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<p>While the first year of the digital mandate saw educators across the country adopting digital solutions, there are still thousands of schools that have yet to make the shift. Washington has provided compelling arguments for digital learning, but the true impetus to accelerate the digital transition should be those who are impacted most – students.</p>
<p>In schools across the country, the way that students learn is undergoing a fundamental shift. It’s a shift that is being fueled by a generation of children who use digital media to learn everything from beginning phonics to biophysics.</p>
<p>If you’ve recently stepped inside one of the more innovative K-12 classrooms, it probably appeared more reminiscent of a Google lab than a traditional classroom. Outdated textbooks have been replaced by tablets; chalk boards swapped for digital smart boards; and VCRs exchanged for projection monitors powered by computers.</p>
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<p>While seemingly only superficial, these infrastructure changes have engendered a culture of learning that is significantly different than generations past. Today, teachers are not the sole voice heard in the learning environment, and students are no longer staring at the teacher. They are engaged and inspired, participating in their own learning, selecting content based on their interests and using individualized feedback mechanisms to help guide their instruction. They are, in fact, participants in a learning community rather than recipients of a one-way exchange.</p>
<p>The results of this revolution have been stunning, not just at wealthy private schools and well-funded public schools, but in districts where both school boards and parents alike struggle to make ends meet.</p>
<p>In the often-cited Mooresville Graded School District in North Carolina, students increased their performance on state exams by 13 percent during their first three years of adopting digital resources, all while maintaining one of the lowest per-student costs in the state.</p>
<p>In the Indianapolis Public Schools system – in which 85 percent of students are enrolled in subsidized lunch programs – schools that converted to digital learning realized a 27 percent higher passing rate on state standardized tests than those that did not.</p>
<p>And in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, one of the poorest districts in the country and a model for aggressive digital adoption, students achieved a 7 percent increase in their science Comprehensive Assessment Test exams, the district reduced its number of “F” rated schools from 13 to 0 and more than 70 percent of Miami Dade’s schools are now receiving “A” grades.</p>
<p>We understand that change is difficult. That is why we applaud the president and secretary of education for challenging our nation, our educators and our communities to take meaningful steps towards real change on behalf of the children we all serve. This kind of change will require every constituent in the educational community – from school boards and parents, to administrators and teachers – to support the up-front investment, the long-term commitment and the cultural changes required to make the digital vision a practical reality.</p>
<p>But most importantly, this change requires a first step of acknowledging that students are entitled to an education that fits the way they interact with today’s world.</p>
<p>We invite you to join us in this change not because elected officials suggest you should, but because students across our nation demand that you do. Let us create classrooms with students who are optimistic about their futures, involved in their education and excited about learning. And at the end of the day, is that not truly the goal?</p>
<p>Also signed by six school district superintendents from around the nation who also attended last week’s Future@Now Education Conference in Silver Spring, Md.</p> | Digital learning way of the future | false | https://abqjournal.com/188482/digital-learning-way-of-the-future.html | 2013-04-14 | 2 |
<p>NEW YORK (AP) - Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is returning to a Brooklyn courtroom Friday, a day after a judge rejected his request to be allowed in the general inmate population.</p>
<p>The 59-year-old defendant famous for twice escaping from prison in Mexico lost his bid Thursday to relax the terms of his confinement at a lower Manhattan lockup when U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan concluded that solitary confinement was appropriate.</p>
<p>Cogan said the U.S. government had good justifications for applying tough jail conditions on a man who escaped twice, including once through a mile-long tunnel stretching from the shower in his cell. But Cogan relaxed the restrictions known as Special Administrative Measures enough for Guzman to communicate with his wife through written questions and answers.</p>
<p>His lawyers said in a statement that it was "devastating" for Guzman and his wife that they will not be allowed jail visits.</p>
<p>Guzman was brought to the U.S. in January to face charges that he oversaw a multi-billion dollar international drug trafficking operation responsible for murders and kidnappings. He has pleaded not guilty.</p>
<p>He has remained in a 20-by-12-foot (6-by-3.7-meter) cell for 23 hours a day in a wing of the Metropolitan Correctional Center that often is used to house high-risk inmates including terrorists.</p>
<p>The U.S. government has said severe restrictions are necessary for Guzman in part because he used coded messages, bribes and other means to continue operating his drug empire from behind bars and arrange escapes.</p>
<p>Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</p> | Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman Returns To Court In Drug Trafficking Case | true | http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/el-chapo-returns-to-court | 4 |
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<p>Santiago, Chile.</p>
