text
stringlengths 0
127k
| title
stringlengths 0
777
| hyperpartisan
bool 2
classes | url
stringlengths 26
278
| published_at
stringlengths 0
10
| bias
int64 0
4
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
<p />
<p>Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) said Tuesday afternoon its third-quarter profit fell about 0.7% amid a continued slump in the PC industry.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The chip maker did report better-than-expected results, thanks in part to record data revenue that helped overshadow weaker sales tied to PCs.</p>
<p>The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company reported net income of $2.95 billion, compared to the year-ago period’s $2.97 billion. Earnings remained flat on a per-share basis at 58 cents. Revenue ticked up slightly to $13.48 billion.</p>
<p>Analysts were expecting per-share earnings of 53 cents and revenue of $13.47 billion.</p>
<p>Gross margin widened to 62.4%, well above its prior forecast of 61%.</p>
<p>The company’s data center group logged revenue of $2.9 billion, up 12.2% year-over-year.</p>
<p>Sales at the PC client group fell 3.5% to $8.4 billion, as demand continued to lag over the summer. Last week, research firm IDC estimated a single-digit percentage decline in overall PC demand during the third quarter.</p>
<p>Intel also said it expects slight revenue growth in the current quarter, which is typically the strongest point in the year for PC sales.</p>
<p>Revenue is projected to check in at $13.2 billion to $14.2 billion, while the company expects gross margin of 61%. Analysts were recently estimating fourth-quarter revenue of $14.02 billion.</p>
<p>Shares rallied 1.2% to $23.68 in after-hours trading. The stock is up 13.4% year-to-date as of Tuesday’s close.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Intel 3Q Profit Tops Street View | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/10/15/intel-reports-earnings.html | 2016-01-29 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>This undated product photo provided by Reynolds American Inc. shows Zonnic brand nicotine gum. Reynolds American Inc., the nation’s second-largest tobacco company, on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014 announced plans to take the product nationwide, challenging the pharmaceutical industry’s hold and pricing power of the market for products to help people stop smoking. (AP Photo/Reynolds American Inc.)</p>
<p>RICHMOND, Va. — Cigarette maker Reynolds American Inc. is taking its Zonnic brand nicotine gum nationwide, challenging the pharmaceutical industry’s hold and pricing power of the market for products to help people stop smoking.</p>
<p>The nation’s second-largest tobacco company announced the expansion plans Thursday following test markets in Iowa and Nebraska over the last two years following its 2009 purchase of Swedish company Niconovum AB, which makes nicotine gum, pouches and spray products. The move by the maker of Camel and Pall Mall cigarettes and Grizzly smokeless tobacco comes as tax increases, health concerns, smoking bans and social stigma cut into demand for cigarettes and more smokers try to quit.</p>
<p>Smoking is the leading cause of preventable illness and death in the U.S. and is responsible for the majority of the nation’s lung cancer deaths. It’s also a factor in heart attacks and a variety of illnesses. More than 42 million U.S. adults smoke cigarettes and about half try to quit every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The company is offering Zonnic in a smaller package and lower price than what’s typically available in the nicotine replacement market and more in line with the cost of a pack of cigarettes — lowering the buy-in price for smokers who want to take a shot at quitting.</p>
<p>Zonnic is being sold in packages of 10 pieces in mint, fruit and cinnamon flavors in two different nicotine strengths for about $3.70 per pack, compared with the national average price for premium cigarettes of $5.80 for a pack of 20. Other nicotine gums that are sold in packs of a minimum of 20 pieces for about $10 and are offered in packages of up to 300 pieces.</p>
<p>“We want to invite people who have made the decision they want to quit to find the best solution for them to achieve that goal,” Tommy Payne, president of Niconovum USA Inc., said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We’re quite serious about it and hopefully we’ll be successful with it.”</p>
<p>While Payne notes there will be critics, “the only thing that we ask is that we’re judged by our actions … even if you don’t like past behaviors” from some of Reynolds American’s operating companies, he said.</p>
<p>According to market researcher Euromonitor International, the U.S. nicotine-replacement therapy market accounts for nearly 40 percent of the $2.4 billion in global annual retail sales, which grew nearly 3 percent over the last year. By comparison, retail cigarette sales worldwide grew 3 percent to $721.6 billion in 2013 but volumes fell more than 1 percent to about 5.71 trillion cigarettes.</p>
<p>While the U.S. is the world’s third-largest consumer of cigarettes, retail volume sales have dropped 22 percent since 2007, indicating a strong movement to quit smoking, Euromonitor analyst Mark Strobel wrote in a report earlier this year. The growing health and wellness trend, as well as educational campaigns, tax hikes, and restrictions on smoking, have all helped to drive sales of nicotine replacement products.</p>
<p>It is also the most mature and competitive market, led by store brands and GlaxoSmithKline, the seller of nicotine-replacement therapy products under the Nicorette and NicoDerm CQ brands, Strobel said.</p>
<p>Reynolds’ foray into the nicotine replacement market is bolstered by moves by the Food and Drug Administration last year to improve quit rates using the products designed to help people stop smoking by supplying controlled amounts of nicotine to ease the withdrawal symptoms. In recent years, a number of stakeholders in public health have noted that smokers that are trying to quit would relapse if they stopped using the nicotine-replacement products after a suggested time period, and they’d abandon their attempt to quit if they had a cigarette while using them, the agency said.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Michael Felberbaum can be reached at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/MLFelberbaum" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/MLFelberbaum</a> .</p> | Cigarette co Reynolds taking nicotine gum national | false | https://abqjournal.com/456508/cigarette-co-reynolds-taking-nicotine-gum-national.html | 2 |
|
<p>Gold and the related exchange traded products are off to very impressive starts this year. For example, the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEArca: GLD), iShares Gold Trust (NYSEArca: IAU) and ETFS Physical Swiss Gold Shares (NYSEArca: SGOL) are each up about 8.7%. Although gold’s ascent to start 2017 has been somewhat quiet, some market observers believe… <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/2017/03/gold-etf-rally-has-legs-to-keep-shining/" type="external">Click to read more at ETFtrends.com. Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Gold ETF Rally has Legs to Keep Shining | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/01/gold-etf-rally-has-legs-to-keep-shining.html | 2017-03-01 | 0 |
<p>Former Southern Baptist Convention President Jack Graham was greeted by students wearing “I Love CP” t-shirts and an open letter voicing concern about his Texas megachurch’s decision to temporarily withhold funding for the denomination when he spoke in chapel March 7 at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.</p>
<p>Jack Graham</p>
<p>Scheduled months ago, Graham’s visit to the campus came two weeks after headlines in the Wall Street Journal and a Baptist newspaper in Louisiana reported that Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, was holding $1 million in funding for the Cooperative Program in escrow because of “various significant positions” taken by the leadership of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.</p>
<p>Last week the SBC Executive Committee launched a study into “the current reality in Southern Baptist life” of churches withholding or discontinuing support of the unified budget plan that has driven funding for state and national denominational bodies since its creation in 1925.</p>
<p>The student letter, published <a href="https://iheartcpblog.wordpress.com/" type="external">online</a> after Graham received a copy, said registering protest by withholding funds sends a message that “money talks” and diminishes the voice of smaller churches unable to pony up amounts comparable to a 40,000-member multi-site church like Prestonwood.</p>
<p>“These actions set a precedent that puts the Cooperative Program at risk,” the students said. “If such a method of escrowing money proves popular, a dangerous precedent will have been set for our denomination.”</p>
<p>“Megachurches may withdraw their funds from the CP when they become disgruntled with the convention, spurring smaller churches to follow suit,” the letter continued. “Amidst such a climate, more missionaries may have to return home, church plants could close their doors, and young pastors may have to seek their theological training elsewhere, or even withdraw from classes.”</p>
<p>Graham, SBC president from 2002 to 2004, didn’t mention the controversy during his chapel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDF57xVqCIg" type="external">sermon</a> but afterward met 20 minutes with interested students in an off-the-record question-and-answer session before leaving for the airport. Graham reportedly offered to cancel his campus visit to avoid a confrontation, but seminary President <a href="http://www.nobts.edu/president/default.html" type="external">Chuck Kelley</a> encouraged him to come.</p>
<p>Kelley introduced Graham in chapel as “champion for Southern Baptists during the Conservative Resurgence, when we were really battling over the soul of our convention.”</p>
<p>The SBC Executive Committee study seeking “redemptive solutions” to the escrowing and discontinuation of Cooperative Program monies, is <a href="http://www.bpnews.net/48455/cp-escrow-study-set-to-begin" type="external">expected</a> to get underway in the next couple of weeks.</p>
<p>Chairman Stephen Rummage told the SBC This Week <a href="http://www.sbcthisweek.com/executive-committee-chairman-stephen-rummage-discusses-cp-escrowing/" type="external">podcast</a> last Friday the study isn’t due solely to the action of Prestonwood Baptist Church.</p>
<p>“The truth is there are a lot of other churches who have concerns about some of the things that are happening in certain SBC entities,” said <a href="http://www.bellshoals.com/about/our-senior-pastor/" type="external">Rummage</a>, pastor Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Fla.</p>
<p>“Specifically some of the actions of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission have caused a lot of churches to respond and to register concerns,” Rummage said. “In fact our Executive Committee staff tells me that they’ve received more letters or calls or e-mails —&#160;people who are considering defunding or holding back CP monies —&#160;they’ve received more concerns about this issue and more volume of correspondence and calls about this than from any other issue in memory.”</p>
<p>“Certainly Prestonwood church’s action caused a lot of attention, but Prestonwood is not by itself,” Rummage said. “In fact I think Prestonwood is giving voice to what a lot of other churches that might not have as large a voice, they are giving voice to those same concerns.”</p>
<p>Russell Moore</p>
<p>Much of the attention the ERLC is receiving centers on agency head Russell Moore’s criticism of Donald Trump and his evangelical supporters during last year’s presidential campaign. Graham, a member of Trump’s evangelical advisory team, has said publicly that Prestonwood’s action isn’t about Trump and isn’t anything personal against Russell Moore, who has spoken at his church. Graham says he is confident the church will continue to support the SBC financially.</p>
<p>Dwight McKissic, an African-American pastor and longtime critic of the lack of ethnic diversity in SBC leadership, said he finds the <a href="" type="internal">focus</a> on Trump —&#160;who reportedly was supported by 81 percent of white evangelical voters but opposed by a large majority of blacks —&#160;disconcerting.</p>
<p>“If Russell Moore cannot give a candid evaluation of Donald Trump without being publically humiliated and without white churches withdrawing and threatening to withdraw funds, … I pity the black SBC officeholder who would dare whisper a word of disagreement on a Trump statement or action,” McKissic said in a recent <a href="https://dwightmckissic.wordpress.com/2017/03/04/the-southern-baptist-conventions-decision-to-investigate-russell-moore-has-huge-implications-for-black-sbc-churches/" type="external">blog</a>.</p>
<p>McKissic noted that predominantly white churches did not withhold funds when Moore’s predecessor accused civil-rights leaders of race baiting and using the 2013 <a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/prosecute-the-killer-of-our-son-17-year-old-trayvon-martin" type="external">shooting death</a> of black teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., to “gin up the black vote for an African-American president” and justified racial profiling <a href="" type="internal">because</a> a black man “is statistically more likely to do you harm than a white man.”</p>
<p>“Dr. Russell Moore is essentially under investigation by the Southern Baptist Convention for his accurate, biblical, prophetic and outspoken views regarding race in America,” said McKissic, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas.</p>
<p>If Moore is marginalized or fired, McKissic, <a href="https://dwightmckissic.wordpress.com/2017/03/04/the-southern-baptist-conventions-decision-to-investigate-russell-moore-has-huge-implications-for-black-sbc-churches/" type="external">said</a> it will send a message to him and other African-American Southern Baptists to “pack your bags and leave.”</p>
<p>The Baptist and Reflector, state newspaper of the Tennessee Baptist Convention, ran an article March 3 warning of the “ripple effect” that boycotting the Cooperative Program has on international and North American missions and the work of Baptist state conventions.</p>
<p>“We encourage churches that have concerns to prayerfully consider the consequences of withholding or escrowing Cooperative Program funds,” <a href="http://baptistandreflector.org/ripple-effect-withholding-cooperative-program-giving/" type="external">said</a> Randy Davis, president and executive director of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board. “If you have a concern about a specific entity, contact the president and trustee board chairman of that entity.”</p>
<p>Previous story:</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">As some key congregations threaten to defund SBC, leaders look for solutions</a></p> | Seminarians push back at former SBC president escrowing Cooperative Program funds | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/seminarians-push-back-at-former-sbc-president-escrowing-cooperative-program-funds/ | 3 |
|
<p>Shares of Pool Corporation (NASDAQ: POOL) fell as much as 10.4% in trading Thursday after the company reported second-quarter earnings. At 2:05 p.m. EDT, shares were still down 8.3% for the day.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Net sales rose 8% to $988.2 million, and base business sales growth was 7%. Operating income also rose 8% to $154.2 million, while net income was up 11.1% to $94.9 million, or $2.21 per share. The bottom-line results fell 3 cents short of analyst estimates, but top-line sales easily surpassed the $982.7 million analysts were expecting.</p>
<p>Management also affirmed a full-year earnings guidance range of $4.12 to $4.32 per share.</p>
<p>Results at the distributor of swimming pool supplies may have fallen slightly below expectations, but there wasn't really anything alarming about the quarter. And management's affirmation that full-year targets would be hit should give investors confidence in operations going forward. My one reservation is that shares are still trading at 25 times earnings. That's a <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/the-relationship-between-pe-ratio-and-stock-price.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=038cee1e-6d7b-11e7-a7eb-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">high multiple Opens a New Window.</a> for a company growing in the single digits, and will keep me from buying the discount today.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than PoolWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=163fa360-a59d-4b72-a23d-2a88a95d8a88&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=038cee1e-6d7b-11e7-a7eb-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Pool wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=163fa360-a59d-4b72-a23d-2a88a95d8a88&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=038cee1e-6d7b-11e7-a7eb-0050569d32b9&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 July 6, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFlushDraw/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=038cee1e-6d7b-11e7-a7eb-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Travis Hoium Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=038cee1e-6d7b-11e7-a7eb-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Why Pool Corporation's Shares Plunged 10% Today | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/07/21/why-pool-corporations-shares-plunged-10-today.html | 2017-07-21 | 0 |
<p>Never before have individuals from the same political party as the sitting US president, attacked him like Republicans are doing to President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Former Rep. David Jolly (R), like the "Maverick" himself, Sen. John McCain, is one of those guys, who on a daily basis, feels the need to take President Trump to task. McCain and Jolly's actions only fuel the false narrative that all Republicans are getting fed up with the president.</p>
<p>Jolly is said to be considering another run for congress, challenging Rep. Charlie Crist (D), who defeated him in the 2016 general election when he decided to play "maverick" and throw the GOP under the bus.</p>
<p>The National Republican Congressional Committee responded in-kind, reversing their strategic course to help Jolly defend his slight Democratic-leaning seat.</p>
<p>With that said, I'm not sure how Jolly would fair in a congressional race next year when he is trashing the titular head of his political party on a nightly basis.</p>
<p>But even as Jolly and company continues doing the bidding of the Democratic Party with &#160;their daily assault on Trump, their partners in crime (Democratic Party) are still frolicking around without a message that resonates with the majority of Americans.</p>
<p>If it's not pushing back on the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare, or harping over the so-called Russian-Trump collusion scandal, Democrats aren't saying much in regards to substantive policy changes, or putting forth pro-American initiatives that will drive economic growth and job development.</p>
<p>Whatever. As long as Republicans continue spewing their hate towards President Trump, it will only be a matter of time before Democrats being to get traction.</p>
<p>Advantage: Crist and Democrats</p> | Republican 'Mavericks' Continue Bashing Trump | true | http://shark-tank.com/2017/08/07/republican-mavericks-continue-bashing-trump/ | 0 |
|
<p />
<p>It shouldn’t come as any great surprise that Karl Rove is leaving the administration. His job is <a href="/news/feature/2006/11/revenge_of_the_nerds.html" type="external">all about winning</a>, and with Bush, there’s nothing left to be won. (Though even on his way out the door, Rove can’t keep himself from spinning, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118698747711695773.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news" type="external">predicting that we’ll turn a corner in Iraq and Bush’s poll numbers will rise</a>. But that’s a sucker’s game, and Rove himself wants no part of it.)</p>
<p>Rove has said he’s going back to Texas to spend more time with his family. Awww, that’s nice. But then what? I wouldn’t expect him to stay out of politics for long. One only has to read a few sentences into “Revenge of the Nerds,” our piece on high school policy debaters, to realize how deep and long standing is Rove’s love of playing hardball:</p>
<p>It would have been the spring of 1969, the Vietnam War in full swing, when a scrawny 18-year-old in a suit and tie and horn-rimmed glasses pushed a handcart stacked with 10 boxes into a classroom at Olympus High School, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. Each shoebox was stuffed with four-by-six notecards pasted with evidence clipped from newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. As the young man and his partner unpacked their evidence on a small table at the front of the room, members of the other policy debate team looked on in horror. They’d only brought one shoebox.</p>
<p>What they didn’t know was that 99 percent of the notecards in the Olympus team’s 10 shoeboxes were just props. Even at 18, the scrawny kid with the horn-rims understood the power of intimidation.”Rove didn’t just want to win,” James Moore and Wayne Slater write in their book Rove Exposed: How Bush’s Brain Fooled America. “He wanted the opponents destroyed. His worldview was clear even then. There was his team and the other team, and he would make the other team pay.”</p>
<p>This isn’t a man that’s going to be content going back to Texas and raising chickens. And though the 2006 rout of the RNC may taken the bloom off Rove’s rose somewhat, “the architect” has still got to be a highly sought-after campaign consultant. Provided he can modernize his direct mail data mining/smear expertise to dovetail with the whole <a href="/news/feature/2007/07/crashing_the_system.html" type="external">cell phone/social networking/video wave of the future</a>. But let’s assume he can.</p>
<p>So any bets as to where Rove will pop up? Fred Thompson seems to be running as the “most like Bush” candidate; could that strategy include Rove? Will Rove sit this election out entirely, perhaps scouting the next feckless son of a prominent politician?</p>
<p /> | What Will Bush’s Brain Do Next? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/what-will-bushs-brain-do-next/ | 2007-08-13 | 4 |
<p>For over 15 years, David Allen has been sharing his insights on productivity with countless organizations and individuals via his Getting Things Done methodology.On this episode of <a href="http://www.fool.com/podcasts/rule-breaker-investing?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Rule Breaker Investing Opens a New Window.</a>, David Gardner welcomes Allen to the show to share the story of how he developed this expertise after working dozens of jobs and how Fools can apply his experience to their own lives.</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Apple When investing geniuses David and TomGardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter theyhave run for over a decade, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tomjust revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/e-sa-bbn-eg?aid=8867&amp;source=isaeditxt0000474&amp;ftm_cam=sa-bbn-evergreen&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;ftm_pit=6610&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">ten best stocks Opens a New Window.</a>for investors to buy right now and Apple wasn't one of them! That's right -- theythink these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/e-sa-bbn-eg?aid=8867&amp;source=isaeditxt0000474&amp;ftm_cam=sa-bbn-evergreen&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;ftm_pit=6610&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>*StockAdvisor returns as of December 12, 2016The author(s) may have a position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns and recommends shares of Apple.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>This podcast was recorded on Nov. 23, 2016.</p>
<p>David Gardner: And welcome back to this week's Rule Breaker Investing podcast. I'm David Gardner. Happy Thanksgiving to all of us in the United States of America. Wherever you are, I hope you've had and are having a wonderful holiday. Well deserved, no doubt.</p>
<p>So I'm really excited, once again, to have another great entrepreneur join us for this Entrepreneur Month for Rule Breaker Investing and it's David Allen. David Allen is somebody who, as you'll shortly discover, is a productivity coach and guru. Somebody who wrote a wonderful book called Getting Things Done -- a book that certainly improved my life.</p>
<p>By the way, I never really like to say "changed" my life. I don't like the whole "change life." Really, when you think about it, everything that happens at any moment is changing your life, so whenever people say "that changed my life," that kind of rings hollow for me. I like to say -- and this isn't always true of things that change our lives -- it "improved" my life.</p>
<p>And certainly Getting Things Done has done that immeasurably for me personally and so I'm excited to share David with you in case that feels relevant to you. In case that might be helpful to you, here, as we hit the busiest time of every year. At least for me, the busiest next six weeks of every year.</p>
<p>So I hope you really enjoy this interview with David. David has a methodology called Getting Things Done. That is the name of his book. We're going to lightly speak to that. There's no real way to do an A to Z primer for that; however, I'm excited to say that David has generously agreed to do a Rule Breaker-extra.</p>
<p>So this week as we sometimes have -- maybe every month or two -- we have an extra. Thank you to my producer, Rick Engdahl, for putting in some (speaking of extra) extra time during a busy week to make that happen for you. But yes, we're going to go over Getting Things Done in a little bit more detail.</p>
<p>So if you're either new to the methodology and you're interested by what we talk about (as we talk about entrepreneurs this podcast), then you're going to want to listen to the extra this weekend. Or maybe you're an old GTDer, like me, and it's good to hear from the master himself. Brush up your Shakespeare a little bit and be reinspired, I think, by my conversation this weekend with David. I should note, though (I don't think there's anything particularly time bound about this) that we recorded this interview last week.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>Gardner: And now I'm so pleased to be joined by David Allen, himself, from Amsterdam. David, welcome to Rule Breaker Investing.</p>
<p>David Allen: Hey, delighted to be here with you guys.</p>
<p>Gardner: Well, it's a real pleasure. You and I have gotten to know each other some over the last 10 years or so. I read Getting Things Done, your seminal work, somewhere around the first year it came out. Maybe 2003 or 2004? Somewhere like that, David?</p>
<p>Allen: It was 2001 hardback. Paperback in 2003.</p>
<p>Gardner: Good. I was paperback in 2003 and it was a total game and life changer for me. I've tried to give back here, some, over the years by just always mentioning how grateful I am for your work. I'm just really pleased to be joined with you this week.</p>
<p>I wanted to start by asking you -- let's go with the superhero origin story. When did you discover that you were a superhero? How did it happen? Tell us a little bit about your early life or early employment life.</p>
<p>Allen: Oh, my God. I had 35 jobs by the time I was 35. I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up. I was looking for God, truth of the universe. I was an American cultural history major in graduate school in Berkeley in 1968. If you can remember being in Berkeley in 1968, you were not there. I discovered that instead of studying people who were enlightened, I wanted my own. Graduate school didn't seem to be the source of that, so I dropped out and did all kinds of things. Karate. Meditation practices All kinds of spiritual explorations, etc. I was more interested in the inner world and how it connected to the big, big, big outer world out there.</p>
<p>And so to make a long story short, I wasn't for rice bowl and cave. That wasn't my style. I like good chardonnay and good-looking women, etc., so I said, "You know, I still have to pay the rent while I'm on this inner exploration." It turned out I had a lot friends in a network. A lot of them had aspirations and were entrepreneurs who were starting their own businesses, so I became a really good No. 2 guy.</p>
<p>I would just walk in and look around at what they were doing because I'm so lazy to begin with. I mean, that's why I developed GTD. I don't like to expend any effort that's not required. So I'd walk in and look around at what they were doing and say, "God, we could do this a lot easier if we did X, Y, and Z." So then we'd do X, Y, and Z and improve the situation, and then I'd get bored. And I'd go, "Okay, let me go find something else to do." And then one day I discovered they'd pay people to do that and they called them something -- so consultant. I couldn't spell it, but now I are one.</p>
<p>So in 1981, I hung out my shingle and started Allen Associates, my own little consulting process. So then I got hungry. Being as lazy as I was, I didn't want to have to make up whatever I was doing whenever I walked into a new client. If it wasn't obvious what I could do to help improve their situation, it'd be nice to have a model, or some models that I could pull out of my quiver and be able to use that as a way to help them ask the right questions. Answer the right stuff. What I'm sure you do, David, with all that stuff that you do. So I got very hungry for that.</p>
<p>Also, because of my other work, I had gotten very attracted to clear space. You know, in martial arts there's a lot of practice about how you clear your head so when four people jump you in a dark alley you don't want 2,000 unprocessed emails hanging in your psyche. You need a clear head to function most productively. So this sort of love of clear space.</p>
<p>And then as my world got more complex, I started to find, "Well, wait a minute. What are some models I can use to stay clear so I can stay more focused strategically [and] have more creative room in my head, etc.?" And I began to cobble together different techniques from different people. So I had two or three different mentors and explored a lot of things. There was no one big epiphany -- just a long string of "epiphanettes" -- for about three or four years back in the early 1980s as I was starting to do this.</p>
<p>And then I went, "God, this is really cool." I found stuff that really worked for me. Then I turned around and applied the same techniques with my clients and it turned out that it produced the same results. More results. More control. More space. More creativity. More room to think about meaningful stuff in meaningful ways. And I said, "Well, that's kind of cool."</p>
<p>And then some guy from the big corporate world showed up. The head of human resources at Lockheed. He said, "David, our whole company sort of needs that result. Can you take what you've come up with, there, and put it into some sort of educational format?" And so I did a pilot program for a thousand executives ...</p>
<p>Gardner: Wow. Lockheed is a big dog.</p>
<p>Allen: Yeah, it's a big dog. We did that in 1983 to 1984. Before you were born, David, I think. Maybe. You know, somewhere back there.</p>
<p>Gardner: I was only 17. Come on, now.</p>
<p>Allen: And I didn't have any experience in the corporate world or in the corporate training world. I have had no traditional business or psychology courses in my life.</p>
<p>Gardner: Beautiful.</p>
<p>Allen: Everything I learned I learned on the street. I learned out there with my sleeves rolled up working with real people and finding out watching this stuff, really, and how it affected people. But then I didn't know what I'd figured out, frankly. I was just trying to keep a good job. I found something that people thought was valuable and they were willing to pay me to come in and do it. And I wasn't particularly entrepreneurial or aspirational at that point, anyway. I just wanted to keep doing that and support my own lifestyle.</p>
<p>So I kept it a fairly small, boutique consulting practice. There was a couple of partners over time. And it really took me 25 years to figure out what I'd figured out. I never did any marketing. I just picked up the phone with people who referred me to other people that referred me to other people and other companies, etc.</p>
<p>And then at some point I realized, "Gee, I might get run over by a bus." I think it was time to write the book, as it took me 25 years to figure out that what I'd figured out was unique. That nobody else had figured it out and that it was bulletproof. Nobody could punch a hole in it.</p>
<p>Believe me, this was tested in some of the most challenging environments you could imagine of the busiest, brightest, best people in the world, and it would go viral inside of those environments. And those are people making more money in a year than I'll probably see in my life. And if this stuff was viral with those kind of people, I figured, "OK, now I feel like I have the confidence that I could put this out." That's when I wrote Getting Things Done.</p>
<p>Gardner: And how did the book come about, David? I mean, you've described it as a 20-year journey to realizing that it should be a book. What was the actual machination by which you did a book deal? Went with the book. I mean, that was a huge shift. That's the way that I found out about you and many, many others [found out about you]. That you really had just shifted from a corporate world consulting business to all of a sudden a mainstream media business.</p>
<p>Allen: Yeah. Well, one point ... and here's a real tip for any of the budding entrepreneurs out there. At least once at least have an ad hoc advisory group of folks that are friends of the court who will be honest with you and have some experience in different aspects of this stuff. That's what I did. I brought them together in my little yard underneath an oak tree in Ojai, California and said, "OK. Give me some advice, guys. What do I do with this tiny, little business that I've built?" And the conclusion was they said to write a good business book. And I went "Oh! OK. How do I do that?"</p>
<p>It had been on my "someday maybe" list for a while, anyway, because I really thought about doing that. And I'd made some fits and starts but hadn't really done it. And then I said, "OK, I better just pull the plug on this," and I actually made that a real project called "(a) publish book." And I didn't know how the hell to do that, so I went and did some research. It took four years from the time I pulled that trigger until it was actually on the shelf at Barnes &amp; Noble. That was quite a process.</p>
<p>The first thing I had to do was figure out, "Well, first of all, how do you sell a book to somebody who's going to sell a book?" So I read whatever current literature there was on how you write a book, and that's a challenging thing, because if you're trying to sell a publisher to publish a book, you've got to write a business plan for the book. What's unique? Why is this different? Who needs this? Who's your target market? Show us an example that you can write. Creating a book proposal was an agonizing but very valuable event and stuff to do. So that took a little while to do.</p>
<p>Also to figure out whether you should self-publish. Whether you should go directly to an editor or a publisher you know, or whether to get an agent. And luckily I had a good friend in the book business and he said, "Look. If your book has potential value outside of a particular niche ..." In other words, it might have national value for a wide audience. It's not like here's a book about the sex life of retired nomads that maybe had a niche market. "But if you have a general audience of something like that, and you don't have a name, you better have an agent."</p>
<p>And he said, "By the way, my next-door neighbor is a good one." So he turned me on to a really good agent. She still is. She's been a great partner. She's been worth every cent of the 15% they get off of this, because she came from the publishing world. She knew the game, so she got me my first deal at Viking Penguin back then, and that's how it all started.</p>
<p>And then it took a year to really make that happen, and then it took a year to write the first draft. The first draft didn't meet my standards. I tore it up. I took another year to write the second draft. This is now year three. And then year four, it took that year to figure out the look and feel. To get the title. And by the way, I have 400 used titles I'll sell you real cheap...</p>
<p>Gardner: Wow!</p>
<p>Allen: ... for this book. Zen and the Art of In-basket Maintenance was one of my favorites, but we thought that was a little cheapie. That was an agonizing process. So it was not a simple game to go from here to there to get it out.</p>
<p>And I also had no idea how much the market would buy into this. I had high aspirations but no expectations for it, because GTD, as you know, David, is subtle stuff. It looks quite simple, but it's not your typical time management tips and tricks kind of thing. There was a whole lot of that out there in the market, [and] I wasn't sure that the world would pick up on the uniqueness and the potential power of what this methodology really was.</p>
<p>So it was bemusing, and fun, and certainly valuable to find it was a best seller. The first year I think it sold 60,000 copies which they figure is a best seller in the nonfiction world, anyway, in the U.S.</p>
<p>Gardner: I'm guessing you earned out your advance.</p>
<p>Allen: I did. And actually they kept it in hardback for a second year, which they don't usually do, but they make more money on the hardback, so they figured it was popular enough that they would still make more money. That's why it was 2003 before they did a paper version of it.</p>
<p>Gardner: Got it.</p>
<p>Allen: And then when the paper version hit, that really hit a nerve out there because the timing was perfect. That actually hit about the same time that the blog world took off. I don't know where you guys were in 2003, but around then was Guy Kawasaki, and Robert Scoble, and a lot of the folks who were the big bloggers. A lot of them were champions of my stuff, too. So all of that was kind of a perfect storm that got GTD and Getting Things Done sort of spinning out there in the tech world. It became the first non-tech name to really spread through the tech world.</p>
<p>And the whole GTD idea -- GTD, those three letters -- were just our internal shorthand for Getting Things Done. And it was a brand that ran out from under us.</p>
<p>Gardner: Yeah!</p>
<p>Allen: Suddenly the world is talking about GTD, and I went, "God, what do we do with that?" So we spent the last 13 years chasing the brand that ran out from under us. That's a short version of a very long story.</p>
<p>Gardner: Well, and it's a story that I wish we had lots more time to talk about, but I need to drive forward very shortly to some tips that you'll have for entrepreneurs listening. That's been the focus this month. But before I go there, let me just ask you. Now, here, in 2016 reflecting back on the last 10 or 15 years, any thoughts about business or insights? Just reflecting on your own journey.</p>
<p>Allen: Hoo! You know, it's constantly sort of eating my own dog food and working on, "OK, wait a minute. What's the vision of where we're going? What does that look like?" And our business has changed a lot. A lot of things have happened economically since that time that have affected the business.</p>
<p>And essentially we always thought that we were going to be the holders of an intellectual property, and the only way we were going to scale it, if we wanted to scale it at all, was through partnerships and through technology. And that really hasn't changed. It's just taken various different kinds of forms.</p>
<p>So fast-forward to today and we've got two (potentially three) partnerships that will essentially take over and already are starting to take over the marketing, sales, and actually delivery of our training programs that we've now designed to go [global]. So we have global franchises, now, for our training program. We're working with a potential partner, now, for the U.S.</p>
<p>And that always was essentially part of the vision. We had no idea how the hell to get from here to there, but we just kept that out there as guidance about how we were making decisions about how to do it. We thought we could grow a lot of that capability internally, where you maintain higher margin and maintain essentially more control.</p>
<p>So it's been a little dance, there, between how much we can give away and how much [we can] give up in terms of quality control but, at the same time, [get] a whole lot more reach. That's been a lot of our strategy back and forth. Our internal committees and certainly of our own heads. You know, we all have committees in our head and sometimes they start throwing plates at each other in there. And which way do you go? Which way do you travel?</p>
<p>Gardner: David, to what extent was your move from California to Amsterdam a personal one or a professional one?</p>
<p>Allen: Yes.</p>
<p>Gardner: I get it. I get it. Love it. And last question, and then we are going to drive forward to our tips for entrepreneurs. How active, or what is your role today in the business? Are you the visionary and people are coming to you? Are you still out there giving seminars? What are you doing? What does the movie of you look like today?</p>
<p>Allen: Well, one of my official titles is "Fool on the Hill," which you should probably relate to pretty easily.</p>
<p>Gardner: You know we love that. We love that! In fact, I think you owe us five dollars for some kind of an intellectual property violation.</p>
<p>Allen: Yeah! So, that's pretty much it, and I'm sort of the final arbiter of some of the quality in terms of just the content of the stuff. And that's primarily it. And I'm sort of the holder of the flag and the maintainer. Now we're franchising ourselves globally -- and there's a whole lot of piracy of GTD out there around the world -- so it's important when we have a real exclusive partner (that we set up, now, in 40 or 50 countries), that I show up, pat them on the back, and they see that I have now vetted them as they are the exclusive distributor because we're now licensing their master trainers and certifying them.</p>
<p>We've got a great team of people out there, so I figured one of the reasons to be over here, in Amsterdam, was it was certainly much more the center of the world than Santa Barbara was. I'm flying tomorrow to Milan and then Sunday to Moscow giving keynote speeches. So I'm still doing that, kind of ad hoc, as the world is knocking on my door to do that and also, at the same time, helping support our new franchisees in these areas. So last year I spent a week in Thailand, a week in Tokyo, a week in South Korea, a week in Budapest just doing that.</p>
<p>Gardner: Wow!</p>
<p>Allen: We're getting a lot of press, because the new edition of the book, which came out last year, is now being translated into the 20 to 30 languages that the first edition was published in. So the launch of that book -- I get a chance to show up and get a lot of press...</p>
<p>Gardner: Great.</p>
<p>Allen: ... in those countries. So tomorrow morning I'll be on a Skype into Taiwan. They just published my book in Chinese in Taiwan, so that's a lot of what I'm doing ...</p>
<p>Gardner: Yeah!</p>
<p>Allen: ... and it's different every week.</p>
<p>Gardner: You remain just as busy as ever. I do want to just remind listeners that we are going to have a pullout extra this week. David is graciously sharing some extra time going through some of his GTD tropes. That's how I think of it -- concepts. A little bit of tips and tricks. I'm going to keep it light, but a little GTD primer which I highly recommend for all Rule Breaker listeners if they're not already familiar with David's material, or even if they are.</p>
<p>David, let's now shift to the aforementioned tips for entrepreneurs. I know that you've spent your life as an entrepreneur. You also have constantly offered coaching and other insights to entrepreneurs. I just want to get some of your best ones right now -- maybe three to five and maybe a minute or two on each -- and I just am going to let you go because I know you can go well.</p>
<p>Allen: Well, I'm going to give you the big one. Hang on! Your head is a crappy office ...</p>
<p>Gardner: All right.</p>
<p>Allen: ... and virtually everybody out there is trying to use [their] head as a way to keep track. As a way to be reminded. As a way to see relationships between priorities. And you cannot do that. Your head evolved over a million years to keep track of about four things you couldn't finish when you thought of them in the moment. That was it.</p>
<p>I mean, your brain is absolutely brilliant with what it does. Recognizing patterns based upon long-term history. But you go to the store to buy lemons and you come back with six things that aren't lemons.</p>
<p>So your head sucks. It does not do that very well. [With] virtually every entrepreneur I meet (and I'm coaching a couple of them right now -- serious major league) the whole thing is building the external brain. You've got to get that stuff out of your head. So there's a whole process about getting stuff out of your head which, as you know, I'll go into. In our little extra I can add some more juice to that.</p>
<p>But basically if it's on your mind, and it's on your mind more than once, that means you're not appropriately engaged with it. You need to write it down. You need to make decisions about [whether it is] something you need to act on, yes or no. And if it is, what's the very next action you need to take. So when it's popping into your head about a potential merger, or increasing your bank credit line, or potentially hiring somebody, or whatever, there are two questions. What outcome is a successful outcome for you to get this person hired and have the right person in the right place, and what's the very next action? Oh, God. Maybe I should call this friend of mine who hired somebody like that and see if they have some tips.</p>
<p>So outcome and action. If you like to watch any kind of a ball game like basketball, or soccer, or football, the two things on anybody's mind out there on the field are where's the goal and where's the next play. So you need to build that into your entrepreneurial life.</p>
<p>Gardner: That's a great one. And yes, we will definitely be riffing off that a little bit in our podcast extra. David, let's think about somebody who's about to open up a restaurant. It's his very first shot at opening anything. It's a business where people are failing left and right, all the time. I definitely can imagine some Rule Breaker Investing listeners who are right in that very situation.</p>
<p>You might have opened a David Allen restaurant, for all I know, but what are a couple of things that should be on that person's mind that would be non-obvious?</p>
<p>Allen: Well, one thing that people are thinking about in some way, probably (or they wouldn't even be there) is what would wild success look like? Wild success would look like what? And how would you know when you were there? And what exactly does that mean to you, because wild success means very different things for very different people, and so that's one of the first things that you probably need to get clear about.</p>
<p>Look, what would cause me to not have this on my mind? And it's coming back to the GTD methodology -- that you don't have to go very far -- and oftentimes that's what people often miss. The thing that's most bugging you, or distracting you, or exciting you ... what do you need to do to get that off your mind? Because when it's on your mind, there's an inverse relationship between on your mind and getting done. So start to notice what most has your attention about this restaurant, and about the opening, and about whatever.</p>
<p>So it could very well be those two things: thinking about vision and making sure that that's real clear, as clear as you can get it. I mean, oftentimes there's a ready, fire, aim. Sometimes you've got a vision that kind of got you started, and then you need to get started, and then you need to mature your thinking as you get started and then keep recasting the vision about what success is.</p>
<p>But there's probably some signature that's yours personally. And I like for people to start to recognize what's your signature. I don't care what kind of business you're in or what kind of profession you're in. You've got your own signature, and when you're playing in that key, everything seems to work much better. If you're playing not in that key, nothing seems to work very well. I think looking for what's unique about you and your signature that you might tap into if you're thinking about wild success.</p>
<p>And then more tactically and operationally, what's most got your attention about this thing, and what do you need to do to get that onto cruise control? Those would be my tips and tricks.</p>
<p>Gardner: That's great. Let's stick with the same thread and let's fast forward it a little bit. And our entrepreneur is, at least in his mind, having wild success because he's just now opening up his third restaurant in the same metropolitan area, and that's two more than he ever thought he'd be running. What is the biggest danger that person needs to be thinking about? What would you be coaching him to do, or not to do, given wild success?</p>
<p>Allen: Well, first of all I'd check in and say, "Is this the success that you assumed would be there?" And oftentimes people overrun their goals, and if you have an overrun goal, you're going to run into really weird space psychologically. Meaning you've actually met your goal and then you start fumbling, and you don't know what to do. You start fumbling yourself around.</p>
<p>So if you're an A, and you want to get to C, as you get closer to C, guess what happens to your energy?</p>
<p>Gardner: It goes down.</p>
<p>Allen: It goes down. So if you actually want to get to C, you better have a D. Because come on, David. I haven't been at your house, but I'll bet you never fully moved in.</p>
<p>Gardner: [Laughs]</p>
<p>Allen: I'll bet there's a box or two that never got unpacked.</p>
<p>Gardner: Guilty as charged. It's more than one box. Six years later.</p>
<p>Allen: Right? [crosstalk 00:24:44] Because you had the picture, and you were there, and you had all that stuff, and then you started to get the refrigerator [voice starts to slow], and you got the music, and you got your furniture, and then plll! Then you got used to that, and that can be extremely dangerous and very subtle, and something very few people recognize. When they reach their goal, or get close to it, their energy starts to sag or wag.</p>
<p>Now that doesn't mean you need to open three more restaurants. It could very well be that what you're going to do with your three restaurants is make them really unique, now. So again, what success would look [like] you may need to be rethinking, now. "Hey, I got this far, but is where I want to go quantity or quality? Or do I want to serve the community? Or do I want to create an environment where people can do X, Y, and Z? Have a place where I can support new artists performing in my restaurants?" I mean, there's all kinds of ways that one could think about, I would imagine. Adding more creativity, and adding more success, and more juice, and more quality to what people are doing.</p>
<p>Because those people get older. Now I know neither you nor I are getting older...</p>
<p>Gardner: It's true.</p>
<p>Allen: ... but while those other people out there are getting older; oftentimes it's more quality than quantity in terms of what success really means.</p>
<p>Gardner: OK, I think we have to end it. Well, not quite right there. I mean, time is running out, so we do need to end it, but David, how about one final money tip for entrepreneurs? The thing that I needed to ask you about 10 minutes ago that I haven't asked you?</p>
<p>Allen: Relax.</p>
<p>Gardner: Love it. We're just going to leave it right there. It's a beautiful ending. David Allen of Getting Things Done fame. A friend of The Motley Fool. A friend of mine. Thank you so much for spending time with us this week with Rule Breaker Investing.</p>
<p>Allen: My pleasure, David. Take care.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>Gardner: Well, that was a real treat. I hope you enjoyed it half as much as I did. In that case, you would have had an awfully good time. So whether you're an entrepreneur, or an entrepreneur wannabe, or just somebody who enjoys listening and thinking about starting your own business, throughout the month we've heard from people who have done just that. I hope you've enjoyed hearing from them and being inspired by them.</p>
<p>And I'm happy to say that we're going to close it out in a special way next week. So next week is not only the last week of the month, and therefore it's Mailbag week, but we're going to have much of the episode dedicated to our final, fifth entrepreneur of the month, and that's going to be Guy Kawasaki, the very famous Apple evangelist from back in the day. The author of a wonderful book for entrepreneurs called Rules for Revolutionaries. I think I'll focus my talk with Guy there.</p>
<p>But I'm really excited to share Guy Kawasaki with you. If you're not familiar with him, one of those guys (kind of like David Allen) who has a million followers on Twitter and has influenced many lives for the better. Has improved -- not just changed -- has improved many lives.</p>
<p>All right, and before I close just a little bit of bookkeeping. Let me mention that you can check out past episodes of Rule Breaker Investing (and actually all of The Motley Fool's podcasts) at our podcast center. I don't think I mention this one enough. It's Podcasts.Fool.com. Please avail yourself of that. I'm sure many of you are already aware of it.</p>
<p>While you're there, you can check out our subscription services, too. Now, a new issue of our Rule Breakers service comes out with two new stock recommendations from me the last Wednesday of the month. You can check it out by going to the podcast center, again, and scrolling to the bottom of the page. That's Podcasts.Fool.com.</p>
<p>And let me mention. If you haven't already, you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or Spotify and give me a review. Throw me some stars. Let us know how we're doing.</p>
<p>Final note. It is Mailbag next week so please -- through [email protected] by email (or certainly you can just tweet it out to @RBIPodcast on Twitter) -- we would love to get a few of your questions to highlight next week.</p>
<p>In the meantime, just a reminder again. The David Allen extra this Saturday. Happy Thanksgiving. Fool on!</p>
<p>As always, people on this program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. Learn more about Rule Breaker Investing at RBI.Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSpiffyPop/info.aspx" type="external">David Gardner Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on Apple. 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> | Rule Breaker Investing: Learning to Get Things Done With David Allen | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/12/17/rule-breaker-investing-learning-to-get-things-done-with-david-allen.html | 2016-12-17 | 0 |
