what the interest rate would be if you locked it for a 60-day period.</p>
<p>The longer the lock period, the more the loan will cost you. Lenders do not know what the interest rates will be in the near future; they hedge the risk by offering higher rates or charging fees for longer lock periods.</p>
<p>Find the optimum combo</p>
<p>Look for the sweet spot when pricing out a rate lock. The sweet spot is the combination of interest rate, term and cost you need to achieve that optimum deal. Most lenders won't lock you for less than 30 days unless you're ready to close and often offer the same rate for a 15- and 45-day period. Ask about the rate for several lock periods: 15, 21, 30, 45 or 60 days. Anything longer than 60 days gets pricey, so it might be smarter to wait until you get nearer to the closing and check again.</p>
<p>Watch, then act</p>
<p>If you feel that you have to keep your finger on the pulse of the market, Terry Connelly, an economic expert and dean emeritus at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, advises you to monitor one factor: "Watch the 10-year bond prices. As they move up, interest rates move down."</p>
<p>The key is to get your rate on a down day and lock for a term long enough to close the loan.</p>
<p>How it works</p>
<p>Grab it while you can. Here's an example: Brian Rubin was visiting Hershey Park with his family when he received an email from me, his mortgage loan officer. The Rubins were buying a four-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot home in Westchester County, New York, and the rates had just dropped. Rubin could lock in at 4.375 percent for 45 days and needed to give the OK. He did via email while strolling with his family. "I was happy with the rate and could now concentrate on other things that were keeping me up like packing, moving and school starting," he says.</p>
<p>If you cannot close by the end of the lock period, most lenders will extend the rate or allow you to relock, but be sure to know how your lender treats it. Learn the process and the costs.</p>
<p>Compare a lineup of interest rates</p>
<p>Inquire about a lineup of mortgage rates instead of zeroing in on just one. Lenders refer to the array of interest rates as buckets, and often there is disparity among rates depending on a bank's investors.</p>
<p>"Think of the lender buying buckets of money at a certain interest rate and then reselling the money to the consumer," says Lou Maldonado, an account executive at Plaza Home Mortgage's New York office. Lenders are able to obtain better pricing on certain rates and should pass it on to the consumer. Ask about a series of interest rates; what will it cost to get a 3.9, 4, 4.25 or 4.375 percent rate locked in for the same period?</p>
<p>Factor different levels of points</p>
<p>Paying discount points (one point equals 1 percent of the loan amount) might be worth it if you can get a lower rate. Divide the monthly savings into the cost to find how many months you need to recoup the expense. Compare the interest rates quoted at different prices, and you might be surprised that higher discount points, combined with a lower rate, could cost less overall.</p>
<p>Be decisive</p>
<p>Pick a rate that you can be happy with, and when it hits, lock the rate. The key is to be happy with the rate you were able to get and not look back.</p>
<p>Jennifer Lerner from Wilmington, Delaware, a second-time homebuyer, was waiting to lock one day. At the time, the rate was 4.25 percent, but her lender thought it could drop a little lower.</p>
<p>Is it really worth waiting for the possible drop? Jennifer waited a few days and then locked at a slightly higher rate: "We locked in at 4.375 and we are not looking back!" she says.</p>
<p>Copyright 2015, Bankrate Inc.</p> | How to Lock a Mortgage Rate for a Good Deal | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2015/04/20/how-to-lock-mortgage-rate-for-good-deal.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>Billionaire investor Warren Buffett announced Monday that he has bought nearly $11 billion worth of IBM stock over the last eight months, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/14/us-buffett-ibm-idUSTRE7AD0V720111114" type="external">Reuters reported</a>. Buffett made the announcement on the cable television network CNBC.&#160;</p>
<p>According to Reuters, the move potentially makes Buffett IBM's largest shareholder, with a 5.5 percent stake.&#160;</p>
<p>Buffett has in the past stayed away from investing in technology companies, but the BBC reported that he was impressed with IBM's planning, global reach and&#160;continuity.&#160;</p>
<p>"If you're in some country around the world and you're developing your IT department you're probably going to feel more comfortable with IBM than with many companies," Buffett said.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/macro/warren-buffett-invest-5-billion-bank-america" type="external">Warren Buffett to invest $5 billion in Bank of America</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15728306" type="external">According to the BBC</a>, Buffett started buying IBM stock after reading the company's 2010 annual report and speaking with technology professionals who work for companies he already is invested in.&#160;</p>