<p>There were certain words that Chileans were hoping that Pope Francis would say&#160; <a href="" type="internal">during his three-day visit</a>&#160;to our country last week. They were hoping he would denounce the sexual abuse committed by members of the Catholic clergy, and particularly the offenses perpetrated by a corrupt and malevolent priest named&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Fernando Karadima</a>. They were also waiting for Francis to condemn the hierarchs in the Catholic Church who had silenced and humiliated the victims and helped to cover up Karadima’s crimes.</p>
<p>Above all, my compatriots wanted the pope to publicly chide Bishop Juan Barros,&#160; <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/parish/controversial-chilean-bishops-appointment-continues-divide-diocese" type="external">who had been Karadima’s protégé</a>&#160;and, according to reports (denied by Barros), had witnessed his mentor’s pedophilia. The issue of Barros mattered symbolically because the pope himself, in 2015, <a href="" type="internal">had appointed</a>&#160;this collaborator of Karadima’s as the bishop of Osorno, a city in southern Chile, in spite of angry complaints from the congregation.</p>
<p>In&#160; <a href="" type="internal">an op-ed I wrote for&#160;The New York Times</a>&#160;that appeared just before the papal visit, I argued that, for Chileans, the way in which Francis handled this case would be a critical test of whether he could restore the prestige of the disgraced local Church, so wounded by these scandals, to the noble place it had held in public sympathy for decades because of its brave opposition to the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). Pope Francis failed that test.</p>
<p>He did express “ <a href="" type="internal">shame and pain</a>” at the abuse of minors by members of the clergy, and he did hold a brief meeting with some of the victims—though not with any of those who had been mistreated by Karadima, or with anyone who has blamed Barros for his connivance. But Barros was flagrantly present at three ceremonies over which the pope officiated in Chile during the visit, and on one occasion, the pontiff&#160; <a href="" type="internal">embraced the bishop</a>&#160;and kissed him on the cheek in a display of affection and support.</p>
<p>This was not entirely surprising. The Catholic Church is known for circling the wagons when there is a crisis, defending the institution at all costs, and this pope, after all, pointedly attended the funeral of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1944869638/counterpunchmaga" type="external" />the&#160; <a href="" type="internal">notorious Cardinal Law</a>, whose cover-up of the depredations of the Catholic clergy in Boston was the subject of the Oscar-winning film&#160;Spotlight. What nobody could have predicted was one word that Francis did indeed utter on the last day of his trip, just as he was leaving the country. Asked about Barros, Francis lost his temper and, with uncharacteristic vehemence, stated that there was not a shred of evidence against the bishop of Osorno and that all the accusations against him were nothing more than “calumnia,” slander.</p>
<p>It is difficult to exaggerate the outrage that greeted this attack upon the integrity of the victims and their testimony. One, Juan Carlos Cruz, who had been abused many times by Karadima,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">tweeted</a>&#160;that perhaps as proof the pope needed him, Cruz, to have taken a selfie while Karadima raped him as Barros looked on. Other Chileans mocked Francis, calling him a hypocrite and worse.</p>
<p>For me, personally, it felt like a betrayal. When I was sixteen years old, Karadima tried unsuccessfully, on several occasions, to convert me to Catholicism. I have no “evidence” that he would not let go of my hand while he promised the fires of Hell if I did not yield to his guidance. Having escaped unscathed from his clutches, I can well imagine how his victims feel when it is demanded that they provide proof of what happened to them. No wonder they are indignant.</p>
<p>But the chief rebuke came from an American clergyman, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who heads the Vatican Committee for the Protection of Minors. This prelate—from Boston, perhaps notably— <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/cardinal-omalley-popes-defense-chilean-bishop-caused-great-pain-abuse-survivors" type="external">wrote that the pope’s words</a>&#160;were “a source of great pain for survivors of sexual abuse by clergy,” and&#160; <a href="" type="internal">added</a>: “Words that convey the message ‘if you cannot prove your claim then you will not be believed’ abandon those who have suffered reprehensible criminal violations of their human dignity and relegate survivors to discredited exile.” The cardinal did not doubt, however, that the pope felt the pain of those survivors. O’Malley had seen Francis weep and pray with other victims of abuse in multiple occasions.</p>
<p>What nobody has been able to explain is how the pope could have committed such a colossal blunder when, at worst, he could have easily sidestepped the issue. You do not get to be the first Latin American and the first Jesuit to be elected as the successor of Peter if you are not a savvy operator. Why sabotage his own message in Chile, and elsewhere, with that one word, “slander”? Why erase the memory of all the other wonderful words he’d said during his sojourn: words in defense of indigenous rights, refugees, and the environment; his call to young people to set aside despair and commit themselves to a world without greed and exploitation; his challenge to the priests and nuns to dedicate their lives to the sick, the elderly, the homeless; the words with which he comforted incarcerated women, reminding them that they were loved and should not be despised for having spent time in jail?</p>
<p>Why go out of his way to attack those who were demanding he face the uncomfortable truth about Bishop Barros and his complicity in the sins of Karadima? Why, when&#160; <a href="" type="internal">he half-apologized this week</a>, on the plane back to Rome, did Francis still adamantly insist on the innocence of Barros?</p>