<p>Budget Impasse:</p>
<p>President Obama proposed a new “grand bargain” Tuesday that would overhaul the corporate tax system while giving more money for jobs programs, but already it appears that plan will go nowhere. Republicans wasted no time denouncing the proposal after Obama announced it during a jobs speech at Amazon’s shipping facility in Chattanooga, Tenn., dismissing the president’s plan as a collection of old ideas. And so it seems the budget stalemate between Obama and Republicans will continue—at least for now. ( <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/07/30/obama-chattanooga-grand-bargain-boehner-mcconnell/2599239/" type="external">Read more</a>)</p>
<p>Running Battle: Looks like the feud between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul won’t be patched up anytime soon. The pair of Republicans, both considered potential GOP presidential candidates in 2016, have been trading shots since last week, and those attacks seem to be getting nastier by the day. On Tuesday, Christie responded to Paul’s accusation that the New Jersey governor had a “Gimme, gimme, gimme” attitude for his state when it came to federal aid after October’s Superstorm Sandy. Said Christie: “I find it interesting that Sen. Paul is accusing us of having a “Gimme, gimme, gimme” attitude toward federal spending when in fact New Jersey is a donor state and we get 61 cents back on every dollar we send to Washington. Interestingly, Kentucky gets $1.51 on every dollar they send to Washington.” It’s doubtful Paul will let that charge go unanswered. ( <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/30/chris-christie-rand-paul_n_3677558.html" type="external">Read more</a>)</p>
<p>In Deeper Trouble: The San Diego City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to sue Mayor Bob Filner to recoup any legal fees the city incurs over fighting a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by his former communications director. Previously, the mayor’s attorney had requested that San Diego, the nation’s eighth-largest city, pay for his client’s legal expenditures. “This is part of due process,” City Attorney Jan Goldsmith said. “If Bob Filner engaged in unlawful conduct and the city is held liable, he will have to reimburse us every penny the city pays and its attorney fees.” Filner has faced numerous calls—including from seven of the City Council’s nine members–to resign in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal involving multiple women. ( <a href="http://www.scpr.org/news/2013/07/30/38442/san-diego-city-council-to-sue-mayor-bob-filner-for/" type="external">Read more</a>)</p>
<p />
<p>Return to Sender: Embattled Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who is under investigation over possible ethics violations, says he is working to return every gift he received—including a Rolex watch–from Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams Jr., one of his major political backers. “My intent is everything I have received from this particular donor … that those gifts that I have in my possession, I am working with my counsel to be able to return,” McDonnell said. Last week, the Republican repaid—with some interest—roughly $120,000 in loans he got from the benefactor. The actions McDonnell has undertaken come amid calls for his resignation over the revelations of Williams’ gifts and loans to the governor. McDonnell insists that these steps are the “first of many” to restore the public’s trust in him. ( <a href="http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/30/19775595-virginia-governor-says-he-and-family-will-return-gifts-to-benefactor?lite" type="external">Read more</a>)</p>
<p>Cheney Backlash: GOP officials are reportedly none too pleased that Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has decided to mount a Senate campaign in Wyoming instead of in her adopted state of Virginia. The issue: The younger Cheney passed up an opportunity to run for the U.S. Senate in a swing state (Virginia) where Republicans are looking for someone to challenge a sitting Democrat (Sen. Mark Warner) in order to “primary” a popular GOP incumbent (Sen. Mike Enzi) in a Republican stronghold (Wyoming). Cowboy State voters don’t seem too keen on Cheney’s prospects either, with one poll revealing that they favor her running in Virginia, where she grew up and lived until last year. ( <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/why-didn-t-liz-cheney-run-for-the-senate-in-virginia-20130730" type="external">Read more</a>)</p>
<p>Video of the Day: Journalist Jeremy Scahill appeared on “Democracy Now!” on Tuesday, where he responded to the Bradley Manning trial verdict by excoriating the “corporate news media” for its “shameful” coverage of the case. “When you look at how CNN and MSNBC and Fox News covered the Jodi Arias trial — where all of cable news was turned into one big ‘Nancy Grace Christmas’ — and then you look at the utter lack of coverage,” Scahill said. He continued: “There has been more coverage of the indictment of that ‘Real Housewives’ lady and her husband than there has been of Bradley Manning.” A military judge found Manning not guilty Tuesday of the most serious charge of aiding the enemy, but guilty of numerous others. He faces more than 100 years in prison.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Obama’s New ‘Grand Bargain,’ Scahill’s Reaction to Manning Verdict, and More | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/obamas-new-grand-bargain-scahills-reaction-to-manning-verdict-and-more/ | 2013-07-31 | 4 |
<p />
<p>Mattel (NASDAQ:MAT) reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. The Barbie and Hot Wheels toy maker said demand for its array of toddler toys and American Girls dolls and tighter cost-management helped offset unfavorable currency conditions.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Mattel spent less on producing and marketing its toys during the quarter, which helped keep costs low in the face of soft demand and a strong dollar that lowered the value it received from international sales.</p>
<p>The El Segundo, Calif.-based company reported net income of $96.2 million, or 28 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier $80.5 million, or 23 cents. &#160;Analysts on average were looking for profit of just 21 cents.</p>
<p>Revenue for the three-month period was $1.16 billion, flat year-over-year on unfavorable exchange rates, but ahead of the average analyst estimates of $1.13 billion.</p>
<p>A slight increase in sales in Mattel’s Fisher-Price and American Girls Brands helped offset a 1% drop in Mattel Girls &amp; Boys brands. Mattel CEO Bryan Stockton said sales performance reflected demand for Barbie, Monster High, American Girls and Hot Wheels toys as well as products related to the new Batman – The Dark Night Rises movie.</p>
<p>“As we look forward, we remain focused on executing our portfolio of strong brands, countries and customers to deliver in the all-important holiday season,” Stockton said in a statement accompanying the report.</p>
<p>Mattel’s board of directors also announced on Tuesday a third-quarter cash dividend of 31 cents, payable on Sept. 21 to shareholders of record on August 29.</p>
<p>Shares of the world's largest toy maker leaped 10% in morning trade to $33.89 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Mattel Beats Street in 2Q, Helped by Lower Costs | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/07/17/mattel-beats-street-in-2q.html | 2016-01-26 | 0 |
<p>I’ve taken to writing a book—-a story from forgotten history, pulled from the sylvan hills of Palestine. Without much income, the burdens of a convenient life fall hard on me and it has been difficult. Still, for now, it does beat the corporate price for my soul.</p>
<p>The daily outrages, barely hitting the mainstream radar, get cursory reactions from me, tempered by the focus I need to write, to research.</p>
<p>A Congress of Jewish American organizations got together last week to decide the fate of my homeland. By what right? Arrogant and rich imperialists gathering for a foreign project in the name of God to decide whether Israel should continue building settlements. They are votaries of zionism, immorality, who roll out the ‘master plan’ of ‘Judaising’ a land that does not belong to them. Never mentioned there, are the victims, Israel’s compulsory condiment of native lives.</p>
<p>I can’t remember the number or names of all the children killed and maimed this week in Palestine. I swear I would remember them all if I could. But there are so many and I am so inadequate. A pregnant woman in her ninth month fell today when a sniper put her in his scope and watched her fall with the twitch of his trigger finger. None, but those of us who care, knows. The “separation wall,” Israel’s latest pretext for its insatiable thievery, is displacing whole villages, cutting family member from one another.</p>
<p>Israel, rogue and rising from the darkness of racism, destroys and rapes and loots with impunity. Its bulldozers strip the hills of their ancient green coats. Then it builds ugly settlements, for Jews only, like art deco cancers metastasizing down the bare hills, no hint of celadon or the graceful old stone homes left to cradle. They siphon the water, changing the land to pieces of another world and making the hill’s kin barren and wasted.</p>
<p>I note these daily atrocities and move on, because I must. There is work to be done. A book to be written. A child to nurture. I haven’t the steadfastness of my people, like the Gazan grandmother, thrice a refugee, who sits in a tent over her demolished shack, vulnerable to the elements and sings to her grandchildren the ballads of old.</p>
<p>For the sake of truth in this book, I read of that grandmother’s life. Book after book, nameless ghosts scream from the pages. Gnarled corpses of women, their unborn babies protruding from their slashed bellies, stare at me from the accounts reported by Robert Fisk, the most courageous Western journalist of our time. My God, how does he sleep with all the crass inhumanity he has witnessed.</p>
<p>But the greater courage is in the every day, where Palestinians go on with their wretched lives, not knowing what humiliation, what death, what despair their Zionists masters will bring. Hungry and destitute, they toil on. The elders sing and the children throw rocks. Their suffering pains me, but mine is a craven ache, always hiding from itself. It seeks the respite of understanding, meanders in a weakness for life, and chokes on a bitter want of belonging and love. It is a genuine pain, but it is coiled in cowardice and the thin veil of intellectual pretense. It cannot bear the reality and sends the conscience on the easy path of deliverance through words.</p>
<p>But no words I write can find measure near the courage of those who trudge the merciless terrain of imperialism, who live in its rancid entrails, and whose thirst grinds with the hunger of children. They yank at the chains round their hands and feet, undaunted and untamed spirits, they are.</p>
<p>Theirs is a suffering that writes verses with its pain and plants the winds with songs and chants. The melody of their love and the tenor of their rage takes flight to the hearts of the pure hearted. Their pain is strength. It is defiance and gratitude at once. It releases life to death with grief subdued by humility, by deference to God and God’s kingdom.</p>
<p>Someday the world will look back in shameful horror at what it allowed to happen to these people, and how long callous eyes averted their plight. Someday world Jewry will see how Israel so despoiled the memory of six million of their brethren.</p>
<p>I’ll finish this book as a prayer for amnesty because I am not as brave as they and I don’t know what else to do.</p>
<p>SUSAN ABULHAWA is a Palestinian living in Pennsylvania. She is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, a non–profit organization dedicated to building playgrounds and recreation areas for Palestinian children living under military occupation. This article first appeared in <a href="http://www.dissidentvoice.org/" type="external">Dissident Voice</a>. She can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Amnesty for the Soul | true | https://counterpunch.org/2003/03/05/amnesty-for-the-soul/ | 2003-03-05 | 4 |
<p />
<p>Welcome to OnSale at FOXBusiness, where we look at cool deals and insane bargains.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Bookworms have another resource for reading recommendations and Rdio hits the <a href="" type="internal">iPad</a> in a big way. Amazons got a new textbook buying app, and now theres an even easier way to follow food trucks.</p>
<p>Literary Genius</p>
<p>Book lovers seeking an end-of-summer beach read will want to check out <a href="http://%20booklamp.org" type="external">BookLamp Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>BookLamp searches a books title, author or genre, and compares it to a StoryDNA database. StoryDNA matches the themes and writing styles of users favorite books and genres with key features such as pacing, density, perspective and dialog to help build a must-read list.</p>
<p>For example, those who enjoy Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, can type in the title and instantly have a list of similar works to choose from. Right now, the BookLamp database is limited since the project is in its beginning stages, so fans of the site are urged to contact the publishers of their favorite books and encourage their participation.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Rdio Meets the iPad</p>
<p>Music streaming service <a href="http://www.rdio.com/" type="external">Rdio Opens a New Window.</a> offers more than 10 million ad-free songs wherever you go for as little as $4.99 per month and its now available via <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rdio/id335060889?mt=8#" type="external">iPad Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>The service offers custom and unlimited playlists and access to the latest albums every week. Right now on <a href="http://www.rdio.com" type="external">Rdio.com Opens a New Window.</a> youll find an offer for a seven-day free trial that also includes Roku streaming players.</p>
<p>Back-to-School Must-Have</p>
<p>A new <a href="" type="internal">iPhone</a> app from Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) aims to help students find the textbooks they need (and sell them back) easily from their smartphone (or iPad). Its called <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amazon-student/id454603718?mt=8" type="external">Amazon Student Opens a New Window.</a>, and it comes with a barcode reader and price-comparison tool to &#160;guarantee the best price.</p>
<p>At the end of a semester, the apps Sell Your Stuff feature uses the barcode scanner to see the trade-in value for books you no longer need. Shipping is free and payment for the books comes as Amazon.com gift cards.</p>
<p>Cash-strapped students should also keep in mind the Kindles textbook rental capabilities. Students can rent their textbooks some at up to 80% off of the list price -- for up to 360 days and pay only for the time they need. Notes and highlights are available even after the time expires. The free Kindle app is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&amp;docId=1000702481" type="external">downloadable here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>App for Foodies</p>
<p>Food truck followers in several large metropolitan cities will want to check out the new Gastrodamus app for <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gastrodamus/id439023535?mt=8" type="external">iPhone Opens a New Window.</a> and <a href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.barbariangroup.foodtruck" type="external">Android Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Created by the Barbarian Group, this free app gathers the <a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a> feeds from local trucks and dishes out the information to foodies in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Boston. &#160;Users are urged to send new food truck recommendations to help build the apps offerings and food trucks are encouraged to boost their Tweet frequency to help keep customers in the know.</p>
<p>Know of a killer deal or insane bargain? Email the goods to [email protected] and share the wealth. &#160;</p> | A New Site for Book Lovers and a Food Truck Finder | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/08/17/new-site-for-book-lovers-and-food-truck-finder.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
<p>Year after year, the aptly titled consumerist holiday "Black Friday" has slowly wormed its way into the Thanksgiving holiday, where people now erect campsites in front of Targets and Best Buy for an entire week, including the national holiday, just to save $300 on a plasma TV.</p>
<p>This year, virtually all major retail outlets from J.C Penney to Walmart to Sears will be opening their doors sometime on Thanksgiving Day, and some stores already have the crowds lining up. One <a href="http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2017/11/22/garland-black-friday-shopper-best-buy/" type="external">Best Buy in Garland, Texas</a>, has served as home to a man and his family throughout this whole week.</p>
<p>Last year's Black Friday stooped to some ugly lows, where two people <a href="" type="internal">were reportedly shot</a>amidst the shopping mayhem.</p>
<p>"It’s a tragedy…It’s very scary you know, you’re starting off the holiday season and you’re excited about the upcoming times with family and now there’s going to be family who are missing people and their holidays will never be the same," one shopper told CBS last year.</p>
<p>Here's a video of a brawl that broke out at a Fairfield, California, shopping mall:</p>
<p>In Reno, Nevada, Black Friday mayhem resulted in a shopper's death due to a "dispute over a parking space" at a Walmart.</p>
<p><a href="http://fortune.com/2017/11/22/thanksgiving-black-friday-stores/" type="external">Fortune</a> provided the list of retail outlets that will open during the festivities:</p> | BLACK THANKSGIVING: Here Are All The Retail Stores Open On Thanksgiving Day | true | https://dailywire.com/news/23897/black-thanksgiving-here-are-retail-stores-open-paul-bois | 2017-11-22 | 0 |
<p />
<p>Image source: Clovis Oncology.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>What: Shares of Clovis Oncology , a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing cancer therapies, sank 28.2% in April, according to data from <a href="http://www.spcapitaliq.com/" type="external">S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence Opens a New Window.</a>. Without any revenue to speak of, more bad news for its first new drug application sent shares tumbling.</p>
<p>So what: The clinical stage company's most developed candidate to date, rociletinib for treatment of advanced lung cancer, had another bad day at the FDA. An independent advisory committee convened to discuss approval of the candidate based on available data and decided there wasn't enough.</p>
<p>As a refresher, the stock plummeted last November when the FDA sent an application for rociletinib back for more data. That time it had tried to use unconfirmed responses from interim data to support an application, and then noted that the confirmed response rate was surprisingly lower than expected. The stock fell more than 71%, based largely on admission that the company had knownabout the lower confirmed response rate for several weeks but didn't bother mentioning it.</p>
<p>In its latest failed attempt with rociletinib, Clovis tried to submit another application for a genetically defined subset of lung cancer patients based on interim data from the ongoing Tiger-X and Tiger-2 trials last July.Both trials showed evidence of activity, but the advisory's committee's response was hardly surprising, given that the confirmed response rate of 32% in the highest dosage cohort was considerably lower that that of AstraZeneca's Tagrisso, which earned approval for the same patient population after showing objective response rates of 59% last November.</p>
<p>Now what:With Tagrisso available for this specific lung cancer patient population, the FDA wasn't about to grant another conditional approval based on single-arm, open-label studies. The committee basically said, "Come back when you have some controlled data."</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Instead Clovisfinally decided to cut its losses and announced it would terminate ongoing rociletinib studies, and it also withdrew its EU application. By the end of the year it intends to reduce staff and contractor positions by more than one-third in order to funnel all available resources into what remains of its pipeline.</p>
<p>Clinical stage pipeline as of Feb. 29 2016 image source: Clovis Oncology,</p>
<p>Perhaps in anticipation of a rociletinib's imminent doom, Clovis recently began a rolling submission of its second-most developed compound.Once again, AstraZeneca already has a similar drug on pharmacy shelves,Lynparza,for the same patient population.</p>
<p>Luckily, this time it looks like Clovis' drug still has a chance. Even after approving Lynparza, the FDA gave rucaparib a Breakthrough Therapy designation,This designation is reserved for drugs that show strong potential to provide better outcomes over existing therapies, and it is intended to expedite the regulatory process.</p>
<p>In trials that led to Lynparza's approval, the objective response rate (meaning complete or even just partial responses) in this genetically defined, heavily pretreated subset of ovarian cancer patients was 34% with a median duration of response of 7.9 months. In the Ariel-2 study, 16 of 23 (or nearly 70%) of evaluable patients achieved a response, as defined by the Gynecological Cancer Intergroup.</p>
<p>Clovis intends to complete a new drug application with data available from the single-arm Ariel-2 study, in the present quarter.Given Clovis' history of withholding less than positive clinical data, I wouldn't put too much faith inrucaparib's ability to save this troubled biotech.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/10/why-clovis-oncology-inc-fell-282-in-april.aspx" type="external">Why Clovis Oncology, Inc. Sank 28.2% in April Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/crenauer/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Cory Renauer Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. You can follow Cory on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/intent/follow?screen_name=coryrenauer" type="external">@coryrenauer Opens a New Window.</a> or connect with him on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/coryrenauer" type="external">LinkedIn Opens a New Window.</a> for more healthcare industry insight. 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=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Why Clovis Oncology, Inc. Sank 28.2% in April | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/05/10/why-clovis-oncology-inc-sank-282-in-april.html | 2016-05-10 | 0 |
<p />
<p>US needs to get it’s act together and restore our economy.</p>
<p>Sorry, America. China just overtook the US to become the world’s largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.</p>
<p>Chris Giles at the Financial Times&#160; <a href="http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2014/10/07/1998332/moneysupply-the-new-world-economy-in-four-charts/" type="external">flagged up the change</a>. He also alerted us back in April this year that it was&#160; <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d79ffff8-cfb7-11e3-9b2b-00144feabdc0.html" type="external">all about to happen</a>.</p>
<p>The simple logic is that prices aren’t the same in each country: A shirt will cost you less in Shanghai than San Francisco, so it’s not entirely reasonable to compare countries without taking this into account.</p>
<p>Though a typical person in China earns a lot less than the typical person in the US, simply converting a Chinese salary into dollars underestimates how much purchasing power that individual, and therefore that country, might have.&#160; <a href="http://www.economist.com/content/big-mac-index" type="external">The Economist’s Big Mac Index</a>&#160;is a great example of these disparities.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/china-overtakes-us-as-worlds-largest-economy-2014-10#ixzz3FYui3O9f" type="external">This&#160;article continues on&#160;businessinsider.com</a></p> | Ruh Roh: China Debunks US as World’s Largest Economy | true | http://girlsjustwannahaveguns.com/ruh-roh-china-debunks-us-worlds-largest-economy/ | 0 |
|
<p>The Republican National Committee has instructed its employees to preserve all documents related to the 2016 presidential campaign as a precaution as probes continue into Russian election interference, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/henrygomez/rnc-tells-staff-to-preserve-all-documents-related-to-2016?utm_term=.qxlAQRz1E#.pfAN6Kjk0" type="external">BuzzFeed reported Monday</a>.</p>
<p>RNC staff was&#160;instructed not to “delete, destroy, modify, or remove from your paper files, laptop computer, desktop computer, tablet, mobile device, e-mail, or any storage system or device, any documents, records, or other materials that relate to the 2016 presidential election or that may relate to any investigation concerning the election.”</p>
<p>The memo, which was sent from the RNC counsel’s office to staff on Friday and then obtained by BuzzFeed, states that “Given the important role that the RNC plays in national elections and the potentially expansive scope of the inquiries and investigations, it is possible that we will be contacted with requests for information.”</p>
<p>However, the memo stated that the RNC has not yet been contacted by either special counsel Robert Mueller or the various congressional committees, nor does it expect that it will be.</p>
<p>Despite this, the memo said that the RNC has an “obligation to keep potentially relevant documents” as part of “standard procedure for any organization that may be in a position to provide helpful or otherwise relevant information to litigants or investigators.”</p>
<p>It also warned that “Serious consequences will result for anyone who fails to comply with this obligation.”</p>
<p>The RNC worked closely with the Trump campaign during the presidential election, and its former chairman, Reince Priebus, was Trump’s chief of staff in the White House before he was ousted last week.</p> | RNC Staff Told to Preserve All Documents Related to Election Campaign | false | https://newsline.com/rnc-staff-told-to-preserve-all-documents-related-to-election-campaign/ | 2017-07-31 | 1 |
<p>Attorneys say an investment firm has settled a federal lawsuit accusing it of bilking investors out of $39 million in a failed effort to build an artificial sweetener plant in Missouri.</p>
<p>The settlement was announced Wednesday, the same day the lawsuit against investment banking firm Morgan Keegan was set for trial. Settlement details weren't disclosed.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The lawsuit sought returns of investments from 133 people who bought $39 million in bonds between July 2010 and September 2011.</p>
<p>The city of Moberly issued bonds to pay for construction of a Mamtek artificial sweetener plant, which was expected to bring 600 jobs to Moberly.</p>
<p>Morgan Keegan purchased the bonds as the underwriter and sold them to investors, but the company later defaulted on bond payments and the factory never was built.</p> | Investment firm settles $39M lawsuit in failed Missouri sweetener plant, terms not disclosed | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/01/14/investment-firm-settles-3m-lawsuit-in-failed-missouri-sweetener-plant-terms-not.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>And despite the economy’s struggles, it also sits atop this year’s category of highest percentage revenue growth the past four years for companies earning more than $10 million.</p>
<p>Founded in 2004, Aspen offers advanced avionics systems that can be retrofitted to more than 900 makes and models of general aviation aircraft. It reached $7 million in revenues by the end of 2008 before “plateauing” at just under $10 million each of the next two years.</p>
<p>The results in 2011 represented a milestone.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We kind of broke through with a very strong year,” said president and CEO John Uczekaj, who attributes Aspen’s success to not only new products, but an agreement with Honeywell’s Bendix/King to help develop its KSN 770 GPS receiver/navigator.</p>
<p>“By a combination of those two elements, we grew our revenues to $11-plus million, which we’re really spring-boarding into 2012,” Uczekaj said. “We’re on a track to do between $15 million and $18 million this year.”</p>
<p>Even though the economic downturn has been severe for the industry – the worst in memory for Uczekaj – there has been an upside for Aspen: More people are opting to upgrade instead of buying new aircraft.</p>
<p>Aspen entered the avionics business designing and building flat-panel flight display instruments – sometimes known as glass cockpits – that can be retrofitted at affordable price to general aviation aircraft to provide critical flight information commonly found in commercial, business and other high-end aircraft. Its equipment has been FAA-certified for installation in both fixed wing aircraft and helicopters. International deals, once accounting for less than five percent of its business, has grown to 27 percent.</p>
<p>“We came out first with the primary flight display, which tells you where the aircraft is going and its attitude in the air in the 3-D space,” said Brad Hayden, vice president of marketing. “When John is talking new products, he is talking about the displays that we’ve brought to market in addition to the primary flight displays, which have added new value to the customer panels.”</p>
<p>Aspen’s multi-function displays are designed to sit alongside the primary device, adding such complementary features as terrain, weather and traffic information.</p>
<p>“So if you’re using the primary function to fly the airplane, you’re using our multi-functions as reference for navigation and stuff like that,” Hayden said. “If the primary flight display for whatever reason fails, you can hit a rev (reversion) button and the multi-function display will actually present you with all that critical data.”</p>
<p>Aspen is developing the software and user interface for Bendix/King’s KSN 770, which is planned to enter the market by the end of December. Uczekaj said Honeywell approached Aspen about co-developing the project.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We have been able to show we can bring these things to market quickly and have them certified,” he said. “We just kind of had a discussion together of how we could work together and we both came to the conclusion this is is one product we could bring to market together.”</p>
<p>The KSN 770 has a GPS receiver in it and the capability to enter flight plans and provide situational awareness. It also includes touch-screen technology and navigation and communication radios.</p>
<p>“The fact we’re working with Bendix/King on this product is a huge precedent setter,” Hayden said. “We’re actually partnering with another avionics manufacturer on an autopilot integration package. We are now known in the industry as somebody willing to go out and co-develop products for the benefit of our customers because we’re offering these more powerful solutions they can get than from any individual manufacturer.”</p>
<p>Uczekaj said one of Aspen’s newest projects is a line of products that will allow connectivity between iPad applications and the cockpit. The first is due out this year.</p>
<p>“Now, an individual with a flight plan he may do on his iPad at home can bring it into his airplane,” Uczekaj said. “We think that market, even what we think today, is only a tip of the iceberg of what people are going to come up with over the years and our equipment is going to facilitate that interface into the cockpit.”</p>
<p>Looking forward, Uzcekaj said he expects Aspen to continue to evolve and grow.</p>
<p>“We are going from a company that was, in the first few years, burning a lot of cash and not showing a lot of profit to now,” Uczekaj said. “We’re at a point where we’re right at break even and over the next couple of years, we’ll be having positive profit and producing a nice place for our investors to be.”</p> | Aspen Avionics taking wing | false | https://abqjournal.com/113346/aspen-avionics-taking-wing.html | 2012-06-18 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>UNLV coach Bobby Hauck shouts to his team during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Central Michigan at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas on Saturday, Sept. 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Chase Stevens)</p>
<p>West Division</p>
<p>UNLV: The Rebels have lost 23 consecutive road games, but they probably have their most confidence in coach Bobby Hauck’s four seasons.</p>
<p>They are coming off consecutive victories for the first time under Hauck, and oddsmakers have made the Rebels 2-point favorites at New Mexico.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Hauck and his players have downplayed the road skid, which is second in school history to the 26 consecutive games lost between 1994 and 1998. Twenty-one of the games in the current streak have been with Hauck at the helm.</p>
<p>But Hauck acknowledged confidence should be up for a team that is coming off a 31-21 victory over Central Michigan and a 38-7 win over Western Illinois.</p>
<p>“Winning is a good tonic for everything,” Hauck said. “Losing’s hard to deal with, especially in our game. A baseball team plays 80 games. You lose, and you go play tomorrow. Football, it’s a grinding sensation when you don’t win, and it’s very uplifting when you do.”</p>
<p>This is a big game for UNLV, which probably will be an underdog in the remainder of its away games. So if the Rebels are to break the skid, it most likely needs to happen this weekend.</p>
<p>Next game: at New Mexico, 6 p.m. MDT Saturday (Root Sports)</p>
<p>– Mark Anderson, Las Vegas Review-Journal</p>
<p>SAN DIEGO STATE: The Aztecs are 0-3, but at least things appear to be moving in the right direction.</p>
<p>San Diego State finally managed to establish a run game in Saturday’s defeat to Oregon State, and that was due in large part to the return of running back Adam Muema.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Muema missed parts of the first two games with a low ankle sprain, but he played a full 60 minutes against Oregon State and scored a 2-yard rushing touchdown, while also totaling a career-high 28 carries.</p>
<p>“I think we were better running the ball,” Aztecs coach Rocky Long said. “Having Adam back helped, and the offensive line blocked better than they have till this point.”</p>
<p>Next game: at New Mexico State, 6 p.m. Saturday (Altitude, AggieVision, ESPN3)</p>
<p>– Stefanie Loh, San Diego Union-Tribune</p>
<p>Mountain Division</p>
<p>AIR FORCE: Three straight weeks of beat downs finally seem to have brought about some changes for the Air Force defense.</p>
<p>Work was spent in practice on jamming receivers. At least one newcomer will step into the lineup as Dexter Walker has moved to first team at strong safety and, perhaps most importantly, the scheme figures to get far less complicated.</p>
<p>“Honestly, I think it was an overthinking of things,” freshman defensive end Ryan Watson said. “We had a lot of stuff on our minds before every play, like, ‘If they do that, we’ve got to do this; or if they do that, we’ve got to do this.’ … We’ve dialed it back, and we’ll see a different Falcon defense this weekend.”</p>
<p>On Wednesday, it was announced that Falcons quarterback Jaleel Awini has been suspended from the team.</p>
<p>The academy said Awini “is no longer a cadet in good standing and is not allowed to represent the Academy in any outside activities, effective immediately.”</p>
<p>Awini had taken over as the Falcons’ starting QB after Kale Pearson hurt a knee in the opener..</p>
<p>Next game: at Nevada, 6 p.m. Saturday (CBS Sports Network)</p>
<p>– Brent Briggeman, The Gazette (Colorado Springs)</p>
<p>BOISE STATE: The Broncos have slipped into unusual territory this season.</p>
<p>They are 2-2 – the first time they have lost two games before November since 2005. That was also the last time they failed to receive a vote in the two major polls, as they did this week, and the last time they lost to Fresno State, which they did last week.</p>
<p>They still can take the division title but likely will need to win their remaining six conference games.</p>
<p>“I have no doubt (coach Chris Petersen) will get us back to work – he already touched on it,” senior quarterback Joe Southwick said. “This team will bounce back. I know they will. It’s far from over. It sucks to be 2-2 right now, but this is far from over.”</p>
<p>Next game: vs. Southern Miss, 8:15 p.m. Saturday (ESPNU)</p>
<p>– Chadd Cripe, Idaho Statesman</p>
<p>COLORADO STATE: Colorado State’s football team might be just 1-3 this season, but the Rams got a huge boost of confidence by holding their own for more than three quarters Saturday night at No. 1 Alabama.</p>
<p>The Rams trailed just 17-6 entering the fourth quarter and had yet to give up a third-down conversion. They held Alabama’s powerful offense to just 66 rushing yards, its lowest output in three years.</p>
<p>In short, they showed the improvement that coaches and players claim the program has made even if the record hasn’t yet reflected it. And they did it in front of a sellout crowd of 101,821 fans – the largest crowd ever to see a Colorado State team play – and national ESPN2 TV audience.</p>
<p>“A loss is a loss, and that’s not something we’re happy about,” senior center Weston Richburg said. “But the positive thing you can take away from this is the confidence we’ve gained playing against the top team in the nation, being able to say we held our own, and that’s exciting going into the rest of the season.”</p>
<p>Next game: vs. UTEP, 1:30 p.m. Saturday (CBS Sports Network)</p>
<p>– Kelly Lyell, Fort Collins Coloradoan</p>
<p />
<p /> | MWC notebook: UNLV looks to end road skid | false | https://abqjournal.com/269250/unlv-looks-to-end-losing-ways-on-the-road-this-week.html | 2013-09-26 | 2 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Here we are, in early 2006 and the headlines are briefly given over to the disclosure that the oil companies have been underpaying their royalties from drilling on US public lands by $7 billion. One of the firms, Kerr McGee, is saying defiantly it doesn’t owe the U.S. Treasury a penny and is suing in US court to have that view confirmed.</p>
<p>There was a time, a generation ago, when people here in the United States thought and wrote about the underpinning of the US economy — the energy industry — in a serious way. In the mid-70s the country was bustling with groups pushing for public control, for extending the regulatory powers of the Federal Trade Commission over natural gas prices, for break-up of the oil companies. In the late 1970s I remember a bill put up by Senator Jim Abourezk of South Dakota calling for divestiture of the oil companies failed by only three votes on its first reading. Abourezk remembers Texaco immediately pumped millions into a pro-oil pr campaign.</p>
<p>In the 1976 Democratic primaries every candidate, from the left-populist Fred Harris to the center-right Jimmy Carter felt obliged to sign on to a statement thrust under their noses by a group called Energy Action committing themselves to aggressive moves to extend public control over the private energy sector.</p>
<p>In came Carter and up went the solar collectors on the White House roof. Aside from that it was downhill all the way. The oil companies spend millions to winch themselves out of the pr debacle of the oil embargo of 73-74, in which the public rightly perceived them as eager co-conspirators with OPEC in price gouging and profiteering.</p>
<p>By the time Carter surrendered the White House and its solar panels to Reagan (who swiftly tore them down and sent them up to Unity college in Maine) the first decisive counterattacks had taken place. The FTC’s wings were clipped, with the oil industry positioning itself for the next great bonanza, in the Gulf of Mexico, the outer continental shelf of the California coast and Prudhoe Bay, which had just come on line. The trans-Alaska pipeline had been built and Alaska primed for the taking. In the interior American west the oil shale deposits of the Rocky Mountain Front were awaiting the green light and the necessary public subsidies.</p>
<p>For the oil men the overarching political task was to get the U.S. Congress to surrender all effective public control and oversight and concentrate on the simple business of handing out these same subsidies. Remember, all these resources are in the public domain. On private lands the oil men had the depletion allowance, one of the great wonders of the world. On public lands the equivalent act of congressional generosity would be to relieve the oil companies of the burden of actually paying any royalties on the publicly-owned oil they were taking out of the ground and flogging to the public at a substantial mark-up.</p>
<p>The Reagan years were spent in clearing away inconvenient regulatory underbrush. While liberals cheered the downfall of James Watt and while the Sierra Club raised royalty-free millions by putting his sour visage on their mailers, the oil industry patiently pushed ahead, priming its champions in Congress for the struggles ahead. The strike force was to be a Louisiana/Alaska axis, with the Democratic senator for Louisiana, Bennett Johnson, speaking for interests poised to expand offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexixo and to build the necessary mainland refineries and pipelines and the Alaska senators, Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski, pressing for royalty-free drilling everywhere in Alaska, from the North Slope, to the Kenai peninsular to the Navy Reserve to ANWAR.</p>
<p>In came the Clinton crowd, briefly flapping its banner of economic populism. By the summer of 1993 the banner was furled, populism in pell-mell retreat and the sustainability of the corporate bottom-line dead center in Clinton’s agenda.</p>
<p>In the summer of 1996 the president played host to a coven of oil company executives during his pre-convention vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It was a victory party. The executives were incandescent in the flush of a victory they had scheming for the previous decade. Bennett Johnson and the Alaskans had scored one of the most significant victories for the oil industry in the twentieth century. The fruits of their triumph was called the Federal Oil and Gas Simplification and Fairness Act. Beyond this demure title were a series of provisions waiving all royalties due the US Treasury from the oil companies.</p>
<p>Finally approved by Congress on the last day of the 1996 session, the law did four things: it placed a seven-year limitation on the auditing of oil company books recording income from drilling on public lands; it turned over many of the auditing responsibilities concerning drilling on federal lands to the states; it permitted the oil companies to sue the federal government to collect interest on “overpayments”, and it allowed those very same companies to set the “market price” of the crude oil upon which the royalty payments to the federal government are based.</p>
<p>In reality, the bill legalized a scam the big oil companies had been running for decades, underpaying royalties on crude oil extracted from federal lands, including the Alaskan fields.</p>
<p>Typically, Clinton cast the measure as simply a way of cutting government red tape and streamlining needless bureaucracy. “Many Americans don’t know it, but a significant percentage of the oil and gas reserves in the United States are on federal lands,” Clinton proclaimed. “Until today, regulatory red tape and conflicting court rulings had discouraged many companies from taking full advantage of these resources.” This bill, Clinton remarked, was part of an overall strategy that “included lifting the 23-year old ban on Alaskan oil exports and efforts to increase production in the Gulf of Mexico.” All this was to be done, needless to say, while protecting the environment.</p>
<p>Amid the cheers, the oil company executives laid out to the obedient president the next stages of their agenda. They wanted to open up the national reserve in Alaska, to expand drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and to overturn the 30-year ban on the export of Alaska crude oil, a provision deemed necessary in the early 1970s to win passage of the original pipeline bill.</p>
<p>The quid pro quo was a tidal wave of political contributions , Arco’s in the lead, into the Domocratic Party treasury. The chairman of Arco, Lodwrick Cook, celebrated his birthday in the White House Rose Garden , with Clinton carrying in the cake.</p>
<p>Twenty years after their nadir in the early 70s, the oil companies had won it all.</p>
<p>By the mid-90s the oil industry no longer had any effective foes arguing for public control. Senators like Abourezk and Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio had gone. The public interest groups were successfully unplugged during Clinton time and the credibility of proposals for public control of the nation’s energy resources undermined by years of neo-liberal derision coming from groups like the NRDC and the Environmental Defense Fund which saw higher prices as the key to conservation, and which thus helped launch Enron on the world.</p>
<p>(NRDC went to bat for Enron during its takeover of Oregon’s Portland General Electric in the mid to late 90s. NRDC’s Ralph Cavanagh testified to Oregon’s Public Utilities Commission, saying he was in favor of the Enron take-over, that he had worked with Enron for ten years and trusted the company. Cavanagh also went to bat for Enron in California. His testimony was decisive in undercutting the protests against Enron by local citizen groups. For its part, EDF was the first major environmental group to endorse “market approaches” and deregulation.)</p>
<p>Today Exxon can schedule a net profit of nearly $100 billion in 2006 and it’s a three-day butt of the nightly talk shows. Meanwhile there are a few news snippets about a 3,600-mile pipeline scheduled to run from Prudhoe Bay, across Canada and down into the Midwest. Deployment of this pipe, 52 inches in diameter, will rival the Three Gorges dam in China as the largest construction project on the planet. There’s not a political ripple to be seen. The green groups are silent, even though the project is three and a half times the length of the original Alaska pipeline whose scheduled construction in rhe early 70s prompted a savage political battle.</p>
<p>And yes, there are also stories about the Democrats being short of ideas. The ideas got flushed down the drain in Carter time. These battles were lost long, long ago.</p>
<p>No, We Don’t Agree with PCR About Everything</p>
<p>A few weeks ago, launching into a jeremiad about the vulgar stupidity of the neocons, Paul Craig Roberts waxed nostalgic about conservative journalism a generation ago:</p>
<p>“What happened”, Craig asked, “to a formerly conservative press to reduce it to political partisanship and warmongering? Specifically, I have in mind National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.</p>
<p>“When I was associated with National Review, the magazine understood that the US Constitution and civil liberty had to be protected from government. When I was on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, the editorials were analytical and reformist.”</p>
<p>It’s true that Roberts quit the WSJ’s editorial pages in 1980, but I have the impression he thinks that even in the 1980s these pages were a sanctuary of reason and political composure, under the overall guidance of the late Robert Bartley.</p>
<p>Roberts’ and my memories of the 80s diverge. At the start of the 1980s, when I was writing columns for the Village Voice, Bartley and the current supremo of the WSJ, Peter Kann, invited me to lunch and offered me a monthly ­ later tri-weekly ­ slot on the top right corner of the Thursday op ed page, a space allowing about 1,150 words or so, thus 400 words longer (significant in this business) than a regular opinion column. I was to be at the left end of a spectrum of liberal opinion displayed on those Thursday pages stretching through Hodding Carter, who’d made his name as U.S. State Department spokesman during the Iranian hostage crisis in the late Carter years, to ­- I think ­- Morton Kondracke as rep of the New Republic Neocons, marching to the orders of Martin Peretz. It may have been Fred Barnes, not Kondracke. Then, as now, the two were pretty much indistinguishable.</p>
<p>Already in the late 1970s, mistily remembered by Craig as a time when sanity prevailed on the editorial floor of the WSJ, I had rich sport in the Village Voice, week after week, with the ripe insanities being purveyed by Bartley and his henchman, George Melloan. Theirs was the boiler-room for the fantasies that powered the Committee on the Present Danger’s lobbying for the soaring military budgets of the late Carter years and Reagan time. Scarcely a week went by without another dispatch from the WSJ editorial or op page on “yellow rain”. Nestling amid this luxuriant undergrowth of paranoia and artful disinformation were essays by Albert Wohlstetter about the extra trillions needed to combat the threat posed by the Soviets and their “proxies”, in Central America and elsewhere. Irving Kristol was a regular contributor. (Melloan is still at it, still spewing lunacies after all these years. As Fred Gardner notes in <a href="" type="internal">his column</a> here this weekend, Mad George just turned in a scorcher, trying to rehab the Osama-Saddam connection.)</p>
<p>One of Paul Craig Roberts’ erstwhile colleagues on the WSJ’s edit pages, the late Jude Wanniski, frequently stigmatized Bartley’s immensely influential role in marshaling the Neocons. Like Roberts, Wanniski remained an impassioned supply-sider and ­ again like Roberts ­ a tireless defender of Reagan’s economic policies, but he was certainly under no illusions about what the role of Bartley’s pages had been in stoking the New Cold War and the Neo-Cons’ later crusades. Like Roberts, Wanniski became a fierce assailant of the war on Iraq and of the Neocon lobby.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago, here on CounterPunch, we ran Bob Pollin’s critique of the actual supply-sider record, prefaced with acknowledgement of Craig’s many powerful columns on our site which have won him many thousands of eager readers on the left, as well as across the spectrum. Around the same time Craig offered a positive accounting for the “supply-side revolution”.</p>
<p>Your CounterPunch editors certainly agree with Bob’s account of the Eighties. We see a lacunae in Roberts’ intellectual and political constructs between what actually happened in the seventies and eighties and the political and economic landscape he deplores so eloquently on our site today. So how does his interpretation of the past explain the present? Sometimes it seems to come down to this: the Reagan “revolution” has been “betrayed” by a neo-con plot! Thus does Roberts try to honor RR, while writing admirably fierce stigmatizations of the present desolate landscape, for which his political hero and his former editor are in considerable measure responsible.</p>
<p>Roberts’ great achievement on the CounterPunch site has been to rouse a huge audience stirred and persuaded by his savage denunciations of the war, of the jobless economy here, and of the crimes of the prosecutorial state and its onslaught on the Bill of Rights. So the caesura doesn’t bother me too much in present circumstances. It’s a long-running battle. I remember bashing supply-sider claims in columns twenty years aqo, hatched with Bob Pollin or with the late Lynn Turgeon, an ardent Keynesian. So we can sink our cesuras for the time being and find common ground, at least until it comes time to offer the coherent economic alternative program to neoliberalism. Then we’ll see how the lacunaes play out.</p>
<p>Cranky Old Karl Still Flourishes Despite Predictions of Demise</p>
<p>Eric Hobsbawm and the French economist and sometime banker, Jacques Attali, jointly celebrated Marx in a recent colloquy, reprinted in the British New Statesman. Attali has just done a biography of Marx, selling briskly in France.</p>
<p>Hobsbawm: I recall my own amazement when I was approached at that time [the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Communist Manifesto] by the editor of the in-flight magazine of United Airlines–on which, I may take it, most passengers are people traveling on business. He thought that the readers would be interested in a debate on Marx, because after all it did seem relevant to the present situation. A year or two later, when I found myself having lunch with George Soros, I was equally amazed when he said: “What do you think of Marx?” Well, now, knowing that our opinions on various things didn’t agree, I gave a sort of ambiguous answer, saying: “Some people think he’s good, some people think he’s bad,” to which Soros said: “Do you know, I’ve just been reading that man and there is an awful lot in what he says.”</p>
<p>Now why would the eminent Hobsbawm feel he had to temporize about Marx with Soros, the international currency trader?</p>
<p>Attali: “Marx predicted that capitalism will grow, that inequalities will grow with it, that the working class will be destroyed and that the workers will be poor. This is not true in the developed world, but if you look at things globally, it is true. Concentration of wealth is growing worldwide.</p>
<p>“The share of wealth which is owned by a small number is growing, and the number of rich people is narrowing. There are three billion people who live on less than $2 a day and out of nine billion human beings 40 years from now, 4.5 billion will be below the poverty line. This is Marx’s nightmare. And you cannot say that they are not workers. Even if they are unemployed, they are workers. And people who work with only their head, or digital workers–they are still workers. The contradictions at the heart of the market economy, to use the modern term, are more true than they ever were when applied to capitalism, which had 19th-century connotations.</p>
<p>“If you look at the history of mankind in the past two centuries, this is the fourth attempt at globalisation. The first came at the end of the 18th century, collapsing with the Napoleonic wars. The second came at the end of the 19th century and collapsed with the First World War. The globalisation of the 1920s collapsed with the Second World War. We are in the fourth attempt at globalisation in two centuries and the most probable outcome is that this attempt will go the same way as the previous, leading to isolationism and protectionism.”</p>
<p>So we’d better press ahead with that alternative radical economic program.</p>
<p>Note: a shorter version of the first item ran in the print edition of The Nation that went to press last Wednesday.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Democrats: When the War Was Lost | true | https://counterpunch.org/2006/03/11/democrats-when-the-war-was-lost/ | 2006-03-11 | 4 |