<p>"It is a big deal for a big company to change auditors, change law firms, or change IT support," Buffett said.&#160;"There's a fair amount of presumption in many places that if you're with IBM, you stay with them."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-14/buffett-bets-ibm-to-avoid-wild-swings-that-burned-technology-investors.html" type="external">Bloomberg reported</a> that IBM's stock has gained 19 percent this year, despite the turmoil in global markets.</p>
<p>Buffett also had some words of praise for IBM's new CEO, Virginia Rometty.</p>
<p>"She's explained these plans they have for the next five years. I have no reason to be anything other than positive," he said, according to Bloomberg. "And they're batting 1,000 in the last two CEO's they've come up with."</p> | Warren Buffett makes big IBM investment | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-11-14/warren-buffett-makes-big-ibm-investment | 2011-11-14 | 3 |
<p>TOKYO (Reuters) – The Bank of Japan’s nine-member board debated calls from one of its policymakers to target the longer end of the yield curve at a rate review in October, a summary of their opinions showed on Thursday, with several stressing that the current stimulus was sufficient.</p>
<p>One board member said the BOJ should pledge to guide the 15-year government bond yield lower than 0.2 percent, instead of aiming to guide the 10-year yield around zero percent.</p>
<p>Another board member countered such calls for further easing, saying that taking “extreme steps” to quicken the achievement of the BOJ’s 2 percent inflation target could destabilize financial markets, the summary showed on Thursday.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | BOJ board debated newcomer's calls for easing: October meeting summary | false | https://newsline.com/boj-board-debated-newcomer039s-calls-for-easing-october-meeting-summary/ | 2017-11-08 | 1 |
<p>By Alan Baldwin</p>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) – Aston Martin will become Red Bull’s Formula One title partner next season in a move that will raise the British marque’s track profile against commercial sportscar rivals Ferrari (NYSE:) and McLaren.</p>
<p>The former world champions will be known officially as Aston Martin Red Bull Racing.</p>
<p>“Title partnership is the next logical step for our innovation partnership with Red Bull Racing,” Aston Martin president and chief executive Andy Palmer said in a statement on Monday.</p>
<p>“We are enjoying the global brand awareness that a revitalised Formula One provides.”</p>
<p>Red Bull and Aston Martin, the glamorous 104-year-old marque whose road cars have become associated with fictional British secret agent James Bond, have an existing technical relationship.</p>
<p>Red Bull designer Adrian Newey, whose cars won four successive drivers’ and constructors’ titles between 2010-13, has been heavily involved in Aston Martin’s Valkyrie “hypercar” which will be delivered to customers in 2019.</p>
<p>The team, whose cars currently carry some Aston Martin branding, are powered by Renault (PA:) engines branded as Tag Heuer. Australian Daniel Ricciardo and Dutch teenager Max Verstappen are the current drivers.</p>
<p>The sport’s engine regulations are changing after 2020, with calls for a simpler and cheaper power unit than the current 1.6 liter V6 turbo hybrid and that could be of interest to Aston Martin.</p>
<p>“We are not about to enter an engine war with no restrictions in cost or dynamometer (testing) hours but we believe that if the FIA can create the right environment we would be interested in getting involved,” Palmer said.</p>
<p>Both parties are to set up a new advanced performance center at the team’s Milton Keynes factory in central England, working on road car and Formula One technology.</p>
<p>Red Bull said 110 new jobs would be created, with the center housing Aston Martin design and engineering staff working on future sports cars from the two companies.</p>
<p>The team’s previous title partner from 2013 to 2015 was Nissan-owned luxury car brand Infiniti, now with Renault.</p>
<p>Aston Martin is owned mainly by Kuwaiti and Italian investors, with Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler holding a five percent stake, and is seeking to boost its share of U.S. markets.</p>
<p>It reported its first half-yearly profit in almost a decade last month and expects full-year volumes to rise by around a third to roughly 5,000 cars.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | Motor racing: The name's Red Bull, Aston Martin Red Bull from 2018 | false | https://newsline.com/motor-racing-the-name039s-red-bull-aston-martin-red-bull-from-2018/ | 2017-09-25 | 1 |
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<p>As any of my long time readers are aware I feel very strongly about the absolute inviolability of the Second Amendment.</p>
<p>Yes, while other Amendments to the Constitution are important, it is only the 2nd Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms that ensures all the other ones. &#160;Looking over the candidates I find that there is only one that fully embraces that understanding&#160;and has not wavered, demurred, compromised or sidestepped that belief.</p>