<p>It seems to me that the answer may lie deep in Pope Francis’s own turbulent past. From 1974 to 1983, the military of his native Argentina waged what has become known as the Dirty War, torturing, killing, and disappearing many thousands of citizens. The Catholic bishops of Argentina, in contrast to the courage shown by their Chilean brothers, were vocally supportive of that repression. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as Francis was then known, was at the time the provincial superior (or head) of the Jesuit Order in his country.</p>
<p>Although he was opposed to this regime of terror and personally intervened to save the lives of several endangered men and women (even giving one persecuted man his own ID card so that the man could escape the country), Bergoglio maintained a public silence on the horrors of the dictatorship. Later,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">there were claims</a>that he had collaborated with the military junta, and failed to protect two priests under his jurisdiction who were arrested and tortured. Though the justice system in Argentina investigated Bergoglio and found no evidence against him, and the allegations of complicity were mostly disproven, those charges resurfaced once Francis was anointed as pope. The&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Vatican insisted</a>&#160;that “there has never been a credible, concrete accusation against him,” and the pope&#160; <a href="" type="internal">has dismissed</a>&#160;the accusations as “slander”—the very word that Francis used to defend Bishop Barros.</p>
<p>It seems probable, then, that the pope saw in Barros a reflection of his own experience: someone who believes he has been falsely indicted, but is unable to clear his name, who feels he has been a target of malicious left-wing and anticlerical activists determined to stain the reputation of an innocent man. It would be tragic, but all too human, if this were the explanation for Francis’s offensive and counter-productive defense of Barros.</p>
<p>The pope has often referred to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus tells the story of this stranger who tends to an unknown traveler who had been beaten and stripped of his clothing and left half-dead, and takes care of him as if he were a neighbor. And Jesus condemns the priest who passed by that injured man with utter indifference, without offering any aid.</p>
<p>Francis, tormented perhaps by his own dark and secret history, has misunderstood who are the victims and who are the perpetrators in this Chilean story. Instead of following the example of the Good Samaritan and comforting the wounded bodies and souls of those violated by sexual abuse, he has sided with the priest, Barros, and the other prelates who not only did nothing to alleviate that suffering, but were part of the gang that beat the victims and robbed them of their dignity.</p>
<p>Did the pope not understand that this was a chance to redeem himself for not having been a Good Samaritan in Argentina? Did he not realize that this was a unique opportunity to show the courage he lacked years ago? Instead, he has damaged his moral standing and weakened the impact of his vital messages about the threats to humanity of poverty, war, and ecological disaster.</p>
<p>May the God Francis believes in forgive him.</p>
<p>This column originally appeared on the <a href="http://www.nybooks.com" type="external">New York Review of Books</a>.</p> | Pope Franscis’s Chilean Betrayal | true | https://counterpunch.org/2018/01/26/pope-fransciss-chilean-betrayal/ | 2018-01-26 | 4 |
<p>One of the most influential campaign documents for the Nov. 4 election is seen by few people: “ <a href="http://www.cft.org/news-publications/newsletters/perspective.html" type="external">Perspective</a>,” by the community College Council of the California Federation of Teachers; which is part of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO. Physical copies are sent to thousands of teachers across the state.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://issuu.com/cftpub/docs/cft_perspective_oct2014_8?e=7269471/9531140" type="external">October issue</a> includes an endorsement of incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Tom Torlakson, long a teachers union ally; and an attack on his opponent, reformer Marshall Tuck. Both candidates are Democrats for a nonpartisan office. It wrote:</p>
<p>“In the contested election, Superintendent Tom Torlakson, a former classroom teacher, is promoting greater collaboration, while Marshall Tuck, a former Wall Street financier&#160;and charter school CEO, is pushing a policy of confrontation.”</p>
<p>But given the failure of California’s K-12 schools, which perennially <a href="http://edsource.org/2013/california-students-among-worst-performers-on-national-assessment-of-reading-and-math/41329#.VEqypfnF_h4" type="external">rank near the bottom</a>of the states on national tests, it’s hard to see how confrontation can be avoided if there’s to be any improvement.</p>
<p>“Perspectives” brought up the recent <a href="http://studentsmatter.org/our-case/vergara-v-california-case-status/" type="external">Vergara court ruling</a>, in which a judge found the state’s school seniority system discriminated against students in poor areas by providing a sub-par education. The paper wrote:</p>
<p>” ‘Teachers are not the problem in our schools; they are the solution,’ opined Torlakson after the recent Vergara lawsuit ruling. By contrast, in talking about teachers unions, Tuck stated: ‘Their seat at the table is too big and they have too much influence over education policy.'”</p>
<p>Given that “Perspectives” largely is aimed at J.C. teachers, the paper &#160;covered that:</p>
<p>“While the statutory duties of the state Superintendent of Public Instruction cover early childhood through high school, Torlakson speaks out on behalf of higher educatoin as well. His brother is a community college instructor in San Francisco, and Torlakson himself taught community college in Los Medanos.</p>