<p>RICHMOND, Va. — Virginians can carry firearms into churches and other places of worship, according to a legal opinion issued this spring, but some Baptist pastors in the state say they’re unsettled by the prospect of congregants with handguns.</p>
<p>Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said in April that personal protection is a valid reason to carry weapons into worship services. He also said houses of worship have the right to ban guns from their premises.</p>
<p>Current Virginia law prohibits carrying guns into churches unless there is a “good and sufficient” reason to do so. Cuccinelli’s advisory opinion says personal protection constitutes a good and sufficient reason under the statute.</p>
<p>The attorney general issued the opinion at the request of Del. Mark Cole, a Fredericksburg, Va., Republican, who sponsored a bill in the state’s General Assembly that would have allowed anyone with a permit to carry a concealed handgun into a worship service. The bill was killed in subcommittee.</p>
<p>“I was a bit startled by [Cuccinelli’s] announcement,” said Don Davidson, pastor of First Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va. “Did it include church business meetings? A congregation that’s packing can really make a preacher nervous.</p>
<p>“Seriously, I'm not comfortable with the thought of guns at church,” he added. “We have lots of FBI, CIA and Secret Service people in our church, and I always assume that at least a few of them are armed, and that’s OK. They are highly trained professionals. If there were an incident on our campus or in a worship service they would know how to handle it. Too many other gun-handlers and innocent people could get caught in the crossfire.”</p>
<p>Davidson said churches concerned about safety should “consider forming a small, discreet security team and then encourage everyone else to leave their guns at home.”</p>
<p>Chuck Warnock, pastor of Chatham (Va.) Baptist Church said he was “disappointed but not surprised” by the advisory opinion.</p>
<p>“I would be very much opposed to anyone in our congregation bringing weapons to worship,” Warnock said. “I think the argument that we are defending against a terrorist attack is a ridiculous argument because of the nature of the terrorist attacks we’ve seen in the past. I also think that weapons in church are not a deterrent and actually endanger more people than they might protect. Theologically, I think to allow or encourage worshippers to bring guns to worship the Prince of Peace is a contradiction that we should not be comfortable with.”</p>
<p>State Sen. A. Donald McEachin, a Henrico County Democrat, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that because of the legal advisory, faith communities which didn’t want weapons in services would be forced to post signs and expend funds to ensure guns are not present.</p>
<p>“The assumption will be that guns can be there, even if they are contrary to the spirit of the religious service and the desire of the congregants,” McEachin, an attorney and ordained minister, told the Times-Dispatch.</p>
<p>In his opinion, Cuccinelli said, “The Constitution of Virginia protects the right to bear arms, but it also recognizes the importance of property rights. … Churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious entities can, like any other owner of property, restrict or ban the carrying of weapons onto their private property.”</p>
<p>Robert Dilday is managing editor of the Religious Herald.</p> | Opinion opens doors to guns in Va. churches, but some pastors are wary | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/opinionopensdoorstogunsinvachurchesbutsomepastorsarewary/ | 3 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. — The leaders of several Navajo communities are asking federal officials to cancel an upcoming oil and natural gas lease sale over concerns about the protection of cultural resources in northwestern New Mexico.</p>
<p>Nine Navajo chapter presidents met with the Bureau of Land Management in Santa Fe on Tuesday as dozens of supporters turned in petitions and letters in opposition to the Jan. 25 lease sale.</p>
<p>The four parcels up for bid include more than 842 acres that opponents say are part of the “greater Chaco area” that surrounds Chaco Culture National Historical Park.</p>
<p>Land managers say the land falls outside of a 10-mile buffer around the park.</p>
<p>The period to protest the sale ended in early December. The agency has yet to make a decision on the seven formal protests that were submitted before the deadline.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Navajo leaders meet with feds over oil, gas lease sale | false | https://abqjournal.com/929694/navajo-leaders-meet-with-feds-over-oil-gas-lease-sale.html | 2 |
|
<p>The U.S. recovery is the most hotly debated topic in national politics, but news from China may end up impacting the nation’s economy more than any of the strategies embraced by the presidential candidates. According to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/business/global/chinas-once-hot-economy-is-turning-cold.html?_r=1" type="external">report in the New York Times</a>, the Chinese are now facing their own real estate meltdown, along with an overall economic downturn, and the effects may well be felt here and around the world.</p>
<p>“A deepening slowdown would ripple across the world economy,” the Times reported on Friday. “Until now, China’s economy barreled ahead mostly unhindered as the main engine of global growth, even as Europe struggled with its government debt crisis and the United States limped along with a crippled housing market.”</p>
<p>The Chinese economy had seemed immune to the world-wide recession that has roiled the U.S. and Europe, but has now suffered what an official government website called “a sharp slowdown.”</p>
<p>Chinese economic difficulties, coming on top of a renewed recession in Europe, could put enormous pressure on the U.S. economy and bring about the feared double-dip recession. Any unraveling of the economic recovery is likely to have a direct impact on the presidential election.</p>
<p>The Pew Research Center <a href="http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2246/mitt-romney-barack-obama-jobs-swing-voters-gop-primaries-gender-gap" type="external">reported</a> that voters ranked the economy and jobs as the two most important factors in selecting a presidential candidate and that concerns about economic factors have narrowed President Obama’s lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney. A strong recovery works in the president’s favor, but weakening numbers are likely to help Mr. Romney.</p>
<p>China appears to be cycling into an economic downturn similar to the one the U.S. experienced beginning in 2006.</p>
<p>“Though the Chinese economy continues to expand,” the Times reported, “construction workers are losing jobs in droves and retail sales grew last month at the slowest pace in more than three years. Investments in fixed assets have increased more slowly this year than in any year since 2001.”</p>
<p>“Not everyone is worried,” the Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-urged-to-spend-more-save-less/2012/05/25/gJQAWsBFqU_story.html" type="external">noted</a> in a Friday report. “Analysts at Jefferies, a global securities and investment banking groups, say state data show that China’s retail sector is set to rebound, creating buying opportunities for stock investors. ‘Our recent channel checks with retailers and retail associations also suggest that retail sales are seeing a gradual recovery,’ they said in a report released Thursday.”</p>
<p>The Chinese government is also likely to make moves to stimulate the economy through increased spending on infrastructure development. China has the financial resources to make sharp increases in spending. Unlike the U.S., China has a low ratio of debt to economic output. However, the government is hamstrung by the fact that it has already built out much of the nation’s infrastructure.</p>
<p>Stimulus spending is one of the principal debate points in U.S. presidential politics, with some economists and politicians seeking more stimulus funds while others argue that the nation can’t afford to add to the national debt. Should the Chinese downturn decelerate the U.S. recovery, that debate could become even more critical to the political process.</p> | Will Chinese Downturn Impact U.S. Presidential Politics? | false | https://ivn.us/2012/05/26/will-chinese-downturn-impact-u-s-presidential-politics/ | 2012-05-26 | 2 |
<p>One of the few things that government in America should do is punish those who initiate force or fraud against others. The judicial system and our prisons are paid for with tax dollars and run like a government monopoly. While we demand that government be very tough on crime, Reagan Conservatives know that anything run by the government should be carefully watched. Government tends to grow and to expand its power driven by its own needs and wants.</p>
<p>For too long conservatives have failed to focus on the growing costs of prisons and the judicial system. Our skepticism of government promises and our usual demand to look at both costs and benefits was set aside in our understandable anger at crime and criminals. We can no longer afford to look away from growing costs and failure.</p>
<p>On a good day, conservatives are the champions of accountable and effective leadership, defenders of American liberty, and whistleblowers on government waste. Many organizations have <a href="http://citiesspeak.org/2012/06/14/untying-the-knot-of-incarceration-part-2/" type="external">noted</a> that, perhaps more than any other area of government, the criminal justice arena is starved for conservative ideas—ideas for reducing crime, restoring victims, reforming offenders, and lowering costs.</p>
<p>This November, conservatives will have the opportunity to put these ideas into action by voting in favor of Proposition 36—a wise and temperate solution to the problems that have plagued the application of California’s “Three Strikes” sentencing law.</p>
<p>For the most part, the Three Strikes Law is a wonderful tool for protecting the public from violent and serious criminals whose very freedom poses a continuing threat to our safety. But the Three Strikes Law has also been applied in a very overbroad and inefficient way that actually threatens public safety and wastes enormous resources for no reason. It needs to be adjusted and Proposition 36 offers a common sense conservative adjustment that maintains all the value of the Three Strikes Law but eliminates its unintended and miscalculated applications.</p>
<p>California’s prison system is the costliest, <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21555611" type="external">most overcrowded</a> in the county. Rightly or wrongly, the state is being forced by Supreme Court to release inmates early because conditions are deemed inhumane. Which prisoners will be released? As long as the current Three Strikes Law is in place, the State is precluded from releasing many inmates who are <a href="http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-3-strikes-life-sentence,0,438447.story" type="external">serving life sentences</a> for crimes as minor as shoplifting a pair of shoes or stealing a loaf of bread. This means that far more dangerous inmates will be released instead. This is absurd. Proposition 36 will remedy this and allow the States to keep the most serious criminals in prison.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.lao.ca.gov/ballot/2012/36_11_2012.aspx" type="external">Legislative Analyst’s Office</a> Proposition 36 will also save California taxpayers at least $5 billion over the next twenty years to house inmates sentenced to under the Three Strikes law for nonviolent crimes. Under current law, the state must continue to incarcerate these inmates, and cover their medical costs which will escalate as they age, even though the state’s own crime assessment models say that these nonviolent Three Strikes prisoners are among the least likely to reoffend if released from prison.</p>
<p>In other words, dangerous criminals are being released early, and the costliest, least dangerous offenders remain behind bars. This is big government at its worst.</p>
<p>Prop. 36 was drafted by the Republican District Attorney from Los Angeles, Steve Cooley, and Stanford law professors to ensure that the most dangerous criminals are kept behind bars and that punishments are fairly and consistently meted out. Experience shows that it works. USC Annenberg has <a href="http://www.neontommy.com/news/2012/09/proposition-36-could-fix-several-california-problems" type="external">reported</a> that counties that have voluntarily implemented the reforms in Proposition 36 have experienced no increases in crime. That’s why the state’s most prominent prosecutors, police chiefs, and criminal justice experts support the reform.</p>
<p>Make no mistake; Proposition 36 is tough on crime. Repeat offenders of serious and violent crimes will continue to get life in prison, as they should. And repeat offenders of nonviolent crimes will continue to get double the ordinary prison term for their crimes, as they should. And aging prisoners who are currently serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes will not receive shorter sentences unless a judge determines that they are no longer a threat to the community.</p>
<p>Proposition 36 also includes other common sense safety provisions to make sure that no truly dangerous criminals, like rapists, murders, or child molesters, can receive any benefit of the initiative, no matter how minor their third offense.</p>
<p>It is unjust and foolhardy to waste precious prison resources on nonviolent individuals who pose no criminal threat to our communities (while releasing violent criminals). These nonviolent offenders should be punished—but conservatives should insist the punishments are fair, effective and efficient. Proposition 36 is a reform all conservatives can and should support.</p> | A Conservative Endorsement of Proposition 36 | false | https://ivn.us/2012/10/23/a-conservative-endorsement-of-proposition-36-2/ | 2012-10-23 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>5:30 p.m.</p>
<p>A group of 12 state attorneys general and one governor is urging a federal appeals court to allow Donald Trump’s revised travel ban targeting six predominantly Muslim countries to take effect.</p>
<p>In a brief filed in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, the states say the president’s executive order is not a “pretext for religious discrimination.” They say the president acted lawfully in the interest of national security.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The states are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and West Virginia. Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi also joined.</p>
<p>The states are urging the Richmond-based appeals court to overturn a lower court ruling that blocked the ban from going into effect. A judge in Hawaii has issued a separate ruling blocking the executive order.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>3:40 p.m.</p>
<p>Hawaii is asking a judge to extend his order blocking President Donald Trump’s travel ban without holding another hearing.</p>
<p>U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson temporarily halted the ban from taking effect, but his order is set to expire Wednesday. That’s when he’s scheduled a hearing on Hawaii’s request to block the ban until the state’s lawsuit works its way through the courts.</p>
<p>Hawaii says in court documents that nothing has changed since Watson ruled and a hearing is unnecessary. The state says that it will ensure the constitutional rights of Muslim citizens across the U.S. are vindicated.</p>
<p>The Department of Justice says that if the judge grants the request, it should only cover the part of Trump’s executive order that suspends new visas for people from six Muslim-majority countries.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:20 a.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump’s administration is asking a federal appeals court to let his travel ban go into effect while it considers the case.</p>
<p>Attorneys for the president want the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to put on hold a lower court judge’s ruling that blocked his revised travel ban targeting six predominantly Muslim countries while the court considers the merits of its appeal.</p>
<p>The administration says the people named in the case haven’t shown they will suffer “substantial harm” if the order takes effect. The administration says the nationwide injunction blocking the ban is “fatally overbroad.”</p>
<p>The Maryland ruling and a separate ruling in Hawaii were victories for civil liberties groups and advocates for immigrants and refugees.</p>
<p>The Richmond, Virginia-based court will hear arguments in the case May 8.</p> | The Latest: 13 states back Trump travel ban in appeals court | false | https://abqjournal.com/977083/the-latest-13-states-back-trump-travel-ban-in-appeals-court.html | 2 |
|
<p />
<p>Ever heard those “I had to walk five miles to school in the snow, uphill, both ways” stories from your parents? I have, too. Of course, my father’s stories were real. He grew up poor. Very poor. I’m talking soda and peanut butter were considered luxuries poor. Like wearing clothes with holes in them that two of his brothers had already grown out of poor. Like putting feathers in a corncob and tossing it in the air so he had something to play with because his parents couldn’t afford to buy him any toys poor.</p>
<p>Happily, since he was born in America, being born poor didn’t mean that he had to stay poor. He started at the bottom with a company (manually punching holes in carpet), moved on from there to become one of his company’s best salesmen, and actually made it to vice president of the rug division near the end of his career. In addition, he served in the military, had four kids, and played his way into the North Carolina Softball Hall Of Fame.</p>
<p>Happily, because of my father’s work ethic and determination that his kids were going to have it better than him, I didn’t have to grow up with the kind of grinding poverty that he did. Yet and still, I remember a conversation he had with me when I was young and he was still working his way up the ladder. He told me that at his income level, I qualified for the free lunch program at school. He asked what I thought about that. My response was, “I’d rather just not eat lunch.” Even then, I could tell he was pleased with that answer and we never applied for any kind of free goodies at school. As I got older my father started climbing the corporate ladder and money ceased to be a big problem, although he remained very frugal.</p>
<p>Then, as I flew the nest and went out on my own, I got to experience my own struggles with money. I rolled pennies for grocery money and went whole weeks on nothing but baked potatoes along with 3-for-a-dollar burritos and pot pies. I drove around in a car with bad brakes that would overheat if I didn’t drive fast enough to cool the engine because I couldn’t afford to repair it. I once had to borrow gas money to take a date out to dinner at a cheap restaurant. I had checks bounce because I had no float money and was regularly dipping below the $5 line to pay bills. I took day laborer positions at temp agencies and had to do things like lay sod to make ends meet. When I was out of town, I once slept in an elevator all night because I was too proud to crash with friends without paying. At one point, I kid you not, I seriously considered living in my car for a couple of months to save up some money.</p>
<p>So I do know what it’s like to be poor, and while I can’t recommend the experience, I can tell you that it is not all bad. There are actually some benefits to it. For example…</p>
<p>When you run your own business you have to make big decisions that can make or break you, cash flow can pick up and slow down, and sometimes you have to make choices today that will reverberate for years to come. In other words, it requires a high level of risk tolerance. Even if you don’t run your own business, you have to worry:&#160; <a href="" type="internal">about getting fired</a>:&#160;or getting hit with big bills that put you in a really tight spot.</p>
<p>Well, the nice thing about having been so poor that you’ve had to sleep in your car multiple times (yes, really) is that you already KNOW that if worse comes to worse financially, you can handle it. That means when the storm blows in, the lightning flashes, and the tide gets high, you KNOW that you can swim even if you get swept off the boat because you have done it before.</p>
<p><a href="http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/files/2012/10/129036746606509146.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>To this day, I still remember walking through a furniture store in Myrtle Beach, looking at a huge, carved, exotic looking stone bench that cost $2000 and thinking, “I could BUY THAT if I wanted.” Did I buy it? No. Should I have bought it? No. But just knowing that I had the option to be able to buy it felt really good. A small, simple thing like that gave me a feeling of accomplishment and security. My brother has told me he had the exact same feeling about being able to buy a set of tires for his car without having to pay them off over a few months’ time.</p>
<p>Could it be any other way? After all, how can you really appreciate being full if you’ve never been hungry? How can you ever appreciate being happy if you’ve never been sad? How can you ever appreciate having money in your wallet if you’ve never been down to lint in your pocket?</p>
<p>John Hawkins's book 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know is filled with lessons that newly minted adults need in order to get the most out of life. Gleaned from a lifetime of trial, error, and writing it down, Hawkins provides advice everyone can benefit from in short, digestible chapters.</p>
<p><a href="http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/files/2012/10/Just-Cant-Afford-It.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>Most politicians are silver spoon babies who grew up in privileged families, went to elite schools, and decided to go into politics as opposed to taking a cushy job that they would have been offered because of their connections, not their abilities. And the ones who aren’t like that? They want to make sure you know all about their humble upbringing. Why? Because rising up out of poverty is considered an accomplishment you can take pride in. Sure, maybe you don’t look at it that way when you’re wearing dirty clothes because you don’t even have enough quarters to visit the laundry yet, but trust me, when you’re doing well, those are exactly the sort of stories you’ll want everybody to know about you.</p>
<p>My neighborhood was so dangerous…. We were so poor that… I didn’t even have the money to….</p>
<p>Once you’ve made it, those will become some of the proudest chapters in the book that is you one day because success is much sweeter when nobody hands it to you on a silver platter.</p>
<p><a href="http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/files/2012/10/Why-I-am-so-poor.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>Ever changed a fan belt? My brother once helped me change one from the owner’s manual because we couldn’t afford to take it to a garage. My mother learned to do everything from laying tile to caulking a shower because she needed it done and early on she couldn’t afford to hire anyone to do it. Despite the fact that I’m not the least bit mechanically inclined, I can paint, put together office furniture, and fix a broken toilet because I had to learn it. It’s like they say, “Necessity is the mother of invention” – and when you’re poor, there is no shortage of necessity.</p>
<p><a href="http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/files/2012/10/redneckswimming.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>When I was growing up, my father used to toss nickels around like manhole covers. He was all about saving every dime he could. If you had grown up in a household where you were once whipped with a switch for eating too much of an “expensive” treat like peanut butter, you’d be that way, too. Of course, there are people who go in the other direction and go into debt to buy the big flat screen TV and the new car they think they “deserve.” However, those are the people who tend to stay poor because they’ve never learned that if you can’t afford it, you don’t deserve it. On the other hand, if you learn that lesson not only will you end up with cash in your wallet, you’ll probably never have to struggle with poverty again.</p>
<p><a href="http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/files/2012/10/poor.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>****</p> | 5 Life Advantages You Acquire From Experiencing Poverty | true | http://rightwingnews.com/john-hawkins/5-life-advantages-you-acquire-from-experiencing-poverty/ | 2018-10-20 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Instead of pouring cold water over his head, President Barack Obama has poured it on the idea of becoming the highest-profile participant of the ice bucket challenge, a dare sweeping the nation that has raised nearly $42 million to support research into Lou Gehrig’s disease.</p>
<p>The disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, attacks nerve cells and can lead to complete paralysis and death.</p>
<p>Average life expectancy is two to five years after diagnosis, according to the ALS Association.</p>
<p>The challenge calls on people to post videos on social media of themselves dumping a bucket of ice water on their heads – or having someone else handle the chilly chore. They also have to publicly name others to do the same thing within 24 hours or donate $100 to the ALS Association. Many people do both.</p>
<p>Other well-known participants include former President George W. Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ethel Kennedy. The 86-year-old Kennedy family matriarch tagged Obama to participate after recently dousing herself at her family’s Massachusetts estate, knowing that the president would be nearby on vacation.</p>
<p>Obama participated financially by donating an undisclosed sum, the White House said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Singer Justin Bieber also nominated Obama to take the challenge, which has been a boon to the advocacy group. The association said it had received $41.8 million in donations as of Thursday, compared with $2.1 million between July 29 and Aug. 21 last year.</p>
<p>Obama isn’t the only U.S. government official who is unlikely to participate.</p>
<p>The State Department has banned participation by U.S. ambassadors and other high-profile foreign service officers. Department lawyers say participation would violate federal ethics rules barring officials from using public office for private gain “no matter how worthy the cause,” according to an unclassified cable sent earlier this week.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Obama says hold the ice, but gives to cause | false | https://abqjournal.com/450293/obama-says-hold-the-ice-but-gives-to-cause.html | 2 |
|
<p>All eyes on Yellen as the stock market awaits Fed's two-day meeting</p>
<p>Wall Street investors have shrugged off recent worries to propel stocks to fresh all-time highs, but this week's meeting of Federal Reserve policy makers might provide investors the clearest sign yet about the health of the U.S. economy and how the central bank is construing stubbornly low inflation.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The Fed gathering set for Tuesday and Wednesday comes against the backdrop of a host of recent events that market participants are anticipating will factor in policy maker's decision making: The economic impact of Hurricanes Irma (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/harvey-irma-could-ding-us-economy-for-combined-290-billion-2017-09-10) and Harvey, (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-oil-prices-are-sinking-as-gasoline-soars-after-harvey-2017-08-28) sluggish inflation, the outlook for fiscal stimulus out of Washington, may be a just a few of the topics that are broached. (That is not even to mention the incalculable risks out of the Korean Peninsula).</p>
<p>Read: Why Harvey and Irma won't change the Fed's rate-raising timeline (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-harvey-and-irma-wont-change-the-feds-rate-raising-timeline-2017-09-13)</p>
<p>Although Janet Yellen's Fed isn't expected to make any change to interest rates, it is anticipated that it will lay the groundwork for unwinding its $4.5 trillion balance sheet, if not announce its start. The coming asset-portfolio reduction has been an important focus for markets because of the unprecedented nature of unraveling a nearly decadeslong initiative of monetary stimulus, which could further tighten borrowing costs for individuals and corporations.</p>
<p>Yellen is likely to emphasize that normalizing the balance sheet is going to be gradual so as to avoid disrupting markets, said Paul Ashworth, chief North American economist for Capital Economics.</p>
<p>The plan is to shrink by only $10 billion a month, with the pace increasing by $10 billion every quarter, up to a maximum of $50 billion a month.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Bond and currency markets, which have been the most attuned to Fed policy, will experience the greatest degree of volatility if there are any Fed surprises.</p>
<p>The yield, which moves inversely to prices, on the 10-year Treasury note has climbed to around 2.21%, compared with 2.05% on Sept. 11. The U.S. dollar has also reclaimed some lost ground. However, both the dollar and yields remain near historic lows despite being in the midst of a rate-hike cycle that should theoretically buoy the pair. Higher rates make the buck more attractive to traders, while pushing up yields on bonds as investors await fresh issuance bearing richer coupons.</p>
<p>Some market participants attribute a combination of fluctuating risks centered on North Korea's military aggressions, and fading expectations this year for the pro-growth policies promised by President Donald Trump during his presidential campaign. Political doubts have been underpinned by increased partisan tension, though a glimmer of bipartisanship has offered some promise of successfully pursuing tax reform, deregulation, and increased infrastructure spending in the coming months.</p>
<p>Some of that hope has filtered into stock markets, with the Dow and S&amp;P 500 logging record closes (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dow-futures-steady-paring-losses-that-came-after-latest-north-korean-missile-2017-09-15)and the Nasdaq narrowly missing a record of its own on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 64.86 points, to 0.3%, to close at 22,268.34, logging its fourth straight record close and its sixth consecutive day of gains. For the week, the blue-chip gauge booked a gain of 2.2%, marking its best weekly advance since the week ended Dec. 9, according to FactSet data.</p>
<p>The S&amp;P 500 ended 4.61 points higher, a return of 0.2%, at 2,500.23, while the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 19.38 points, or 0.3%, to close at 6,448.47, missing an all-time high by about 12 points.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the U.S. officially hit $20 trillion in debt (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-the-us-got-to-20-trillion-in-debt-2017-03-30), with about half of that added over the past decade or so.</p>
<p>The 2007-09 recession, brought on by the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble, is at least partly to blame, with the government responding with huge bank bailouts and the stimulus programs. In fiscal years 2009-2012, deficits exceeded $1 trillion.</p>
<p>James Rickards, attorney and finance commentator, in the Daily Reckoning blog (https://dailyreckoning.com/golden-solution-americas-debt-crisis/) said the current level of inflation, running below the Fed's 2% annual target, is partially tied to the increase in the deficit.</p>
<p>"Now, the Fed printed about $4 trillion over the past several years and we barely have any inflation at all. But most of the new money was given by the Fed to the banks, who turned around and parked it on deposit at the Fed to gain interest. The money never made it out into the economy, where it would produce inflation. The bottom line is that not even money printing has worked to get inflation moving," Rickards wrote.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, the market will see what the Fed has to say about the state of inflation in the world.</p>
<p>Beyond the Fed, the Bank of Japan is slated to deliver its updated policy statement on Thursday.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>September 18, 2017 08:11 ET (12:11 GMT)</p> | MARKET SNAPSHOT: How Much Longer This Stock-market Bull Run Lasts May Depend On The Fed's Next Move | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/09/17/market-snapshot-how-much-longer-this-stock-market-bull-run-lasts-may-depend-on-feds-next-move.html | 2017-09-18 | 0 |
<p>Hashim Almadani, an Iraqi businessman, author and commentator, was recently visiting the UK and paid me a visit. I sat down with Hashim to talk about his perspectives on the <a href="" type="internal">Iraq</a> war, and I learned some shocking stuff.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>Guns being sold for the equivalent of 50 pence, lawlessness on the streets, and a collapsed economy...</p>
<p>Iraq was really plunged into chaos,&#160;and Hashim saw it first hand. He sees the West "supporting the wrong side" "again and again".</p>
<p>Listen to his experience in <a href="" type="internal">the Middle East</a>, and find out why he left for Europe and what he's been doing since. If you want to hear more from Hashim, you can&#160; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvbKg3T1Erz0WUZoS_vqETw" type="external">check out his YouTube channel.</a></p> | Tommy Robinson and Iraqi Hashim Almadani: The West “supports the wrong side again and again” | true | https://therebel.media/tommy_robinson_and_hashim_almadani_an_iraqi_s_thoughts_on_the_middle_east | 2017-09-29 | 0 |
<p>Siblings of Michael Flynn announced Monday that they have set up a <a href="https://mikeflynndefensefund.org/" type="external">legal defense fund</a> for the former national security adviser who’s under investigation for his role in alleged collusion with Russia during the election.</p>
<p>“The enormous expense of attorneys’ fees and other related expenses far exceed their ability to pay,” Flynn’s brother, Joe, and sister, Barbara, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/18/michael-flynn-legal-defense-fund-242832" type="external">said in a statement</a>. “To help ensure that he can defend himself, we have set up a legal defense fund, and we are asking Mike’s supporters, veterans, and all people of goodwill to contribute whatever amount they can to this fund.”</p>
<p>Flynn acknowledged his family’s effort via Twitter.</p>
<p>Lori and I are very grateful to my brother Joe and sister Barbara for creating a fund to help pay my legal defense costs. 1/2</p>
<p>— General Flynn (@GenFlynn) <a href="https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/909748907600760832" type="external">September 18, 2017</a></p>
<p>We deeply appreciate the support of family and friends across this nation who have touched our lives. <a href="https://t.co/O08co3DRpn" type="external">https://t.co/O08co3DRpn</a> 2/2</p>
<p>— General Flynn (@GenFlynn) <a href="https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/909749150572515328" type="external">September 18, 2017</a></p>
<p>Flynn is the focus of several investigations looking into alleged impropriety with Russia, including congressional panels and special counsel Robert Mueller.</p>
<p>“The costs of legal representation associated with responding to the multiple investigations that have arisen in the wake of the 2016 election place a great burden on Mike and his family. They are deeply grateful for considering a donation to help pay expenses relating to his legal representation,” the website reads.</p>
<p>“Only U.S. citizens and permanent residents may contribute. Any donations that are identified as originating with foreign nationals will be declined or refunded,” the website said.</p> | Family of Mike Flynn Sets up Legal Defense Fund | false | https://newsline.com/family-of-mike-flynn-sets-up-legal-defense-fund/ | 2017-09-18 | 1 |
<p>YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio businessman who faces deportation to his native Jordan may be able to stay in the United States for about six months while his case is reviewed.</p>
<p>A U.S. House subcommittee vote Thursday requested the Department of Homeland Security review Amer Othman’s case and report back. Youngstown-area Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan says similar votes under past administrations would halt deportation proceedings for six months while cases are reviewed.</p>
<p>Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials took the businessman into custody Tuesday before his expected deportation.</p>
<p>ICE says courts have held Othman doesn’t have a legal basis to remain.</p>
<p>ICE said in a statement Friday it’s reviewing the committee’s written notification requesting that deportation be delayed. ICE also says Othman is being medically monitored while continuing his hunger strike.</p>
<p>YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio businessman who faces deportation to his native Jordan may be able to stay in the United States for about six months while his case is reviewed.</p>
<p>A U.S. House subcommittee vote Thursday requested the Department of Homeland Security review Amer Othman’s case and report back. Youngstown-area Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan says similar votes under past administrations would halt deportation proceedings for six months while cases are reviewed.</p>
<p>Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials took the businessman into custody Tuesday before his expected deportation.</p>
<p>ICE says courts have held Othman doesn’t have a legal basis to remain.</p>
<p>ICE said in a statement Friday it’s reviewing the committee’s written notification requesting that deportation be delayed. ICE also says Othman is being medically monitored while continuing his hunger strike.</p> | Businessman may get 6-month delay in deportation | false | https://apnews.com/532615863438494e853ad9a60660ecbf | 2018-01-20 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>HOUSTON — Dozens of low-income families in Houston whose homes were damaged by flooding after Hurricane Harvey are getting help thanks to a partnership with a housing agency in Oklahoma City.</p>
<p>The torrential rainfall in late August damaged thousands of homes in the Houston area, including seven properties owned by the Houston Housing Authority, which uses federal funds to provide affordable homes to more than 58,000 low-income residents. Most of the 950 families living in the seven properties have been helped, but 84 families whose townhome complex was severely damaged were in limbo.</p>
<p>Vouchers are usually available to help such families pay rent elsewhere, because all of the Houston Housing Authority’s housing units were full, but the agency is facing a temporary funding shortfall. It decided to reach out to similar housing authorities across the country to see if their budgets could quickly help the Houston families, said Tory Gunsolley, the Houston Housing Authority’s president and CEO.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Oklahoma City Housing Authority responded, saying it could provide vouchers.</p>
<p>“We just felt we could move faster trying this innovative approach and help them in a more permanent way,” Gunsolley said. Mark Gillett, executive director of the Oklahoma City Housing Authority, added: “We stand ready to do our part to help our Texas neighbors recover from the storm.”</p>
<p>Oklahoma City has a waiting list of people seeking housing vouchers, but families flooded out by Harvey were moved ahead on the list because of the federally declared disaster, said Richard Marshall, who manages leased housing for the Oklahoma City Housing Authority.</p>
<p>Normally such vouchers must be used in the city where they were issued. But if a housing authority agrees, they can be used in another location, Gunsolley said.</p>
<p>Housing officials in Oklahoma have offered similar help before, including when people brought their housing vouchers from New Orleans to Oklahoma City after Hurricane Katrina, Marshall said.</p>
<p>The expectation is that the Oklahoma City Housing Authority will pay for the vouchers — which provide an average of $600 a month for rental assistance — in November and December, with Houston taking over in 2018.</p>
<p>Other social services that serve the poor in Oklahoma are funded by state money. Oklahoma is facing severe budget cuts as lawmakers try to find ways to plug a $215 million hole in the state budget that could affect Medicaid, home health care for seniors and mental health and substance abuse services.</p>
<p>Celenia Reyes, who’s been living in the damaged townhome in Houston with her three daughters, called the newly available housing vouchers “a great help.” But the 31-year-old mother noted it can be hard to find a privately run apartment that will accept the vouchers.</p>
<p>The Houston Housing Authority has been working with the Houston Apartment Association and local landlords to find apartments for the displaced families, Gunsolley said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Adam Kealoha Causey in Oklahoma City contributed to this story.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/juanlozano70" type="external">www.twitter.com/juanlozano70</a></p> | Oklahoma, Texas promote Houston affordable housing effort | false | https://abqjournal.com/1085752/okla-texas-officials-push-houston-affordable-housing-plan.html | 2017-10-31 | 2 |
<p><a href="http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2016/06/new-village-voice-column-up_20.html" type="external">alicublog</a> - John Podhoretz, still wrong about everything, still vile;</p>
<p><a href="https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/06/21/laugh-at-the-short-fingered-grifter/" type="external">Balloon Juice</a> - it's all just one big grift;</p>
<p><a href="https://blueinthebluegrass.blogspot.com/2016/06/bevins-wet-dream-for-kentucky.html" type="external">Blue in the Bluegrass</a> - Bevin to Brownback: I can do more damage than you!</p>
<p><a href="http://crookedtimber.org/2016/06/20/review-jacob-hacker-and-paul-pierson-american-amnesia/" type="external">Crooked Timber</a> - American amnesia;</p>
<p><a href="http://fablog.ehrensteinland.com/2016/06/20/getting-hate-straight/" type="external">David E's Fablog</a> - getting hate straight (text NSFW);</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/blogenfreude" type="external">Steve in Manhattan</a> (blogenfreude) blogs at <a href="http://www.stinque.com/" type="external">stinque.com</a> and is not pleased <a href="http://www.westsiderag.com/2016/06/20/rendering-shows-just-how-high-neighborhoods-tallest-building-will-soar" type="external">this</a> is going up a few blocks from his building.</p>
<p>Send tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.</p> | Mike's Blog Round Up | true | http://crooksandliars.com/2016/06/mikes-blog-round-19 | 2016-06-22 | 4 |
<p />
<p>Three former securities traders were found guilty on Monday of fraud and conspiracy to commit insider trading on pending mergers, part of the U.S. government's broad probe of corporate secrets leaked to hedge funds.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Brothers Zvi Goffer and Emanuel Goffer and a third trader, Michael Kimelman, their former partner at Incremental Capital LLC, chose to go to trial when dozens pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the face of <a href="" type="internal">FBI</a> phone taps in evidence.</p>
<p>The guilty verdicts were another victory for prosecutors in what they describe as the biggest probe of insider trading at hedge funds on record, which also included the conviction of <a href="" type="internal">Galleon Group</a> hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam a month ago.</p>
<p>The convictions of Zvi Goffer, 34, Emanuel Goffer, 32, and Kimelman, 40, carry a maximum possible prison sentence of 25 years apiece.</p>
<p>The case is USA v Zvi Goffer et al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 10-00056.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Three More Guilty Verdicts in Trading Cases | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/06/13/three-former-traders-found-guilty-insider-trading.html | 2016-01-28 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Overall, about $473 million wen to U.S. small businesses in Sandia contracts, with the New Mexico share totaling $256 million, the Labs said in a news release.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I am proud to say that fiscal year 2012 stood out as another consecutive year where Sandia exceeded its over-arching small business goal and, in addition, all but one of its sub-tier small/socio-economic goals,” said Don Devoti, manager of Sandia’s Small Business Utilization Program. “Sandia’s commitment to identify and contract with qualified, capable small business suppliers continues to push new frontiers.”</p>
<p>Sandia’s economic impact in 2012 include:</p>
<p>$1.4 billion spent on labor and non-contract-related payments</p>
<p>$896.3 million on contract-related payments</p>
<p>$66.4 million to the state of New Mexico for gross receipts taxes</p>
<p>$65 million spent through procurement card purchases</p> | Sandia Releases Economic Impact Figures | false | https://abqjournal.com/165321/business-briefs-54.html | 2013-02-01 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Hector Gamboa (MDC)</p>
<p>Hector Gamboa, a 59-year-old Grants man, was shot after a standoff with police at a home in San Rafael, which is in Cibola County about five miles southwest of Grants, State Police said in a news release. Gamboa was wanted in connection with the slaying of 54-year-old Blanca Renova, who was stabbed to death at her Albuquerque home near Central and Wyoming earlier this month.</p>
<p>Renova’s daughter found her on May 5.</p>
<p>Renova on March 15 had taken out a restraining order against Gamboa, who she had said threatened her during their relationship, according to a Journal story published earlier this month. She wrote in the order that Gamboa “became more aggressive” in the past six months.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I’m concerned for my life and my safety is at risk,” Renova wrote.</p>
<p>Albuquerque police have said a confidential informant told police that Gamboa admitted to killing Renova as she was getting out of the shower.</p>
<p>State Police spokesman officer Carl Christiansen on Saturday said that the name of the officer who killed Gamboa will be released after the officer has been interviewed about the shooting.</p>
<p>State Police released few details about the events that led up to the shooting.</p>
<p>Police said only that Gamboa refused to negotiate or comply with police commands prior to the shooting, which happened at about 8:30 p.m.</p>
<p>On Friday morning, State Police went to the San Rafael residence after receiving a report that Gamboa was there. When the officers encountered Gamboa, he barricaded himself in the home, which led to a standoff, according to the news release.</p>
<p>The State Police Crisis Negotiation Team and tactical officers responded. State Police Chief Pete Kassetas also asked APD to send its SWAT team to the area, according to the news release.</p>
<p>“Such requests are standard and necessary to assist in volatile situations, and to supplement additional needed manpower,” Christiansen said in the release.</p>
<p>The standoff lasted more than four hours.</p>
<p>Police didn’t say if Gamboa was armed when he was killed.</p>
<p>Simon Drobik, an Albuquerque police spokesman, referred all questions to State Police.</p>
<p>The shooting is the Albuquerque police SWAT team’s first since June 2014. It was the department’s fourth shooting so far this year and the second fatal shooting.</p>
<p>The department is in the middle of a yearslong reform effort that aims to address a pattern of excessive force within the department. Throughout the reform process, the SWAT team has received praise from officials who monitor the department’s progress and report to a federal judge.</p> | Murder suspect killed by APD officer in arrest attempt near Grants | false | https://abqjournal.com/1009666/state-police-wanted-person-fatally-shot-by-officers.html | 2017-05-27 | 2 |
<p>By Agustinus Beo Da Costa</p>
<p>JAKARTA (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Muslims marched from the main mosque in Indonesia’s capital to a square in Jakarta on Sunday to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.</p>
<p>It was the biggest protest in Indonesia since Trump’s controversial move earlier this month to reverse decades of U.S. policy. Police estimated the number attending the rally, organized by various Muslim groups, at about 80,000.</p>
<p>The protest was peaceful but rows of police behind coils of barbed wire held back the crowd outside the U.S. embassy in Jakarta. A police spokesman said 20,000 police and members of the military were deployed to ensure security.&#160;</p>
<p>“We urge all countries&#160;to reject the unilateral and illegal decision of President Donald Trump to make Jerusalem Israel’s capital,” Anwar Abbas, the secretary general of the Indonesian Ulema Council, told&#160;the crowd. &#160;</p>
<p>“We call on all Indonesian people to boycott U.S. and Israel products in this country” if Trump does not revoked his action, Abbas said, reading from a petition due to be handed to the U.S. ambassador in Indonesia.</p>
<p>Many of the protesters were clad in white and waved Palestinian flags and held up placards, some reading: “Peace, love and free Palestine”.</p>
<p>There have been a series of protests in Indonesia over the issue, including some where hardliners burned U.S. and Israeli flags.</p>
<p>The status of Jerusalem, a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, is one of the biggest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.</p>
<p>Jerusalem’s eastern sector was captured by Israel in a 1967war and annexed in a move not recognized internationally.</p>
<p>Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent state that they seek, while Israel maintains that all of Jerusalem is its capital.</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> | Tens of thousands of Indonesians rally over Trump's Jerusalem stance | false | https://newsline.com/tens-of-thousands-of-indonesians-rally-over-trump039s-jerusalem-stance/ | 2017-12-17 | 1 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>THOREAU – Digging an 8-foot hole in solid rock is no easy job, even with a backhoe and a jackhammer.</p>
<p>A crew spent two days last month digging outside the home of Rena James to install a 1,200-gallon cistern, together with an electric pump, that will allow the 84-year-old Navajo woman to turn on a tap in her kitchen.</p>
<p>For now, she still doesn’t have a shower or an indoor toilet. But a kitchen sink marks the first time in her life that Rena James has had running water in her adobe-walled home, said her son, Freddy James.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The cistern will also provide clean, safe water to other members of her extended family who live nearby in a cluster of houses and hogans in rural Prewitt, about 20 miles northwest of Grants.</p>
<p>“This is going to make a big difference,” said Freddy James, 60.</p>
<p>For several years, the family has received water deliveries by truck, which they stored outside in barrels that accumulated blowing dust and dirt, and froze in the coldest months. Water in the buried cistern is expected to remain clean fluid year-round.</p>
<p>“We won’t have to haul water from outside where it freezes in the winter,” Freddy James said. “We’ve got to chip the water out of the barrel.”</p>
<p>The James family is the 16th Thoreau-area household to receive a new cistern funded by Dig Deep, a California-based nonprofit in cooperation with the St. Bonaventure Indian Mission and School, a Thoreau-based nonprofit.</p>
<p>George McGraw, executive director of Dig Deep, a California-based nonprofit, helps install pipe that will carry water from a new 1,200-gallon cistern to Rena James’ home. (Roberto E. Rosales/Journal)</p>
<p>Dig Deep’s goal is to install 200 cistern systems by late 2018 at a cost of about $4,000 per household, said George McGraw, executive director of the nonprofit. Cistern installations will comprise a big part of the nonprofit’s $2.2 million investment in Thoreau-area water projects, all funded by private donations, he said.</p>
<p>Changing lives</p>
<p>Sonny Sanders, 49, of Thoreau was among those who helped install the James’ cistern. Like many of his co-workers, the Navajo man said he gets satisfaction from helping his neighbors get running water in their homes.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“It really does change their lives – that’s what really gets me,” the St. Bonaventure employee said. Now, Rena James can get water from a tap “instead of having to go outside on a cold, windy day to get water out of a barrel.”</p>
<p>The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, an enterprise of the Navajo Nation, provides electricity, water, natural gas and wastewater treatment to residents throughout the 27,000-square-mile reservation. The utility has 36,000 water customers, according to its website.</p>
<p>NTUA is expanding nodes off its water mains to service homes, McGraw said, but the rocky ground in many areas has made expansion slow, difficult and expensive.</p>
<p>Freddy James said his mother’s home lies less than half a mile from a water main, but the rocky ground has frustrated efforts to extend a water line to the house.</p>
<p>The big, plastic cisterns also mean changes for Darlene Arviso, widely known here as “the water lady” because she drives the truck that delivers water throughout the Thoreau area.</p>
<p>Darlene Arviso stands beside the water truck she drives some 300 miles a week to deliver water to homes in the Thoreau area. Arviso had just filled a new 1,200-gallon cistern installed at Rena James’ home southeast of Thoreau. (Roberto E. Rosales/Journal)</p>
<p>Arviso fills up a 4,000-gallon water truck each morning at a well owned by St. Bonaventure and travels some 300 miles a week over pitted, unpaved roads, delivering water to up to 250 scattered Navajo households.</p>
<p>In the past, Arviso delivered about 250 gallons at a time to the James’ household, filling 55-gallon plastic barrels, buckets and virtually any other container that held water.</p>
<p>“That wouldn’t last the month,” Arviso said, which required her to make multiple trips to the household each month.</p>
<p>As cisterns become more common around Thoreau, household water supplies should last longer, limiting the number of trips Arviso must make to each location.</p>
<p>“They should have plenty of water to last the whole month,” she said.</p>
<p>About half of water deliveries are made to homes that lack electricity, McGraw estimates. That presents a major hurdle because cisterns require an electric pump to deliver water into the home.</p>
<p>Lindsay Johnson, 79, has had running water since September when a cistern was installed at her home east of Smith Lake. But without an electrical connection, she must use a gasoline-powered generator to heat water for showers, which requires Johnson and her family to buy pricey fuel.</p>