<p>That candidate is the Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz .</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>As a U.S. Senator, Ted Cruz has demonstrated a willingness to fight for our Second Amendment rights.&#160; He has worked&#160;on legislation to repeal the Obama Administration’s gun ban that is and will continue to affect millions of military veterans and senior citizens.</p>
<p>He has opposed efforts to reward millions of illegal aliens with citizenship and voting rights, given that the majority of them are anti-gunners who have ignored and flouted our laws.</p>
<p>He has cosponsored legislation to allow concealed carry reciprocity for law-abiding gun owners.</p>
<p>Ted Cruz is not afraid to say that he is pro gun. &#160;Not afraid to say that he is proud to be endorsed by Gun Owners of America, the only no compromise gun lobby in Washington DC. &#160;An organization that I am proud to have worked for in the past and continue to support and believe in today.</p>
<p>Ted Cruz in the general election will be the same Ted Cruz in the primary. &#160;He will not soften his stance on the 2nd Amendment. &#160;He will not coddle the gun haters in considering “common sense” gun laws. &#160;In short, he will not compromise his beliefs or your rights in order for political expediency.</p>
<p>Ted Cruz has led the way in defense of our right to keep and bear arms.</p>
<p>In Ted Cruz’s own &#160;words:</p>
<p>Knowing where he stands, having been resolute and unwavering in his beliefs for as long as I have known of him, Ted Cruz gets the full and unequivocal endorsement of Bullets First and of me personally.</p>
<p>He will not betray the 2nd Amendment, he will appoint pro gun jurists to not only the Supreme Court but to the lower courts as well. &#160;If Republicans give me the opportunity, I will not regret my vote for Ted Cruz because he will ensure the one right that guarantees all others.</p>
<p>And hey…I like machine guns and bacon.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.</p> | Bullets First Endorses Ted Cruz For President | true | http://bulletsfirst.net/2016/02/29/bullets-first-endorses-ted-cruz-for-president/ | 0 |
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An accident on eastbound Interstate 40 near the Rio Grande Boulevard exit has two lanes blocked, according to KKOB’s Joe Gonzales. The crash involves a motorcyclist, but not much more is known at the moment.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">ABQjournal.com’s traffic map</a> shows the accident occurred at 7:53 a.m.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Accident on EB I-40 at Rio Grande | false | https://abqjournal.com/162967/accident-on-eb-i-40-at-rio-grande.html | 2 |
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<p>EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota coach Mike Zimmer says rookie center Pat Elflein will miss Sunday's game against Chicago because of a shoulder injury, his second missed start of the season.</p>
<p>Zimmer made the announcement Friday during a press conference. Veteran Joe Berger will move from right guard to take Elflein's place, making his first start of the season at center. Berger started all 16 games there for the Vikings during the 2015 season.</p>
<p>Zimmer wouldn't reveal who would fill in for Berger. The Vikings have depth in rookie Danny Isidora, but could opt to move right tackle Mike Remmers to guard and insert Rashod Hill at right tackle.</p>
<p>If the Vikings (12-3) win against the Bears (5-10) on Sunday, they will clinch a first-round bye in the playoffs.</p>
<p>EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota coach Mike Zimmer says rookie center Pat Elflein will miss Sunday's game against Chicago because of a shoulder injury, his second missed start of the season.</p>
<p>Zimmer made the announcement Friday during a press conference. Veteran Joe Berger will move from right guard to take Elflein's place, making his first start of the season at center. Berger started all 16 games there for the Vikings during the 2015 season.</p>
<p>Zimmer wouldn't reveal who would fill in for Berger. The Vikings have depth in rookie Danny Isidora, but could opt to move right tackle Mike Remmers to guard and insert Rashod Hill at right tackle.</p>
<p>If the Vikings (12-3) win against the Bears (5-10) on Sunday, they will clinch a first-round bye in the playoffs.</p> | Vikings center Pat Elflein ruled out with shoulder injury | false | https://apnews.com/amp/3763e93384a34db1ac9bcb4b916cabe2 | 2017-12-29 | 2 |
<p>Under-fire Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO John Stumpf has resigned from an advisory panel to the Federal Reserve, the San Francisco Fed said Thursday. The regional central bank didn't provide an explanation for Stumpf's resignation from what's called the Federal Advisory Council, which has representatives from commercial banks from each of the twelve Fed districts that gives advice on economic and banking matters. Stumpf was grilled by a Senate panel this week over Wells Fargo's unauthorized openings of millions of customer accounts.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2016 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Wells Fargo's Stumpf Resigns From Fed Advisory Panel | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/09/22/wells-fargo-stumpf-resigns-from-fed-advisory-panel.html | 2016-09-22 | 0 |
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