<p>“Torlakson sided with the City College of San Francsico faculty and students against the unfair and illegal actions of the accreditation agency, calling on the ACCJC to reverse its sanctions.”</p>
<p>Torlakson’s statement is <a href="http://www.aft2121.org/2013/09/tom-torlakson-urges-the-accjc-to-rescind-ccsfs-sanction/" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p>A court trial on the accreditation issue is scheduled for Oct. 27. According to the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Judge-refuses-to-halt-October-trial-over-CCSF-5768244.php" type="external">Chronicle</a>:</p>
<p>“City College has been in a state of limbo since 2012, when the [accrediting] commission gave it eight months to correct numerous fiscal and governance issues that were out of compliance with accrediting standards.</p>
<p>“In 2013 — after the state sidelined City College’s elected Board of Trustees and empowered a “special trustee” to make unilateral decisions — the commission still found the college was out of compliance. It voted to revoke accreditation, effective July 31, 2014.”</p>
<p>But shouldn’t the superintendent and the union favor tough standards to make sure students are learning and taxpayers are getting maximum bang for every education buck?</p>
<p>That’s one thing voters will decide in this race on Nov. 4.</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | AFT paper backs Torlakson | false | https://calwatchdog.com/2014/10/24/aft-paper-backs-torlakson/ | 2018-10-20 | 3 |
<p>MIAMI (AP) — Eleven prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay detention filed a legal challenge Thursday against President Donald Trump, whose administration has not released or transferred anyone from the U.S. base in Cuba over the past year.</p>
<p>Lawyers for the men argue in a challenge filed in U.S. District Court in Washington that the apparent policy of no releases amounts to arbitrary "perpetual detention" that violates the Constitution and acts of Congress establishing the rights of the men held at Guantanamo.</p>
<p>Their complaint, filed on the 16th anniversary of the opening of the detention center on the base in southeast Cuba, is unusual legal step since this type of action, known as habeas corpus petition, is typically filed on behalf of individuals rather than a group of prisoners.</p>
<p>The filing notes that President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama together released nearly 750 men by making case by case determinations on individual detainees.</p>
<p>"Continuing, still indefinite detention after all this time is unprecedented and experimental," said Pardiss Kebriaei, an attorney from the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents prisoner Sharqawi Al Hajj of Yemen.</p>
<p>Trump has not formally released a Guantanamo policy but his administration has not released any of the five prisoners who were determined to be eligible to depart by multiple government agencies and not added any additional men to the cleared list. There are 41 men still held at Guantanamo.</p>
<p>A Pentagon spokeswoman for Guantanamo issues, Navy Cmdr. Sarah Higgins, said that the administration is still considering whether to transfer detainees. The Department of Justice is reviewing the complaint and had no further comment, spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam said.</p>
<p>Trump said of Guantanamo during the campaign that he planned to "load it up with some bad dudes." Shortly before he took office in January 2017, he said on Twitter that there should be no further releases, adding that the prisoners are "extremely dangerous people and should be not allowed back onto the battlefield."</p>
<p>The prisoners' legal challenge argues that the Authorized Use of Military Force adopted by Congress in 2001 only allows "limited military detention" and not "perpetual detention disconnected from any legitimate purpose." They also note that because of age and ill health, some may not survive to the end of the Trump administration.</p>
<p>MIAMI (AP) — Eleven prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay detention filed a legal challenge Thursday against President Donald Trump, whose administration has not released or transferred anyone from the U.S. base in Cuba over the past year.</p>
<p>Lawyers for the men argue in a challenge filed in U.S. District Court in Washington that the apparent policy of no releases amounts to arbitrary "perpetual detention" that violates the Constitution and acts of Congress establishing the rights of the men held at Guantanamo.</p>
<p>Their complaint, filed on the 16th anniversary of the opening of the detention center on the base in southeast Cuba, is unusual legal step since this type of action, known as habeas corpus petition, is typically filed on behalf of individuals rather than a group of prisoners.</p>
<p>The filing notes that President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama together released nearly 750 men by making case by case determinations on individual detainees.</p>
<p>"Continuing, still indefinite detention after all this time is unprecedented and experimental," said Pardiss Kebriaei, an attorney from the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents prisoner Sharqawi Al Hajj of Yemen.</p>
<p>Trump has not formally released a Guantanamo policy but his administration has not released any of the five prisoners who were determined to be eligible to depart by multiple government agencies and not added any additional men to the cleared list. There are 41 men still held at Guantanamo.</p>
<p>A Pentagon spokeswoman for Guantanamo issues, Navy Cmdr. Sarah Higgins, said that the administration is still considering whether to transfer detainees. The Department of Justice is reviewing the complaint and had no further comment, spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam said.</p>
<p>Trump said of Guantanamo during the campaign that he planned to "load it up with some bad dudes." Shortly before he took office in January 2017, he said on Twitter that there should be no further releases, adding that the prisoners are "extremely dangerous people and should be not allowed back onto the battlefield."</p>