<p>Typically, the family runs the generator only for showers and relies on a wood-burning stove to heat water for other purposes, such as washing dishes.</p>
<p>To overcome that problem, Dig Deep is funding a pilot program that uses solar panels to power the water pumps.</p>
<p>Pickle buckets</p>
<p>Kirk Yazzie, his wife and three children, ages 2 to 9, live in a one-room house in Thoreau that uses a solar-powered water pump that draws water from a cistern to a tap inside their home.</p>
<p>Before the demonstration project started two months ago, Yazzie said he hauled water from St. Bonaventure’s well across town.</p>
<p>“I used to haul water in a car with five-gallon pickle buckets,” Yazzie said. The indoor tap, he said, “is a lot better than the buckets.”</p>
<p>When the demonstration project concludes later this year, solar-powered pumps will be installed routinely with cisterns at all homes that lack electricity, McGraw said.</p>
<p>The water-delivery program here is on the verge of a major expansion. Dig Deep plans to begin drilling an 1,800-foot well near Smith Lake about 10 miles north of Thoreau that should begin producing early next year.</p>
<p>The $1.2 million well is expected to produce a fourfold increase in water deliveries, from about 3,500 gallons a week today to as much as 16,000 gallons, McGraw said. That will allow Dig Deep to serve up to 90 additional households in the Smith Lake area, he said.</p>
<p>Fortunately, Arviso will have some help. Dig Deep recently refurbished a donated water truck and St. Bonaventure hired a second driver.</p>
<p>Smith Lake homeowners are in dire need of truck deliveries of water. Many area residents routinely drive into Thoreau to fill buckets and barrels from the St. Bonaventure well.</p>
<p>Raymond Warner fills barrels on the back of his pickup at St. Bonaventure Indian Mission in Thoreau. Warner makes the drive twice a week from his home in Smith Lake because shallow wells there are contaminated. (Roberto E. Rosales/Journal)</p>
<p>Raymond Warner, 64, said he drives about 10 miles twice a week from his home in Smith Lake to fill two barrels because shallow wells there are contaminated.</p>
<p>“You can’t drink it,” Warner said recently while tanking up at the St. Bonaventure Mission. “You can’t even do laundry with it – it eats your clothes. It stinks, too.”</p>
<p />
<p /> | Tapping into the future | false | https://abqjournal.com/873270/future-2.html | 2016-10-23 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Paige Jensen, second from left, waits outside the U.S. Postal Service main post office on Broadway and Mountain in Albuquerque during the Passport Fair on Saturday. Jensen is getting a passport for the first time. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Amid concerns that the state's driver's licenses will soon no longer give people access to certain federal facilities, New Mexicans formed a line that snaked through Albuquerque's main post office and into the parking lot on Saturday morning to apply for passports.</p>
<p>Hundreds of people have participated in several Passport Fairs at the post office on Broadway and Mountain NE near Downtown in recent weeks. The fairs have also been held at several other post offices around the state in anticipation of New Mexico driver's licenses losing some of their usefulness and no longer allowing people access to military bases, federal facilities and possibly airplanes in the future.</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has denied New Mexico an extension from tougher federal requirements on state licenses under the Real ID Act.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>That means a driver's license won't grant people access to military bases or nuclear research labs, starting Jan. 10. There are also concerns that the licenses won't allow people to board domestic airlines.</p>
<p>After waiting in a long line, Tiffany Roth, sitting left, and Bryce Roth, sitting next to her, fill out paperwork while applying for their passports. The Roths have some trips coming up, and they wanted to make sure that they would have proper identification. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>Though the airline restrictions haven't yet been announced, several people applying for passports in Albuquerque on Saturday said they were worried that such a policy would be put in place, so they were applying ahead of time.</p>
<p>"I'm a citizen of the United States," said Adeline Apodaca, who was applying with her partner, Janice Miranda. "For me to have to get a passport to travel within the U.S. really makes me angry."</p>
<p>Apodaca and Miranda said part of the reason they were applying was because Miranda's sister is battling cancer in California. That means they may need to drop everything and get on an airplane in case of a family emergency.</p>
<p>"We don't want to be caught off guard," Miranda said.</p>
<p>The purpose of the Real ID Act is to ensure that people are United States citizens when they enter some federal facilities using their licenses. The issue with New Mexico is that the state allows immigrants to obtain driver's licenses, regardless of whether they are in the country illegally.</p>
<p>Bruce Davis was another New Mexican in line on Saturday morning. He said he works for a contractor at Sandia National Laboratories. His company has been telling its employees for the past six weeks or so that they will need to get passports to continue working at the labs, beginning next year.</p>
<p>"I think the politicians should have taken care of this," he said, adding that he was frustrated that he had to spend $135 for a passport in order to continue working. "Look at everybody in line. We're not rich."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Pierce Tindell, 13, lucked out with the fairs. He's going on a school trip to Costa Rica next year, so he had to apply for a passport anyway. The fair made the process easier.</p>
<p>"I'm excited," he said from the line Saturday morning. "I've been waiting (for the trip) for a year."</p>
<p>The El Paso Passport Agency is running this weekend's fair. People applied for passports from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, and the fair has the same hours today.</p>
<p>At the fair, people can get assistance with their photograph, filling out the application and paying fees.</p>
<p>Jennifer Archibeque, the customer service manager for the agency, said people need to bring a valid driver's license and an original birth certificate or other documents that prove citizenship.</p>
<p>She said about 400 people applied for passports Saturday.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Passport Fairs busy as deadline looms | false | https://abqjournal.com/686760/passport-fairs-busy-as-deadline-looms.html | 2 |
|
<p>LONDON (Reuters) – Pilots working for British tour operator Thomas Cook (L:) will strike on three more days during September and October if talks starting next week fail to resolve a dispute over pay, the pilots’ union said on Friday.</p>
<p>Thomas Cook pilots went on strike on Friday for 12 hours in what the British Airline Pilots’ Association (BALPA) said was the first walkout by British pilots in more than 40 years.</p>
<p>Talks, due to start on Sept. 12, have been facilitated by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS). Five days of negotiations will run over a two-week period.</p>
<p>Strikes would be staged on Sept. 23, Sept. 29 and Oct. 3 if those talks failed, BALPA said.</p>
<p>“There is still a significant gap between us and Thomas Cook so we cannot assume that those talks will succeed. That’s why we’ve set new strike dates,” BALPA General Secretary Brian Strutton said in a statement.</p>
<p>Thomas Cook said all its flights operated during Friday’s stoppage.</p>
<p>“We are disappointed that BALPA has announced further strike dates. We have set out a fair pay increase,” a Thomas Cook spokesman said in a statement, urging BALPA to negotiate.</p>
<p>“BALPA have not moved from their demands for a pay rise which adds up to more than 10 per cent, or around 10,000 pounds ($13,217.00) per pilot,” it said.</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> | Thomas Cook's UK pilots threaten more strikes if pay talks fail | false | https://newsline.com/thomas-cook039s-uk-pilots-threaten-more-strikes-if-pay-talks-fail/ | 2017-09-08 | 1 |
<p />
<p>California lawmakers have emerged as pivotal players in the state’s struggle over cyberlaw — and the country’s. In Sacramento and Washington, D.C., elected officials have placed themselves at the forefront of disputes over the intersection of technology and national security, potentially determining the course of America’s approach to civil liberties for decades to come.</p>
<p>Inside the Beltway, federal oversight of U.S. security agencies has been dominated by Californians. “The current chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., is now investigating the alleged manipulation of war assessments by the U.S. Central Command,” as McClatchy recently <a href="http://www.pe.com/articles/lawmakers-798725-california-spy.html" type="external">noted</a>. Faced with bombshell allegations from New York Times sources that military officials had spun intel to overstate U.S. progress against the Islamic State, Nunes told the news service that “a special multi-committee task force was needed to investigate the allegations because officials were ‘trying to hide’ from oversight through bureaucratic sleight-of-hand.”</p>
<p>As Nunes’ colleague to his left, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has&#160;rounded out the top two seats on the committee, observers have watched for signs that Schiff might opt to run to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein in two years, having previously chosen not to jump into the race to succeed retiring&#160;Sen. Barbara Boxer.</p>
<p>It is Feinstein who has put the biggest California imprint on national security policy. After a bruising tiff with the CIA over its interrogation program, Feinstein made fresh headlines co-authoring a piece of legislation that would recast the relationship between surveillance and technology inside the U.S. A draft of a&#160;Senate bill being finalized by Feinstein and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, “would effectively prohibit unbreakable encryption and require companies to help the government access data on a computer or mobile device with a warrant,” the New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/04/09/us/politics/ap-us-congress-encryption.html?_r=0" type="external">reported</a>.</p>
<p>The bill has instantly ratcheted up the stakes in the already heated controversy surrounding the ongoing efforts of federal officials to force Apple to provide the means to unlock its iPhones. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told the Times that Feinstein and Burr’s bill would require all&#160;American companies marketing handheld devices “to build a backdoor” into&#160;them.&#160;“They would be required by federal law per this statute to decide how to weaken their products to make Americans less safe,” he told the paper,&#160;vowing to do&#160;“everything in my power” to&#160;block the effort.</p>
<p>A similarly sweeping bill&#160;has been crafted within California itself.&#160;Assemblyman&#160;Jim Cooper, D-Elk Grove, “introduced&#160;new state legislation&#160;that would require any new smartphone from 2017 onwards to be,” in the bill’s words, “capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider,” according to <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/california-bill-banning-encrypted-phones-just-got-worse/" type="external">ZDNet</a>. “That would impose a near-blanket ban on nearly all iPhones and many Android devices being sold across the state as they stand today, more often than not with unbreakable encryption that even&#160;the companies can’t unlock,” the site observed.</p>
<p>Although state and federal legislation has been prompted by terrorist threats and attacks, cybercrime has become sophisticated and prevalent enough to spur other concerns — especially in California, where recent strikes have raised fears that infrastructure and essential services could be crippled more out of greed than an appetite for destruction. So-called ransomware deployed by hackers paralyzed three Southern California hospitals several weeks ago.</p>
<p>“The security breaches — which temporarily disable digital networks but usually don’t steal the data — not only have endangered public safety, but revealed a worrying new weakness as public and private institutions struggle to adapt to the digital era,” as the Los Angeles Times <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-0407-cyber-hospital-20160407-story.html" type="external">noted</a>. “Government officials are particularly concerned that hackers could lock up digital networks that run electrical grids, and oil and natural gas lines, according to Andy Ozment, assistant secretary of cybersecurity and communications at the Department of Homeland Security.”</p> | Federal oversight of U.S. security dominated by California lawmakers | false | https://calwatchdog.com/2016/04/09/ca-congressional-delegation-calls-security-tune/ | 2018-04-20 | 3 |
<p />
<p>Fallout from a reported <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/2015/09/14/stanford-confidential-sex-lies-and-loathing-at-the-worlds-no-1-business-school/" type="external">love triangle at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business Opens a New Window.</a> (GSB) has already claimed the school’s dean, sparked lawsuits and countersuits, and threatened the reputation of one of the nation’s most prestigious business schools. To make matters worse, it appears that Stanford is now dragging Apple into the fray.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>What happens next is anyone’s guess, but what’s allegedly happened so far would definitely make for a juicy TV mini-drama.</p>
<p>According to reports, the 12-year marriage of GSB professors James Phills and Deborah Gruenfeld had been on the rocks for some time. In 2012, Gruenfeld finally decided to call it quits and moved out. That sparked a bitter divorce and custody battle that has cost the couple nearly half a million dollars. Three years later, it’s still ongoing.</p>
<p>That’s not unusual, but soon after the separation, Gruenfeld reportedly began a clandestine affair with GSB dean Garth Saloner, who at the time happened to be both her and her husband’s boss. And wouldn’t you know it, Stanford ended up firing Gruenfeld’s estranged husband, ostensibly for taking several leaves of absence to teach at Apple University.</p>
<p>While Saloner disclosed the incestuous relationship to Stanford provost John Etchemendy and publicly claims to have recused himself from the termination decision, Phills retained access to his wife’s emails and text messages, including “private” conversations with her new boyfriend, who seemed to be very much involved.</p>
<p>So Phills sued the school and the dean for wrongful termination, alleging the usual litany of hostile workplace, ongoing retaliation and harassment. In addition, he believes that GSB is trying to force him out of his residence by recalling a low-interest rate loan, now that his wife is no longer living in the home they built on campus.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>It’s sort of funny how lawsuits like these always turn out to be a gift that keeps on giving because, if either party has any dirty laundry (and who doesn’t), it will turn up in the discovery and deposition process sooner or later. This case is no exception.</p>
<p>In addition to the salacious not-so-secret communication between the conniving lovers, a 2014 petition signed by 46 current and former employees apparently sought to keep Etchemendy from re-appointing the dean to a new 5-year term, claiming that <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/stanford-business-school-sex-scandal" type="external">Saloner was a bully Opens a New Window.</a> who ruled by “personal agendas, favoritism and fear,” according to Vanity Fair. While Saloner was rehired, in September he resigned in the wake of the lawsuit.</p>
<p>Of course, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/technology/at-stanford-an-affair-reveals-accusations-of-discrimination.html?_r=0" type="external">Stanford says Phills’ complaint Opens a New Window.</a> is baseless and countersued, claiming that his eavesdropping on the new couple’s messaging was illegal, computer fraud and an invasion of Saloner’s privacy, according to the New York Times. But then the university took the unusual step of dragging Apple into the sordid mess, claiming the rights to the course material Phills now uses to teach there.</p>
<p>That pits the school against Silicon Valley’s most powerful company, Apple. While Stanford’s action does appear to be an overzealous overreach that goes against established academic practice of allowing course material developed by professors to be their own intellectual property, whether that’s consistent with copyright law remains to be determined by the court.</p>
<p>Poets&amp;Quants, a publication that covers B-schools and has reported on the scandal since the beginning, points out the <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/2015/12/18/stanford-drags-apple-into-court-over-lawsuit-against-saloner/2/" type="external">blatant duplicity of Stanford’s claims Opens a New Window.</a>, considering that it doesn’t seem to have a problem with any other professors enriching themselves using work derived while teaching there.</p>
<p>For example, Gruenfeld recently secured a $900,000 advance for an upcoming book that happens to have the same title as the one course she teaches at Stanford, “Acting With Power.” She also reportedly sells DVDs and gets $25,000 a pop for speeches on the same topic. Go figure.</p>
<p>An even greater irony is that Gruenfeld spent her entire career researching the psychology of power and influence. She sits on the board of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” nonprofit and is co-director of GSB’s executive program that advises women leaders – presumably on how not to end up in situations just like this one.</p>
<p>This is the point in the story where I usually say you just can’t make this stuff up, but then, this sort of thing is becoming so predictable. Whether it’s government or academia, bureaucracy breeds incestuous cronyism where those in power think the rules don’t apply to them, and those who whine about bullying end up being bullies.</p>
<p>Regardless of how the litigation turns out, none of this reflects well on <a href="http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools" type="external">the nation’s top ranked business school Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Growing Scandal Threatens Stanford B-School Reputation | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2015/12/22/growing-scandal-threatens-stanford-b-school-reputation.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
<p><a href="http://www.textamerica.com" type="external">TextAmerica</a>, the photo weblog (a.k.a., moblog) company that needs to change its name, has a couple of innovative new services. First, proving popular are its photo-phone " <a href="http://www.textamerica.com/wishlist.asp" type="external">Christmas Wish Lists</a>" -- a service that allows anyone with a camera phone to take pictures of items they want for Christmas and share the list with the world. That's a great application for photo phones. (Here are a <a href="http://nlb.textamerica.com/" type="external">couple</a> <a href="http://lauraville.textamerica.com/" type="external">examples</a>, from a kid and an adult, respectively.) Second is TextAmerica's <a href="http://givethanks.textamerica.com/" type="external">Thanksgiving 2003</a> moblog service. Photo-phone users are invited to create photo blogs of their Thanksgiving celebrations, dinner tables, what they're thankful for, etc. (Thanks to <a href="http://www.picturephoning.com" type="external">PicturePhoning.com</a> for the pointers.)Attention news industry: There must be many innovative services that you can offer your online readers who have photo phones (especially young people). It's time to get creative here; don't leave the innovation just to companies like TextAmerica. For any substantial event, a news organization can set up a moblog and invite people to send in their photos. Possible moblog topics: Thanksgiving food dishes; public running races; county fairs; protests; etc. Create moblogs that anyone can post to. And/or offer moblog hosting to local groups (Girl Scouts, Little League teams, etc.). (And if you still don't get why photo phones are important, be sure to read <a href="http://www.cameraphonereport.com/" type="external">Alan Reiter's Camera Phone Report</a>.)</p> | Photo-Phone Innovation: Not From the News Industry | false | https://poynter.org/news/photo-phone-innovation-not-news-industry | 2003-11-20 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>When all is said and done, New Mexico taxpayers will spend an astonishing $1.3 billion on the train. Despite my organization’s opposition to the project, I have ridden it and cannot recall a single major business that has sprung up to serve the train and its customers.</p>
<p>Certainly, no business has generated anywhere near the tax money to pay for even a significant portion of the system. There is no reason to believe that the $7.1 million transit center will be better investment of scarce tax dollars.</p>
<p>And, much like the electric automobile, mass transit has been the “next big thing” for decades. In fact, according to federal data provided by transportation analyst Wendell Cox transit’s market share – of transit and motor vehicles – has fallen since the 1950s. In 1955, transit’s market share was over 10 percent. Today, transit’s share hovers below 2 percent nationally and is not growing despite rapid spending growth.</p>
<p>The fact is that unlike a car, no matter how good the system and how wishful the thinking, transit cannot get you to wherever you want to go, when you need to be there especially in spread-out Western cities like Albuquerque.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>PAUL J. GESSING</p>
<p>President, Rio Grande Foundation</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p> | Mass transit can’t work in our cities | false | https://abqjournal.com/270837/mass-transit-cant-work-in-our-cities.html | 2013-09-28 | 2 |
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Michelle Obama delivered her final remarks as first lady of the United States on Friday, telling a room of educators that the role has been “the greatest honor” of her life. It was an emotional end to a White House event honoring the 2017 School Counselor of the Year, where she also urged young people to embrace diversity and empower themselves through education.</p>
<p>“As I end my time in the White House, I can think of no better message to send to our young people,” Obama said. “For all the young people in this room and that are watching, that this country belongs to you. If you or your parents are immigrants, know that you are a part of proud American tradition.”</p>
<p>“I want our young people to know that they matter, that they belong. So don’t be afraid. Be focused, be determined, be hopeful, be empowered.”</p>
<p>Obama will leave the White House as one of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/obama-legacy/michelle-obama-popularity.html" type="external">most popular first ladies</a> in recent memory.</p>
<p /> | Michelle Obama’s Farewell Address Will Leave You an Emotional Wreck | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/michelle-obamas-farewell-address-emotional/ | 2017-01-06 | 4 |
<p>A warm, generous spirit of affection and insurrection washes over Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” a Cold War-era fairytale that submerges you in the fantastical realm of the director’s Technicolor imagination only to swell into a watery allegory for today.</p>
<p>It is, one suspects, the monster movie Del Toro was born to make. Lushly composed, vividly realized, “The Shape of Water” is lovingly designed to send you floating out to sea on a carnal bed of enchantment and acceptance. If that sounds a little much, that’s true, too, of “The Shape of Water.” It’s an exceedingly dreamy movie so intoxicated with itself that it’s sometimes easier to admire Del Toro’s classically composed film than to genuinely swoon for it.</p>
<p>With shades of “Beauty and the Beast,” ″The Shape of Water” is about a love between a mute cleaning lady, Eliza (Sally Hawkins), and a merman (Doug Jones) who has been captured from the Amazon and hauled back to 1962 Baltimore by a cattle prod-wielding military man named Stickland (Michael Shannon). At a secret government laboratory where Eliza and her talkative friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer) mop up blood, the amphibious man is studied and tortured but mostly kept chained in a murky pool so he can’t be taken by the Russians.</p>
<p>Eliza lives — and this is one of those touches a little too on-the-nose — above a grand movie palace where business is drying up. Her friend and neighbor is a gay, out-of-work artist named Giles (Richard Jenkins), who draws wholesome pictures of nuclear American families for an advertising company he used to work for. It’s his voice, in the movie’s glowing opening, that introduces the tale of “the princess without voice.” The camera drifts through a flooded apartment where Eliza sleeps on a floating divan while Alexandre Desplat’s romantic score thrums.</p>
<p>We later learn that Eliza is an orphan whose throat was thrashed as a baby, and who was found in a river. So she has a kind of affinity for water, and, after setting an egg timer for precision, masturbates in an overflowing tub. Her courtship with the merman begins with an egg, too, only with the crackle of an opened hardboiled, which she sets out for the creature.</p>
<p>Del Toro’s fables may be sweet, but they aren’t tame. (His latest is most connected in spirit with his wartime fantasy “Pan’s Labyrinth,” set in Franco-era Spain.) One of the best things about “The Shape of Water” is that it’s a fairy tale that not only doesn’t hide from sexuality, but fully embraces it. The movie’s lustful soul is written across Hawkins’ face as it lights up in mischievous delight.</p>
<p>A love story between two voiceless creatures — one finned, the other not — “The Shape of Water” is a fable to counter the one America long told itself and that some still cling to: of the supremacy of the straight, white, male Bible-thumper. “We’re created in the Lord’s image,” says the married, Cadillac-driving Strickland. He’s talking to Eliza and Zelda and quickly corrects himself that it’s more him who appears godlike.</p>
<p>Eliza, Giles and Zelda are all second-class citizens, at best, in the world of “The Shape of Water,” but they — along with a rogue Russian spy (Michael Stuhlbarg) — will plot what amounts to an uprising. Del Toro’s movie dream is one where outsiders of any kind struggle to free themselves from the chains of supposed “decency.” The film’s rousing call-to-action is a silent one, signed by Eliza but with her words captioned across the center of the screen: “If we do nothing, neither are we.”</p>
<p>Nothing is out of place in “The Shape of Water,” especially its heart. The cast is universally flawless, as is the lavish production design of Paul. D. Austerberry and the sumptuous cinematography of Dan Laustsen. The film, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, won’t ever surprise you; and you’ll have no doubt of its message. It simply swims along exactly as you’d expect, through currents both whimsical and ominous, as if striving for light from the bottom of the ocean.</p>
<p>“The Shape of Water,” a Fox Searchlight release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for “sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and language.” Running time: 123 minutes. Three stars out of four.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: <a href="http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP" type="external" /> <a href="http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP" type="external">http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP</a></p>
<p>A warm, generous spirit of affection and insurrection washes over Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” a Cold War-era fairytale that submerges you in the fantastical realm of the director’s Technicolor imagination only to swell into a watery allegory for today.</p>
<p>It is, one suspects, the monster movie Del Toro was born to make. Lushly composed, vividly realized, “The Shape of Water” is lovingly designed to send you floating out to sea on a carnal bed of enchantment and acceptance. If that sounds a little much, that’s true, too, of “The Shape of Water.” It’s an exceedingly dreamy movie so intoxicated with itself that it’s sometimes easier to admire Del Toro’s classically composed film than to genuinely swoon for it.</p>
<p>With shades of “Beauty and the Beast,” ″The Shape of Water” is about a love between a mute cleaning lady, Eliza (Sally Hawkins), and a merman (Doug Jones) who has been captured from the Amazon and hauled back to 1962 Baltimore by a cattle prod-wielding military man named Stickland (Michael Shannon). At a secret government laboratory where Eliza and her talkative friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer) mop up blood, the amphibious man is studied and tortured but mostly kept chained in a murky pool so he can’t be taken by the Russians.</p>
<p>Eliza lives — and this is one of those touches a little too on-the-nose — above a grand movie palace where business is drying up. Her friend and neighbor is a gay, out-of-work artist named Giles (Richard Jenkins), who draws wholesome pictures of nuclear American families for an advertising company he used to work for. It’s his voice, in the movie’s glowing opening, that introduces the tale of “the princess without voice.” The camera drifts through a flooded apartment where Eliza sleeps on a floating divan while Alexandre Desplat’s romantic score thrums.</p>
<p>We later learn that Eliza is an orphan whose throat was thrashed as a baby, and who was found in a river. So she has a kind of affinity for water, and, after setting an egg timer for precision, masturbates in an overflowing tub. Her courtship with the merman begins with an egg, too, only with the crackle of an opened hardboiled, which she sets out for the creature.</p>
<p>Del Toro’s fables may be sweet, but they aren’t tame. (His latest is most connected in spirit with his wartime fantasy “Pan’s Labyrinth,” set in Franco-era Spain.) One of the best things about “The Shape of Water” is that it’s a fairy tale that not only doesn’t hide from sexuality, but fully embraces it. The movie’s lustful soul is written across Hawkins’ face as it lights up in mischievous delight.</p>
<p>A love story between two voiceless creatures — one finned, the other not — “The Shape of Water” is a fable to counter the one America long told itself and that some still cling to: of the supremacy of the straight, white, male Bible-thumper. “We’re created in the Lord’s image,” says the married, Cadillac-driving Strickland. He’s talking to Eliza and Zelda and quickly corrects himself that it’s more him who appears godlike.</p>
<p>Eliza, Giles and Zelda are all second-class citizens, at best, in the world of “The Shape of Water,” but they — along with a rogue Russian spy (Michael Stuhlbarg) — will plot what amounts to an uprising. Del Toro’s movie dream is one where outsiders of any kind struggle to free themselves from the chains of supposed “decency.” The film’s rousing call-to-action is a silent one, signed by Eliza but with her words captioned across the center of the screen: “If we do nothing, neither are we.”</p>
<p>Nothing is out of place in “The Shape of Water,” especially its heart. The cast is universally flawless, as is the lavish production design of Paul. D. Austerberry and the sumptuous cinematography of Dan Laustsen. The film, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, won’t ever surprise you; and you’ll have no doubt of its message. It simply swims along exactly as you’d expect, through currents both whimsical and ominous, as if striving for light from the bottom of the ocean.</p>
<p>“The Shape of Water,” a Fox Searchlight release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for “sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and language.” Running time: 123 minutes. Three stars out of four.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: <a href="http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP" type="external" /> <a href="http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP" type="external">http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP</a></p> | Review: In ‘Shape of Water,’ a Technicolor ode to outsiders | false | https://apnews.com/c615d2830184428296c5bb4fe90fdafb | 2017-11-29 | 2 |
<p>The outcome of the presidential election dashed the hopes of many people expecting measures to reverse the four-decade long growth of inequality. Few expect Donald Trump to be an ally in efforts to rein in incomes at the top and boost the income of ordinary workers. While there is always the possibility that we can be pleasantly surprised by the policies that Trump puts forward, efforts are probably best focused in other arenas.</p>
<p>One obvious target are the bloated salaries of top executives at major corporations. CEOs have always been well paid. This is reasonable given that they have demanding jobs that often require a wide range of skills. But corporate America seemed to have little trouble attracting talented top executives in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when the ratio of CEO pay to that of ordinary workers was 20 or 30 to 1. Why do we now need&#160; <a href="" type="internal">ratios of 200 to 1 or even higher</a>&#160;to get good help?</p>
<p>But corporate America seemed to have little trouble attracting talented top executives in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when the ratio of CEO pay to that of ordinary workers was 20 or 30 to 1. Why do we now need ratios of 200 to 1 or even higher to get good help?</p>
<p>And the help often doesn’t seem that good. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf will walk away with a pay package that&#160; <a href="" type="internal">averages close to $15 million a year</a>, even as the bank was involved in a massive phony account scandal under his watch. And according to&#160; <a href="" type="internal">some calculations</a>, Marissa Meyer averaged almost $55 million a year for her four-year stint at Yahoo, a period in which she never managed to turn around the company’s fortunes.</p>
<p>The basic problem is that CEO pay is not subject to the same market discipline as the pay of most other workers. Most companies are constantly looking to lower costs by paying workers less. This is the point of producing goods in Mexico or China. If a company can get comparable quality labor at a lower price, they will shift production.</p>
<p>However the boards of directors who most immediately determine CEO pay rarely act the same way. It is unlikely that many directors ever ask if they could cut their CEO’s pay by 20 to 30 percent and still keep her, or alternatively, if they could get another CEO who is just as good at half the pay? These questions are likely to go unasked, even though this is exactly what corporate boards are paid to do, because the directors tend to be more closely tied to top management than to shareholders.</p>
<p>Directors often owe their positions to top management. Once on the board, which often includes the CEO, the directors typically ally themselves with top management. After all, it is a very cushy arrangement with directors getting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for extremely part-time work. Why should they look to upset the apple cart by getting in a fight over the CEO’s pay? It is almost impossible for shareholders to dislodge even the most negligent directors. They are&#160; <a href="" type="internal">re-elected over 99 percent</a>&#160;of the time.</p>
<p>In this context, it is not surprising that CEO pay keeps rising. There are no checks in place in the current institutional structure.</p>
<p>It is almost impossible for shareholders to dislodge even the most negligent directors. They are re-elected over 99 percent of the time.</p>
<p>The obvious fix is to put in place some real checks on CEO pay. Suppose that directors had a real incentive to reduce CEO pay. For example, the directors could split any savings from cutting the pay of the CEO and next five top paid executives, as long as the company’s stock did at least as well as a peer group for the next five years. This would give directors a real incentive to ask whether they could get away with paying less.</p>
<p>This sort of shareholder power measure is something that could be pressed by pension funds, university endowments or any other party with a substantial stake in a company’s stock. And if some companies could be pressed to reform corporate governance in this way, others might follow.</p>
<p>In addition to bringing down to earth the pay of some of the country’s highest earners, lowering pay for corporate CEOs would likely have a large spillover effect. It is not uncommon for the top executives at universities, foundations and private charities to earn more than $1 million a year. Pay at the top in these other sectors followed the pay of CEOs in the corporate sector on the way up. It is likely also to follow them on the way down.</p>
<p>And, as a simple economic matter, lower pay for those at the top will leave more money for everyone else. The university that pays its president $400,000 instead of $1 million has $600,000 to pay other staff or charge lower tuition.</p>
<p>There is also another route to attack CEO pay in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofits benefit from special tax treatment, most importantly the tax deduction for charitable contributions. This allows high-income people to write off 40 percent of their contributions against their income taxes. This effectively means that the government is giving a $400,000 yearly subsidy to a university president getting a $1 million annual salary. That’s a big taxpayer subsidy for people in the top 0.1 percent of wage earners.</p>
<p>There are clear channels that people can use to put downward pressure on the pay of those at the top in both the corporate and noncorporate sector that don’t require going through Washington.</p>
<p>While the largest subsidy is the federal income tax, most states also give exemptions from their income taxes for charitable contributions. They also often exempt nonprofit institutions from state sales and property taxes.</p>
<p>There is no reason that states or even cities could not put conditions on these subsidies. For example, they could say that to benefit from these tax subsidies, nonprofit institutions would have to cap the pay of any employee at $400,000 a year, the same as the president of the United States. While many universities and other institutions will insist that they can’t attract good help for this wage (roughly 10 times the annual pay of a typical worker), that is probably a good argument that they aren’t then the sort of institution that the taxpayer should be subsidizing.</p>
<p>There are clear channels that people can use to put downward pressure on the pay of those at the top in both the corporate and non-corporate sector that don’t require going through Washington. These are clear cases where incremental gains can make a big difference. Contrary to the warnings we got from TV shows when we were young, these are actions that the kids can do at home.</p>
<p>This article originally ran PBS Newshour.</p> | We Don’t Need Washington to Fix Bloated CEO Pay | true | https://counterpunch.org/2016/11/30/we-dont-need-washington-to-fix-bloated-ceo-pay/ | 2016-11-30 | 4 |
<p />
<p>Image source: Wikimedia Commons.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>It's hard not to appreciate JPMorgan Chase's dividend when you look at the three metrics that matter most to income-seeking investors: yield, dividend growth, and payout ratio. Taken together, these show that shares of the nation's biggest bank by assets yield more than the broader market and that its dividend has considerable room to increase going forward.</p>
<p>The first metric investors use to assess the quality of a dividend stock is yield. This communicates how much a stock pays out each year in dividends relative to its share price, and is calculated by dividing the former by the latter.</p>
<p>A higher yield is generally better than a lower yield, though there are exceptions to this rule. These follow from the fact that an unusually high yield connotes high risk.</p>
<p>Williams Companiesserves as a case in point. The oil and gas pipeline company has seen its shares fall by more than 60% since July 2015, thanks to the dramatic decline in energy prices. The net result is that its dividend yield has shot up to 13%.</p>
<p>The goal is thus to find stocks that yield more than the broader market, but not excessively so. A good benchmark is the average yield on the S&amp;P 500, which is currently 2.2%.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>JPMorgan Chase's dividend hits this sweet spot. Its 2.9% yield exceeds the broader market, but not by such a large margin that investors need to be concerned.</p>
<p>The second thing that income investors look for in a stock is one that grows its dividend consistently. It isn't an immutable law of nature, but a company that has grown its dividend in the past is more likely to continue doing so in the future.</p>
<p>JPMorgan Chase checks this box as well. Although the $2.4 trillion bank slashed its quarterly payout during the financial crisis, like most every other big bank, it's since increased its dividend for five consecutive years.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/JPM/dividend" type="external">JPM Dividend</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>The one outlier is that banks with more than $50 billion in assets on their balance sheets must get approval from the Federal Reserve every year to increase their dividends. But even though the central bank has used its veto power over bank capital plans in the past, there's little reason to think that it will interfere with reasonable dividend increases at JPMorgan Chase.</p>
<p>Finally, the last metric that shines a revealing light on a stock's dividend is the payout ratio. This measures the percentage of net income that a company distributes every year via dividends.</p>
<p>There is no set rule when it comes to the payout ratio, though a smaller number is generally better than a larger one, as the former suggests that a company has plenty of room to increase its distribution in the future. A good benchmark once again is the S&amp;P 500, the average stock on which pays out two-thirds of its income each year to shareholders.</p>
<p>JPMorgan Chase's payout ratio is less than half of that, at 30%, according to Yahoo! Finance. This is in line with the capital allocation strategy at most banks, which calls for an equal distribution of net income between dividends, stock buybacks, and retained earnings.</p>
<p>In sum, if you're looking for a dividend stock that yields more than the average stock and has room to grow, you could do a lot worse than JPMorgan Chase.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/18/jpmorgan-chase-dividend-snapshot.aspx" type="external">JPMorgan Chase: Dividend Snapshot Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/JohnMaxfield37/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">John Maxfield 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=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | JPMorgan Chase: Dividend Snapshot | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/05/18/jpmorgan-chase-dividend-snapshot.html | 2016-05-18 | 0 |
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — This summer, everyday New York residents will take the stage alongside professional actors as part of the Public Theater’s annual presentation of Shakespeare in the Park.</p>
<p>The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/theater/shakespeare-in-the-park-twelfth-night.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=nyregion&amp;region=stream&amp;module=stream_unit&amp;version=latest&amp;contentPlacement=8&amp;pgtype=sectionfront" type="external">reports</a> two rotating ensembles of New Yorkers from all five boroughs will appear alongside five professional actors in a musical adaptation of “Twelfth Night,” running from July 17 to Aug. 19.</p>
<p>This will be the first time the Public Theater has included a production from its participatory theater program, Public Works, in its regular summer program. Public Works was founded in 2013 to encourage city residents to get involved in theater.</p>
<p>The free Shakespeare in the Park season will begin with “Othello,” slated to run from May 29 to June 24.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The New York Times, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com" type="external">http://www.nytimes.com</a></p>
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — This summer, everyday New York residents will take the stage alongside professional actors as part of the Public Theater’s annual presentation of Shakespeare in the Park.</p>
<p>The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/theater/shakespeare-in-the-park-twelfth-night.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=nyregion&amp;region=stream&amp;module=stream_unit&amp;version=latest&amp;contentPlacement=8&amp;pgtype=sectionfront" type="external">reports</a> two rotating ensembles of New Yorkers from all five boroughs will appear alongside five professional actors in a musical adaptation of “Twelfth Night,” running from July 17 to Aug. 19.</p>
<p>This will be the first time the Public Theater has included a production from its participatory theater program, Public Works, in its regular summer program. Public Works was founded in 2013 to encourage city residents to get involved in theater.</p>
<p>The free Shakespeare in the Park season will begin with “Othello,” slated to run from May 29 to June 24.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The New York Times, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com" type="external">http://www.nytimes.com</a></p> | New Yorkers to take the stage in summer Shakespeare musical | false | https://apnews.com/34d2af54420646388307fa74b411da76 | 2018-01-23 | 2 |
<p>your email</p>
<p>your name</p>
<p>recipient(s) email (comma separated)</p>
<p />
<p>message</p>
<p>captcha</p>
<p />
<p>The 12-day lockout ended Thursday, with faculty and staff returning to class after students missed seven days of classes. The faculty refused to accept the concessionary contract the administration tried to force them to accept, leading the union to declare victory. (Long Island University Faculty Federation/ Facebook) &#160;</p>
<p>This article was first <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/behind-the-lockout/" type="external">posted</a> at Jacobin.</p>
<p>On August 31, the Long Island University Faculty Federation Union contract expired. Faculty and management began negotiations over a new contract, and on September 6, the faculty met to discuss a proposed agreement.</p>
<p>Faculty voted 226 to 10 not to accept the contract that was provided by the administration. Rather than renegotiate the agreement, however, management decided to <a href="http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160907/downtown-brooklyn/liu-staff-protests-lockout-on-first-day-of-classes-amid-contract-stalemate" type="external">lock out</a>&#160;the university’s four hundred professors.</p>
<p>Lockouts are often confused with strikes—under both, workers aren’t working. But whereas strikes are offensive measures taken by workers against bosses, lockouts are a boss’s tool <a href="http://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/11/accumulation-by-lockout/" type="external">used to break unions</a>.&#160;Such was the case in this lockout.</p>
<p>The twelve-day lockout <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/nyregion/faculty-lockout-at-liu-brooklyn-ends-with-contract-agreement.html" type="external">ended yesterday</a>,&#160;with faculty and staff returning to class after students missed seven days of classes. The faculty&#160;refused to accept the concessionary contract the administration tried to force them to accept, leading the union to <a href="http://www.liuff.net/blog/2016/09/14/lockout-over/" type="external">declare victory</a>.</p>
<p>To discuss the lockout, the future of the union, and corporatization of higher education, Edna Bonhomme spoke with Emily Drabinski, library coordinator at LIU and secretary of the Long Island University Faculty Federation.</p>
<p>This is the beginning of my ninth year at Long Island University. I am the coordinator of library instruction here, but I’m also secretary of the union and a proud member of the Long Island University Faculty Federation. The union was the first in private higher education and has been a notable example of organizing in higher education. I think we may be one of only two or three unions in private universities in the country.</p>
<p>Having a union has really shaped our working conditions, particularly mine as a librarian. I’m on the library faculty here at LIU Brooklyn, and the collective bargaining agreement has produced for me a job that is as close to classroom faculty as any other contract that I’ve seen in higher education.</p>
<p>I don’t know what our working conditions would be like without it. They probably would be like the working conditions of the staff at LIU Brooklyn. The staff at LIU Brooklyn invariably make salaries that shock me. The secretary of the library makes somewhere around the high 20s, low 30s ($20,000 to $30,000 dollars per year). Not a living wage in contemporary Brooklyn, New York.</p>
<p>The salaries at CUNY are currently higher, they have&#160;base minimums and a step system, but the salaries that we get at Long Island University are fairly fair. At least we thought they were until we understood that we were getting paid significantly less than the faculty members at the <a href="http://liu.edu/Post" type="external">Post campus</a>.</p>
<p>It’s really important to note that the administration locked out the faculty at Long Island University Brooklyn before the faculty had a chance to review and vote on the contract as proposed by the administration.</p>
<p>When we met on Tuesday, September 6—which seems like a year ago now—we had already lost our health insurance, we had already lost our wages, we had already been locked out of our communication systems at LIU Brooklyn. Longstanding tradition at LIU has been for negotiations to continue up until the final day of the contract, August 31, and then for the faculty to meet and ratify or not ratify the contract on the first day after Labor Day.</p>
<p>They knew that was the plan. I’m the secretary (of the union), I know that I had emailed and we had reserved a room (for continued negotiations). They knew that was coming and they locked us out before that could happen.</p>
<p>Labor and employer relations at LIU Brooklyn have always been contentious—that is the task of a unionized workforce. We knew that things were going to be difficult.</p>
<p>When I arrived at LIU Brooklyn, there we six unions on campus; right now there are four. This is the <a href="http://www.liu.edu/About-LIU/Office-of-the-president" type="external">president</a>&#160;who has been hired to bust the unions, and she’s been successful so far. We knew she would be coming for us next.</p>
<p>But I don’t think any of us anticipated a lockout. It’s unprecedented because the lockout was so disruptive and so harmful to the reputation of the university as well as to the workers who were locked out. I was talking to my partner and asked, “What’s going to happen?” As we got down to the end—and we’ve been bargaining since April—the administration had not been moving, almost at all.</p>
<p>They’ve been meeting with us, they had been sticking within the letter of the law. They clearly know how to go right up to the line of bargaining in good faith, and they just stuck there.</p>
<p>They began advertising for replacement workers in July on Monster.com. Monster.com is I guess where you get your best higher education faculty to replace us. We assumed that was in the event of a strike, which of course we hadn’t and haven’t called.</p>
<p>My guess would be that they have been preparing for the lockout probably since the president arrived.</p>
<p>They told the press that the reason that they locked us out was to prevent a strike. We are a fairly militant union. We go on strike for working conditions, we go on strike for wages. That might have happened in this event—I don’t know, it’s hard to know now what would have happened had they not locked us out.</p>
<p>What they don’t say is that the other option was to negotiate in good faith and bargain a fair contract for the faculty workforce.</p>
<p>The contract has a lot of little things in it, “work rules.” We have proposed some things, then taken them off the table like eliminating criminal background checks on all faculty on a periodic basis. Some of the things that we see as having to do with academic freedom or work rules around when grades need to be submitted, the submission of syllabi, they want to institute a process of post-tenure review. A number of contract provisions seem to us to be about systematic transferring power from the unionized faculty to management.</p>
<p>Other issues relate to salary parity with our colleagues at the Post campus.&#160;We have a parity clause that says essentially that both parties want to work towards parity between both campuses. One of our faculty members got a hold of the contract at LIU Post about a year ago and saw that the minimums were systematically $10,000-15,000 less than a salary minimum at LIU Post.</p>
<p>We would like to close that gap because that’s not right. It’s hardly more expensive to live in Long Island than it is in Brooklyn at this point. There’s no reason we should be getting paid less, so we would like parity for the full-time faculty.</p>
<p>The administration has tried to get the money for parity, so they proposed a five-year parity settlement in which we’d all be brought to the base minimum after five years. They want to pay for that by taking money out of the pockets of adjuncts and out of the pockets of librarians.</p>
<p>The librarians are smaller, the adjuncts a little harder to organize, so the administration is trying to attack those two parts of the membership and pull out of their pockets the money to pay for parity for full-time faculty.</p>
<p>It’s tough. We’re a union that has a full-time and part-time faculty in it. A lot of universities don’t have that, because the management drives a wedge between the two groups, pitting them against each other. It’s hard to know how that would have played out had they not locked us out.</p>
<p>I can’t say that all of my full-time colleagues are committed to the wages and working conditions of the part-time faculty. But when management locked us out, they produced a militant, unified group of protected workers. We’re going to stay out together.</p>
<p>That said, the two-tier system was really a regressive contract. It cuts wages for new adjuncts in an effort to split the adjuncts.</p>
<p>It’s interesting—now that this has happened to us, we see how we are part of a bigger, longer, older story.</p>