<p>The prisoners' legal challenge argues that the Authorized Use of Military Force adopted by Congress in 2001 only allows "limited military detention" and not "perpetual detention disconnected from any legitimate purpose." They also note that because of age and ill health, some may not survive to the end of the Trump administration.</p> | Guantanamo prisoners challenge no-release policy under Trump | false | https://apnews.com/amp/0c04e7d1d54d4ff893f73468453e3c28 | 2018-01-11 | 2 |
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<p>CLEVELAND – The man who imprisoned three women in his home, subjecting them to a decade of rapes and beatings, pleaded guilty Friday to 937 counts in a deal to avoid the death penalty.</p>
<p>Ariel Castro told the judge he was addicted to pornography, had a “sexual problem” and had been a sexual abuse victim himself long ago.</p>
<p>In exchange for his plea, prosecutors recommended Castro be sentenced to life without parole plus 1,000 years.</p>
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<p>Castro, 53, was far more interactive than in previous court appearances when he mostly kept his head down and eyes closed. He answered the judge’s questions in a clear, intelligible voice, saying he understood the proceedings and that he would never be released from prison.</p>
<p>Castro, who was born in Puerto Rico, said he could read and understand English well but had trouble with comprehension. “My addiction to pornography and my sexual problem has really taken a toll on my mind.” He later said he had been a sexual abuse victim as a child, but the judge cut him off.</p>
<p>Near the end of the 2 1/2-hour hearing, the judge accepted the pleas and declared Castro guilty. Sentencing was set for Thursday.</p>
<p>Castro had been scheduled for trial Aug. 5 on a 977-count indictment, but 40 counts were dropped as part of the plea deal. The indictment included two counts of aggravated murder related to accusations that he punched and starved one woman until she miscarried. The former school bus driver was also charged with hundreds of counts of kidnapping and rape, plus assault and other counts.</p>
<p>He was accused of repeatedly restraining the women, sometimes chaining them to a pole in a basement, to a bedroom heater or inside a van. The charges alleged Castro assaulted one woman with a vacuum cord around her neck when she tried to escape.</p>
<p>The sticking point on a plea deal had been whether the prosecutor would rule out the death penalty.</p>
<p>Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Blaise Thomas said he wants to make sure Castro will never see the girl he fathered with one of his victims.</p>
<p>Chief Prosecutor Tim McGinty also says the county will use over $20,000 seized from Castro to tear down his house within a month. McGinty said the plan is to also tear down two abandoned houses next door and acquire a vacant lot for a park.</p>
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<p>McGinty rejected attempts by Castro to portray himself a victim of a sex addiction.</p>
<p>“He’s a coward and he’s nowhere near the truth,” McGinty said. “He’s in his own world and it’s not a world of regret and remorse. He feels sorry for one person and one person only – himself.”</p>
<p>The three women disappeared separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old. Each said they had accepted a ride from Castro, who remained friends with the family of one of the women and even attended vigils over the years marking her disappearance.</p>
<p>The women escaped Castro’s house May 6 when one of them kicked out part of a door and called to neighbors for help. Castro was arrested within hours and has remained behind bars.</p>
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<p /> | Castro deal means life plus 1,000 years | false | https://abqjournal.com/226219/castro-deal-means-life-plus-1000-years-2.html | 2013-07-27 | 2 |
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<p>Two youths look at bullet holes and forensic evidence inside a synagogue after an attack in Jerusalem, Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2014. Two Palestinians stormed a Jerusalem synagogue on Tuesday, attacking worshippers praying inside with knives, axes and guns, and killing four people before they were killed in a shootout with police, officials said. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)</p>
<p>JERUSALEM — Israel vowed harsh retaliation Tuesday for a Palestinian attack that killed five people and left blood-smeared prayer books and shawls on the floor of a synagogue in Jerusalem — an assault that sharply escalated already-high tensions after weeks of religious violence.</p>
<p>The attack during morning prayers in the west Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof was carried out by two Palestinian cousins wielding meat cleavers, knives and a handgun. They were shot to death by police after the deadliest assault in the holy city since 2008.</p>
<p>Four of the dead were rabbis and one was a police officer who died of his wounds hours after the attack. Three of the rabbis were born in the United States and the fourth was born in England, although all held dual Israeli citizenship. Five others were wounded.</p>
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<p>Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack, the first time he has done so in the wave of deadly violence against Israelis. But he also called for an end to Israeli “provocations” surrounding Jerusalem’s shrines that are sacred to both Muslims and Jews.</p>
<p>President Barack Obama called the attack “horrific” and without justification, urging cooperation from both sides to ease tensions and adding that too many Israelis and Palestinians have died in recent months,</p>
<p>Tuesday’s attack, however, appeared to mark a turning point, with the gruesome scene in a house of worship shocking a nation long accustomed to violence.</p>
<p>The government released a photo of a meat cleaver it said came from the crime scene. Government video showed blood-soaked prayer books and prayer shawls in the synagogue. A pair of glasses lay under a table, and thick streaks of blood smeared the floor.</p>
<p>“I saw people lying on the floor, blood everywhere,” said Yosef Posternak, who was at the synagogue in the quiet neighborhood that has a large community of English-speaking immigrants.</p>
<p>“People were trying to fight with (the attackers) but they didn’t have much of a chance,” Posternak told Israel Radio.</p>
<p>In one of Israel’s first acts of retaliation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the demolitions of the homes of the attackers. But halting further violence could prove to be a tough challenge as police confront a new threat: Lightly armed assailants from annexed east Jerusalem who hold residency rights that allow them to move freely throughout the country.</p>
<p>Netanyahu condemned the deaths of the “innocent and pure Jews.” In a nationally televised address, he accused Abbas of inciting the recent violence and said the Palestinian leader’s condemnation of the attack was insufficient.</p>
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<p>Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that runs the Gaza Strip, praised the attack. In Gaza, dozens celebrated in the streets, with some offering trays full of candy.</p>
<p>The U.S.-born victims were identified as Moshe Twersky, 59, Aryeh Kupinsky, 43, and Kalman Levine, 55. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the British man was Avraham Goldberg, 68, who immigrated to Israel in 1993.</p>
<p>It described the four as “rabbis,” an honorific title in the ultra-Orthodox world given to men who are considered pious and learned. Twersky, a native of Boston, was the head of the Toras Moshe Yeshiva, a seminary for English-speaking students. He was the son of Rabbi Isador Twersky, founder of Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies, and a grandson Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, a luminary in the world of modern Orthodox Jewry.</p>
<p>Thousands of people attended a joint funeral for Kupinsky, Levine and Goldberg before sundown– held outside the synagogue where they were killed.</p>
<p>In recent weeks, Jerusalem has seen its worst sustained bout of violence since a Palestinian uprising a decade ago. Palestinian assailants have carried out a pair of deadly attacks by ramming their cars into crowded train stations, while a gunman shot and seriously wounded a Jewish activist who has campaigned for greater access to the holy site.</p>
<p>The hilltop compound, in Jerusalem’s Old City, has been at the heart of the tensions. It is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, the site of the ancient Hebrew temples. For Muslims, it is the Noble Sanctuary, home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the iconic gold-topped Dome of the Rock.</p>
<p>Under a longstanding arrangement, Jews are permitted to visit but not to pray. A growing number of visits by Jewish worshippers, many who seek the right to pray there, has drawn Muslim accusations that Israel is secretly trying to take over the site and sparked violent clashes between young Palestinians and Israeli police.</p>
<p>Netanyahu has repeatedly said he will not change that arrangement, but the violence has spread beyond Jerusalem, with deadly stabbings in Tel Aviv and the West Bank last week, while the fatal shooting of a young Arab protester in northern Israel by police — apparently as he was walking away from an officer — has added to the tensions.</p>
<p>Late Tuesday, several hundred Jewish youths marched through downtown Jerusalem, blocking traffic and chanting, “Death to Arabs.” Police reported at least 10 arrests.</p>
<p>Police identified the synagogue attackers as Ghassan and Oday Abu Jamal, cousins from the Jabal Mukaber neighborhood in east Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the assailants were killed in a shootout with police that left one officer critically wounded. He said police were still trying to determine how the men had chosen their target.</p>
<p>Mohammed Zahaikeh, a social activist in Jabal Mukaber, said he did not know whether the cousins were politically active. He said Ghassan was 27, married with two young children and worked in a clothing store. Oday, 21, was not married and was an interior decorator. He said both men were quiet, and residents were surprised by the attack.</p>
<p>Clashes later broke out outside the assailants’ home, where dozens of police officers had converged. Residents hurled stones at police, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades. Residents said 14 members of the Abu Jamal family were arrested.</p>
<p>The violence has created a special security challenge for Israel. Where Palestinian violence has traditionally been carried out by organized militant groups based in the West Bank or Gaza, most of the recent attacks have been done by perpetrators from east Jerusalem acting on their own.</p>
<p>Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed the area, while the Palestinians claim it as their capital. Although the annexation is not internationally recognized, the more than 200,000 Arab residents of east Jerusalem have Israeli residency rights that allow them to move freely throughout the country. In contrast, West Bank residents and Gazans need Israeli permission to enter.</p>
<p>“There is no solution in the world of intelligence to the problem of a lone wolf who decides in the morning to launch an attack in the afternoon,” said Cabinet Minister Yaakov Peri, a former director of the Shin Bet internal security agency.</p>
<p>He said the “only solution is very strong deterrence,” such as swiftly demolishing the homes of attackers.</p>
<p>Netanyahu has vowed to revive the policy of home demolitions, which Israel halted in 2005 after determining it wasn’t an effective deterrent. Israeli officials have reversed their opinion, and Netanyahu has ordered stepped-up demolitions.</p>
<p>The Israeli leader flew to Jordan last week for talks with King Abdullah II, who holds custodial rights over the Jerusalem mosque compound.</p>