<p>In retrospect, I had thought a lot of things—submitting our syllabi to the deans for review, to submit to the state education department, or learning outcomes assessment work that we do for middle states and other accreditation agencies—were simply about facilitating shared governance within the university.</p>
<p>I bought the lie that they were an important part of ensuring quality education for our students. But now, I see them as part of management assertions of control over the classroom.</p>
<p>Before the lockout, I would have said, “Whatever, you just put your learning outcomes on the syllabus—that’s not a big deal.” Every teacher I know has an idea of what they want students to learn and is interested in finding out whether or not those students learn those things, right?</p>
<p>Now I see that they wanted those things in part so that they could replace us.</p>
<p>One of the things that was most egregious to us was during the summer, administration began taking syllabi that had been submitted and going into all Blackboard courses and taking syllabi down and uploading them into course management shelves. They then handed the syllabi off to replacement faculty. Okay, so now it’s clearly not about facilitating shared governance and a quality education—it is about making our labor replaceable and fungible.</p>
<p>They’ve tried to put a wall between us and the students, but it hasn’t worked, because it’s hard to be on anybody’s side but ours in this.</p>
<p>The students are as affected as we are. They’ve been sharing the syllabi, and they’re shocking. Syllabi from 2011 with a faculty name on it that we’ve never had before. A syllabus from a history class that’s been cobbled together from a bunch of different syllabi, so it’s history until the year 1500, but they tell you to buy the textbook of 1500 to the present.</p>
<p>If you had asked me this question two weeks ago I would have said labor is dead or dying. Today I believe labor is alive and well and we can build on the power that we’ve built right now.</p>
<p>As they say, management is the best organizer. We’ve long had a union, everybody is a member, we’re an agency shop. Now everyone really feels invested in the union and knows that the union is the only way that we can secure fair wages and working conditions for ourselves at the university.</p>
<p>Having the union infrastructure available to us has been meaningful. We’ve been able to facilitate communication through union channels and that’s been important.</p>
<p>Both the New York State Union of Teachers (NYSUT) and the AFT stepped in and said, “This is not a small, local problem. This is a sign of a national problem”—the systematic transfer of rights from faculty to management, the fungibility of our labor, the fact that the primary goal is to deliver the commodity of higher education at a lower per-unit cost (which you can do by hiring part-time faculty and paying them significantly less than you pay full-timers). This is a national story.</p>
<p>As soon as we were locked out, NYSUT—who by the way was on the verge of their own strike on August 31—jumped immediately into the picture.&#160;AFT Higher Ed specifically has been critical to have in our corner.</p>
<p>Because it’s so much about if you’re going to be able to stand outside and stand against the management contract.&#160;Which was easy to do in a rage on Tuesday, September 6, but it’s harder to do as bills begin to loom and you don’t have your salary anymore and you live in Brooklyn. You pay your rent or mortgage or you have a kid who is starting school. Or you’re uninsured and you’ve got to cross the streets in this fucking town.</p>
<p>We really needed the support of others to help us manage that fear and deal with some of the material implications of this lockout. AFT and NYSUT were critical for us in that.</p>
<p>It’s interesting. They have a different local. They’re also an NYSUT union but they’re a different local. They ratified a contract extension a year ago and the terms of that contract extension played a big role in what management has been willing to ask and demand of us in this.</p>
<p>Their union, I think, has not been as .&#160;.&#160;. We have not seen the solidarity I would expect from another higher education union. The faculty are outraged, there isn’t anybody at Long Island University Post who works for the university who is happy with the leadership there. Just this morning I got an email—the&#160;faculty&#160;held a vote of no confidence in the president.</p>
<p>There’s a memo from faculty saying they support the Brooklyn campus, but that’s not enough. I heard stories of faculty in the School of Education at Post teaching courses in the School of Education at Brooklyn. They replaced the labor of Brooklyn faculty and made it possible for management to carry this out. So yeah, I have mixed feelings.</p>
<p>We have each other and that’s all we have. That is what I’ve learned. Management has power and 90 percent of the time they win. The only way that we have power is through collective power and collective organizing.</p>
<p>I’m the secretary of the union, so I’m sending a ton of emails and people are responding to my emails, but what they’re orally responding to are the conversations that they’re having with each other. The first couple nights of the protest, me and a handful of other phone bankers called hundreds of members to get them to come out to the initial actions. That was totally critical, standing together.</p>
<p>We gathered every day too with the student lockout solidarity actions, which just blew me away. They fucked with the wrong students.</p>
<p>Just having the conversations that we have when we were waiting around—because it turns out union struggle involves a lot of waiting, it’s a lot of standing up, it’s a lot of being outside when it’s hot. Those conversations have been amazing.</p>
<p>There are faculty that I had no idea were secretly hiding a militant left-labor personality underneath, like their nursing faculty outfit, that now I feel like I have a different kind of relationship with. It’s going to be about sustaining those relationships going forward.</p>
<p>The students were totally outraged. I saw that happening at two levels.</p>
<p>First the pure injustice of the fact that we make less than the professors at Long Island University Brooklyn when they pay the same tuition. They’re outraged at that. They’re outraged at just a pure customer service level. Even if they bought the line that higher education is about purchasing a credential in order to enter the workforce and get paid enough,&#160;they’re outraged that they are not getting the credential that they paid for.</p>
<p>I also think this is happening in the context of political and social movements that I haven’t seen before in my life. One of the student organizers came off of the Bernie Sanders campaign trail. He 100 percent believes that he can make a change in the world and make a difference with the organizers, with his cohort.</p>
<p>He’s totally right about that, and it’s been beautiful to see. I would like to say that the faculty has been organizing with the students and had lots of conversations with them out on the line. Faculty held their classes outside the campus and tried to connect with our students. This is a pretty organic student movement for a right to an education that I think will have implications beyond this.</p>
<p>There’s the feeling part, the affect part, where it is just meaningful to know that other people see you and that you’re not alone in the struggle. That matters a lot when we’re trying to stay out.</p>
<p>I had to pay my credit card bill this week, and it was scary to do knowing I didn’t have an income coming. It was sad because .&#160;.&#160;. this is cheesy, but my login is built around my love for the Blackbird Nation here at LIU Brooklyn (the school’s mascot). I had to type that in, and it was scary and sad.</p>
<p>They wanted us to succeed. They know that our struggle is not the only one—that we are emblematic of struggles that faculty are facing in higher education all over the country. It helped us, and helped me, see our struggle in the context of a larger struggle for higher education.</p>
<p>Eventually this contract is going to get settled. I don’t know what&#160;that’s going to look like, what’s that’s going to feel like, now that we have a galvanized, mobilized class of workers at LIU Brooklyn .&#160;.&#160;.&#160;Other unions and that solidarity, the solidarity networks that we’re building right now, will help us build a sustainable movement going forward. That’s not just about me defending myself against the lockout, but about taking back higher education for teachers and students.</p>
<p>Next steps for the movement are more unions. We need more unions in higher education, to attack corporate takeovers of higher education.</p>
<p>To make material changes in the lives of faculty, which are material changes I think in the lives of our students, we need organized labor. I hope the win here will begin to set up some of the avenues that we can use to stop the corporate takeover of&#160;higher education more generally.</p>
<p>We need to organize for a fair contract. This is a big victory—we forced administration to capitulate and put us back to work. Now we have the fight for a fair contract in front of us.</p>
<p>We also need to work toward meaningful shared governance. Faculty are better organized than they have ever been, and the time is now to put that organization to work to make sure all of us have a say in bargaining for our working conditions.</p>
<p>In These Times is proud to feature content from&#160; <a href="http://jacobinmag.com/" type="external">Jacobin</a>, a print quarterly that offers socialist perspectives on politics and economics. Support Jacobin and buy a four-issue subscription&#160; <a href="http://www.jacobinmag.com/subscribe/" type="external">for just $19.95</a>.</p> | Anatomy of a Lockout | true | http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/19473/anatomy_of_a_lockout_at_long_island_university | 2016-09-16 | 4 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>It is not just a theoretical problem, either, because when our government is out of balance, there are real consequences in people’s lives. This is what is we are seeing in the fight over funding of the state’s courts, and to a lesser degree, in the acrimony over what level of funding is necessary to operate the Legislature.</p>
<p>The state’s executive, Gov. Susana Martinez, to put it bluntly, is bullying the other two branches of government. It is both wrong and reckless. The Legislature is the people’s branch. The judiciary is the branch that makes sure there is justice in our society.</p>
<p>Using her power of the pen to veto money approved by the Legislature to pay for its own and the judiciary’s functioning, the governor has been hard at work playing partisan, political games. She recently did so in order to convince a distracted public that the state court system and the Legislature impose large, sprawling expenses upon the taxpayers. It is simply not true.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Combined, New Mexico’s judiciary and Legislature make up just over 3 percent of the total cost of state government annually. The Legislature uses less than three tenths of one percent of the entire state budget. The remaining 96 percent of all spending is mostly absorbed by the executive branch, overseen by Gov. Martinez.</p>
<p>Our courts in New Mexico have been strapped for cash for quite a few years. Now it’s catching up. They need an emergency request of $1.6 million to pay jurors until July. The Legislature appropriated the funds for juries that were due to run out on March 1. The governor vetoed it twice and said the courts should be more frugal.</p>
<p>This creates a serious problem. Without jurors, there can be no jury trials, constitutionally guaranteed to all who face jail. State law requires that jurors be paid for their time. Without the possibility of jury trials, judges would be forced to dismiss charges against defendants, setting them free and conceivably putting public safety at risk.</p>
<p>At the start of every meeting of our citizen Legislature, the two chambers pass a measure to pay for the costs of functioning, for staff and so on. Earlier this month it passed with bipartisan support. Legislators generally know what it costs to put on a session, and governors tend to respect that amount. It’s less than 3 tenths of one percent of the budget.</p>
<p>This year was different. The governor vetoed the Legislature’s “feed bill,” called it “irresponsible” and said reduce the budget. To get the staff paid, legislators sent back a new bill that lopped off $300,000.</p>
<p>Senate Minority Leader Stuart Ingle, a Republican like the governor, stated afterward that the Legislature has actually reduced its own budget repeatedly over the past years as revenues fell.</p>
<p>The judiciary and Legislature are branches of the state government co-equal with the executive under the state’s Constitution. It is wrong that Gov. Martinez is now causing havoc with their ability to carry out their work.</p>
<p>Our economy is in a long downturn. Gov. Martinez’s willingness to starve state agencies to keep intact her reputation for never having raised taxes – — her sole achievement – imperils many key services upon which we all depend. It also threatens the viability of the two other branches of government and our constitutional system of checks and balances.</p>
<p /> | Governor is wrong to starve the other branches | false | https://abqjournal.com/956233/governor-wrong-to-starve-other-branches.html | 2 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The Office of the State Engineer favors a proposal to construct a “New Mexico Unit” diverting the Gila River into four structures in side canyons with high hazard dams. The cost estimates range from $500 million to $1.1 billion. In stark contrast, $80 million total covers 11 proposed non-diversion agricultural and municipal conservation, water re-use and watershed restoration projects. Taxpayers lose from $400 to over $900 million with the New Mexico Unit option.</p>
<p>The non-diversion options can keep 12,000 or more acre feet per year in Southwest New Mexico. A summary from the Gila River Flow Needs Assessment report was presented at the Sept. 22 ISC meeting I attended. An analysis of the 47-year hydrograph of the Gila from river gauge records illustrated the effect of Consumptive Use and Forbearance Act regulations. The act sets rate of flow and volume requirements for diverting water.</p>
<p>The hydrograph showed annual divertible water ranging from 0-14,000 acre feet, with very few years where it would be equal or greater than the volume provided by conservation proposals.</p>
<p>As humans we are as much a part of the ecology as fish, birds, plants and other mammals. Disrupting the natural flow patterns of the Gila River will negatively impact all of the above.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Altered river flows will harm cottonwood establishment and growth and the spawning and feeding patterns of native fish. Non-native (many invasive) plants will increase, reducing habitat of threatened and endangered bird species.</p>
<p>The result will be an increase in insect pests of people, crops and livestock, a loss of shade along the riparian corridor and far less fishing and birding.</p>
<p>All species lose if a New Mexico Unit is pursued.</p>
<p /> | Everyone loses if Gila diversion is approved | false | https://abqjournal.com/478856/everyone-loses-if-gila-diversion-is-approved.html | 2 |
|
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>General Mattis famously known a "Mad Dog" has been known for his famous quote "?Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet?" that's the blunt advice that General Mad Dog gave the Marines as they were heading to the war in Iraq back in 2003; General Mattis is a four-star General. The President-elect has chosen him for the position of the Defence Secretary.</p>
<p>General Mad Dog has been renowned for his uncompromising approach towards enemy forces and his memorable phrases that revealed a stunning character that means business.</p>
<p>The General is 66-years old but his legacy and famous quotes have been a source of inspiration to many in the military community. The veterans have respect his leadership and openness which was greatly used in the battle field.</p>
<p>Following his meeting with Donald Trump in November, the president-elect was certain that General Mad Dog who has had 44-years of service with the Marine Corps was the ideal man for the job; Trump branded him as the true General of General's. The General was also nicknamed as "?Warrior Monk?" as he rose through the ranks since he had no children and never married.</p>
<p>The General retired in the year 2013 after having served as the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM). Centcom is the American military's wing that's in charge of the operations conducted in the Middle East.</p>
<p />
<p>General Mad Dog was also renowned for critiquing President Barack Obama's administration and his Middle East Policy and its approach on Iran. General Mad Dog has severally pointed out that Iran is the single most enduring threat that's hindering peace and stability in Middle East.</p>
<p>Before he was promoted to lead Centcom in 2010, Gen Mattis was appointed as the head of US Joint Forces Command and Nato Supreme Allied Commander in 2007.</p>
<p />
<p>It's been well known that the next president is going to inherit a mess from President Obama who has been very incompetent. This regards foreign policy as noted in the CSIS speech back in April, the US has been on strategy free mode by shifting focus from one region to another.</p>
<p />
<p>The requirements for a defense secretary state that a retired officer should be out of uniform for at least seven years before being considered for service as Defence Secretary.</p>
<p>However, with only 3 years after retirement, General Mattis will require a formal waiver from the Republican controlled congress for him to take up the role as Defense Secretary. Once confirmed as Defense Secretary, he'll be the second General in the country to serve as Pentagon Chief.</p> | Trump Transition: Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis for Secretary Of Defense | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/644-Trump-Transition-Retired-Marine-Gen-James-Mattis-for-Secretary-Of-Defense | 2016-12-02 | 0 |
<p>HANOI, Jan 25 (Reuters) - In a post-war first, the United States will send an aircraft carrier to Vietnam, Hanoi’s defence ministry said on Thursday, in a major demonstration of deepening military ties between the former enemies more than four decades after the Vietnam War.</p>
<p>The announcement of the proposed visit, that could bring the most U.S. forces to the country since the conflict ended in 1975 came during a two-day visit by U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis to Hanoi which was expected to focus on shared concerns about China.</p>
<p>The arrival of a U.S. aircraft carrier in Vietnam is expected to be welcomed by an emerging network of countries who are nervously eyeing China’s military rise, particularly its assertive stance and island-building activities in the South China Sea, a vital global trade route linking Northeast Asia with the Middle East and Europe. (Reporting by Phil Stewart and James Pearson; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort on Wednesday filed a motion in federal court seeking to dismiss charges against him, saying that the special counsel had exceeded his authority by charging Manafort with crimes not related to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.</p> Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort departs from U.S. District Court in Washington, U.S., February 28, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
<p>In a 46-page filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Manafort’s attorney Kevin Downing also said Manafort had been threatened with additional indictments and “faces a game of criminal-procedure whack-a-mole” by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who has massive government resources he cannot possibly match.</p>
<p>Reporting by Sarah Lynch; Writing by Eric Walsh; Editing by Eric Beech</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>PARKLAND, Fla. (Reuters) - U.S. students spilled out of classrooms by the tens of thousands on Wednesday, chanting slogans like “No more silence” and “We want change” as part of a coast-to-coast protest over gun violence prompted by last month’s massacre at a Florida high school.</p>
<p>The #ENOUGH National School Walkout was intended to pressure federal and state lawmakers to tighten laws on gun ownership despite opposition by the National Rifle Association (NRA), the powerful gun rights advocacy group.</p>
<p>With some students dressed in orange, the color adopted by the gun control movement, the walkouts began at 10 a.m. local time in each time zone and were scheduled to last 17 minutes. Many rallies went longer.</p>
<p>The duration was a tribute to 17 students and staff killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14. It was the latest in a series of shootings that have plagued U.S. schools and colleges over the past two decades.</p>
<p>While many school districts gave their blessings to the walkouts, others said anyone who participated would face discipline. Many students defied the warnings and left school anyway. They included over two dozen at Lindenhurst High School on New York state’s Long Island, who were at first suspended, then had their punishment reduced to detentions, according to a senior and the school superintendent.</p>
<p>In Parkland, thousands of students slowly filed onto the Stoneman Douglas school football field to the applause of families and supporters beyond the fences as law enforcement officers looked on. News helicopters hovered overhead.</p>
<p>Ty Thompson, the principal, called for the “biggest group hug,” and the students obliged around the 50-yard line.</p>
<p>“We want change!” students chanted on the sidewalks outside the school. “Can you hear the children screaming?” read one of the signs.</p>
<p>But not all students in Florida were in favor of gun control. About 80 miles (129 km) north of Parkland at Vero Beach High School, chants of “No More Silence, end gun violence,” were countered by shouts of “Trump!” and “We want guns” from other students, according to video posted by local newspaper TCPalm.</p>
<p>At New York City’s Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, crowds of students poured into the streets of Manhattan, many dressed in orange, symbolic of the bright color worn by hunters to avoid being shot by accident.</p>
<p>“Thoughts and prayers are not enough,” read one sign at LaGuardia, a jab at a response often uttered by lawmakers after mass shootings.</p>
<p>In Akron, Ohio, hundreds of students wearing orange t-shirts with black targets on the front walked out of Firestone High School.</p>
<p>At Granada Hills Charter High School in Los Angeles, students laid prone on the field of a football stadium to form a giant #ENOUGH, symbolizing the thousands of youth who die of gun violence every year in the United States.</p>
<p>Students at Columbine High, Colorado remembered the 1999 massacre at their school that began an era in which mass shootings became common in U.S. schools.</p> Students from Washington, DC-area schools carry signs during a protest for stricter gun control during a walkout by students at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
<p>“I grew up in a community still haunted by the tragedy from 19 years ago,” said 16-year-old sophomore Abigail Orton.</p> LOBBYING LAWMAKERS
<p>The walkouts were part of a burgeoning, grassroots movement prompted by the Parkland attack and came 10 days before major protests planned in Washington and elsewhere. Survivors have lobbied lawmakers and President Donald Trump in a push for new restrictions on gun ownership, a right protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.</p>
<p>“We don’t feel safe in schools anymore,” said Sarah Chatfield, a high school student from Maryland, standing with hundreds of other protesters outside the White House.</p>
<p>Chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, the NRA has got to go!” students, many of whom will be able to vote in 2020, marched to the U.S. Capitol, where Democratic lawmakers emerged from the white-domed landmark to praise them.</p> Slideshow (30 Images)
<p>The student-led initiative helped bring about a tightening of Florida’s gun laws last week, when the minimum age of 21 for buying any handguns was extended to all firearms. But lawmakers rejected a ban on the sort of semiautomatic rifle used in the Parkland attack.</p>
<p>In Washington, however, proposals to strengthen the background-check system for gun sales, among other measures, appear to be languishing.</p>
<p>After protests began on Wednesday, the NRA tweeted a picture of a semiautomatic rifle with the caption “I’ll control my own guns, thank you.”</p> SCHOOLS VARY IN RESPONSE
<p>Students from more than 3,000 schools and groups joined the walkouts, many with the backing of their school districts, according to the event’s organizers, who also coordinated the Women’s March protests staged nationwide over the past two years.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-usa-guns-legislation-passage/house-passes-bill-to-prevent-gun-violence-in-schools-in-rare-bipartisan-vote-idUSKCN1GQ2W7" type="external">House passes bill to prevent gun violence in schools in rare bipartisan vote</a>
<a href="/article/us-usa-guns-florida/suspected-florida-school-shooter-silent-in-court-judge-enters-not-guilty-plea-idUSKCN1GQ2OB" type="external">Suspected Florida school shooter silent in court, judge enters not-guilty plea</a>
<p>In Newtown, Pennsylvania, more than 100 students walked out of Council Rock High School despite warnings they would face discipline if they left the building.</p>
<p>But after the walkout, Superintendent Robert Fraser said “the level of maturity and sincerity was amazing” among protesters, and the school district waived any punishments.</p>
<p>At Norton High School in the rural-suburban district in northeastern Ohio, a small group of students, including a teenage boy with an American flag draped over his shoulder, stood apart from a larger gathering of nearly 300 students who walked out of class. One of the students also flew a large Trump flag at the end of his truck.</p>
<p>Ryan Shanor, the school’s principal, said the small group wanted to honor the victims but disagreed with sentiment they considered to be against the Second Amendment.</p>
<p>“They did not agree with everything they thought the protest was about,” he said.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus, Jonathan Allen and Alice Popovici in New York; Suzanne Barlyn in Newtown, Pennsylvania; Joe Skipper in Parkland, Florida; Scott Malone in Boston; Kim Palmer in Cleveland; Susan Heavey, Richard Cowan, Sarah N. Lynch and Ian Simpson in Washington; Lindsey Wasson in Seattle; Keith Coffman in Colorado; writing by Jonathan Allen and Andrew Hay; editing by Frank McGurty and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - A Japanese Nobel-winning chemist was discovered wandering in rural Northern Illinois and his wife found dead nearby, some nine hours after they had been reported missing from their home 200 miles away, police said on Wednesday.</p> FILE PHOTO - Ei-ichi Negishi of Japan (R) and his wife Sumire Negishi (2nd R) are surrounded by his family members as he displays his diploma and medal after winning the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry during the award ceremony at the Concert Hall in Stockholm December 10, 2010. Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency via REUTERS/File Photo
<p>Nobel Prize winner Ei-ichi Negishi, 82, was transported to a local hospital for treatment after he was spotted walking near Rockford, Illinois, at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, the Ogle County Sheriff’s Department officials said in a written statement.</p>
<p>Deputies later found the couple’s car and the body of his wife, Sumire Negishi, at the nearby Ochard Hills Landfill, the sheriff’s department said. Rockford is about 100 miles west of Chicago.</p> FILE PHOTO - Mrs. Sumire Negishi, wife of Nobel Prize laureate for Chemistry Ei-ichi Negishi of Japan attends the Nobel banquet at Stockholm's City Hall, Sweden December 10, 2010. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski/File Photo
<p>An autopsy was pending on the body of Sumire Negishi but foul play was not suspected in her death, the sheriff’s department said. No information was released on the condition of Ei-Ichi Negishi.</p>
<p>The couple was reported missing to the Indiana State Police at about 8 p.m. central time on Monday. They were last seen at their home in West Lafayette, near the Purdue University campus where Ei-Ichi is a professor of chemistry.</p>
<p>The scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2010.</p>
<p>Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Michael Perry</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Bankrupt Toys ‘R’ Us Inc is preparing to sell or close all 885 stores in its U.S. chain, risking up to 33,000 jobs, after failing to reach a deal to restructure billions of dollars in debt, a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.</p>
<p>With shoppers flocking to online platforms like Amazon.com Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>) and children choosing electronic gadgets over toys, Toys ‘R’ Us has struggled to service debt from a $6.6 billion leveraged buyout by private equity firms KKR &amp; Co LP ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=KKR.N" type="external">KKR.N</a>) and Bain Capital and real estate investor Vornado Realty Trust ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=VNO.N" type="external">VNO.N</a>) in 2005.</p>
<p>Toys ‘R’ Us had been closing one-fifth of its U.S. stores as part of efforts to emerge from one of the largest ever bankruptcies by a specialty retailer.</p>
<p>But creditors decided they can get more from liquidating assets of the toy seller, the largest in the United States and one of the best known in the world, rather than finding a way to keep the business alive, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the private negotiations.</p>
<p>A Toys ‘R’ Us spokeswoman declined to comment.</p>
<p>The company is expected to make a filing with the bankruptcy court late on Wednesday, the person said.</p>
<p>The planned closure in coming months is a blow to generations of consumers and hundreds of toy makers that sold products at the chain, including Barbie maker Mattel Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MAT.O" type="external">MAT.O</a>), board game company Hasbro Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=HAS.O" type="external">HAS.O</a>) and other large vendors such as Lego.</p>
<p>In Britain, the remaining 75 Toys ‘R’ Us shops will close within six weeks, joint administrators for the retailer said earlier on Wednesday, after they were unable to find a buyer for all or part of the business, resulting in the loss of about 3,000 jobs.</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal earlier on Wednesday reported that Toys ‘R’ Us Chief Executive David Brandon told U.S. staff about the likely closures on a conference call.</p> Slideshow (4 Images)
<p>Efforts to restructure collapsed this month after lenders decided, absent a clear reorganization plan, they could recover more by closing stores and raising money from merchandise sales, sources with knowledge of the matter said.</p>
<p>“It’s a relentlessly difficult retail environment for mall-based retailers. There just aren’t the same feet coming through the doors,” said Brian Davidoff, a financial restructuring lawyer.</p>
<p>More than 8,000 U.S. retail stores closed in 2017, roughly double the average annual store closures in the previous decade, according to data from the International Council of Shopping Centers.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">Amazon.com Inc</a> 1591.0 AMZN.O Nasdaq +2.82 (+0.18%) AMZN.O KKR.N VNO.N MAT.O HAS.O
<p>Toys ‘R’ Us is also likely to liquidate in France, Spain, Poland and Australia, Brandon said, according to The Wall Street Journal. It quoted Brandon as adding that the retailer also planned to sell operations in Canada, Central Europe and Asia.</p>
<p>Toys ‘R’ Us was already working with liquidators Tiger Capital Group LLC, Great American Group LLC, Hilco Merchant Resources LLC and Gordon Brothers Retail Partners LLC on previously announced store closures, and the four are expected to continue with the additional closings, sources said.</p>
<p>The future of the retailer’s big-box shops, many located in strip centers, was uncertain.</p>
<p>The disappearance of Toys ‘R’ Us in the United States and the UK leaves a void for hundreds of toy makers that relied on the chain as a top customer alongside WalMart Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WMT.N" type="external">WMT.N</a>) and Target Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TGT.N" type="external">TGT.N</a>).</p>
<p>Shares in Mattel, the world’s largest toymaker, and No. 2 U.S. toymaker Hasbro tumbled last week on liquidation reports. Both companies rely on Toys ‘R’ Us for roughly 10 percent of their revenues, according to their 2016 annual reports.</p>
<p>The liquidation will be more painful for small, independent toy makers that relied on the chain as a major showcase, said Lutz Muller, president of consultancy Klosters Trading Corp.</p>
<p>“A large number will go to the wall,” Muller said.</p>
<p>Reporting by Tracy Rucinski in Chicago; Additional reporting by Ismail Shakil and Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Henderson, Richard Chang and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | U.S. aircraft carrier to visit Vietnam in March - defence ministry Former Trump campaign manager Manafort files to dismiss charges 'ENOUGH': U.S. student walkout sends message on gun violence Nobel prize winner hospitalized, wife found deceased in Illinois Toys 'R' Us plans to close all U.S. stores; 33,000 jobs at risk: source | false | https://reuters.com/article/usa-vietnam-mattis-carrier/us-aircraft-carrier-to-visit-vietnam-in-march-defence-ministry-idUSL4N1PK23Q | 2018-01-25 | 2 |
<p>Mitt Romney exaggerates when he says President Obama “did nothing on immigration” for three and a half years, even when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. Obama supported and lobbied for the DREAM Act, which would have created a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. The bill passed the House in December 2010, but failed in the Senate largely because of Republican opposition.</p>
<p>Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and presumptive Republican presidential nominee, discussed immigration during a June 17 appearance on CBS’ “ <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/2102-3460_162-57454827.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody" type="external">Face the Nation</a>.” He was asked about the Obama administration’s <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/20120612-napolitano-announces-deferred-action-process-for-young-people.shtm" type="external">new policy</a> to allow certain illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children to remain and work in the country for two years (subject to renewal) without fear of deportation. The policy is designed to help those who would have been eligible for the path to citizenship under the DREAM Act. In <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/06/15/remarks-president-immigration" type="external">announcing his decision</a>, the president urged Congress to once again pass the DREAM Act “precisely because this is temporary.”</p>
<p>When asked by host Bob Schieffer if he would repeal the new policy, Romney criticized the president for not seeking a long-term solution for those covered by the policy:</p>
<p>Romney, June 17: … with regards to these kids who were brought in by their parents through no fault of their own, there needs to be a long-term solution so they know what their status is. This is something Congress has been working on, and I thought we are about to see some proposals brought forward by Senator Marco Rubio and by Democrat senators, but the President jumped in and said I’m going to take this action. He called it a stopgap measure. I– I don’t know why he feels stopgap measures are the right way to go and he–</p>
<p>Schieffer: Well, what would you do about it?</p>
<p>Romney: Well, as– as you know, he was– he was President for the last three and a half years, did nothing on immigration. Two years, he had a Democrats’ House in Senate, did nothing of permanent or– or long-term basis. What I would do is I’d make sure that by coming into office I would work with Congress to put in place a long-term solution for the– for the children of those that– that have come here illegally.</p>
<p>Asked again if he would repeal the new policy, Romney again stressed the need for a long-term solution and said the president “should have worked on this years ago.”</p>
<p>Schieffer: I won’t keep on about this but just to– to make sure I understand, would you leave this in place while you worked out a long-term solution or would you just repeal it?</p>
<p>Romney: We’ll– we’ll look at that– we’ll look at that setting as we– as we reach that. But my anticipation is, I’d come into office and say we need to get this done on a long-term basis, not this kind of a stopgap measure. What– what the President did, he– he should have worked on this years ago. If he felt seriously about this, he should have taken action when he had a Democrat House and Senate, but he didn’t.</p>
<p>It’s true that the president <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/525/introduce-comprehensive-immigration-bill-first-yea/" type="external">failed to deliver on his promise</a> to introduce comprehensive immigration legislation. But the president has a long track record on this particular issue of illegal immigrants who were brought to this country as children.</p>
<p>The president <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/12/03/10-reasons-we-need-dream-act" type="external">supported and lobbied</a> for the DREAM Act when the Democrats controlled a majority of votes in both houses of Congress. The House <a href="http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2010/roll625.xml" type="external">passed</a> the <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr5281eah/pdf/BILLS-111hr5281eah.pdf" type="external">legislation</a> Dec. 8, 2010, 216 to 198, with 208 Democrats and eight Republicans voting for it. He <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/08/statement-president-house-voting-approve-dream-act" type="external">congratulated</a> the House for passing the bill, urged the Senate to pass it and promised to sign it. The bill failed, however, to receive enough support in the Senate to end debate and advance to a final vote.</p>
<p>In the Senate, a cloture motion to end debate received <a href="http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&amp;session=2&amp;vote=00278" type="external">55 votes</a> — a clear majority and enough to assure passage had the bill been allowed to come to a straight up-or-down vote. But the measure failed because it takes 60 votes for such a motion to pass. The vote was mostly along party lines: Three Senate Republicans voted for the motion, and five Democrats were among the 41 senators who opposed it.</p>
<p>The president then exercised the administration’s executive powers to provide limited relief to the young adults who would have benefited from the failed legislation.</p>
<p>In June 2011, the director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a <a href="http://www.ice.gov/doclib/secure-communities/pdf/prosecutorial-discretion-memo.pdf" type="external">memo</a> providing ICE agents and officials with “guidance on the exercise of prosecutorial discretion.” It gave guidelines for who should not be detained and deported, and it listed 19 factors to be considered, including if the person is in “pursuit of education” in the U.S. It also listed eight “classes of individuals that warrant particular care,” including “individuals present in the United States since childhood.”</p>
<p>The administration has now taken it one step further, deferring deportation proceedings for certain illegal immigrants and allowing them to work here legally. The <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/20120612-napolitano-announces-deferred-action-process-for-young-people.shtm" type="external">new policy</a> applies to those who are 30 or younger and who came to the United States before the age of 16. They must be in school or have graduated from high school or have a high-school equivalency degree or have served in the military. They cannot have a criminal record.</p>
<p>Romney simply goes too far when he says Obama “did nothing,” and he glosses over the role of his own party in blocking the legislation the president proposed.</p>
<p>— Eugene Kiely</p> | Romney’s Immigration Exaggeration | false | https://factcheck.org/2012/06/romneys-immigration-exaggeration/ | 2012-06-18 | 2 |
<p />
<p>LinkedIn Corp, the social site for business professionals, is hoping to cash in with investors eager to gobble up shares in social networking companies such as <a href="" type="internal">Facebook</a>, with a public debut valuing the company at more than $3 billion.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>LinkedIn Corp said on Monday it would offer 7.84 million shares in its initial public offering.</p>
<p>LinkedIn, which attracts professionals and job seekers with 100 million worldwide members, priced its IPO at between $32 and $35 a share. It is generating significant interest as one of the first social networking companies to start the process of being publicly traded -- ahead of the much-anticipated Facebook IPO.</p>
<p>Social media companies including <a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a>, Groupon and Zynga have generated significant interest and are seeing multibillion dollar valuations of their shares trading on the secondary markets.</p>
<p>Last week, Renren Inc, one of the biggest social networking companies in <a href="" type="internal">China</a>, made its trading debut after a successful IPO -- another indicator of investor interest in the hot social media companies space.</p>
<p>Renren's stock surged 28.6 percent in its May 4 debut.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>LinkedIn is offering 4.8 million shares, and the rest will be sold by some of its stockholders.</p>
<p>Shares owned by co-founder and LinkedIn board Chairman Reid Hoffman, who is among those stockholders selling shares in the IPO, would represent about 21.7 percent of voting power after the offering.</p>
<p>Other key stakeholders offering shares include <a href="" type="internal">Goldman Sachs</a>, <a href="" type="internal">McGraw-Hill</a> Companies Inc and <a href="" type="internal">Bain Capital</a> Venture Integral Investors LLC.</p>
<p>Major investors Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners, which together own about two-fifths of the company, will not be participating in the IPO.</p>
<p>In January, LinkedIn had filed with U.S. regulators for an IPO to raise up to $175 million.</p>
<p>The company expects to receive net proceeds of about $146.6 million from the shares it is offering in the IPO, based on an assumed offer price of $33.50 apiece.</p>
<p>It has applied to list its shares on the <a href="" type="internal">New York Stock Exchange</a> under the symbol "LNKD."</p>
<p>LinkedIn earned $15.4 million in 2010 on net revenue of $243 million.</p> | LinkedIn IPO Price Values Company at Over $3B | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/05/09/linkedin-ipo-price-values-company-3b.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
<p />
<p>According to data from the World Bank, the average American spent a staggering $9,403 on healthcare in2014.That figure landed us in third place worldwide, putting us just behind Norway and Switzerland in terms of per-capita healthcare spending.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>For context, the World Bank's data shows that the average country spent just over $1,061 per capita in the same year. However, this figure varies from as low as $14 per capita in Madagascar to as high as $9,674 in Switzerland.</p>
<p>Perhaps a moremeaningful point of comparison is that the average high-income country spent $5,251 per capita in 2014. This figure suggests that the average American paid nearly 80% more, on average, than a person in a typicalhigh-income country. What's even more amazing is that Americans paid more per capita in 2014 than the 85 cheapest countries in the world combined!</p>
<p>Image Source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Given the political attention surrounding the surging costs of prescription drugs, you might assume that this factor is the biggest reason why Americans pay so much for healthcare. After all, many of the world's largest drugmakers are based in the U.S. -- thinkPfizer,Johnson &amp; Johnson,Gilead Sciences,Amgen-- and our demand for drugs ishigher than any other country in the world. We also incentivize drugmakers to crank out new drugs by offering long periods of patent exclusivity, and we do not regulate prices.</p>
<p>While surging drug prices certainly play a role in keeping our total spending up, you might be surprised to learn how small of an impact drugs have on our overall spending.According to data published byExpress Scripts, the nation's largestpharmacy-benefitsmanager, the average American spends just $1,370 each year on prescriptiondrugs. While this figure continues to <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/12/12/the-average-american-spends-this-much-on-prescript.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">tick higher Opens a New Window.</a>over time, it still represents only about 15% of total healthcare spending.</p>
<p>What other factors are driving our costs higher?</p>
<p>According to a 2012 paper published in the <a href="http://www.oregon.gov/oha/analytics/MetricsDocs/Eliminating_Waste_in_US_Health_Care.pdf" type="external">Journal of the American Medical Association Opens a New Window.</a>, Donald Berwick and Andrew Hackbarth argued that healthcare waste is the answer. The paper argued that overtreatment, administrative complexity, fraud, pricing inefficiencies, and a general failure to coordinate care are the primary drivers behind our vast overspending. The authors estimated that, if we successfully addressed each of these issues and used the proceeds to invest inpreventive care, we could reduce our total spending by a whopping 34%.</p>
<p>Given our elevated level of healthcare spending, you'd naturally assume that America must also rank as one of the healthiest nations on earth, right?</p>
<p>Nope.</p>
<p>A recent studyby the United Nations General Assembly, published inThe Lancet, ranked 188 countriesbased on 33 health-related indicators. This study ranked each country from 0 to 100 on a number of health measures, such as theprevalence of diseases, alcohol consumption, smoking rates, childhood nutrition, neonatal mortality, violence, and more, to get an overall measure of health.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this study noted that America didn't even make it into the top 10 list of healthiest countries. In fact, the U.S. ranked 28th overall, putting us far behind countries like Cyprus,Iceland, and Slovenia, all of which pay far less per capita than we do for healthcare.</p>
<p>Image Source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Why did we rank so poorly given our clear willingness to spend? The report noted that the U.S. performed well in areas like sanitation, hygiene, access to clean water, and control of diseases. However, the U.S. ranked poorly in measures such as childhood obesity, alcohol consumption, and "mortality due to interpersonal violence, self-harm, and unintentional poisoning."</p>
<p>Former President Barack Obama made an attempt to address this problem when he signed the Affordable Care Act, which is better known as Obamacare, into law. One of the primary selling points of his bill was that insurers were going to be forced to compete for patients in a transparent and open marketplace.</p>
<p>In addition, the bill also incentivized hospitals and physicians to share best practices, decrease patient injuries, and help reduce overuse of ineffective care by shifting payments toward the value of care provided.Theoretically, these two factors should have helped to lower costs for all and cover more Americans.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the Affordable Care Act hasn't been able to deliver on all of its promises. While the uninsured rate has fallen to record lows, several large insurers, such as UnitedHealth Group andHumana, ended up losing boatloads of money by participating in the plan. Why? The sickest patients signed up first, while many healthy individuals chose to remain uninsured. The combination led to higher losses, causing several insurers to jack up their premiums and abandon Obamacare plans in many states.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, President Trump was elected in part because of his promise to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. Last month, he took his first step to deliver on that promise with the introduction of the American Health Care Act, which was dubbed Trumpcare. While the bill proposed <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/07/23-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-republican-ob.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">several sweeping changes Opens a New Window.</a>, the largest one arguably would be the rollback of Medicaid expansion.</p>
<p>However, shortly after the bill was introduced, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 14 million Americans would lose their health insurance by 2018 if the bill passed. The bill drew a lot of criticism, which caused it to be pulled from Congress before it could be voted on.</p>
<p>In 2014, the U.S. spent more than 17% of its totalgross domestic product on healthcare. With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day, this figure is expected to reach20% by 2020. Simply put, that's an unsustainable trend that can't continue forever.</p>
<p>Economist Herbert Stein once said, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." One way or another, we'll ultimately be forced to find a solution to this problem. However, it's still anyone's guess as to what that solution might look like and how long it will take the U.S. to get there.</p>
<p>Offer from The Motley Fool: The 10 best stocks to buy now</p>
<p>Motley Fool co-founders Tom and David Gardner have spent more than a decade beating the market. In fact, the newsletter they run, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the S&amp;P 500!*</p>
<p>Tom and David just revealed their ten top stock picks for investors to buy right now.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.fool.com/mms/mark/sa-bbn-usat?aid=8867&amp;source=isausttxt0000002&amp;ftm_cam=sa-bbn-evergreen&amp;ftm_pit=6830&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here to get access to the full list! Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of 4/3/2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFTypeoh/info.aspx" type="external">Brian Feroldi Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Gilead Sciences. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Gilead Sciences and Johnson &amp; Johnson. The Motley Fool owns shares of Express Scripts and has the following options: short June 2017 $70 calls on Gilead Sciences. The Motley Fool recommends UnitedHealth Group. 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> | Wow! Americans Pay More for Healthcare per Person Than the 85 Cheapest Countries Combined | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/04/13/wow-americans-pay-more-for-healthcare-per-person-than-85-cheapest-countries.html | 2017-04-13 | 0 |
<p>Former Obama “Homeland Security” Secretary Jeh Johnson is applauding U.S. cities and states that are demanding the removal of Confederate statues and memorials because he believes they are a threat to “homeland security.”</p>
<p>During an appearance on “This Week,” Johnson embraced the elimination of history.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>“What alarms so many of us from a security perspective is that so many of the statues, the Confederate monuments are now modern day becoming symbols and rallying points for white nationalism, for neo-Nazis, for the KKK, and this is most alarming,” Johnson told Martha Raddatz.</p>
<p>“We fought a world war against Nazism,” he said. “The KKK reined terror on African-Americans for generations.</p>
<p>“And so a number of Americans, rightly, Republican and Democrat are very concerned and very alarmed and I salute those in cities and states who are taking down a lot of these monuments for reasons of public safety and security,” Johnson said.</p>
<p>“And that’s not a matter of political correctness, it’s a matter of public safety and homeland security,” he added.</p>
<p>On Saturday, an Indiana man didn’t wait for his city or state to take down the monument.</p>
<p>RTV6 <a href="http://www.theindychannel.com/news/local-news/indianapolis/impd-man-arrested-for-damaging-confederate-statue-in-garfield-park-with-hammer" type="external">reports</a>:</p>
<p>A man has been arrested after police say he damaged the Confederate statue at an Indianapolis park with a hammer on Saturday.</p>
<p>Police were called to Garfield Park just after noon after someone reported a man was destroying a statue.</p>
<p>When Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers arrived they found the man hitting the statue with a hammer and chipping pieces off of it.</p>
<p>Police arrested Anthony Ventura, 30, at the scene. He’s charged with vandalism.</p>
<p>Indianapolis has been debating whether to tear down the monument.</p> | JEH: Confederate monuments threaten ‘homeland security’ | true | http://theamericanmirror.com/jeh-confederate-monuments-threaten-homeland-security/ | 2017-08-21 | 0 |
<p />
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Shares of Atwood Oceanics (NYSE: ATW) continued their recent ascent, jumping more than 11% by 10:45 a.m. EST on Friday. The stock is now up 86% over the past month, with the bulk of those gains coming since OPEC signed its agreement to cut output at the end of November:</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/ATW" type="external">ATW</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>There aren't any catalysts fueling today's move. While crude oil is up 1.5%, to $51.50 a barrel, that is not a significant move considering how volatile prices have been over the past month. Further, that price point is not high enough to move offshore drilling projects forward, which is what Atwood needs to do to secure new leases for some of its idle drilling rigs.</p>
<p>It is unclear how long it will be before crude hits that pivot point, which is why Atwood recently secured a deal to push back the delivery dates and milestone payments for its last two newbuild ultra-deepwater drillships. Under the terms of that agreement, which it signed on Tuesday, the company was able to push back the delivery of its Atwood Admiral and Archer by two years, to September 2019 and June 2020, respectively. Those moves boosted the company's liquidity by $250 million by pushing back the final payments until the end of 2022. This agreement shows just how cautious the company is in relying on a recovery in the offshore drilling market.</p>