<p>The two men agreed to take steps to lower tensions at the holy site. But on Monday, rumors spread that a Palestinian bus driver had been killed by Jewish assailants. Although forensics experts ruled the death a suicide, Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli police.</p>
<p>Israeli media reported Tuesday that Yoram Cohen, the current Shin Bet head, told lawmakers in a closed meeting that Abbas was not interested in inciting Palestinians to use violence against Israelis.</p>
<p>Cohen tied his assertion to his belief that widespread Palestinian violence against Israelis would undermine Abbas’s political standing, the reports said.</p>
<p>The attack was the deadliest in Jerusalem since a Palestinian assailant killed eight students at a Jewish seminary in March 2008.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh and Fares Akram in Gaza City, Gaza Strip and Matthew Lee in London contributed to this report.</p> | Israel vows harsh response to synagogue attack | false | https://abqjournal.com/497951/palestinians-kill-4-in-jerusalem-synagogue-attack.html | 2 |
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<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
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<p>Oil prices tumbled this week because of renewed fears that OPEC wouldn't follow through on its agreement to cut and cap output. That was after its production reached a new record last month. But despite the slump in the oil market, energy stocks had a different fuel to drive them higher this week: the unexpected election of Donald Trump as president. That fueled huge rallies in several segments because of the specific policies he plans to enact as president. Among the leading gainers, according to data from <a href="https://www.capitaliq.com/home.aspx" type="external">S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence Opens a New Window.</a>,wereArch Coal (NYSE: ARCH), Foresight Energy (NYSE: FELP), CVR Energy (NYSE: CVI), Energy Transfer Partners (NYSE: ETP), and Energy Transfer Equity (NYSE: ETE):</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/ARCH/intraday_price" type="external">ARCH Price</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a></p>
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<p>The Trump victory is good news for coal stocks Arch Coal and Foresight Energy, because he said he would end the "war on coal." He plans to do so by enacting several pro-coal policies, including lifting the moratorium on coal leasing on federal lands, rescinding several regulations that have negatively affected the coal industry, and promoting clean coal power generation. These policy initiatives could fuel more demand for coal and improve producer profitability.</p>
<p>Independent refining companies, including CRV Energy, also <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/09/trumps-win-fuels-a-massive-rally-in-refining-stock.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">spiked this week in the wake of the Trump win Opens a New Window.</a>. That's because Trump promised to lift many of the regulatory burdens that have plagued American energy companies in recent years, including the problematic renewable fuel standard program. CRV Energy's refining arm is one of several to complain about that program. Last quarter, its CEO said the "exorbitant costs of renewable identification numbers under the broken renewable fuel standard program" hurt its results and is punishing the company even though it has done nothing wrong. Given Trump's pledge to ease these regulations, it should remove the impact of this massive headwind on CVR Energy's refining arm.</p>
<p>Trump's America-first energy plan would put the country on the path toward energy independence. That means we would need more pipelines to bring oil and gas from production basins to market centers, including Energy Transfer Partners' contested Bakken Pipeline. As such, Trump's win means its oil pipeline will probably move forward. Meanwhile, Trump's plan will likely drive demand for <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/09/how-a-donald-trump-presidency-could-affect-pipelin.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">additional pipeline projects Opens a New Window.</a>, which opens the door for Energy Transfer Equity's pipeline subsidiaries to capture some of these opportunities in the future.</p>
<p>Trump's win could reinvigorate America's coal industry, ease burdens on independent refiners, and make it easier for pipeline companies to construct projects. That has the potential to fuel more profits to the companies operating in each of those sectors, which is why their stock prices surged this week. But investors need to be careful before jumping into these stocks just because of the election outcome, as Trump might not be able to do everything he would like. And even if he does, not everything will work out as hoped for with these companies. Instead, investors need to continue to take a measured approach and focus on the long-term outlook until it's evident what impact the new president can have on the energy industry.</p>
<p>Forget the 2016 Election: 10 stocks we like better than Energy Transfer Partners Donald Trump was just elected president, and volatility is up. But here's why you should ignore the election:</p>
<p>Investing geniuses Tom and David Gardner have spent a long time beating the market no matter who's in the White House. In fact, 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%2Fecap-foolcom-bbn-election%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0000468%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6454%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=bb2b5192-42da-4ef6-a6f8-0e4cb3504bc1&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 Energy Transfer Partners 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%2Fecap-foolcom-bbn-election%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0000468%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6454%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=bb2b5192-42da-4ef6-a6f8-0e4cb3504bc1&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 November 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 has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Energy Stock Roundup: Trump's Win Fuels Massive Gains (ETP, ARCH, FELP, CVI, ETE) | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/12/energy-stock-roundup-trump-win-fuels-massive-gains-etp-arch-felp-cvi-ete.html | 2016-11-12 | 0 |