<p>Improving liquidity has been a major focus for offshore drillers in the wake of the OPEC agreement. That explains why rivals Transocean (NYSE: RIG) and Rowan (NYSE: RDC) both issued senior notes this week. Transocean issued $625 million in 6.35% senior notes due in 2024 to partially finance the construction of its Deepwater Proteus newbuild. Meanwhile, Rowan issued $500 million of 7.375% notes due in 2025 to refinance nearer-term debt maturities, including notes maturing next year. By increasing their liquidity now, Transocean, Rowan, and Atwood Oceanics will have more breathing room later on if the OPEC deal does not boost oil prices or offshore drilling activities as quickly as hoped.</p>
<p>While investors are growing more optimistic about a potential improvement in the offshore drilling market, drillers are muchmore cautious. That is evident in their decision to take advantage of the market's optimism and boost liquidity, just in case reality turns out to be less rosy than the current optimistic outlook.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Atwood Oceanics 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=56eed0c3-c178-4c86-a50e-b2819119d69f&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 Atwood Oceanics 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=56eed0c3-c178-4c86-a50e-b2819119d69f&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/TMFmd19/info.aspx" type="external">Matt DiLallo Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Atwood Oceanics. 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> | Atwood Oceanics, Inc. Is Up Double Digits Again Today | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/12/09/atwood-oceanics-inc-is-up-double-digits-again-today.html | 2016-12-09 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>One of the men was killed and the other is expected to survive, Sheriff Heath White said.</p>
<p>Morgan Dunkle of Moriarty was arrested on suspicion of murder.</p>
<p>The sheriff’s office was called to the Club 203, a Moriarty strip club, shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday when shots were reported. White said he was responding when he saw Dunkle’s vehicle driving on Interstate 40. The sheriff pursued the suspect, who crashed near a DWI memorial.</p>
<p>Dunkle fled his vehicle and continued to run from the sheriff, stripping as he ran. He was quickly arrested in his underwear by deputies.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“He started to remove his clothing,” White said. “I couldn’t say why.”</p>
<p>White said Dunkle shot the two victims in the strip club parking lot. The men had gotten into a fight in the topless club, and the fight spilled into the parking lot where the shooting took place.</p>
<p>White said deputies have identified the two men who were shot, who are from Moriarty. They are not releasing their identities because not all of their family members have been notified.</p>
<p>The strip club, on its Facebook page, posted a picture of the two men and said it was a somber day for the club. Club 203 did not open Saturday, out of respect, but it will be accepting donations for the dead man’s family when it reopens, according to its Facebook page.</p> | 2 men shot at strip club; 1 dies | false | https://abqjournal.com/486252/one-man-killed-outside-moriarty-strip-club.html | 2 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>A rapid-moving, potent storm system will plow into New Mexico later today, bringing with it a very slight chance of showers in the Albuquerque area tonight and temperatures in the low 20s Wednesday night into Thursday morning.</p>
<p>"Wednesday night and Thursday morning will see the coldest temperatures of the year," said Clay Anderson, a meteorologist with the Albuquerque office of the National Weather Service. "Thursday overall will be a beautiful day, but it will start out with cold temperatures."</p>
<p>Anderson said the main impact of the storm will be potentially damaging winds in other parts of the state.</p>
<p>"I'm not expecting wind warnings for Albuquerque," he said. "We are looking at maybe 20 mph to 30 mph, with gusts to 40 mph."</p>
<p>Deirdre Kann, science officer for the weather service's Albuquerque office, characterized winds in the Albuquerque area as pesky on Tuesday and more annoying on Wednesday.</p>
<p>The Albuquerque area is unlikely to receive much precipitation from the storm system, but Anderson said 1 inch to 2 inches of snow is possible for the Grants, Farmington, Taos and Chama areas. He said there is the possibility of blowing snow and dangerous driving conditions in those areas during the heart of the storm today and Wednesday.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Aside from the snow up north, Anderson said there is not much potential for substantial precipitation in the state within the next 10 days.</p>
<p>Temperatures in the Albuquerque area are expected to get down to 32 degrees tonight. Wednesday, Veterans Day, will be mostly sunny with a high of 53 and a low that night of 24. Thursday will be sunny with a high of 55 and a low of 27, and Friday will be sunny and 55 during the day, and clear and 30 at night.</p>
<p>Anderson said the weekend is shaping up to be uneventful, with temperatures reaching 56 on Saturday and 59 on Sunday. Lows on Saturday and Sunday are expected to be 33-34 degrees.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Cold snap may bring showers, wind and snow | false | https://abqjournal.com/673277/cold-snap-may-bring-showers-wind-and-snow.html | 2015-11-10 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>With nine lethal injections in 2016, Georgia accounted for nearly half of the 20 executions nationwide. It was the most inmates the state has put to death in a calendar year since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed executions to resume 40 years ago. It was almost twice as many as the state’s previous record of five, set in 1987 and matched last year.</p>
<p>Texas, meanwhile, executed seven inmates, the fewest the state has put to death since 1996, when three people were executed. Alabama had two executions, and Florida and Missouri had one apiece.</p>
<p>Executions and new death sentences have been on the decline in recent years for a variety of reasons, and that continued in 2016.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Even as Georgia carried out 14 executions in 2015 and 2016, no new death sentences were imposed in the state. Texas sent four people to death row in 2016 and two in 2015.</p>
<p>Georgia typically sets an execution date once an inmate has exhausted all of his appeals. In recent years, however, executions have been halted for months at a time, essentially creating a backlog of inmates who were eligible for execution that was cleared this year.</p>
<p>A legal challenge to the change in the execution method from three drugs to one drug stopped executions in Georgia from July 2012 to February 2013. Executions paused again from July 2013 to May 2014 while lawyers challenged a law that makes secret the source of the state’s execution drugs. And another lull came from March to September 2015 after a drug intended for use in an execution was found to have precipitated, leaving solid chunks floating in what should have been a clear solution.</p>
<p>There are currently no Georgia inmates who are eligible for execution, according to the attorney general’s office, and the state is unlikely to have another record year in 2017.</p>
<p>In Texas, a dozen condemned inmates had their scheduled executions postponed in 2016, some more than once, according to records kept by the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that provides analysis and information about capital punishment.</p>
<p>A combination of factors led to the 20-year low in Texas, said Kathryn Kase, executive director of the Texas Defender Service.</p>
<p>The state was the first in the country to create a junk science writ, which can give defense attorneys an opportunity to reopen convictions and ask the courts to take a closer look if evidence used to convict the inmate is no longer considered scientifically sound, she said.</p>
<p>The state’s highest court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, has been raising more questions than in the past, causing cases to be delayed. And the U.S. Supreme Court has continued to consider challenges to practices used in Texas, including taking two cases this fall, Kase said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We’ve got a hell of a lot of reform going on in a lot of different spheres,” she said. “But that is owed to Texas’ very shameful record of a broken capital justice system.”</p>
<p>Texas already has scheduled nine executions for the first half of next year. There’s no way to know how many will happen, Kase said.</p>
<p>One thing Georgia and Texas have in common that has allowed them to execute more inmates than other states is a seemingly reliable supply of execution drugs. Both states use pentobarbital made by compounding pharmacies whose identities are shielded by law. That has allowed them to overcome shortages caused when traditional drug manufacturers, some bowing to pressure from opponents of capital punishment, refused to sell their products for use in lethal injections.</p>
<p>Ohio, on the other hand, postponed all scheduled executions this year because the state wasn’t able to secure the drugs it needed, and other states also have struggled to get the necessary drugs.</p>
<p>Other states slowed their pace because courts have declared death penalty statutes and systemic practices unconstitutional, said Death Penalty Information Center executive director Robert Dunham.</p>
<p>“That has ended up reversing sentences in cases where people might have been executed otherwise,” he said.</p> | Georgia leads nation in number of executions as Texas slows | false | https://abqjournal.com/912504/georgia-leads-nation-in-number-of-executions-as-texas-slows.html | 2016-12-20 | 2 |
<p />
<p>Kia Motors &lt;000270.KS&gt; said on Thursday it is drawing up a contingency plan to cope with the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump, reflecting growing wariness by Asian exporters about the prospect of U.S. protectionism.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Trump has promised to revive U.S. industrial jobs by forcing automakers to stop making cars in Mexico, threatening to tax imports and promising to make it more attractive for businesses to operate in the United States.</p>
<p>South Korea-based Kia Motors last year started production at a new plant in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, while sister firm Hyundai Motor &lt;005380.KS&gt; will begin making cars at Kia's Mexico plant this year.</p>
<p>"We acknowledge that there are a lot of concerns about the uncertainty stemming from the new U.S. administration," Han Chun-soo, Kia's chief financial officer, said during an earnings conference call.</p>
<p>"While closely monitoring its policy directions, we are preparing to respond by setting up a step-by-step, scenario-based contingency plan."</p>
<p>Trump has warned German carmakers and Japan's Toyota &lt;7203.T&gt; of a "big border tax" if they build cars for the U.S. market in Mexico. So far however he has not commented on the South Korean carmakers' plans.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Kia plans to more than double its Mexico output this year to 250,000 vehicles and aims to boost U.S. sales by 8 percent to 699,000 vehicles. Hyundai and Kia together rank fifth in global car sales.</p>
<p>Hyundai Motor on Wednesday said it expected competition and protectionist measures to increase, after posting its lowest quarterly profit in about five years.</p>
<p>Hyundai Motor group, which includes Kia, last week said it planned to lift U.S. investment by 50 percent to $3.1 billion over five years and could build a new plant there.</p>
<p>KIA TARGETS SUVs</p>
<p>Kia on Thursday said it planned to launch a small sport utility vehicle in South Korea this year, in a bid to take advantage of a booming segment.</p>
<p>The model would be a "crossover utility vehicle (CUV)" based on its Pride sedan, also known as the Rio, the carmaker said without elaborating.</p>
<p>Kia Motors already sells a small SUV called Niro, a gasoline-electric hybrid model.</p>
<p>It also planned to introduce a small SUV in Europe this year, it added.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Stephen Coates and Tony Munroe)</p> | South Korea's Kia Motors drafts Trump contingency plan | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/01/26/south-korea-kia-motors-drafts-trump-contingency-plan.html | 2017-01-26 | 0 |
<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - Neurotech International Ltd:</p>
<p>* - SECURED ASHNEV MEDICALS AS ITS MARKETING AND DISTRIBUTION PARTNER IN INDIA? Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - As adult-film actress Stormy Daniels looked on, a federal judge ordered U.S. President Donald Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen to cough up the name of client he had hoped to keep secret at a Monday court hearing: Sean Hannity.</p>
<p>Hannity is a conservative television host known for passionately advocating for Trump on his Fox News show, and often receiving public praise from Trump in return. Calls to a Fox News spokeswoman were not immediately returned.</p>
<p>Cohen, Trump's fiercely loyal and pugnacious lawyer, was in court to ask a judge to limit the ability of federal prosecutors to review documents seized as part of a criminal investigation. The investigation has frustrated the White House as it has spread to enfold some of Trump's closest confidantes.</p>
<p>But in the background, Cohen also had to contend with Daniels' efforts to keep attention on her story, relating to what she says is a past affair with Trump.</p>
<p>Daniels is engaged in a separate civil legal fight over $130,000 she received in a 2016 agreement arranged by Cohen to stop her from discussing a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump a decade earlier.</p>
<p>Photographers knocked over barricades outside the courthouse as they scrambled to get pictures of Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, arriving dressed in a lavender suit. Inside, she quietly took a seat in the public gallery with her lawyer.</p>
<p>Cohen has argued that some of the documents and data seized in last week's raids are protected by attorney-client privilege or otherwise unconnected to the investigation. But Judge Kimba Wood rejected his efforts to mask the identity of Hannity, a client Cohen had said wanted to avoid publicity.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen arrives at federal court in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., April 16, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Segar
<p>"I understand if he doesn't want his name out there, but that's not enough under the law," Wood said, before ordering a lawyer for Cohen to disclose the name.</p>
<p>Cohen has asked the court to give his own lawyers the first look at the seized materials so they can identify documents that are protected by attorney-client privilege.</p>
<p>Failing that, they want the court to appoint an independent official known as a special master, a role typically filled by a lawyer, to go through the documents and electronic data seized under a warrant and decide what prosecutors can see.</p> Slideshow (10 Images)
<p>Prosecutors have asked that the documents be reviewed for attorney-client privilege by a "filter team" of lawyers within their own office, who would be walled off from the main prosecution team.</p>
<p>A lawyer for Trump, Joanna Hendon, asked in a filing on Sunday to be allowed to review documents that in any way relate to the president, which she described as being seized amid a "highly politicized, even fevered, atmosphere." She also appeared in court on Monday.</p>
<p>A person familiar with the raids said last week that the information Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were seeking included information about payments to Daniels.</p>
<p>Reporting by Brendan Pierson, Karen Freifeld and Jonathan Stempel in New York, Writing by Jonathan Allen, Editing by Susan Thomas and Rosalba O'Brien</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Fox News television host Sean Hannity said in a statement Monday that he has never retained U.S. President Donald Trump's longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.</p> FILE PHOTO: Conservative TV and radio personality Sean Hannity gestures during remarks during the opening day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual gathering of conservative politicians, journalists and celebrities at National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., February 22, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Theiler
<p>"Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter," Hannity said in an e-mailed statement provided to Reuters. "I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.&#160; I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third party."</p>
<p>At a hearing in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, a judge ordered a lawyer for Cohen to disclose that Hannity is a client of Cohen.</p>
<p>Reporting By Jessica Toonkel; editing by Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Commerce has banned American companies from selling components to leading Chinese telecom equipment maker&#160;ZTE Corp for seven years for violating the terms of a sanctions violation case, U.S. officials said on Monday.</p>
<p>The U.S. action, first reported by Reuters, could be devastating to ZTE since American companies are estimated to provide 25 percent to 30 percent of the components used in ZTE's equipment, which includes networking gear and smartphones.</p>
<p>The ban is the result of ZTE's failure to comply with an agreement with the U.S. government after it pleaded guilty last year in federal court in Texas to conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions by illegally shipping U.S. goods and technology to Iran.</p>
<p>The Chinese company, which sells smartphones in the United States, paid $890 million in fines and penalties, with an additional penalty of $300 million that could be imposed.</p>
<p>"If the company is not able to resolve it, they may very well be put out of business by this. Many banks and companies even outside the U.S. are not going to want to deal with them," said Eric Hirschhorn, a former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce who was heavily involved in the case.</p>
<p>As part of the agreement, Shenzhen-based ZTE Corp promised to dismiss four senior employees and discipline 35 others by either reducing their bonuses or reprimanding them, senior Commerce Department officials told Reuters. But the Chinese company admitted in March that while it had fired the four senior employees, it had not disciplined or reduced bonuses to the 35 others.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-usa-china-zte-britain/uks-ncsc-says-national-security-risk-from-equipment-from-chinas-zte-cannot-be-mitigated-idUSKBN1HN1ZY" type="external">UK's NCSC says national security risk from equipment from China's ZTE cannot be mitigated</a>
<a href="/article/us-usa-china-zte-suppliers/zte-ban-hits-shares-of-u-s-optical-component-suppliers-idUSKBN1HN1ZQ" type="external">ZTE ban hits shares of U.S. optical component suppliers</a>
<p>Under terms of the ban, U.S. companies cannot export prohibited goods, such as chip sets, directly to ZTE or via another country, beginning immediately.</p>
<p>Shares of big U.S. ZTE suppliers fell sharply on the Commerce ban. Acacia Communications Inc, which got 30 percent of its total 2017 revenue from ZTE, tumbled 35 percent, hitting a near two-year low.</p>
<p>Shares of optical companies including Lumentum Holdings Inc fell 6.6 percent and Finisar Corp dropped 2.7 percent. Oclaro Inc, which got 18 percent of its fiscal 2017 revenue from ZTE, lost 13.1 percent.</p>
<p>ZTE "provided information back to us basically admitting that they had made these false statements," said a senior department official. "That was in response to the U.S. asking for the information."</p>
<p>"We can't trust what they are telling us is truthful," the official said. "And in international commerce, truth is pretty important."</p>
<p>ZTE officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.</p>
<p>The ban on supplying ZTE comes two months after two Republican Senators introduced legislation to block the U.S. government from buying or leasing telecommunications equipment from ZTE or its Chinese rival Huawei Technologies Co Ltd[HWT.UL], citing concern the companies would use their access to spy on U.S. officials.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Britain's main cyber security agency said on Monday it has written to organizations in the UK's telecommunications sector warning about using services or equipment from ZTE.</p> ?DEVASTATING?
<p>Douglas Jacobson, an exports control lawyer who represents suppliers to ZTE, called the ban highly unusual and said it would severely affect the company.</p>
<p>"This will be devastating to the company, given their reliance on U.S. products and software," said Jacobson. "It's certainly going to make it very difficult for them to produce and will have a potentially significant short and long-term negative impact on the company."</p>
<p>ZTE has sold handset devices to U.S. mobile carriers AT&amp;T Inc, T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp. It has relied on U.S. companies including Qualcomm Inc, Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp for components.</p>
<p>The U.S. action against ZTE is likely to further exacerbate current tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade. After the U.S. placed export restrictions on ZTE in 2016 for Iran sanctions violations, the China's Ministry of Commerce and Foreign Ministry criticized the decision.</p>
<p>A five-year federal investigation found last year that ZTE had conspired to evade U.S. embargoes by buying U.S. components, incorporating them into ZTE equipment and illegally shipping them to Iran.</p>
<p>ZTE, which devised elaborate schemes to hide the illegal activity, agreed to plead guilty after the Commerce Department took actions that threatened to cut off its global supply chain.</p>
<p>The U.S. government had allowed the company continued access to the U.S. market under the 2017 agreement.</p> Visitors pass in front of the Chinese telecoms equipment group ZTE Corp booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Perez
<p>The new restrictions stem from a Jan. 16 report by a U.S. monitor appointed by a federal judge in Texas who accepted the guilty plea in March 2017. Although Commerce Department officials would not discuss the report, they said the department followed up in February.</p>
<p>The U.S. government's investigation into sanctions violations by ZTE followed reports by Reuters in 2012 that the company had signed contracts to ship millions of dollars' worth of hardware and software from some of the best known U.S. technology companies to Iran's largest telecoms carrier.</p>
<p>(To read the Reuters report that exposed the practice, click Special Report: <a href="" type="internal">here</a></p>
<p>Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York and Steve Stecklow in London; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Netflix Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NFLX.O" type="external">NFLX.O</a>) added more international subscribers than expected in the first quarter as a slate of original shows including "Altered Carbon" kept viewers hooked to the video streaming service provider.</p> The Netflix logo is pictured on a television in this illustration photograph taken in Encinitas, California, U.S., January 18, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake
<p>The company said on Monday it signed up 5.46 million subscribers internationally in the quarter compared with the average analyst estimate of 5.02 million, according to data and analytics firm FactSet.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NFLX.O" type="external">Netflix Inc</a> 307.78 NFLX.O Nasdaq -3.87 (-1.24%) NFLX.O
<p>Netflix said it added 7.4 million total subscribers compared with the average analyst estimate of 6.5 million, according to FactSet.</p>
<p>Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | BRIEF-Neurotech International Says? Secured Ashnev Medicals As Its Marketing & Distribution Partner In India? Trump's personal lawyer coughs up name of mystery client: Sean Hannity Sean Hannity says he never retained Trump lawyer Michael Cohen U.S. bans American companies from selling to Chinese phone maker ZTE Netflix subscriber growth beats on strong original content | false | https://reuters.com/article/brief-neurotech-international-says-secur/brief-neurotech-international-says-secured-ashnev-medicals-as-its-marketing-distribution-partner-in-india-idUSFWN1PC1CD | 2018-01-17 | 2 |
<p>The first thing Judd Apatow does in his new stand-up special is tell the crowd that he has wanted to do this kind of show since he was a kid.</p>
<p>The second thing he does is joke about how famous he is.</p>
<p>“There’s a little bit of a freak show element to me doing it,” Apatow says of his act and the need to lead it off by addressing his Judd Apatow-ness. “If I ignored that it was weird that I was up there, the audience wouldn’t [listen to my act]. They would just want to know about me and my life.”</p>
<p>Apatow, who is nearing his 50th birthday, sits in a conference room at his production company’s L.A. office. Behind him are photos of the casts of “Freaks and Geeks” and “Girls,” two of his best-loved TV shows. To his left is a whiteboard bearing story notes for season three of one of the current series he executive produces, <a href="http://variety.com/t/hbo/" type="external">HBO</a>’s “Crashing.” The giant TV at the front of the room has just been turned off after playing footage from an upcoming <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/global/hbo-europe-kit-harington-guy-fawkes-gunpowder-1202629512/" type="external">HBO</a> documentary series he directed about his mentor, Garry Shandling. For more than a decade, Apatow has been one of comedy’s most prolific writer-producer-directors — and probably its most influential. Now he has decided to be a stand-up comedian again.</p>
<p>“Judd Apatow: The Return,” which premieres Dec. 12 on Netflix, was recorded in July at the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal and culminates Apatow’s unlikely reunion with the form he abandoned decades ago. Weirdly, it was quitting stand-up that put Apatow on the path to becoming one of comedy’s grandmasters — finding so much success as a creator that when he began to dabble in performing again, the gates were thrown open to him in a way that they never were when he was young. It’s a little like basketball god Michael Jordan returning to play baseball — the sport he loved as a kid — if Jordan hadn’t sucked at baseball the second time around.</p>
<p>Apatow dove into stand-up as an 18-year-old in 1985 and spent seven years trying to break through. He earned a spot on HBO’s “Young Comedians Special” but believed he would never find the kind of success as a performer that peers such as Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey were enjoying — or that he would ever be as good as his idols, Shandling and George Carlin. When Fox in 1992 picked up “The Ben Stiller Show,” which he co-created, Apatow left stand-up.</p>
<p>“It felt like the universe was telling me to be a writer and producer,” he says.</p>
<p>The universe didn’t steer him wrong. In the 22 years between quitting stand-up and picking up the mic again, Apatow wrote and directed features “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up,” “Funny People,” “This Is 40” and “Trainwreck.” He executive produced “Freaks and Geeks,” “Girls,” “Love” and “Crashing” for TV and produced “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” “Bridesmaids” and “The Big Sick” for the big screen. In the process he’s launched or bolstered the careers of James Franco, <a href="http://variety.com/t/seth-rogen/" type="external">Seth Rogen</a>, Lena Dunham, <a href="http://variety.com/t/amy-schumer/" type="external">Amy Schumer</a>, Paul Rudd, Kumail Nanjiani and his own wife, Leslie Mann. He’s also launched and bolstered two actress daughters, Maude, 19, and Iris, 15.</p>
<p>Apatow had done a few stand-up sets while writing 2009’s “Funny People” as a way to workshop jokes for Sandler and Rogen’s characters, both comedians. But it was in 2014, while working with Schumer on the screenplay for “Trainwreck,” that he began to flirt with the idea of standing up again in earnest.</p>
<p>“Amy would come back from the road to have writing sessions with me, and it just sounded like so much fun,” he says. “It reminded me that that’s all I ever wanted to do. I was seeing her get more and more successful and building this great audience for herself. And on some level I just got jealous and thought, ‘I used to do that.’”</p>
<p>“Trainwreck” shot in New York, where Apatow owns an apartment that’s walking distance from the Comedy Cellar. “One night when we were in prep for ‘Trainwreck,’ I said to Amy, ‘I’m going to go onstage at the Comedy Cellar just to make you laugh, so you can see what it was like when I did it.’”</p>
<p>Schumer and her sister Kim Caramele gave Apatow premises for stand-up jokes. “Oddly, it went well,” he says. “It annoyed Amy. She really wanted to watch me bomb and suffer.”</p>
<p>The club invited him to come back anytime. “So I took advantage of that,” he says. “They were so nice to me — and no one was nice to me when I started out.” During shooting on “Trainwreck,” Apatow would end most of his days performing at the Comedy Cellar. “It really felt like I was funnier all day with Amy as a result of doing these sets. It was just firing up a part of my brain that had been asleep.”</p>
<p>When he returned to L.A., he continued performing. He built up enough of an act to perform at Just for Laughs in 2016. The last show, which he headlined, was attended by several Netflix executives; Apatow was offered a special on the spot. He asked for a year to hone the act first.</p>
<p>In the year that followed, he worked on new seasons of “Love” and “Crashing,” on the Shandling project (“I thought if O.J. Simpson is worth seven hours, Garry’s got to be worth at least four”) and on another HBO documentary, “May It Last,” about the band the Avett Brothers. But stand-up moved from hobby to priority. He performed almost every evening, starting most nights with a spot at the Improv, then heading to The Comedy Store to do each of its three rooms. He would sometimes go back to the Improv for the late show. He also performed at the Laugh Factory and at Nanjiani and Jonah Ray’s Meltdown Comics show.</p>
<p>“I think maybe the most astounding thing about Judd is that he’s doing so many things — working on several TV shows, producing movies — and still manages to have a triumphant return to stand-up,” says “Crashing” creator and star Pete Holmes. “It’s really annoying. I can only do one thing at a time.”</p>
<p>&#160;Apatow doesn’t flatter himself when asked about the stand-up he performed in his 20s.</p>
<p>“I was terrible,” he says. “I look back, and there’s so little to be proud of. And I was getting on TV; it shows you the low standards.”</p>
<p>Having grown up on Long Island, he admired comics like Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld and Paul Reiser.</p>
<p>“There were a lot of great comedians who grew up not too far from where I grew up,” he says. “But I loved it more than I was good at it.” He ascribes his failings to “insecurity and also the result of being really young, having no strong opinions and no life experience. So I was aware that I needed something to do a better act, and now that I’m about to turn 50, I have those things.”</p>
<p>He has them in spades. Apatow’s act as captured in “The Return” is highly personal. He jokes about his relationship with Mann and how much more attractive she is. He leans into over-the-top impressions of his teenage daughters. Much of what he offers is classic dad-and-husband humor.</p>
<p>But much of it also is about Apatow’s odd celebrity. He’s no Franco. But as a producer and shepherd of comedy talent, he has achieved a celebrity shared by no one else in his station save Lorne Michaels. That fame is fueled in part by how much of his personal life is in so much of his work. Mann has starred in several of his movies — as have Maude and Iris, usually playing Mann’s character’s daughters. Maude, once the subject of a New York Times profile about her status as a social-media influencer, had a recurring role on “Girls.” Iris is recurring on “Love.”</p>
<p>“What I learned quickly doing stand-up was that people seemed amused to see me,” he says. “What was happening was they felt like they knew me already from watching the movies, and that the stand-up was an extension of what they already knew about me. Once I tapped into that, it all became easier.”</p>
<p>“It really felt like I was funnier all day with Amy [Schumer] as a result of doing these sets. It was just firing up a part of my brain that had been asleep.”Judd Apatow</p>
<p>In “The Return,” Apatow merges two seemingly conflicting themes — one that he is a family man with regular problems, the other that he is a Hollywood poobah surrounded by famous women. At one point in the show, he displays a photo of himself, Mann and President Obama to set up a joke about his marriage. He closes with a story about Iris acting like a very stereotypical teenage daughter in a very rarefied setting.</p>
<p>“I feel like my life is basically the same as everybody else’s,” he says. “We all have a family that we’re trying to make function. All the issues that our kids have at each stage are the same. And the fact that ‘Knocked Up’ did well does not make anything easier when it comes to your kids and trying to make your family work.”</p>
<p>Not all the jokes are domestic. If Apatow lacked strong opinions in his 20s, he certainly has them now. He was a vocal critic of Bill Cosby at a time when many in the entertainment business were hesitant to address mounting rape allegations against the aging comic. He has been no less vocal in his criticism of President Trump, he of the “Access Hollywood” tape.</p>
<p>“I tried to be very careful to do stuff that I thought might hold up for a little while,” Apatow says. “But I also thought, ‘I’m outraged by everything Donald Trump is doing,’ so I can’t do a special and not make that statement with a few jokes. And I am outraged by Bill Cosby.”</p>
<p>In the months since the special was taped, stories of sexual assault and harassment have taken over the news cycle, spurred by the allegations against disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein. “That’s changed the core problem with this,” Apatow says. “This was always in the shadows, and it’s not in the shadows anymore, so now people have to deal with it.”</p>
<p>Apatow, meanwhile, is at an inflection point. His documentaries are wrapped, and season three of “Love” soon will be as well. Work is just beginning on the third season of “Crashing,” yet Apatow’s dance card is less full than usual. He wants to direct another feature soon. But having battled with network and studio executives in his early TV days, he sees lots of upside in that medium at this moment.</p>
<p>“The real question is how much television to pursue,” he says. “There’s so much creative freedom; it’s quite irresistible.”</p>
<p>There’s also stand-up. He still performs at clubs twice a week, keeping his foot in the door. He may step through again.</p>
<p>“I’d like to generate another act,” he says. “It just makes me really happy, with all the things that are happening in the news every night, to be able to get up and talk about it and be with people. Because that’s the best part of comedy — hearing people laugh and being part of a moment with an audience. It sounds corny, but that really was my dream. I’m so happy that people haven’t told me to stop.”</p> | Judd Apatow on Returning to Stand-Up Comedy After 25 Years | false | https://newsline.com/judd-apatow-on-returning-to-stand-up-comedy-after-25-years/ | 2017-12-06 | 1 |
<p>A New York real estate developer and former business partner of President Donald Trump has bought a sketch of the Empire State Building drawn by Trump for $16,000 at an auction.</p>
<p>Elie Hirschfeld, president of Hirschfeld Properties, purchased the 12-by-9-inch black marker depiction of the iconic New York City skyscraper at an auction in California and online last week. It was created by Trump for a charity auction in Florida during the time he opened his Mar-a-Lago estate as a private club in 1995.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Julien's Auctions says the piece signed by Trump went for less than $100 the first time it was sold.</p>
<p>In a statement Monday, Hirschfeld says he plans to hang it in his offices a couple of blocks from Trump Tower.</p> | New York real estate developer buys Trump drawing at auction | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/10/23/new-york-real-estate-developer-buys-trump-drawing-at-auction.html | 2017-10-23 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>TUCSON, Ariz. — A Tucson woman has been sentenced to more than five years in federal prison for mailing child pornography to her jailed husband who was awaiting trial on child porn charges.</p>
<p>Federal prosecutors say 28-year-old Breana VanDyck received a 63-month prison term Monday.</p>
<p>After serving her sentence, VanDyck will be on lifetime supervised release with stringent sex offender conditions, including the condition that she register as a sex offender.</p>
<p>VanDyck was found guilty of mailing child pornography last September following a jury trial in U.S. District Court in Tucson.</p>
<p>She was accused of printing and mailing child pornography to her husband at the Central Arizona Detention Center.</p>
<p>At the time, VanDyck’s husband was in jail awaiting trial on charges involving the possession and production of child pornography.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Tucson woman sentenced for sending jailed husband child porn | false | https://abqjournal.com/949295/tucson-woman-sentenced-for-sending-jailed-husband-child-porn.html | 2 |
|
<p>Though apparently <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/awards/stacey-dashs-oscars-appearance-confuses-audience-n527696" type="external">not many people got the joke</a>, Oscars host Chris Rock invited Fox News contributor Stacey Dash out on the stage Thursday to pay ironic tribute to Black History Month.</p>
<p>The 88th Annual Academy Awards was a racially charged event, with <a href="" type="internal">Rock playing up the controversy</a> to comedic effect throughout the evening. During one transition, Rock told the crowd that the Academy had installed a new "Director for Minority Outreach" and then, to the audience's surprise and/or confusion, invited out Dash.</p>
<p>"I cannot wait to help my people out. Happy Black History Month!" said Dash with a giggle. "Thank you!"</p>
<p>The response from the crowd was probably not what Rock had anticipated, the room remaining mostly silent with only a small number offering hesitant applause and tepid laughter.</p>
<p>Dash has garnered <a href="" type="internal">particularly nasty</a> criticism from the Left in recent weeks for daring to defy the <a href="" type="internal">#OscarsSoWhite</a> narrative by <a href="" type="internal">pointing out the hypocrisy</a> of the racial divisiveness inherent in the BET Awards, the NAACP's Image Awards, and Black History Month. Dash also made the unforgivable offense of <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/foxs-stacey-dash-obama-doesnt-give-a-sht-about-terrorism/" type="external">criticizing President Obama while being black</a>. The outrage directed at Bash from the Left after her #OscarsSoWhite comments was so strong that one black activist group even enrolled <a href="" type="internal">a bunch of little kids</a> to shoot a video mocking Dash's criticism of Black History Month.</p>
<p>CNN blasted Dash's cameo as a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/29/entertainment/stacey-dash-oscars-feat/index.html" type="external">"failure</a>," highlighting the silence in the audience as evidence. NBC News attributed the crowd's lack of response to " <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/awards/stacey-dashs-oscars-appearance-confuses-audience-n527696" type="external">confusion</a>" rather than shock.</p>
<p>Hollywood is so detached from us. That Stacy Dash joke went completely over there heads.</p> | WATCH Crowd's Bizarre Response When Stacey Dash Shows Up At Oscars | true | https://dailywire.com/news/3745/watch-stacey-dash-show-oscars-james-barrett | 2016-02-29 | 0 |
<p />
<p>As French troops ramp up their aerial bombardment of northern Mali, which began on January 11 in an effort alongside the Malian army to push back Islamist militants seizing the region and threatening the capital Bamako, other countries have begun offering their support.&#160;On Monday, the United States <a href="" type="internal">announced</a> they would contribute intelligence and support, while Britian is lending logisitical support, and a handful of African nations are deploying thousands of troops in the coming days. Meanwhile, in France, 700 troops were deployed in and around Paris, as the country fears reprisal from al Qaeda and other extremist groups involved in Mali, who&#160;have warned that France has "opened the doors of hell" by unleashing its warplanes and have called for an attack on French soil. As the situation escalates, here's a look at the French efforts to rid Mali of extremists.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>French troops from the "Licorne" operation based in the Ivory Coast arrived at the 101st military airbase near Bamako on January 15 to reinforce the "Serval" operations, before their deployment in the north of Mali.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>After leading an all-night aerial bombing campaign on Tuesday,&#160;French troops gather in a hangar at Bamako's airport. The campaign is the latest effort to gain control of a small Malian town back from armed Islamist extremists who seized the area, including its strategic military camp. France is preparing for a possible land assault as well and&#160;convoys of trucks carrying French troops crossed into Mali from Ivory Coast this week, and are soon to be joined by several thousand soldiers from the nations neighboring Mali.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>A resident of Bamako, Mali, looks at newspapers' frontpages focusing on France's military intervention to turn back the terrorist threat.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>A man weighs himself during a blood drive for Malian soldiers fighting al Qaeda-linked Islamists in northern Mali, in Bamako. French aircraft pounded Islamist rebels in Mali for a second day on Saturday and neighbouring West African states sped up their plans to deploy troops in an international campaign to prevent groups linked to al Qaeda expanding their power base.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>A man holds a blood bag during a blood donation in Bamako. Islamists have retreated in the east of Mali but French forces are facing a difficult situation in the west of the country where rebels are well armed, said French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Operation "Serval" of the French army in Mali prepares to fight against Islamist terrorists, as they await departure the bases of the Malian Air Force.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>The French soldiers of&#160;2E RIMA&#160;unload as they await deployment from Bamako to the region of Mopti, where militants have been gaining control at a disturbing speed.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>A French military armoured personnel carrier is loaded on to a Royal Air Force C-17 aircraft at Evreux in northern France. Britain is lending logistical support to France as it sends troops and military equipment to Mali.</p>
<p /> | French Troops, Planes, Bombard Extremists in Mali (PHOTOS) | true | https://thedailybeast.com/french-troops-planes-bombard-extremists-in-mali-photos | 2018-10-03 | 4 |
<p>London</p>
<p>‘Tis the season to think about the next season. Before letting the wave of Christmas gifts crash of over their heads and/or into the digital stockings, and before undertaking their own yuletide retail therapy to help snap the U. K. out of its pre-postpartum Brexit depression, this island nation’s youths of college age have now to face the trial of interviews and auditions.</p>
<p>In the next room as I write, young George does his vocal warm-ups for a mid-morning audition at the Royal College of Music.&#160; He hopes to become an opera singer. His baritone calisthenics concluded, he launches into the opening of one of Brahms’s Four Serious Songs: Ich wandte mich und sahe an—“I turned and looked at all under the sun who have suffered injustice.”&#160; This seems a fitting lyric for someone who within two hours will be facing his own trial before a musical jury of his non-peers. The song’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEJ6AZ5youo" type="external">opening</a>&#160; is sparse and tentative, yet somehow also weighted with angst. There’s no brash enunciation of brave deeds to be done. It’s all fateful confrontation with truth rather than wrathful vengeance.</p>
<p>In the context of an audition the ardent feeling for “the tears of the oppressed” expressed a short time later could well be taken to refer to the aspirant himself, though George has the English public school bearing—and presumably training as well—to suppress any such displays of emotion when under duress.</p>
<p>The Four Serious Songs were composed in the year before Brahms’ death in 1897. Clara Schumann, the long-time object of his unrequited love, lay on her own deathbed. The song inexorably pivots towards mortality: “Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead.” For a singer to sing about dying—on stage, or before a panel of hanging musical judges—seems a risky business, but George is in good voice.</p>
<p>He’s now emerged from his ad hoc studio and grabs his backpack. He’s in the last year of his studies German and Italian and Oxford, so I give him the Teutonic version of the English-language theatrical boost: “Hals- und Beinbruch!”—break your neck and your leg. Leave it to the Germans to inflict maximum bodily harm as they shove the poor victim onto the stage.&#160; As he bravely descends the steps I slightly regret that ironic bit of encouragement. He’ll need his throat.</p>
<p>Earlier George had told me his brother was up at Cambridge for an interview at one of the colleges there. Those who want to be admitted to Oxford or Cambridge must go up for an interview with their prospective tutor. The students apply in a given subject: the Brits specialize earlier than their American counterparts rather than going for the liberal arts smorgasbord.</p>
<p>Somewhat coincidentally, I had spent a couple of days amongst the mist-shrouded crenellations and spires of the storied center of learning that is Cambridge. The place was thrumming with eager, nervous-looking applicants flanked by one or, more frequently, two of their parents.</p>
<p>I scanned my subjects for the shared familial expressions of concern. These were etched more deeply on the older generation’s faces, but genetically unmistakable on the younger ones as well. At times I felt like a pith-helmeted anthropologist studying the primitive ways of the modern Brits and their foreign imitators, most of them once ruled by these same island folk.</p>
<p>One parent informed me ruefully that it used to be that the school boy—and since about 1980 at most colleges, school girl—took the train up from London himself and made his way through the ordeal without age-based back-up. That has changed, since in all things the Old Country now models itself after its former colony across the Atlantic.&#160; Just as Roman culture was carried on in Byzantine after the Fall of Rome, so too America is now the engine of the British Empire.</p>
<p>Take for example that venerable bunch of judges who make up the country’s highest court, for centuries called the Law Lords. Not so long ago, they’ve been rebranded according to the America mode as the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court. Sure they keep the wigs and snazzy gold-brocaded robes, but gone is the name and with it the connotation of superiority and privilege that clings to the concept Lords. We’ve been hearing a lot about this posse of ten men and a single women recently, since they will soon make a decision as to whether to send Brexit to Parliament for approval. Word came down yesterday from the Lord Chief Justice that the referendum would not be overturned. Another foundational American institution, McDonald’s, isn’t waiting for the final judgment, however: the Big Mac purveyor announced this morning that it would fold the arches at its European headquarters in Luxembourg and relocate back to the U. K.</p>
<p>Give this larger cultural trend, it’s not particularly surprising that the sky over East Anglia is dark with fully-weaponized helicopter parents of American design. &#160;They touch down at the portals to ancient Cambridge colleges, and their youngsters’ boots hit the cobbles and charge into the porter’s lodge, leaving the old folks alone and exposed to the enemy fire of Chinese tourist iPhone video fusillades. Calling in air cover on their Bluetooth ear pieces, mum and dad pull back to the nearest Starbucks or kindred safe haven.</p>
<p>I retreated to a satellite village on the Cambridge periphery—a manor house of Queen Anne vintage. There are portraits of the ancestors running up the walls in the main stairs. There’s a fire crackling in the hall, and a broken down Rolls-Royce from the 1930s in the carriage house. A tiger skin hangs on the hall leading down to the breakfast room.</p>
<p>Within a few minutes of my arrival, the lord of the manor has told me all about his time in America and many other things, too, including the fact that Pablo Casals’s Hamburg Steinway grand is moored down in the library.&#160; His cello-playing debutante mother was the great Spanish cellist’s favorite student—at least according to my interlocutor. He ushers me towards the instrument whose peeling veneer indicates that too many years of its life were spent near the fire.&#160; I start into Brahm’s Intermezzo in A Major, opus 118, no. 2. On the piano facing me are photographs of Margaret Thatcher from the 1980s; the owner’s ex-wife shaking hands with Prince Charles; and Bill Clinton with an arm around my guide’s daughter.</p>
<p>Only late Brahms—again!—could survive such a visual assault.&#160; This is music that captures both the fading dreams and the hopes of youth.</p> | Brahms and the Tears of Britain’s Oppressed | true | https://counterpunch.org/2016/12/09/brahms-and-the-tears-of-britains-oppressed/ | 2016-12-09 | 4 |
<p><a href="http://wp.me/p3bwni-2LY" type="external">21st Century Wire</a> says…&#160;</p>
<p>Bill Gates, along with Michael Bloomberg, are members of an exclusive elite club. You have to buy your way in.</p>
<p>Can you guess what this special club does?</p>
<p>Timothy Alexander Guzman <a href="http://beforeitsnews.com/eu/2013/03/the-global-polio-eradication-initiative-new-technology-used-to-locate-children-for-polio-vaccinations-2511050.html" type="external">Before Its News</a></p>
<p>Bill Gates of the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg were interviewed on Charlie Rose on February 28th, 2013 that mainly focused on the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and how “new approaches” to their agenda can be utilized.</p>
<p>Bill Gates, along with Michael Bloomberg,&#160;has contributed large sums of money to numerous causes such as the Global Polio Eradication Initiative originally launched in 1988 by the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).</p>
<p>Bill Gates has been in the forefront for the depopulation agenda which he publicly stated in 2010 during a conference for TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) that:</p>
<p>&#160;“The world today has 6.8 billion people… that’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”</p>
<p>The Charlie Rose interview was an indication on how new technological advances can possibly help them vaccinate the majority of children in the Third World including Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries throughout Africa. The technology used to track children for vaccinations is dangerous. It sets the precedence to target children in many Third World countries. Charlie Rose asked Bill Gates about the “New Approaches” used in the process:</p>
<p>Charlie Rose:You mentioned the five or a six year plan the new initiative has learning from old lessons and therefore, coming up with new approaches. What are the new approaches?</p>
<p>Bill Gates:Well, we’re able to use new technology like satellite photos to see are there people moving around, nomadic roots. You know we see if when we go out to get all the children, if there’s some settlement areas that we’ve actually missed. We also put a – – a phone in the vaccine box they carry around that looks where they’re located every three minutes and so it has that GPS data. At the end of the day you plug that in and compare it to where they were asked to go, and you can see if you’re – you’re really covering all the kids.</p>
<p>The “New Technology” used to locate children to administer vaccinations is a method that will be introduced to many countries targeted for depopulation. It is a scenario that poses a threat to humanity. The Polio vaccine has contributed to the more deadly ‘Non-Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis (NPAFP)’. NPAFP is not any different from polio paralysis, but it is twice as dangerous.</p>
<p>In a 2012 article titled “Study: Polio vaccine campaign in India has caused 12-fold increase in deadly paralysis condition” by alternative health website naturalnews.com staff writer Ethan A. Huff reported that:</p>
<p>“The mainstream media has been busy hailing the supposed success of India’s polio vaccine campaign over the past few years, with many news outlets now claiming that the disease has been fully eradicated throughout the country. But what these misinformation puppets are failing to disclose is the fact that cases of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP), a much more serious condition than that caused by polio, have skyrocketed as a result of the vaccine’s widespread administration”</p>
<p>What the polio vaccine has done was increase a more severe condition called non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP).</p>
<p>In 2011, for instance, the year in which India was declared to be polio-free, there were 47,500 known cases of NPAFP, which is a shockingly high figure under the circumstances. And based on data collected from India’s National Polio Surveillance Project, cases of NPAFP across India rose dramatically in direct proportion to the number of polio vaccines administered, which suggests that the vaccines were responsible for spurring the rapid spread of this deadly condition.</p>
<p>Not only has NPAFP increased 12 times due to the Polio Vaccine campaign, the cost to India increased 100 times more than the original amount as well. Huff wrote:</p>
<p>According to the IJME report, the entire polio vaccine scam in India was spawned from initial grants made by the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation and various other groups that claimed the program would eventually pay off. But the overall costs once India started paying for the program quickly ballooned to more than 100 times the initial investment amount, with more than $2.5 billion and counting still being funneled into it.</p>
<p>The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is a fraud. But more importantly, it is a dangerous step towards forced inoculations by the global elites who claim that their philanthropies are supposed to help people. Overall, it sets a dangerous path towards an Orwellian society that will be monitored and targeted for vaccinations that do more harm than good. The ultimate goal is depopulation, not saving populations.</p>
<p>About the author:</p>
<p>Timothy Alexander Guzman is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on political, economic, media and historical spheres. He has been published in Global Research, The Progressive Mind, European Union Examiner, News Beacon Ireland, WhatReallyHappened.com, EIN News and a number of other alternative news sites. He is a graduate of Hunter College in New York City.</p>
<p>READ MORE EUGENICS NEWS AT: <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire Eugenics Files</a></p>
<p>–</p>
<p /> | Bill Gates and Polio: ‘New vaccines can help reduce population by 10-15%’ | true | http://21stcenturywire.com/2013/03/06/bill-gates-and-polio-new-vaccines-can-help-reduce-population-by-10-15/ | 2013-03-06 | 4 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Yes, that’s right.</p>
<p>Albuquerque native Elise Eberle is starring in the series “Salem,” which is in its third season. (Source: WGN America)</p>
<p>It’s also something the Albuquerque native never imagined herself saying.</p>
<p>But here she is.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I never imagined any of this,” she says. “I feel so blessed and it feels remarkable.”</p>
<p>Eberle’s profile is on the rise in the film industry.</p>
<p>As a cast member of WGN America’s hit “Salem,” Eberle plays the character Mercy Lewis, who has grown into a fan favorite. The series airs at 8 p.m. Wednesdays.</p>
<p>“Salem” is set in the volatile world of 17th century Massachusetts. It explores what really fueled the town’s infamous witch trials and dares to uncover the dark, supernatural truth cloaked behind the veil of that period of American history.</p>
<p>The show also stars Janet Montgomery and Shane West.</p>
<p>Mercy Lewis, the Rev. Lewis’ daughter, is tormented by Mary Sibley’s witchcraft.</p>
<p>Over the course of series, Sibley has turned Lewis into a witch and Lewis vows to seek revenge on Sibley.</p>
<p>In the show, Mercy Lewis is possibly one of the more powerful witches of the Essex Hive, having grown quickly in power on her own and currently residing in Salem.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Eberle says that over the course of the three seasons, Lewis has revealed a lot of layers.</p>
<p>In the first season, she is possessed and just wants life to be over.</p>
<p>“The second season, she has anger and she wants revenge,” she says. “This season is quite the opposite. She’s the madam of a brothel. She’s seductive. The first two seasons, viewers thought she was asexual. Then the writers told me this season she would fall in love. It’s been pretty unexpected.”</p>
<p>Eberle says that as this season unfolds, viewers will get to see Mercy Lewis through her perspective.</p>
<p>“The writers are making an effort for the viewers to see her differently,” she says. “We’re getting to see another side of Mercy. You have no idea of what’s to come. It’s a completely different experience for me on the show this season.”</p>
<p>Growing up in Albuquerque, Eberle was active in the local theater scene, and after graduating from Albuquerque Academy, she was cast in two movies – “Lemonade Mouth” and “Tiger Eyes.” It was in “Tiger Eyes” that Eberle garnered some critical acclaim from the likes of Rolling Stone magazine, which helped her profile rise in the film industry.</p>
<p>Eberle has already finished filming “Salem.”</p>
<p>She is looking for a new project to work on while the show is on hiatus.</p>
<p>“I’m getting older, but I want to play a high schooler again,” she says. “It would be fun if it were a comedy so I can show a different side of me as an actress.”</p>
<p>SEND ME YOUR TIPS: If you know of a movie filming in the state, or are curious about one, email [email protected]. Follow me on Twitter @agomezART.</p>
<p /> | Role in ‘Salem’ boosts Albuquerque Academy grad’s profile | false | https://abqjournal.com/894796/rising-star-3.html | 2 |
|
<p>For nine months Secretary of State John Kerry shepherded talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Along the way he let it slip that if talks failed Israel could &#160;face <a href="" type="internal">a third</a> <a href="" type="internal">intifada</a>, <a href="" type="internal">further isolation</a>,&#160;or <a href="" type="internal">international opprobrium</a>. Of course he didn’t want to sound like a bully so he also let everyone know that <a href="" type="internal">he was concerned about Israel’s future</a>. Now the peace process is suspended and <a href="" type="internal">Fatah has embraced Hamas</a> and John Kerry’s staff have their long knives out for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4515821,00.html" type="external">interviews with Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea</a>, unnamed American officials ripped Israel’s government.</p>
<p>“The negotiations had to start with a decision to freeze settlement construction. We thought that we couldn’t achieve that because of the current makeup of the Israeli government, so we gave up. We didn’t realize Netanyahu was using the announcements of tenders for settlement construction as a way to ensure the survival of his own government. We didn’t realize continuing construction allowed ministers in his government to very effectively sabotage the success of the talks.</p>
<p>“There are a lot of reasons for the peace effort’s failure, but people in Israel shouldn’t ignore the bitter truth – the primary sabotage came from the settlements. The Palestinians don’t believe that Israel really intends to let them found a state when, at the same time, it is building settlements on the territory meant for that state. We’re talking about the announcement of 14,000 housing units, no less. Only now, after talks blew up, did we learn that this is also about expropriating land on a large scale. That does not reconcile with the agreement.</p>
<p>And there was this:</p>
<p>“I guess we need another intifada to create the circumstances that would allow progress.</p>
<p>“20 years after the Oslo Accords, new game rules and facts on the ground were created that are deeply entrenched. This reality is very difficult for the Palestinians and very convenient for Israel.”</p>
<p>Those nasty statements from Kerry then, weren’t careless slips, but expressions of deeply held beliefs. Rather undiplomatic of him. I know that Barnea’s interlocutor is referring to Israel when he mentions “new game rules and facts on the ground.” This is one of the frustrating aspects of the peace process. There are plenty of new facts on the ground for the Palestinians, but they’re ignored. However dysfunctional, there is now a Palestinian Authority with jurisdiction over the vast majority of Palestinians in the West Bank. But whatever the Palestinians have gained it has come at a great cost to Israel. Withdrawals from the West Bank and later Gaza were followed by increases in terror. Despite the fact that the Palestinians are closer to having a state than they were twenty years ago, Israel is, in some circles, criticized even more harshly than it was then.</p>
<p>And the Palestinians have done little or nothing for their gains. The truth is the opposite of Barnea’s source, the peace process has been difficult for Israel and convenient for the Palestinians.</p>
<p>Though Kerry and the State Department are keen to blame Israel and the Netanyahu government for the failure of the peace talks, the failure is mostly of their own making. Alexander Joffee points out a number of the mistakes that the Americans made in&#160; <a href="http://www.meforum.org/3815/israel-palestinian-ngotiations-collapsed" type="external">Why [Israeli-Palestinian] Negotiations Collapsed</a>. One of the chief American mistakes was not appreciating the importance of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.</p>
<p>Recognizing Israel as a Jewish state is, for Abbas and the Palestinian leadership, if not the majority of Palestinians, a declaration that Jews have historic rights as a nation and a people, not simply a religion. Such a declaration would end the conflict once and for all by mandating that a Jewish nation-state may stand alongside a Palestinian state. And for those reasons it was out of the question.</p>
<p>The American habit of seeing Israel as a Jewish state is comforting, but the inability to understand that Palestinians refuse to do so out of religious convictions that Jews are a religion, not a people entitled to sovereignty in their historic homeland, is absurd. If the Arab-Israeli conflict has a “root cause,” this is it. But American blindness is not surprising, since the religious context of international affairs has never been well-understood by American policymakers, and has, since 9/11, been deliberately obfuscated, denied, and pushed far to the background.</p>
<p>The negotiations spearheaded by Kerry were doomed to fail because of the <a href="" type="internal">refusal of the Palestinians to make any compromises</a>, and the State Department’s ignorance of the environment in which it was operating. Having the dagger in Bibi’s back may make Kerry and co. feel better but it won’t bring peace.</p>
<p>[Photo:&#160; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyQW3smKUDQ" type="external">JewishNewsOne / YouTube</a>&#160;]</p> | John Kerry’s Long Knives | true | http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/05/john-kerrys-long-knives/ | 2014-05-06 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Philip Monette says a series of callers claiming to be from the “U.S. Government Grant Office” recently offered him as much as $10,000 – as long as he used the money for wholesome purposes. The caller, who sounded like she was in a phone center, said he was not to use his award to purchase cigarettes, drugs or alcohol.</p>
<p>Monette said he was told that his name was drawn from a pool of people with “good, clean records” and that he should give the caller his banking information so she could deposit his reward.</p>
<p>Thanks, but no thanks.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Watch out for a new twist on health-related scams, this one involving offers for free medical devices or supplies.</p>
<p>The Better Business Bureau says fall is “peak season” for these types of telemarketing calls because Medicare offers open enrollment between Oct. 15 and Dec. 7. The details may differ, but the idea is the same: persuading people to give out personal information.</p>
<p>The scheme starts with a pre-recorded call, saying you have been chosen to receive free medical supplies. Common offers include a personal emergency alarm system, medications or supplies for a particular health condition, such as diabetes, according to the BBB.</p>
<p>In Don Hodshire’s case, the caller said he was following up on Hodshire’s request for a back brace. Hodshire had never inquired about a back brace. The Albuquerque resident was given the option of pushing “1” for more details and “2” for “put me on your `do not call’ list.”</p>
<p>Hodshire punched “2,” but got a live human anyway, who said Hodshire could get the brace for free through Medicare. Hodshire isn’t covered by Medicare.</p>
<p>You see where this is going.</p>
<p>Here’s a variation: the caller tells you that a “doctor-ordered” medicine or medical device is already in the mail, and the call is to confirm the shipment. You will be asked to provide personal and/or insurance information. Don’t do it.</p>
<p>According to the Better Business Bureau, you can spot a telemarketing scam if the phone call:</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Internet crimes have become so prevalent that efforts to prevent them have won a special spot on the calendar. Yes, October is now known as National Cyber Security Awareness month.</p>
<p>The FBI is celebrating by reminding people that they can help the scam-busters do their job by filing complaints with the Internet Crime Complaint Center, affectionately known as IC3. That’s whether you’ve actually lost money or just believe you have been targeted online.</p>
<p>IC3 is a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, and the point is not only to catch culprits but to “help identify regional, national, or international trends” in cyber scams, according to a news release.</p>
<p>The information you provide is filed into IC3’s database, where it is reviewed by analysts who use automated matching systems to reveal any links or trends involving other complaints. Groups of similar complaints are referred to the relevant law enforcement agencies for possible investigation.</p>
<p>Ellen Marks is assistant business editor at the Albuquerque Journal. Contact her at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a> or 505-823-3842 if you are aware of what sounds like a scam. To report a scam to law enforcement, contact the New Mexico Consumer Protection Division toll-free at 1-800-678-1508.</p>
<p /> | $10K ‘grant’ preys upon fake concerns | false | https://abqjournal.com/482481/oct-is-now-fbis-cyber-security-awareness-month.html | 2 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The industry that truly stands out in New Mexico’s economy is not the government job sector, despite its huge payroll and pair of world-class national labs, or tourism, despite the world-class allure of Santa Fe, according to a pair of reports from the Federal Reserve Bank.</p>
<p>It’s the prosaically named “mining and logging” job sector, better known as the energy sector, and you will find its hotbed of activity in the southeastern corner of the state that’s sometimes called “little Texas.” <a href="https://d3el53au0d7w62.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BizO_jd_21oct_Key-Industries-copy.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>What makes New Mexico’s energy sector jump out is its “location quotient,” says a report in the new issue of The Rocky Mountain Economist put out by the Denver Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. In essence, the state’s energy sector is way oversized compared to the national norm.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“The concentration of employment in the energy sector has increased over the past 10 years as the oil and natural gas sectors expanded in each state,” says the third-quarter report, comparing key industries in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming.</p>
<p>“During the recent recession, employment in the energy sector fell sharply, dropping almost 16 percent at the national level between the fall of 2008 and the fall of 2009,” the report says. “Since then, energy employment has surpassed pre-recession peaks in Colorado and New Mexico.”</p>
<p>From roughnecks in southeast New Mexico to the proliferation of government jobs around the state, a new report shows the strengths and weaknesses across a variety of jobs sectors in the state. (Richard Pipes/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>The location quotient for New Mexico’s energy sector is 4.73, more than three times the 1.46 quotient for the government sector and more than four times the 1.06 quotient for the leisure and hospitality sector, according to calculations made by the report’s author, economist Alison Felix.</p>
<p>To calculate a location quotient, the share of total employment in a particular industry for a state or region is divided by the share of total employment for the same industry nationally. The employment of the energy sector nationwide is 0.6 percent, compared with 3 percent, or about 25,000 workers, in New Mexico.</p>
<p>A location quotient of 1.0 means the industry’s employment share is dead even with the national average. A quotient greater than 1.0 means the particular industry has a higher concentration of workers than what you would expect to find on average nationwide. The opposite holds true for a quotient of less than 1.0. Location quotients are thus relative to a bigger picture.</p>
<p>The quotient compares one state’s job sector to another state’s and is unrelated to the workers in a sector as a percentage of a state’s workforce.</p>
<p>Workers construct a home in Montecito Estates on Albuquerque’s West Side in July. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>For example, New Mexico’s mining and logging sector, while large by location quotient, is only 3 percent of the state’s workforce.</p>
<p>New Mexico’s government employment sector is huge, at about 183,000 workers, making up 23.4 percent of the state’s workforce, compared with an average of 16.1 percent nationwide, according to the Fed report. Wyoming’s government sector has an even bigger share of total employment at 25.2 percent.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Some of the larger share of government workers can be explained by the relatively small population in each state and the need to provide services in less-populated areas,” the report says.</p>
<p>The location quotient of only 1.46 percent for New Mexico’s government sector points to government employment at all levels – local, state and federal – representing a big chunk of total employment across the country. Government job numbers get a boost from the inclusion of public education employees.</p>
<p>In relative size, New Mexico’s construction sector is the third-most oversized employment sector behind energy and government. At about 42,000 workers, the construction sector makes up 5.2 percent of total state employment, compared with an average of 4.3 percent nationwide. Its location quotient is 1.22.</p>
<p>“The construction sector was hit particularly hard during the recent recession, leading to a sharp decrease in employment,” the report says, noting that construction employment in New Mexico has rebounded in the past year but remains well below peak levels.</p>
<p>Sandia researchers Isaac Ekoto, left, and Will Colban prepare to conduct laser-based velocity measurements at the Combustion Research Facility. (Courtesy of Sandia National Labs)</p>
<p>The state’s leisure and hospitality sector, basically the tourism sector, has the next-highest location quotient at 1.06. Although bigger than the national norm, it’s smaller than the leisure and hospitality sectors in Colorado, with a 1.19 quotient, and Wyoming, which has a 1.14 quotient.</p>
<p>The relative size of New Mexico’s retail and private education/health services employment sectors are in line with the national norms. The remaining major sectors, including professional and business services, are all undersized compared to what’s found on average around the country.</p>
<p>The strength of the energy sector has helped to compensate for shortcomings elsewhere in the state economy, according to a second-quarter report in the Crossroads newsletter published by the El Paso Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.</p>
<p>“The New Mexico economy is going through a difficult recovery: It has gained back only 13,800 of the 51,700 jobs lost during the recession,” says the report by Avilia Bueno and Roberto A. Coronado. “The recovery has been led by southeast New Mexico, spurred by rising commodity prices.”</p>
<p>The resurgence of the energy sector, made possible by a technology revolution in extracting oil and natural gas, is centered in booming Eddy and Lea counties. Combined, they produce 90 percent of the state’s crude-oil production, the Crossroads report says.</p>
<p>Employees work inside Presbyterian Hospital’s emergency room in Albuquerque. The size of New Mexico’s health services employment sector is in line with national norms. (Journal File)</p>
<p>“From April 2012 to April 2013, employment growth was 3.9 percent in Eddy County and 5.4 percent in Lea, significantly higher than the 1.2 percent growth in New Mexico and 1.6 percent nationwide,” it says.</p>
<p>“In 2012, only 11 of the 33 counties in New Mexico reported population increases. At the top of the list were Lea at 1.9 percent, San Juan at 1 percent and Eddy at 0.8 percent.”</p>
<p>The energy sector is the only employment sector in New Mexico where the average annual pay is higher than the average for energy jobs nationwide, $58,476 in the state compared with $55,933. As a rule of thumb, no matter what the job, pay in New Mexico typically lags the rest of the country.</p>
<p /> | Fed reports find NM job-sector disparity | false | https://abqjournal.com/285469/fed-reports-find-nm-jobsector-disparity.html | 2013-10-20 | 2 |
<p>Rex Features/AP</p>
<p />
<p>A group of 75 Republican foreign policy experts blasted Donald Trump and his foreign policy positions in <a href="http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/open-letter-on-donald-trump-from-gop-national-security-leaders/" type="external">an open letter</a> released on Wednesday night, calling the GOP front-runner “fundamentally dishonest” and “utterly unfitted” for the presidency.</p>
<p>“Mr. Trump’s own statements lead us to conclude that as president, he would use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe, and which would diminish our standing in the world,” the group wrote in the letter posted at <a href="http://warontherocks.com/" type="external">War on the Rocks</a>, a prominent national security blog. “Furthermore, his expansive view of how presidential power should be wielded against his detractors poses a distinct threat to civil liberty in the United States.”</p>
<p>The group is a who’s who of influential writers, policymakers, and commentators in national security and foreign policy. From the neoconservative brain trust, signatories include <a href="https://www.sais-jhu.edu/eliot-cohen" type="external">Eliot Cohen</a>, who served as a State Department lawyer in the Bush administration, and historians <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/experts/kaganr" type="external">Robert Kagan</a>, <a href="http://www.maxboot.net/" type="external">Niall Ferguson</a>, and <a href="http://www.maxboot.net/" type="external">Max Boot</a>. A host of former government officials also signed the document: Bush administration Homeland Security Secretary <a href="http://chertoffgroup.com/bios/michael-chertoff.php" type="external">Michael Chertoff</a>; <a href="http://history.virginia.edu/user/58" type="external">Philip Zelikow</a>, who served as a national security official under three Republican presidents; and retired US Army Colonel <a href="http://www.cnn.com/profiles/peter-mansoor-profile" type="external">Pete Mansoor</a> joined the other prominent GOP foreign policy figures.</p>
<p>Many of them, particularly the neoconservatives, had already <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-clinton-neoconservatives-220151" type="external">expressed their loathing</a> for Trump in the media, but this open letter unites them in a single platform with figures from other parts of the more traditional GOP foreign policy establishment. “We have disagreed with one another on many issues, including the Iraq War and intervention in Syria,” they write, “but we are united in our opposition to a Donald Trump presidency.”</p>
<p>Their list of criticisms includes Trump’s “inexcusable” fondness for torture, his “admiration for foreign dictators such as Vladimir Putin,” his hate-mongering against Muslims, his threats to start trade wars with China and other countries, and other inflammatory positions. “His foreign policy platform is uniquely awful,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/03/the-unique-horror-of-donald-trumps-foreign-policy-and-why-i-signed-a-letter-opposing-it/" type="external">wrote</a> Tufts professor and signatory Dan Drezner in the Washington Post.</p>
<p>But, as the letter suggests, Trump doesn’t have anything resembling a “foreign policy platform,” much less a coherent foreign policy. Instead, the signatories write, “His vision of American influence and power in the world is wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle.” One of them, former Department of Justice lawyer <a href="https://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/cordero-carrie-f.cfm" type="external">Carrie Cordero,</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/carriecordero/status/705409257089449984" type="external" /> <a href="https://twitter.com/carriecordero/status/705409257089449984" type="external">tweeted</a> on Thursday morning that Trump still hasn’t followed through on his long-standing <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/donald-trump-national-security-2016-213899#ixzz3zgoUymUe" type="external">promise</a> to announce his foreign policy team: “It’s not weeks, but 6+ months since Trump said he’d name his foreign policy advisors.”</p>
<p>Some of those who signed the letter, including <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11141308/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-max-boot" type="external">Boot</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-the-gops-frankenstein-monster-now-hes-strong-enough-to-destroy-the-party/2016/02/25/3e443f28-dbc1-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html" type="external">Kagan</a>, have already pledged to support Hillary Clinton if Trump becomes the GOP nominee. But former Mitt Romney adviser Bryan McGrath, who helped assemble the group, denied that all its members would follow suit. “The only implication here is that we’re not going to support Donald Trump,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/03/02/in-new-letter-republican-foriegn-policy-experts-declare-war-on-trump/?postshare=9771456978343824&amp;tid=ss_tw" type="external">he told</a> the Washington Post. “I want to be on record saying that this man is not presidential material, and this was the best way I could do it and bring some friends along.”</p>
<p /> | How Many Republican Heavyweights Does It Take to Tell Trump His Foreign Policy Ideas Are Insane? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2016/03/gop-foreign-policy-experts-just-went-nuclear-donald-trump/ | 2016-03-03 | 4 |
<p>Shanshan Wu already owns three houses back home in China. But the 36-year-old has spent the last two months in Chicago shopping for a three-bedroom. She's got cash to spend — up to $400,000.</p>
<p>And she's not done.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"The real estate market in China is dropping and I'm planning to sell one of them to maybe buy more houses in the U.S.," said Wu, whose hometown of Yunfu is in the province of Guangdong in southeast China.</p>
<p>Chinese have been snapping up U.S. real estate of all kinds, looking for a safer place to put their money than their own slowing economy. Investors from China are now second only to Canadians in the number of U.S. homes they buy.</p>
<p>In the last few months, amid signs that China's economy is slowing even more than expected, Chinese investors have stepped up their buying even more. The government's decision last month to downgrade the country's currency added to their urgency, since a weaker yuan makes buying real estate in dollars more expensive.</p>
<p>"I got a spur of buyers contacting me the past few days," said Gloria Ma, an agent with Re/Max Action in Lisle, Illinois, who is working with several Chinese homebuyers. "Some of the people are selling part of their holdings over there and come here and buy."</p>
<p>While purchases by foreigners represent just a sliver of overall U.S. home sales, they have impacted markets significantly in certain cities such as New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Irvine, California. Buyers are also showing up in more affordable Midwestern areas like Chicago.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In the 12 months ended in March, roughly 209,000 U.S. houses were sold to buyers living outside the U.S. or immigrants in the country for less than two years, according to the National Association of Realtors. That represents about 4 percent of all sales of previously occupied homes in the same period.</p>
<p>Of the $104 billion in total sales, Chinese buyers accounted for the biggest portion, $28.6 billion. Half of those sales involved homes in Florida, California, Texas and Arizona.</p>
<p>Overall, U.S. home sales to foreign buyers have been falling — 10 percent in the 12 months ended in March compared to the same period a year earlier — but the devaluation of the yuan makes a slowdown in Chinese deals unlikely.</p>
<p>That's one reason it's likely that Chinese who are interested in buying real estate won't pull back now, said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.</p>
<p>So far this year, the yuan has fallen 2.6 percent versus the dollar. It now takes about 6.37 yuan to buy $1. That's still better than five years ago, when 6.77 yuan bought $1.</p>
<p>For now, the change in the currency is likely not enough to dissuade well-heeled homebuyers from China, said Wei Min Tan, a real estate broker who caters to investors looking to buy condominiums in Manhattan.</p>
<p>"My clients may say, 'OK, I'll just negotiate an extra 5 percent off," said Tan, whose clients tend to buy condos priced between $1 million and $5 million.</p>
<p>That price range is typical of Chinese investors buying homes elsewhere in the U.S. And most of them pay in cash.</p>
<p>"In the last year or two, we've seen more sales pushing $5 to $10 million," said Tere Foster, managing broker for Team Foster at Windemere Real Estate in Seattle.</p>
<p>The segment of homes most in demand by Chinese buyers are those priced around $1.2 million, she said.</p>
<p>"That's where we're seeing a lot of the business," Foster said.</p>
<p>Not all buyers are wealthy investors. Some are middle-income earners with kids bound for university in the U.S. They will typically buy an apartment or small single-family home for their kids to live in while they go to college, said Lisa Li, an agent at Re/Max of Naperville, a suburb of Chicago.</p>
<p>Others will use the home as a vacation property or a rental.</p>
<p>It's not just the U.S. attracting Chinese real estate investment. Australia, other parts of Asia and Europe have also been popular spots for Chinese homebuyers.</p>
<p>And since 2010, investors from China have bought roughly 100 vineyards in France's Bordeaux wine-making region, according to a report published earlier this year from Christie's International Real Estate.</p>
<p>The main reason: To protect their money.</p>
<p>"They want a safe place to park their assets," Tan said. "A lot of my clients were not expecting the Chinese economy to be strong indefinitely. A lot of them started moving assets to safer countries a few years ago."</p>
<p>Wu, CEO of a countertop maker, is looking to make her move now.</p>
<p>She plans to buy a house in cash and live there for at least three years as she works to gain a foothold for her business in the U.S. Wu's also eyeing Chicago's Chinatown neighborhood as a location where she might buy another home as an investment, and to host out-of-town visitors.</p>
<p>Wu says she's determined to land her first home in the U.S., despite extra costs from the devaluation of the Chinese currency.</p>
<p>"It affects us a little bit," Wu said. "But not much."</p> | Chinese currency devaluation makes it more costly for Chinese investors to buy US homes | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/09/18/chinese-currency-devaluation-makes-it-more-costly-for-chinese-investors-to-buy.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The University of New Mexico women’s basketball team opened its 2012-13 season with a 68-57 victory over Northern Arizona at the Pit on Friday night.</p>
<p>The Lobos did it with depth.</p>
<p>UNM’s bench outscored NAU’s reserves 31-1 and helped finally wear down red-hot Lumberjacks guard Amy Patton. The 5-foot-10 senior scored 33 points, but she played all 40 minutes and clearly was running on fumes in the closing minutes.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>New Mexico divided its playing time and offense more effectively, getting 13 points apiece from Caroline Durbin, Sara Halasz and Khadijah Shumpert. Ten players saw significant minutes for the Lobos, and nine scored.</p>
<p>It was a stark contrast to 2011-12, when UNM was frequently outnumbered and often worn down by opponents.</p>
<p>“Depth, that was the difference,” Lobos coach Yvonne Sanchez said. “Whenever someone got tired, we had someone fresh to bring in. And to have our bench go 31-1, that’s huge. I used to tell our bench players that if they got 20 points it was a great game. Thirty-one is awesome.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t as easy a victory as the 6,072 fans in attendance might have expected. Northern Arizona was 9-20 last season and has been picked to finish ninth in the 11-team Big Sky Conference.</p>
<p>But with Patton knocking in shots from just about everywhere, and the Lumberjacks energized by a new coaching staff, Friday’s opener turned into a difficult test.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“They did actually surprise us,” Shumpert said. “We practiced some of their plays (from last season), but they have a new coach. They didn’t run any of those plays.”</p>
<p>The ‘Jacks did run plenty of plays designed to get Patton the ball. She came into the game needing 12 points to move into second place on NAU’s career scoring list and got there midway through the first half.</p>
<p>Patton scored 17 of her team’s first 23 points, hitting unorthodox, lean-back jumpers even when she was well-defended. Patton’s hot start helped the visitors build a 28-21 lead with 5:12 left in the first half.</p>
<p>“She was hitting tonight,” said Durbin, the first of several Lobos assigned to chase Patton through an endless series of screens. “She keeps the ball over her head so it’s hard to contest it. She’s a good player.”</p>
<p>But the Lobos amped up their defense late in the first half, putting a 10-2 run together in the final 3:38 to take a 33-32 lead to halftime. Halasz, playing her first regular-season game in 961 days, came up with a steal and layup during the run, bringing a roar from the crowd.</p>
<p>“It was just amazing being out there with my teammates and the fans again,” said Halasz, who missed back-to-back seasons with knee injuries. “I missed that feeling so much.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Northern Arizona regained the lead briefly in the second half, but a Bryce Owens 3-pointer, two Jayme Jackson jumpers and a three-point play by Whitney Johnson helped UNM build a 56-45 lead with 9:28 left.</p>
<p>It was the first regular-season home game for Johnson, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in the Lobos’ second contest last season.</p>
<p>The Lumberjacks stayed within striking distance thanks to Patton and some poor New Mexico free-throw shooting. The Lobos were 15-for-30 from the line, despite a 6-for-6 outing by Halasz.</p>
<p>But after Paige Haynes’ layup trimmed UNM’s lead to 60-55 with 3:38 left, the Lobos’ defense allowed just one basket the rest of the way.</p>
<p>“You know what, it’s a good win,” Sanchez said. “We’ve still got a lot of meshing to do, but we executed our offense down the stretch. There are a lot of things to take from this, and I’d rather learn from a win than a loss.”</p>
<p>Shumpert finished with a team-high eight rebounds, while Owens had nine points, three assists and three turnovers in a team-high 35 minutes.</p> | Depth Pays Off For UNM In Opener | false | https://abqjournal.com/28867/fresh-start-finish-for-unm.html | 2 |
|
<p>TORONTO, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index edged lower in early trade on Tuesday, as gold miners and other materials stocks weighed while marijuana producers extended their latest rally.</p>
<p>The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&amp;P/TSX composite index was down 33.34 points, or 0.2 percent, at 16,338.47 shortly after the open. (Reporting by Alastair Sharp Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department has granted ZTE Corp's ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=000063.SZ" type="external">000063.SZ</a>) ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=0763.HK" type="external">0763.HK</a>) request to submit more evidence after the agency banned American companies from selling to the Chinese technology firm, a senior Commerce official said on Saturday.</p> FILE PHOTO - Visitors pass in front of the Chinese telecoms equipment group ZTE Corp booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Perez/File Photo
<p>The U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, or BIS, this week banned American companies from selling to ZTE for seven years, saying the Chinese company had broken a settlement agreement with repeated false statements. The action was sparked by ZTE's violation of an agreement that was reached after it was caught illegally shipping U.S. goods to Iran.</p>
<p>According to Commerce regulations, there is no appeals process, but the agency has "exercised discretion" to let ZTE present additional evidence through an "informal procedure," the senior official said.</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal first reported the decision by Commerce to allow more evidence.</p>
<p>ZTE, in a statement on Friday, called the initial decision "unacceptable" and said it could cause damage to both the company and its partners.</p>
<p>It is unclear whether the decision to accept more evidence would provide a chance for resolution between U.S. regulators and the company.</p>
<p>This week's U.S. action, first reported by Reuters, could be devastating to ZTE since American companies are estimated to provide 25 to 30 percent of the components used in ZTE's equipment, which includes networking gear and smartphones.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=000063.SZ" type="external">ZTE Corp</a> 31.31 000063.SZ Shenzhen Stock Exchange -- (--%) 000063.SZ 0763.HK
<p>The ban is the result of ZTE's failure to comply with an agreement with the U.S. government after it pleaded guilty last year in federal court in Texas to conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions by illegally shipping U.S. goods and technology to Iran.</p>
<p>The company paid $890 million in fines and penalties, with an additional penalty of $300 million that could be imposed.</p>
<p>As part of the agreement, Shenzhen-based ZTE promised to dismiss four senior employees and discipline 35 others by either reducing their bonuses or reprimanding them, senior Commerce Department officials told Reuters. But the Chinese company admitted in March that while it had fired the four senior employees, it had not disciplined or reduced bonuses to the 35 others.</p>
<p>Under terms of the ban, U.S. companies cannot export prohibited goods, such as chip sets, directly to ZTE or via another country, beginning immediately.</p>
<p>The U.S. action against ZTE is likely to further exacerbate current tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade. After the United States placed export restrictions on ZTE in 2016 for Iran sanctions violations, China's Ministry of Commerce and Foreign Ministry criticized the decision.</p>
<p>Reporting by Ginger Gibson in Washington and Karen Freifield in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivia will manufacture and market lithium batteries along with German company ACI Systems GmbH, which will invest $1.3 billion in the project, the country's manager of the lithium deposits told the Bolivian state radio on Saturday.</p> FILE PHOTO - Deposits of lithium brine are seen at the lithium pilot plant of Llipi at the Uyuni salt lake in the Potosi Department, Bolivia, November 29, 2017. Picture taken in November 29, 2017. REUTERS/David Mercado
<p>Along with Argentina and Chile, Bolivia is part of South America's so-called "lithium triangle," one of the largest global reservoirs of the key mineral for the production of car batteries.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;"The German company ACI Systems has been selected as the strategic partner," Juan Carlos Montenegro, head of state-owned company Bolivian Lithium Deposits, or YLB by its Spanish initials, told Patria Nueva radio.</p>
<p>He said the joint venture deal will be inked as soon as possible so that operations can begin in about 18 months.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Bolivia has almost a quarter of the world's lithium resources.</p>
<p>Reporting by Daniel Ramos; Editing by Chris Reese</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Bank's shareholders on Saturday endorsed a $13 billion paid-in capital increase that will boost China's shareholding but bring lending reforms that will raise borrowing costs for higher-middle-income countries, including China.</p> World Bank President Jim Yong Kim attends the Development Committee meeting during the IMF/World Bank spring meeting in Washington, U.S., April 21, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
<p>The multilateral lender said the plan would allow it to lift the group's overall lending to nearly $80 billion in fiscal 2019 from about $59 billion last year and to an average of about $100 billion annually through 2030.</p>
<p>"We have more than doubled the capacity of the World Bank Group," the institution's president, Jim Yong Kim, told reporters during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings in Washington.</p>
<p>"It's a huge vote of confidence, but the expectations are enormous."</p>
<p>The hard-fought capital hike, initially resisted by the Trump administration, will add $7.5 billion paid-in capital for the World Bank's main concessional lending arm, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.</p>
<p>Its commercial-terms lender, the International Finance Corp, will get $5.5 billion paid-in capital, and IBRD also will get a $52.6 billion increase in callable capital.</p> LENDING REFORMS
<p>The bank agreed to change IBRD's lending rules to charge higher rates for developing countries with higher incomes, to discourage them from excessive borrowing.</p>
<p>IBRD previously had charged similar rates for all borrowers, and U.S. Treasury officials had complained that it was lending too much to China and other bigger emerging markets.</p>
<p>U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said earlier on Saturday that he supported the capital hike due to the reforms that it included. The last World Bank capital increase came in 2010.</p>
<p>The current hike comes with cost controls and salary restrictions that will hold World Bank compensation to "a little below average" for the financial sector, Kim said.</p>
<p>He added that there was nothing specific in the agreement that targeted a China lending reduction, but he said lending to China was expected to gradually decline.</p>
<p>In 2015, China founded the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and lends heavily to developing countries through its government export banks.</p>
<p>The agreement will lift China's shareholding in IBRD to 6.01 percent from 4.68 percent, while the U.S. share would dip slightly to 16.77 percent from 16.89 percent. Washington will still keep its veto power over IBRD and IFC decisions.</p>
<p>Kim said the increase was expected to become fully effective by the time the World Bank's new fiscal year starts on July 1. Countries will have up to eight years to pay for the capital increase.</p>
<p>The U.S. contribution is subject to approval by Congress.</p>
<p>Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Paul Simao</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Arab countries have finalised plans to create an independent, regional cross-border payments system after current arrangements were hit by a rise in compliance costs and downsizing by some international banks.</p>
<p>At present, many cross-border payments and settlements among Arab countries are carried out by correspondent banks, which act as agents for foreign financial institutions that do not have a local presence in a given country.</p>
<p>A tightening of anti-money laundering rules by U.S. and European banks in the last several years has added to the cost of this practice, while some banks have quit the market to focus on more lucrative areas.</p>
<p>The board of the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF), which has 22 member countries ranging from Gulf states to Sudan and Morocco, approved the creation of an independent regional body to clear and settle payments among them, the AMF said on Sunday.</p>
<p>It did not specify when the system would go live, but AMF officials said earlier that they expected the system to be in operation by 2020.</p>
<p>The new body, supported by Arab central banks, will have capital of $100 million and be owned by the AMF.</p>
<p>"The aim of the entity is to promote the use of local currencies in intra-Arab payments clearing and settlement transactions, alongside main international currencies," the AMF said.</p>
<p>Reporting by Stanley Carvalho; Editing by Andrew Torchia and Andrew Heavens</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | CANADA STOCKS-TSX slips as materials stocks weigh, pot stocks rise U.S. regulator permits China's ZTE to submit more evidence Bolivia to invest in billion-dollar lithium deal with ACI Systems World Bank shareholders back $13 billion capital increase Arab states finalize regional payment and settlement system | false | https://reuters.com/article/canada-stocks-open/canada-stocks-tsx-slips-as-materials-stocks-weigh-pot-stocks-rise-idUSL1N1PB0OX | 2018-01-16 | 2 |
<p>(The US and Iran for all their differences have a surprising amount of overlap in their interests in Iraq. What is that common ground?) Well neither us nor the Iranians would like to see a new Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or an Iraq with WMDs, or a divided Iraq. (How about in terms of practicality? The US is accusing Iran of stoking the violence and training and equipping Shia militants, while Iran says the US is contributing to civilian casualties. So these basic differences are both superficial and deep.) I do know after 30 years, we and the Iranians instinctively see each other as the source of all the problems in the world. (One problem here also is whether Iran intends to form nuclear weaponry.) It's in the background, it forms us. basically we don't trust each other so whatever one does, it's going to be interpreted in the worst light. (How do you define the relationship between the US and Iran?) It's a paradoxical one because it's no war, but no peace. I'm saying at this point it's time for mediation. (It's a bit surprising for people to hear you take a softer line given the fact that you were a hostage in Iran 30 years ago.) That was not a positive experience, but I'm not alone in this. Others have been saying this. I knew Iran from before and this was to me an aberration, something unexpected and that doesn't fit in with what I knew about Iran. I can't go on and say because of this, the whole country and system is infinitely evil.</p> | Iran's role | false | https://pri.org/stories/2008-04-07/irans-role | 2008-04-07 | 3 |
<p>For any multifactor investor, it’s critical to really put the microscope on the excess returns of a fund to try and identify the main return drivers. And a good starting point is probably to regress a fund’s excess returns on a number of single factors to determine two things: the right factors that explain the… <a href="https://www.etftrends.com/smart-beta-channel/yes-were-going-there-gauging-factor-sensitivities-in-a-multifactor-world/" type="external">Click to read more at ETFtrends.com. Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Yes, We’re Going There – Gauging Factor Sensitivities in a Multifactor World | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/04/24/yes-re-going-there-gauging-factor-sensitivities-in-multifactor-world.html | 2017-04-24 | 0 |
<p>Radio host Laura Ingraham launched a series of vicious attacks on Texas State Senator Wendy Davis for her filibuster fight against the state's anti-choice bill, by asking Davis which children she "sees on the playground shouldn't be there" and bringing up Davis' personal history to try to discredit her.</p>
<p>In a June 27 tweet, Ingraham mocked characterizations of Davis as a hero after her successful <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/texas-state-senator-wendy-davis-filibusters-her-way-to-democratic-stardom/2013/06/26/aace267c-de85-11e2-b2d4-ea6d8f477a01_story.html" type="external">filibuster</a> of Texas' <a href="http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/831/billtext/pdf/SB00005H.pdf#navpanes=0" type="external">Senate Bill 5 (SB5)</a>, one of the nation's most restrictive abortion laws. In response to Davis' efforts, Ingraham tweeted a "question" to Davis: "Which kids that you see on the playground shouldn't be there?":</p>
<p>Ingraham pushed her attack further during the June 27 edition of her radio show. She seized on Davis' personal history as a teenage mother, who later became successful, to claim Davis is "the kind of person who should actually be advocating for life":</p>
<p />
<p>The attack mirrored one made by&#160; Texas Governor and former Republican presidential contender Rick Perry, who, according to Think Progress, used his speech at the Right To Life c <a href="http://stoptheabortionagenda.com/convention/" type="external">onvention</a> to claim Davis "hasn't learned from her own example":</p>
<p />
<p>According to Texas Observer staff writer Forrest Wilder, Davis responded to Perry's attack by saying "Rick Perry's statement is without dignity and tarnishes the high office he holds":</p>
<p />
<p>From the June 27 edition of The Laura Ingraham Show:</p>
<p>INGRAHAM: The amazing thing about Wendy Davis is that she became a mom while she was still in her teens and she lived in a trailer park for a time. She ended up graduating with honors from Harvard Law. Her life story actually indicates why you shouldn't give your children up. You should consider adoption, or figure out a way with family members to raise the child yourself, or take the adoption alternative. She went on to go to Harvard Law. Right, So why -- when you think about it, Wendy Davis should actually be the type of person who is advocating for life after her life story.</p>
<p>I mean -- you know what I would like to ask the Planned Parenthood folks, just look around you. Which of the children on the playground shouldn't be here right now? Point the children out who shouldn't be here. You're listening to your healthy radio addiction, the Laura Ingraham Show.</p> | Laura Ingraham Launches Vicious Attacks Against Texas Senator Wendy Davis | true | http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/06/27/laura-ingraham-launches-vicious-attacks-against/194650 | 2013-06-27 | 4 |
<p>CEDAR CITY, Utah (AP) — Brandon Better scored 19 points, Jadon Cohee 18 and Southern Utah defeated Northern Arizona 81-75 on Saturday for the Thunderbirds’ first Big Sky Conference victory this season.</p>
<p>Better made four 3-pointers and Southern Utah (7-9, 1-4) hit 9 of 20 from the arc while shooting 52 percent overall in snapping a five-game losing streak. Dwayne Morgan added 14 points, Jamal Aytes 12 and Dre Marin 10.</p>
<p>Gino Littles scored 15 points and Torry Johnson and Isaiah Thomas 14 each for the Lumberjacks (3-15, 0-5), who have lost five straight and eight of nine.</p>
<p>Southern Utah, which led 38-36 at halftime, took the lead for good at 56-51 with 10 minutes left after Aytes scored five straight points.</p>
<p>The lead remained in single digits with Better scoring for a 77-69 lead with under a minute to go.</p>
<p>CEDAR CITY, Utah (AP) — Brandon Better scored 19 points, Jadon Cohee 18 and Southern Utah defeated Northern Arizona 81-75 on Saturday for the Thunderbirds’ first Big Sky Conference victory this season.</p>
<p>Better made four 3-pointers and Southern Utah (7-9, 1-4) hit 9 of 20 from the arc while shooting 52 percent overall in snapping a five-game losing streak. Dwayne Morgan added 14 points, Jamal Aytes 12 and Dre Marin 10.</p>
<p>Gino Littles scored 15 points and Torry Johnson and Isaiah Thomas 14 each for the Lumberjacks (3-15, 0-5), who have lost five straight and eight of nine.</p>
<p>Southern Utah, which led 38-36 at halftime, took the lead for good at 56-51 with 10 minutes left after Aytes scored five straight points.</p>
<p>The lead remained in single digits with Better scoring for a 77-69 lead with under a minute to go.</p> | Southern Utah picks up first conference victory, 81-75 | false | https://apnews.com/aff506c66c9e49b68cc873cbcb2ad756 | 2018-01-13 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>RAYMONDVILLE, Texas — Experts believe an endangered ocelot found dead on a South Texas highway was struck and killed by a vehicle.</p>
<p>The Valley Morning Star ( <a href="http://bit.ly/1NuWlkE" type="external">http://bit.ly/1NuWlkE</a> ) reported Monday that the cat’s body was found June 8 on Highway 186 between Raymondville and Port Mansfield.</p>
<p>The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the carcass was a mature female first confirmed in Willacy County in 2011. The rare cat was spotted by remote cameras by the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute.</p>
<p>Authorities say the animal was one of only about 80 ocelots left in the U.S.</p>
<p>Approximately 30 of those live on private brush land in Willacy County. The others are in and around the Laguna Atascosa (a-tuhs-KOH’-suh) National Wildlife Refuge.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Valley Morning Star, <a href="http://www.valleystar.com" type="external">http://www.valleystar.com</a></p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Endangered ocelot found dead in Texas was hit by vehicle | false | https://abqjournal.com/606227/endangered-ocelot-found-dead-in-texas-was-hit-by-vehicle.html | 2015-06-30 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>UNM’s low four-year graduation rates have prompted gasps and yawns as well – because while perennial students cost the university tens of thousands of dollars more than those who don a mortarboard after eight semesters, there’s been little immediate financial incentive for many students to make a real effort to graduate in four years.</p>
<p>So it is important that UNM regents are now trying to get the same reaction, a sense of immediacy, from everyone, one that emphasizes tuition is paid for with real money that should result in a college degree in four years.</p>
<p>The proposal being fleshed out is a guaranteed, flat-rate, four-year tuition, likely starting in fall 2015. It could be offered to all incoming freshmen, or the first 500 applicants, or scholarship recipients, or students taking a full 15-credit load, or students who maintain a certain grade-point average. It would likely include a surcharge to lock in a rate and an escape clause in the event of another fiscal crisis like the Great Recession.</p>
<p>But, by design, it would help students and their families budget for four years of college. Ditto for helping the beleaguered Legislative Lottery Scholarship fund manage expenditures compared with its revenue. And it could limit the tuition creep that has been tolerated, in great part, because said scholarship has picked up the tab for many.</p>
<p>A flat-tuition plan would do all this by putting an immediate, likely higher, student price on not finishing coursework in four years. That’s important, because UNM officials have said the university spends $50,000 for a student to get a bachelor’s degree in four years, but almost twice that amount, $91,000, for someone who takes six. Just under 16 percent of UNM students graduate in four years; around 46 percent graduate in six.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The flat-rate proposal has the same timeline as the revised lottery scholarship, which the 2014 Legislature reduced to seven semesters while requiring students carry full 15 credit-hour loads. (A “bridge” scholarship is available for students’ first semester.) It has the same timeline as UNM’s recent policy change that requires students pass a minimum of 120 credit hours to graduate (15 hours x 8 semesters = 120 credits). It coincides with the university’s discounting the cost of courses in a 15-hour-plus full load vs. those of part-time students (students who take on that heavier load could save almost $9,000 in tuition alone by graduating in four years instead of six).</p>
<p>In other words, it’s part of an integrated, multi-pronged approach aimed at delivering more degrees in four years, and more affordability and fiscal clarity to students and the programs that fund their educations. That’s an equation that adds up for all involved. This is a move in the right direction.</p>
<p>This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.</p>
<p /> | Editorial: Flat-rate tuition adds up for UNM and its students | false | https://abqjournal.com/418622/flatrate-tuition-adds-up-for-unm-and-its-students.html | 2 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" />ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Just two months after it opened an in-house trampoline park, Cottonwood Mall has added another family attraction: glow-in-the-dark miniature golf.</p>
<p><a href="http://opryglowgolf.com/index.htm" type="external">Glowgolf</a>, the West Side mall's newest resident, has created a 36-hole course on the lower level near Macy's. Mall general manager B Janecka said the course took over what was once the Bloom clothing store but has most recently housed various temporary tenants.</p>
<p>Glowgolf has 27 locations across the U.S. - most of them in malls - according to its website.</p>
<p>Admission runs $10 per adult, $8 for kids ages 5-12 and $5 for those under 5 and entitles the customer to play a total of 54 holes, according to a news release.</p>
<p>Cottonwood Mall in September welcomed Fallout Trampoline Arena, an 8,000-square-foot, two-story facility near Old Navy. Customers pay $12 for one hour of jumping or $20 for two.</p>
<p>Those aren't the only additions on tap for Cottonwood. Though not technically part of the mall, a <a href="" type="internal">new Texas Roadhouse</a> is in the works on the property's perimeter.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Cottonwood Mall expands entertainment options | false | https://abqjournal.com/678110/cottonwood-mall-expands-entertainment-options.html | 2 |
|
<p />
<p>Adding to a large list of cyber attacks against large companies, Citigroup (NYSE:C) confirmed Thursday that hackers breached security and had access to the personal information of some 200,000 bank-card holders in North America.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>While only 1% of Citis North American accounts were affected by the security breach, hackers were able to gain access to the affected customers names, account numbers and contact information, the company said.</p>
<p>Birth dates, social security numbers, card expiration dates and card security codes were not compromised in the attack, according to Citi.</p>
<p>The breaches were reportedly discovered by the bank in early May, according to the Financial Times -- like Sony (NYSE:SNE), which has undergone numerous security attacks this year, Citi may come under criticism for not informing customers sooner.</p>
<p>One of the largest banks in the U.S., Citi is the latest company facing cyber attacks, including Nintendo, Sony (NYSE:SNE), Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT).</p>
<p>Citi said it is contacting affected customers and has implemented new procedures to prevent a recurrence of such an event.</p> | Hackers Gain Data Access to 200,000 Citi Bank Cards | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/06/09/hackers-access-citi-bank-card-data.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
<p>Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE:CMG) said Tuesday that federal prosecutors have joined an ongoing investigation into the popular chain eatery’s hiring practices.</p>
<p>Chipotle has been targeted in the past by federal authorities for allegedly hiring undocumented workers.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Now the U.S. Attorney’s Office is looking into whether Chipotle has violated Securities and Exchange Commission rules regarding how the company discloses information related to its process for verifying whether workers are legally documented.</p>
<p>The investigation was revealed by Chipotle in a filing with the SEC in which the company said the probe is targeting “possible criminal securities law violations relating to our employee work authorization verification compliance and related disclosures and statements.”</p>
<p>Chipotle said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm is also looking into the matter.</p>
<p>The company said in the filing, “We intend to continue to fully cooperate in the government’s investigations.”</p>
<p>Chipotle’s shares dipped into negative territory after news of the investigation broke but closed for the day up $2.23, or 0.57%, at $395.56.</p>
<p>Last week Chipotle was told by the SEC that a formal investigation was underway into whether the company was verifying its employees’ immigration status. Chipotle said the SEC is seeking information related to whether the company is complying with employee work and authorization requirements and related disclosure regulations.</p>
<p>The SEC investigation follows a probe by federal immigration officials into allegations that Chipotle employed undocumented workers in Minnesota and several other markets. A 2010 investigation by immigration officials resulted in about 450 Chipotle employees losing their jobs in Minnesota.</p>
<p>Chipotle owns and operates more than 1,000 restaurants in the U.S. Its stock has been popular with investors, climbing about 40% in the past 12 months.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | U.S. Attorney Looking Into Chipotle Hiring Practices | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/05/22/us-attorney-looking-into-chipotle-hiring-practices.html | 2016-01-26 | 0 |
<p>Photo by US Department of Labor | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>Without doubt, the greatest Secretary of Labor in U.S. history was Frances Perkins.&#160; She was not only the first woman to serve in that office, and not only served longer than any Labor Secretary in history (1933-1945), she was a leading force in the implementation of FDR’s New Deal program, including passage of the landmark 1935 National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act).</p>
<p>After witnessing firsthand, as a young woman in New York City, the tragic 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which 146 workers (123 women, 23 men, mostly immigrants) died after being trapped inside their burning workplace by greedy factory owners who routinely kept the doors locked, Perkins became a “labor zealot,” a true crusader.</p>
<p>It was she who, as Labor Secretary, established the first minimum wage and overtime pay for the American worker. &#160;&#160;Say what you will about tough-minded, inspirational union leaders like Harry Bridges, Walter Reuther, John L. Lewis, et al, but Perkins outshined them all.&#160; She did more than simply inspire and motivate.</p>
<p>Because she was part of the federal government (back when that wasn’t viewed with the cynicism it is today), she had the authority to actually get things done—the authority to get unapologetically pro-union laws passed, which was exactly what she did.&#160; And which is why Perkins will forever be revered as the patron saint of organized labor.</p>
<p>Now we have Alexander Acosta as our Secretary of Labor.&#160; Born in 1969, in Miami, Florida, to Cuban immigrants, Acosta was serving as law school dean at an obscure college (Florida International University) when Donald Trump chose him to be one of his cabinet flunkies.&#160; Let’s be clear. &#160;Alex Acosta is no friend of labor.&#160; Indeed, if he had shown even a trace of “labor zealotry,” Trump never would have picked him.</p>
<p>Still, in all fairness to him, we must recognize that, “labor-wise,” the milieu in which he’ll be taking his cow to market is exceedingly hostile to unions. &#160;In truth, the social-economic zeitgeist that Acosta inherited differs radically in both substance and presentation from that of the post-New Deal era.</p>
<p>Ever since the toxic Taft-Hartley Act was passed, in 1947, the anti-union, anti-worker forces in this country have been on the ascendancy, using RLC (rat-like cunning) to do everything in their power to erode the influence and scope of America’s unions.&#160; So it won’t be entirely Acosta’s fault when he proves to be the useless bureaucratic ornament we all assumed he would be.</p>
<p>The following account is one real-life example of just how “pro-business” and anti-union the Establishment is.&#160; This incident occurred back in the 1980s, when I was part of a team negotiating a contract for a union affiliated with a Fortune 500 industrial company.</p>
<p>One of the provisions in the contract was a 20-minute lunch period.&#160; Understandably, the union members wanted to get it extended to 30 minutes.&#160; But here’s the kicker.&#160; The state of California’s labor commission had already mandated that employees be given a 30-minute meal period during an 8-hour shift.&#160; In other words, a 30-minute lunch break was already on the books.</p>
<p>The only way a company could get around it was by formally applying for an exemption on the grounds that a 30-minute meal period would adversely affect production.&#160; And even though there was a “tag relief” format in effect (where machinery was never shut down), the company had applied for that exemption in all previous negotiations, and had gotten it every time.&#160; They had never been refused.</p>
<p>But in this negotiation—even before the parties sat down at the table and exchanged agendas—the company decided to throw the union a crumb.&#160; They had chosen not to oppose a 30-minute meal break.&#160; And for that reason (and rightly assuming the item would be on the union’s agenda), they didn’t bother applying for an exemption.</p>
<p>However, the California government took this moment to show just how pro-management it was.&#160; Thinking the company had “forgotten” to apply for the exemption before the deadline, the commissioner’s office notified the HR manager that they had taken it upon themselves to make the application.&#160;&#160; So don’t worry about it, guys.&#160; We got you covered.</p>
<p>How did the union learn about this?&#160; The HR manager proudly showed us the labor commission’s letter.&#160; He showed it to us with no trace of embarrassment or guilt.&#160; As far as he was concerned, this act of generosity demonstrated just how—in his own words—“respected” the company was.&#160; And the beat goes on.</p> | What Can We Expect from Alex Acosta, Our New Labor Secretary? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/07/11/what-can-we-expect-from-alex-acosta-our-new-labor-secretary/ | 2017-07-11 | 4 |
<p>Can you guess the artist?</p>
<p>A strong, confident black woman rises from performing on the streets to superstardom. Her music is filled with talk of sex and violence, and her private life is just as transgressive as her lyrics. Rumors circulate about her hookups with various men and women, and she even hints at these affairs in her songs. Many are shocked, but audiences flock to her performances and her recordings sell millions of copies.</p>
<p>Maybe Nicki Minaj? Or Rihanna? Or some other in-your-face hip-hop diva.</p>
<p>No, you’re not even close.</p>
<p>Here’s one last clue: my mystery singer was born in 1894.</p>
<p>Yes, ladies such as Bessie Smith did exist back during the Victorian era. Well, at least one woman like that was around. And she became the biggest-selling black female singer of her day. Even white audiences fell under Bessie Smith’s spell, and the major record companies of the era soon figured out they needed to sign her, or find someone else who could imitate her.</p>
<p>But no one could really imitate Bessie Smith. Even now, almost a century after the release of her first records, she still stands out as the greatest blues singer in history. You can hear the echoes of her style in current-day divas such as Ruthie Foster, who just a few days ago got honored by the Blues Foundation as best female blues singer of the year, or Cécile McLorin Salvant, who was picked as top female jazz vocalist in the most recent Down Beat critics poll.</p>
<p>No singer is hotter in the jazz world right now than 25-year-old Salvant, but she will sing a song by Bessie Smith at almost every performance. When I spoke to her recently about her influences, Smith’s name was the first one she mentioned. “Bessie Smith,” Salvant added, “is very important to me.”</p>
<p>Singers still learn from Bessie Smith, and for a very good reason. These songs work like a charm in live performance, even in the year 2015. They are filled with raw passion and raunchy comedy. They tell stories that seem just as relevant today as when Smith recorded them during the Calvin Coolidge administration. In fact, they might be even more appropriate in the current day, almost as if this blues singer from our great-grandma’s generation were sending a time capsule to millennials.</p>
<p>Frankly, I’m not surprised that HBO decided to turn Bessie Smith’s life into a biopic. I’m only puzzled why it took so long. Of all the celebrity entertainers from the first half of the 20th century, Bessie Smith is the one most suited for a posthumous revival. She was Nicki Minaj before there was a Nicki Minaj. She wrote the rulebook for hip-hop ladies before hip-hop existed. She was the Empress of the Blues, and her reign never really ended.</p>
<p>HBO’s casting of <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2015/05/13/queen-latifah-takes-on-nudity-sexuality-and-the-indomitable-bessie-smith.html" type="external">Queen Latifah</a> as Bessie Smith was an inspired choice. Who better to play an Empress than a Queen? “I had no idea who Bessie Smith was, to be honest with you,” Latifah recently admitted to an interviewer. But after she had immersed herself in Smith’s music, she walked away in awe. “I could hear her voice in so many people who came after her,” Latifah has explained. “If there was a Bessie Smith alive today, she’d blow everyone else out of the water.” Now Latifah is charged with convincing others who know nothing about Bessie Smith why they should care about a singer whose most important recordings were made almost 90 years ago. I have a hunch that she will succeed.</p>
<p>Bessie Smith’s life story may be filled with rule-breaking and hell-raising, but also conforms to the classic rags-to-riches formula of traditional American narratives. Smith was an orphan before the age of ten, and survived by performing on the streets of her native Chattanooga, Tennessee along with her brother Andrew. She toured with blues singer Ma Rainey while still in her teens, but soon went out on her own as a star attraction, performing in theaters and tent shows in the South and along the Eastern Seaboard.</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>Smith dazzled audiences in live performance, with her larger-than-life stage presence and a big, earthy voice that could reach the back row in the days before microphones and amplification. But her recordings made her into a superstar, and even today I listen in rapt admiration to these old tracks, wondering how such a fragile medium of sound waves preserved in grooves on a shellac disk can contain so much life force and emotional power.</p>
<p>Clearly audiences in the ’20s felt the same. Smith’s 1923 recording of “Downhearted Blues” would eventually sell 2 million copies, and she followed it up with more than a dozen other mega-hits over the next half-decade. At the peak of her fame, she was earning $2,000 per week (equivalent to $25,000 in 2015 purchasing power) and traveled in her own private rail car as part of an entourage of 40 troupers.</p>
<p>Smith was fearless, both onstage and off. Stories circulate of her staring down the Ku Klux Klan, or taking on an impertinent drunk in a fistfight. Many have been inspired by her courage, and not just musicians. Edward Albee drew on her biography for his play The Death of Bessie Smith, and J.D. Salinger did the same in his short story “Blue Melody.” Editor David Lehman included one Smith’s song lyrics, “Empty Bed Blues,” in The Oxford Book of American Poetry, where it appears alongside works by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.</p>
<p>Author James Baldwin later stressed the influence of Bessie Smith on his illustrious career. “I was working on my first novel—I thought I would never be able to finish it,” he recalled. But the blues singer helped him find his own voice as a writer. “I played Bessie Smith every day. A lot of the book is in dialogue, and I corrected things according to what I was able to hear when Bessie sang… It’s that tone, that sound which is in me.”</p>
<p>No other blues singer could challenge her. But Bessie Smith finally encountered an obstacle she couldn’t overcome. The Great Depression destroyed the U.S. recording industry. Record sales declined by more than 90 percent, and the labels exited the blues market even faster than they had entered it a few years before.</p>
<p>Smith’s voice never lost its magic, and she continued to perform wherever she could find work. And I am confident that she would have enjoyed renewed acclaim in the post World War II era, when mainstream America began its love affair with R&amp;B and the first stirrings of the blues revival reverberated through the music industry.</p>
<p>But she never got the chance. Smith died on September 26, 1937 from injuries suffered in an auto collision while heading to an engagement in Darling, Mississippi. She was just 43 years old. In the aftermath of her death, many debated whether she could have been saved with better medical intervention after the accident. Rumors circulated about her death just as they had about her life, almost as her artistry were a footnote to all the gossip and scandalmongering.</p>
<p>Smith deserved better. She still does. She earned our respect through her music and her bravery in the face of obstacles that would have overwhelmed a less courageous woman. Above all, she deserves that revival she never enjoyed during her lifetime. Perhaps she will finally get it in 2015, thanks to Queen Latifah and HBO.</p> | Why Blues Titan Bessie Smith Still Kills It | true | https://thedailybeast.com/why-blues-titan-bessie-smith-still-kills-it | 2018-10-06 | 4 |
<p>Sirius XM Holdings Inc. reported improved fourth-quarter earnings and revenue on Thursday. Net income for the quarter was $204.6 million, or 4 cents per share, compared with $134.6 million, or 3 cents during the same period a year ago. Sirius' per-share earnings came in right at FactSet's consensus of 4 cents. Revenue hit $1.30 billion during the quarter, up from $1.20 billion during the year-earlier quarter and just ahead of FactSet's forecast for $1.29 billion. The satellite radio broadcasting company said it added 1.75 million net subscribers during the full year 2016, more than the 1.65 million FactSet expected. Sirius expects to add 1.30 million self-pay subscribers during 2017 and expects revenue of approximately $5.30 billion, above the FactSet consensus of $5.01. Shares of Sirius are up more than 33% in the trailing 12-month period, while the S&amp;P 500 Index is up nearly 20% in during the same time frame.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Sirius XM Posts Improved Q4 Earnings And Revenue, Adds 1.75 Mln Subscribers In 2016 | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/02/02/sirius-xm-posts-improved-q4-earnings-and-revenue-adds-175-mln-subscribers-in.html | 2017-02-02 | 0 |
<p>Baptists tend to be the “problem children” of the ecumenical movement but have gifts both to give and receive from the broader Christian community, a Baptist theologian who teaches in the school of divinity at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, N.C., says in a new book.</p>
<p>Steven Harmon</p>
<p>Steven Harmon, who previously served on the faculties of Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala., and Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, N.C., argues in <a href="http://www.baylorpress.com/Book/470/Baptist_Identity_and_the_Ecumenical_Future.html" type="external">Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future</a>, released March 1 by Baylor University Press, that Baptist communities and the churches from which they are separated need each other to be faithful to Jesus’ vision of a visibly united church in his high priestly prayer in John 17.</p>
<p>Harmon, author of previous books including <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ecumenism-Means-You-Too-Christians/dp/1606088653" type="external">Ecumenism Means You, Too</a>and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Towards-Baptist-Catholicity-Tradition-Studies/dp/1597528323" type="external">Towards Baptist Catholicity</a>, says he takes seriously Christ’s desire that his followers “may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”</p>
<p>“In my opinion, only the end of the full visible unity of the church justifies the continued separate ecclesial existence of Baptist denominational identity,” says Harmon, who was educated at a Southern Baptist seminary but now identifies the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship as his denominational home. “When continued denominational existence becomes an end in itself, it perpetuates the division of the church.”</p>
<p>Harmon, who has been active in ecumenical conversations through the Baptist World Alliance, says Baptists, and especially Southern Baptists, were initially resistant to the ecumenical movement as represented in groups such as the World Council of Churches, fearing the price of visible unity would be the surrender of doctrines held most dear.</p>
<p>But he says a newer model of “receptive ecumenism” —&#160;where each communion in conversation seeks to identify the distinctive gifts each tradition has to offer and discern which gifts each member of the conversation could receive with integrity —&#160;is in many ways friendlier to Baptists than earlier models.</p>
<p>“It assumes that because Baptists have been entrusted with a unique journey as the people of God, they possess distinctive gifts to be offered to the rest of the body of Christ,” Harmon writes. “It also suggests the possibility that Baptists can incorporate the gifts of others into their own faith and practice without abandoning or distorting the gifts that already define the Baptist identity.”</p>
<p><a href="https://1648o73kablq2rveyn64glm1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/baptist_identity_and_the_ecumenical_future.jpg" type="external" />Harmon says Baptists are more ecumenically minded than most people believe. The way they read the Bible, he said, was inherited from English Separatists that came to be known as the Free Church tradition. Most of their theology, including the biblical canon, is from the pre-Reformation church. Patterns of worship are not dissimilar from the Catholic mass.</p>
<p>Harmon says Baptist hymnals “are arguably the most significant ecumenical documents produced by Baptists,” because they recognize hymn writers from a wide variety of traditions throughout the history of the church as brothers and sisters in Christ by including their hymns alongside those of Baptist authors.</p>
<p>Harmon says Baptists “have a history of declaring other traditions to be false churches” that goes all the way back to the earliest identifiable Baptist congregation in Amsterdam in 1609.</p>
<p>Baptist triumphalism marched on with the 19th century Restorationist Movement concept of the “Constantinian fall of the church” and Landmarkism, a view popular among Baptists on America’s frontier which sought to trace a lineage of direct succession of true churches though pre-Reformation sectarian movements all the way back to Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist.</p>
<p>Harmon says not only do Baptists need the gifts that Catholics and other Christians have to offer, but the Baptist tradition has been entrusted with gifts that the rest of the church needs to be “fully catholic,” pertaining to the whole Christian body.</p>
<p>Chief among those gifts, Harmon says, is the Baptist understanding of “a pilgrim community seeking to become a community living fully under the rule of Christ.” Baptists, he says, bring to the table a “pilgrim aversion to overly realized eschatologies of the church and their radical commitment to discerning the rule of Christ by means of the Scriptures.”</p>
<p>Harmon says the Baptist vision of a pilgrim community is “thoroughly eschatological,” not rooted in any particular past or present but a future goal that embodies more fully gifts available in the here and now.</p>
<p>Such a church, he says, is ever “renewing itself by fresh reappropriations of the normative biblical and catholic roots of Christian faith and faithfulness.”</p>
<p>“While there have been many Baptist failures to embody the ideals of this vision, a pilgrim church orientation is one of the gifts this tradition has to offer the whole church,” Harmon says. He says that recognition “may even be a necessary precondition” for engaging in receptive ecumenism.</p>
<p>“Unless all churches are willing to acknowledge the possibility that they currently lack something they need to be more fully catholic, more fully under the rule of Christ, they will not be receptive to the gifts found elsewhere in the body of Christ,” Harmon writes. “Without pilgrim openness to receiving what they need for renewal from one another, the divided churches cannot make further progress in their shared pilgrimage toward the ecumenical future.”</p>
<p>“Baptist churches at their best are relentlessly pilgrim communities that resist all overly realized eschatologies of the church,” Harmon contends. “Their ecclesial ideal is the church that is fully under the rule of Christ, which they locate somewhere ahead of them rather than in any past or present instantiation of the church. Baptists are relentlessly dissatisfied with the present state of the church in their pilgrim journey toward the community that will be fully under the reign of Christ.”</p>
<p>Harmon says the pilgrim church vision is by no means limited to Baptists. The early monastic communities grew out of a desire to follow Christ more faithfully, and Augustine described a “society of pilgrims” in the fifth-century classic <a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=APdLAwAAQBAJ&amp;source=productsearch&amp;utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&amp;utm_medium=SEM&amp;utm_campaign=PLA&amp;pcampaignid=MKTAD0930BO1&amp;gl=US&amp;gclid=COCW3bLQtssCFdHoDQodj7IDuw&amp;gclsrc=ds" type="external">City of God</a>. The pilgrim church identity, he says, is also a part of the modern ecumenical movement as reflected in documents issued in connection with assemblies of the World Council of Churches.</p>
<p>Harmon says those involved in ecumenical dialogue today know “painfully well” there can be no “realized eschatology of the ecumenical movement” any time soon.</p>
<p>“Only a pilgrim church vision can sustain the quest for the visible unity of the church,” he says. “It recognizes that each church lacks something it needs to receive to be visibly united with the other churches and perhaps retains something it must relinquish for visible unity to be realized.”</p>
<p>“It refuses to be content with the status quo of the ecumenical movement, though it has achieved much, and it regards the nonetheless significant expressions of spiritual ecumenism as only partial embodiments of what ought to be,” he concludes. “Until there is a unity within the church that the world without the church can see, the church’s pilgrim journey must continue.”</p> | ‘Pilgrim’ identity is Baptists’ gift to the larger church, new book asserts | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/pilgrim-identity-is-baptists-gift-to-the-larger-church-new-book-asserts/ | 3 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>But a study published this week in the journal PNAS suggests that among adolescents, the hopeful signs are limited to those from better-educated, more affluent families. Among teenagers from poorer, less well-educated families, obesity has continued to rise.</p>
<p>Nationally, rates of obesity among adolescents ages 12 to 19 did not rise between from 2003 to 2004 and 2009 to 2010. But during those times, obesity rates among adolescents whose parents have no more than high-school educations rose from about 20 percent to 25 percent. At the same time, the obesity rates for teenage children of parents with four-year college degrees or more fell from 14 percent to about 7 percent.</p>
<p>“The overall trend in youth obesity rates masks a significant and growing class gap between youth from upper and lower socioeconomic status backgrounds,” the authors of the latest research wrote.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>That class gap was not evident in younger children – those from ages 1 to 2, the researchers said. But as children neared the cusp of adulthood, the class differences became increasingly stark.</p>
<p>Disparities between rich and poor in obesity rates are not new, and they are only one of many health gaps that make poor patients sicker and more likely to die prematurely than richer ones. But if the public health message on obesity “has not diffused evenly across the population,” as the authors of Monday’s report suggest, this disparity could stymie efforts to stem a costly obesity-related diseases in the years ahead.</p>
<p>In a detailed accounting of youth consumption and exercise patterns, researchers from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government found that physical activity may account largely for the divergent trend in obesity between rich and poor.</p>
<p>In 2003, 86.6 percent of adolescents living with parents who had college degrees told survey-takers that they had exercised or played a sport for at least 20 minutes continuously sometime in the last seven days. By 2011, 90.1 percent said they had done so.</p>
<p>In contrast, 79.8 percent of adolescent children with parents who did not go beyond high school said in 2003 that they had exercised or played a sport for at least 20 minutes in the previous week. By 2011, the numbers of those adolescents who had done so had barely budged, at 80.4 percent.</p>
<p>Asked whether they had engaged in at least 10 minutes of continuous physical activity in the last 30 days, 94.7 percent of adolescents with college-educated parents said yes. But among teens with parents with high school educations or less, 82.1 percent of teens said they had engaged in even that minimal level of exercise.</p>
<p>Less advantaged kids took in fewer calories to begin with. From 1998 to 2010, the teenage children of parents with college degrees reduced their average calorie intake from 2,487 calories per day to 2,150. In the same period, less advantaged adolescents went from averaging 2,271 calories per day down to 2,105.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Obesity drops among affluent kids | false | https://abqjournal.com/336842/obesity-drops-among-affluent-kids.html | 2 |
|
<p>The two-year operating budget that Gov. John Kasich plans to deliver Monday to state lawmakers will include a package of tax changes that delivers an overall $500 million cut.</p>
<p>Details the Republican governor and his cabinet directors plan to provide at an afternoon news conference will show exactly what's reduced and what's raised to achieve the savings.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Kasich has signaled he'll eliminate nearly all income taxes imposed on small businesses and boost the personal income-tax exemption for low- and middle-income workers. To offset those cuts, he's likely to revisit raising taxes on oil and gas drilling operations and on cigarettes and consumer products.</p>
<p>Kasich's budget also is expected to continue funding a Medicaid expansion approved last session. It's also likely to present for the first time a more integrated education budget following the consolidation of some higher education and K-12 operations.</p>
<p>Lifting struggling Ohioans out of poverty perhaps will be Kasich's primary goal with the sweeping policy document, which lays out spending priorities for the two years beginning in July 1.</p>
<p>He suggested during his inaugural address last month that he's a believer in sharing the benefits of Ohio's improving economy with those who live "in the shadows," such as the poor, undereducated and those who are mentally ill.</p>
<p>Kasich's budget will be introduced in the Ohio House, which begins hearings Tuesday with testimony by Budget Director Tim Keen. Under state law, the House must pass the bill, which then goes to the Senate for more debate and changes.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Disagreements in the two versions will go to a conference committee this summer. The budget must be in place by June 30.</p> | Gov. Kasich set to detail tax cuts and hikes needed to balance Ohio's next state budget | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/02/02/gov-kasich-set-to-detail-tax-cuts-and-hikes-needed-to-balance-ohio-next-state.html | 2016-03-09 | 0 |
<p>Shares of Nordstrom Inc. tanked late Thursday after the retailer reported lower-than-expected first-quarter sales and earnings. The company said it earned $46 million, or 26 cents a share, in the first quarter, compared with $128 million, or 66 cents a share, in the first quarter of 2015. Sales reached $3.2 billion in the quarter, flat in comparison with the year-ago period. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected earnings of 47 cents a share on sales of $3.3 billion. "Our first quarter results were impacted by lower than expected sales. In response we have made further adjustments to our inventory and expense plans," Co-President Blake Nordstrom said in statement. Comparable-store sales fell 1.7%, and Nordstrom also cut its expectations for 2016 comparable sales and earnings. The retailer sees comparable sales in a range from 1% down to 1% up in the year, whereas it had predicted sales to remain flat or rise 2% in a previous outlook. The company also set its 2016 EPS expectations lower to $2.50 to $2.70 a share, from $3.10 to $3.35 a share prior. Shares of Nordstrom had ended the regular trading day down 0.4%.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2016 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Nordstrom Shares Plunge After Revenue, EPS Miss | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/05/12/nordstrom-shares-plunge-after-revenue-eps-miss.html | 2016-05-12 | 0 |
<p>The Covestor Rockledge L2 strategy gained 2.8% in November after management fees. The <a href="http://covestor.com/rockledge-group/l2-portfolio" type="external">Covestor Rockledge Group L2 Opens a New Window.</a> portfolio has held positions in industrials ETFs such as the Select Sector SPDR Industrial <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Fund/XLI" type="external">(XLI) Opens a New Window.</a>, Select Sector SPDR Healthcare <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Fund/XLV" type="external">(XLV) Opens a New Window.</a> and Select Sector SPDR Consumer Discretionary <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Fund/XLY" type="external">(XLY) Opens a New Window.</a> since July inception.</p>
<p>In November, the positions in XLI, XLV and XLY gained 3.6%, 4.6% and 3.5%, respectively. During the month of November, some new data came in, and some signals changed. As a result, I added the Select Sector SPDR Consumer Staples <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Fund/XLP" type="external">(XLP) Opens a New Window.</a>and Select Sector SPDR Materials <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Fund/XLB" type="external">(XLB) Opens a New Window.</a> ETFs at the expense of a position in Select Sector SPDR Energy <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Fund/XLE" type="external">(XLE) Opens a New Window.</a>. These were closed out by month end and replaced with a position in Select Sector SPDR Financials <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Fund/XLF" type="external">(XLF) Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The Rockledge L2 strategy typically holds positions in three sectors. But since inception, the strategy has taken on holding four sectors, and even briefly, five. This is predicated by the unusual market conditions. I believe that to mitigate the risks in the market today, holding a more diversified portfolio is warranted versus the more concentrated three position portfolio.</p>
<p>Against a backdrop that continues to push the stocks of the S&amp;P 500 higher, the Rockledge L2 strategy has kept pace with the market. These are not ideal conditions for the L2 strategy. In these periods of high correlation, all sectors tend to react in a similar way.</p>
<p>In my opinion, corporate fundamentals have taken a back seat to investor emotion. That is, traditional factors like earnings growth and sales growth today seem to be less important than macro-economic (budget balancing) and political (debt ceiling) discussions with respect to how the markets are doing. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve continues to signal a low rate environment, pushing money from the sidelines into stocks.</p>
<p>We believe that the persistently high correlations and lessened regard for corporate fundamentals will subside. &#160;When the market begins to recognize good sector fundamentals against weakened sector fundamentals, the Rockledge L2 strategy should capitalize on these dislocations.</p>
<p>DISCLAIMER: The investments discussed are held in client accounts as of November 30, 2013. These investments may or may not be currently held in client accounts. The reader should not assume that any investments identified were or will be profitable or that any investment recommendations or investment decisions we make in the future will be profitable. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.</p>
<p>The post <a href="http://investing.covestor.com/2013/12/emotion-trumps-fundamentals-stock-market" type="external">Emotion trumps fundamentals in this stock market Opens a New Window.</a> appeared first on <a href="http://investing.covestor.com" type="external">Smarter Investing Opens a New Window.</a>Covestor Ltd. is a registered investment advisor. Covestor licenses investment strategies from its Model Managers to establish investment models. The commentary here is provided as general and impersonal information and should not be construed as recommendations or advice. Information from Model Managers and third-party sources deemed to be reliable but not guaranteed. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Transaction histories for Covestor models available upon request. Additional important disclosures available at http://site.covestor.com/help/disclosures.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Emotion trumps fundamentals in this stock market | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2013/12/20/emotion-trumps-fundamentals-in-this-stock-market.html | 2016-03-02 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>— Jake Spidle</p>
<p>■ “CRYING IN The Rain “- Charlie Baca 1962 ….Umbrellas are banned at outdoor sporting events because your oversized umbrella will&#160; block the view of a dozen people around you. See, this is why I quit going to sporting events, people don’t respect others space. Tailgate areas should ban Frisbee’s, footballs and “foaming at the mouth Pit-bulls”. You’re sitting there enjoying a hot dog and a Frisbee or football comes crashing into you space.</p>
<p>— Vince Guillen</p>
<p>■ I AGREE WITH Josh Norman about Roger Goodell. However, it takes 24 owners to make anything happen and Jerry Jones will lead the “keep Goodell” movement.</p>
<p>— MHD</p>
<p>■ WHILE I HOLD season tickets for both Lobo football and basketball, my interest has been slowly gravitating toward the football program. In part, because of Coach Davie (great hire Paul Krebs!), but more so because I thoroughly enjoy watching a kid develop over all four years of his eligibility.&#160; The majority of blue chip college basketball players will bolt for the NBA after 1, 2 or 3 years. I understand why this happens, and I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same under the circumstances, but … it’s a letdown.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>— Bob, UNM Area</p>
<p>■ DOES ANYONE else agree that the ROOT announcers&#160; doing the Lobos game are the worst?</p>
<p>— da Don, ABQ</p>
<p>■ FOR VETERANS DAY at UNM to recognize veterans $17 for a bench seat. At NMSU to recognize veterans $5. Nuff Said!</p>
<p>— Dave C</p> | Speak Up! On golf umbrellas, the NFL and Lobo hoops and football | false | https://abqjournal.com/888013/speak-up-on-golf-umbrellas-the-nfl-and-lobo-hoops-and-football.html | 2 |
|
<p>When a person is granted asylum in Sweden, the first order of business: learn the language. &#160;</p>
<p>The small Swedish city of Södertälje is known for being the childhood home of tennis legend Bjorn Borg, and now, as home to many migrants from Syria and Iraq. I spoke with Sevag Yemenyjan outside of a Swedish language classroom. He fled Syria and left everything and everyone behind. I asked how he chose Sweden. &#160;</p>
<p>“Someone told me Sweden is good. They help for school, and help&#160;two years,” said Yemenyjan in somewhat stilted English.</p>
<p>Two years refers to the time period for cash assistance to asylees. During that time, Yemenyjan will&#160;receive close to $54,000 to support himself, his wife, and two daughters. By comparison, if he and his family went to the US as&#160;refugees, they'd&#160;get a <a href="http://www.ascentria.org/frequently-asked-question-about-refugee-resettlement-1" type="external">one-time payment of about $4,000</a>. (There are other forms of non-cash assistance in both countries as well.)</p>
<p>Roughly <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/28/europe/sweden-migrants-expulsion-numbers/" type="external">&#160;163,000 migrants</a>&#160;applied for asylum in Sweden last year, the highest per capita rate in Europe;&#160;not surprising as the&#160;country has among the most generous social&#160;benefits in the world.</p>
<p>The transition to a new country and culture hasn’t been easy for Yemenyjan, but he says he’s grateful to be in Sweden, except for the winter, that is.</p>
<p>“I don’t go out because it’s very cold,” he says, laughing about his coping strategy.</p>
<p>Yemenyjan&#160;was a jeweler back in Syria. After he&#160;picks up more of the Swedish language, he’ll meet with somebody at <a href="http://www.arbetsformedlingen.se/download/18.749929de128499e60608000697/1401114497081/etablering_engelska.pdf" type="external">Arbetsförmedlingen</a>, the Swedish public employment service, to help him find work.</p>
<p>“The best way to get into society is to meet the Swedish people at work and it’s also the best way to learn the language,” says Fredrik Möller, a senior administrative officer at Arbetsförmedlingen.</p>
<p>But here's the thing: Sweden has a highly-skilled workforce, and it’s tough to place many refugees looking for work.</p>
<p>“For some people it takes a year, for some people it can take 10 years,” says Möller.</p>
<p>The median time:&#160;eight years. Sweden’s generous social system supports them along the way. But increasingly, many Swedes are saying the country can’t afford to keep doing this.</p>
<p>Sweden <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/world/europe/europe-raises-pressure-on-greece-to-tighten-its-borders.html" type="external">tightened its borders</a> this year and may <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35425735" type="external">deport up to 80,000 migrant</a>s. One far right nationalist party, the Sweden Democrats, wants to close the borders entirely to asylum seekers. The party is surging in popularity, from a fringe group to <a href="http://www.thelocal.se/20151201/sweden-democrats-surge-in-new-opinion-poll" type="external">polling at near 20 percent support</a>. &#160;</p>
<p />
<p>Parliamentarian&#160;Markus Wiechel with the Sweden Democrats proposes closing Sweden's borders to asylum seekers and increasing foreign aid to help refugees closer to home.&#160;</p>
<p>Jason Margolis</p>
<p>Parliamentarian Markus Wiechel, the Party spokeperson on migration issues, says beyond the economic strain that migrants place on Swedish society, they also&#160;pose a danger.</p>
<p>“A lot of them are radical Muslims. They’re radicalized here in Sweden because of the tensions in the society, because of the segregation,"&#160;says Wiechel.&#160;"They’ve ended up in radical groups.”&#160;</p>
<p>The Swedish government <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/11/22/Up-to-300-Swedes-fighting-with-ISIS-official-.html" type="external">estimates that up to 300 Swedes</a> have travelled to the Middle East to fight with ISIS.</p>
<p>The Sweden Democrats&#160;been labelled as xenophobic and racist. Some of the Party's&#160;founding members were <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nazi-inspired-anti-immigration-group-becomes-swedens-most-popular-party-10465862.html" type="external">linked to neo-Nazi</a> groups. Wiechel admits the party has had problems in the past, but he says they’ve expelled troubled members and they don’t tolerate racism. And he says the right-wing in Sweden, well, it’s pretty different from the US.</p>
<p>“When I used to live in the US, I was actually active in the Kerry (presidential) campaign of 2004. So I would consider myself a Democrat,” says Wiechel. &#160;</p>
<p>Wiechel says his party supports increasing foreign aid to help refugees stay closer to home. They’d like to stop the flow of migrants seeking asylum, but would&#160;allow in more refugees already vetted by the United Nations. He adds though,&#160;for those refugees who do settle in Sweden, they need to behave Swedish.&#160;</p>
<p>“We have to make them understand that here in Sweden, it’s our values that matter, our way of looking at women, our way of looking at children, etc.,” says Wiechel.</p>
<p>Some Syrian migrants share that attitude.</p>
<p>“I think it must be Swedish schools here in the country, not Syrian, not Muslim, not other things,” says Charbel Samoil, a Syrian refugee&#160;who moved here a couple of years ago.</p>
<p>He met his wife Safa Idrees, who is also Syrian, in a Swedish language class. They’re both Christian, by the way. I asked how long they’ve been married and she fumbled for an answer.</p>
<p>“One year and six or seven months?” she asked.</p>
<p>He corrected her: it’s been a year and five months.</p>
<p />
<p>Syrians Charbel and Safa Idrees met in a Swedish language class and are now expecting their first child together.&#160;</p>
<p>Jason Margolis</p>
<p>The couple is expecting their first child and are building a life here. But both worry that Swedish authorities have lost control of immigrant neighborhoods.</p>
<p>“They have no idea what’s going on in the future, what’s coming. It might happen exactly the same as Paris,” says Idrees.</p>
<p>The couple is stuck: afraid of both new migrants and the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment in Sweden. Homes of asylum seekers have been set on fire. Last weekend, a gang of perhaps <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35451080" type="external">100 masked men roamed Stockholm’s central train station</a> looking to beat up immigrants. The attacks were said to be in retaliation for the murder of a Swedish woman, allegedly killed&#160;by a teenage refugee.</p>
<p>I met Swedish author <a href="https://twitter.com/segerfeldt?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" type="external">Fredrik Segerfeldt</a> at a restaurant in Stockholm&#160;and asked if Swedish society is starting to fray.</p>
<p>“There is this sense in large chunks of Swedish society that something is wrong, that things are falling apart. The thing is, this feeling, this sense is not supported by data. We’re still richer, safer than ever before,” says Segerfeldt. (Many <a href="http://www.thelocal.se/20160201/sex-attacks-and-radical-racism-are-not-the-new-norm-in-sweden" type="external">others have said</a> the international media has blown a few isolated incidents&#160;out of proportion.)</p>
<p>Segerfeldt is a rare libertarian in Sweden. He says his country should allow in more asylum seekers, but&#160;argues that Sweden also needs to create more low-wage, low-skill jobs to get people working. &#160;</p>
<p>“The expenses for the government have become so high, we have almost closed the borders,” says Segerfeldt. “I think we should keep letting people in and give them fewer benefits.”</p>
<p>That’s tough for many to digest here though. Modern Sweden is built on strong wages and generous benefits. And that presents a quandary: Can Sweden preserve its egalitarian values and social safety net, and extend that way of life to many more people displaced by war? &#160;</p>
<p>Editor's&#160;Note: An earlier post of this story had the&#160;incorrect last name for&#160;Charbel Samoil.&#160;</p> | Swedes ask: Can we take in more migrants and maintain our generous social benefits? | false | https://pri.org/stories/2016-02-05/swedes-ask-can-we-take-more-migrants-and-maintain-our-generous-social-benefits | 2016-02-05 | 3 |
<p>Naomi Shihab Nye, a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and an award-winning writer, grew up in two of the most frequently discussed conflict zones in the news today. In a recent piece for The Washington Post, Nye talks about the lessons she learned while living in lands that are still divided by racial tensions.</p>
<p>The Washington Post:</p>
<p>My father and his family became refugees in 1948, when the state of Israel was created. They lost everything but their lives and memories. Disenfranchised Palestinians ended up in refugee camps or scattered around the world. My dad found himself in Kansas, then moved to Missouri with his American bride. He seemed a little shell-shocked when I was a child.</p>
<p>Ferguson was a leafy green historic suburb with a gracious red brick elementary school called Central. I loved that school, attending kindergarten through sixth grade there. All my classmates were white, of various derivations – Italians, French-Canadians, etc….At 12, I took a berry-picking job on “Missouri’s oldest organic farm” in Ferguson. I wanted the job because I had noticed that the other berry-pickers were all black boys. I’d always been curious about the kids living right down the road whom we hardly ever got to see…</p>
<p />
<p>Summer 2014, the news exploded…Of course, we wished Hamas would stop sending reckless rockets into Israel, provoking oversized responses. Why didn’t the news examine those back stories more? Oppression makes people do desperate things. I am frankly surprised the entire Palestinian population hasn’t gone crazy. If the U.S. can’t see that Palestinians have been mightily oppressed since 1948, they really are not interested in looking, are they? And we keep sending weapons and money to Israel, pretending we’d prefer peace.</p>
<p>We send weapons to Ferguson, too.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/28/on-growing-up-in-ferguson-and-gaza/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost" type="external">Read more</a></p>
<p>And here are a few lines from Nye’s devastating poem “Blood”:</p>
<p>Today the headlines clot in my blood. A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page. Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root is too big for us. What flag can we wave? I wave the flag of stone and seed, table mat stitched in blue.</p>
<p>I call my father, we talk around the news. It is too much for him, neither of his two languages can reach it. I drive into the country to find sheep, cows, to plead with the air: Who calls anyone civilized? Where can the crying heart graze? What does a true Arab do now?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178323" type="external">Read more</a></p>
<p>And a few more from her poem “Jerusalem”:</p>
<p>I’m not interested in who suffered the most. I’m interested in people getting over it…</p>
<p>A child’s poem says, “I don’t like wars, they end up with monuments.” He’s painting a bird with wings wide enough to cover two roofs at once.</p>
<p>Why are we so monumentally slow? Soldiers stalk a pharmacy: big guns, little pills. If you tilt your head just slightly it’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>There’s a place in my brain where hate won’t grow. I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds. Something pokes us as we sleep.</p>
<p>It’s late but everything comes next.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/241002" type="external">Read more</a></p>
<p>—Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Natasha Hakimi Zapata</a></p> | Poet Naomi Shihab Nye Discusses What It Was Like Growing Up in Palestine and Ferguson | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/poet-naomi-shihab-nye-discusses-what-it-was-like-growing-up-in-palestine-and-ferguson/ | 2014-08-30 | 4 |
<p>NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) - Yale University is trying to sell off furniture, kitchen equipment and other items as part of a major renovation of its historical Commons Hall and Memorial Hall.</p>
<p>The school is turning the connected halls into a campus center following a $150 million donation from an alumnus.</p>
<p>The renovated building, scheduled to open in 2020, will be called the Schwarzman Center. It is designed to be a central location for students to meet, eat and view performing arts.</p>
<p>To make way for the renovation, the school is holding two <a href="https://www.restaurantequipment.bid/cgi-bin/mmdetails.cgi?rebid46" type="external">online auctions</a> for the stuff it no longer needs in Commons and Memorial halls.</p>
<p>That includes professional-grade kitchen equipment, appliances, fixtures, tables and over 1,000 chairs. The first auction ends Jan. 11. The other runs through Jan. 18.</p>
<p>NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) - Yale University is trying to sell off furniture, kitchen equipment and other items as part of a major renovation of its historical Commons Hall and Memorial Hall.</p>
<p>The school is turning the connected halls into a campus center following a $150 million donation from an alumnus.</p>
<p>The renovated building, scheduled to open in 2020, will be called the Schwarzman Center. It is designed to be a central location for students to meet, eat and view performing arts.</p>
<p>To make way for the renovation, the school is holding two <a href="https://www.restaurantequipment.bid/cgi-bin/mmdetails.cgi?rebid46" type="external">online auctions</a> for the stuff it no longer needs in Commons and Memorial halls.</p>
<p>That includes professional-grade kitchen equipment, appliances, fixtures, tables and over 1,000 chairs. The first auction ends Jan. 11. The other runs through Jan. 18.</p> | Yale auctioning off furniture, items from historical halls | false | https://apnews.com/0ad11716afd54a7481e90e83b5723f49 | 2018-01-07 | 2 |
Subsets and Splits