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<p>If you're a nurse practitioner, architect or can work a retail floor you are in luck. These pockets of the U.S. economy are hiring despite a weaker than expected March jobs report which showed U.S. employers added 126,000 workers, less than the prior month's whopping 264,000 gain, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Healthcare is very hot, especially ambulatory care which added 19,000 jobs last month. These jobs might include those who are trained to provide medical assistance at an outpatient clinic, or medical consultations via the telephone. Companies such as CVS (NYSE:CVS) and Walgreens (NYSE:WAG) have stepped up offerings at walk-in clinics which are often staffed with board certified nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Healthcare has added 363,000 jobs over the past twelve months and continues to be one of the fastest growing industries in the U.S.</p>
<p>Retailers such as Home Depot (NYSE:HD) might be looking for you. The overall retail industry added 26,000 workers with most of the gains coming from general merchandise. Earlier this year, the <a href="http://ir.homedepot.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=63646&amp;p=irol-newsArticle&amp;ID=2015112" type="external">world's largest home improvement retailer said it is looking for 80,000 workers Opens a New Window.</a> to combat the busy spring selling season. Rival Lowe's (NYSE:LOW) <a href="http://media.lowes.com/pressrelease/thinkspringlowestohire30000seasonalemployees/" type="external">plans to hire approximately 30,000 seasonal employees. Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Architects, engineers and IT jobs fueled job growth for professional and business services which added a total of 40,000 workers.</p>
<p>Hiring slowed in food services and watering holes during the month to 9,000 after a notable gain of 66,000 in February. However, some of these workers will be getting paid more. Earlier this week, McDonald's (NYSE:MCD) <a href="http://news.mcdonalds.com/Corporate/news-stories/McDonald%E2%80%99s-USA-Announces-New-Employee-Benefit-Pack" type="external">said it would hike wages by $1 dollar over the locally mandated minimum wage Opens a New Window.</a> and by 2016 the company says the average hourly rate at company-owned stores will exceed $10.</p>
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<p>The sector has also been hot for investors. Shake Shack (NYSE:SHAK) raised more than $100 million in its initial public offering earlier this year. While stocks including Starbucks (NYSE:SBUX) and Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE:CMG) are hovering near record highs.</p> | Help Wanted: These Industries Are Hiring | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2015/04/03/help-wanted-these-industries-are-hiring.html | 2016-03-09 | 0 |
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<p>The drop left unemployment benefit applications at the lowest level in 10 weeks, the Labor Department said Thursday. Some of the decline may have been caused by seasonal factors.</p>
<p>Still, the broader trend has been favorable. The four-week average, which smooths out fluctuations, fell 5,250 to 351,000.</p>
<p>“We believe labor market conditions remain on a gradually improving trajectory,” said Laura Rosner, an economist at BNP Paribas.</p>
<p>Weekly applications data can be volatile in July. Automakers typically shut their factories in the first two weeks of the month to prepare for new models, which leads to a temporary spike in layoffs. But this year much of the industry has skipped or shortened the shutdowns to keep up with stronger demand.</p>
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<p>Employers added an average of 202,000 jobs a month through the first six months of the year, up from an average of 180,000 in the previous six months.</p>
<p>In June, they added 195,000 jobs and revisions showed 70,000 more jobs were added in April and May. The unemployment rate stayed at 7.6 percent last month but is down from 8.2 percent a year earlier.</p>
<p>Despite the gains in hiring, economic growth has been weak. Most economists expect growth slowed in the April-June quarter to an annual rate of 1 percent or less, down from a tepid 1.8 percent rate at the start of the year. That would mark the third straight quarter of growth below 2 percent.</p> | US unemployment aid applications drop to 334K | false | https://abqjournal.com/222763/us-unemployment-aid-applications-drop-to-334k-2.html | 2 |
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<p>Martin Montano, the man accused of stabbing and beating his mother and another man and dumping the woman into the Rio Grande off the Central Avenue Bridge yesterday, has been booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center.</p>
<p>According to the West Side jail’s online records, Montano, 26, was booked shortly after noon.</p>
<p>He faces numerous felony charges and is being held temporarily without bond.</p>
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<p>An initial court appearance, where a judge will set his bond and other conditions of release, has not yet been scheduled.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>12:45 p.m.</p>
<p>Martin Montano, 26, told Albuquerque Police Department investigators that he believed his mother and another man — whom he allegedly stabbed, beat and loaded into the trunk of a car with the intention of disposing of their bodies yesterday — were “clones.”</p>
<p>“His family was living under ground,” APD detective Kevin Kees wrote in a criminal complaint filed in Metro Court. “While watching television this morning, he heard voices coming through the TV telling him to go to his mother’s house and get the clones out.”</p>
<p>Police say Montano threw his mother, Hope Montano, from the Central Avenue&#160;Bridge after he attacked her and Francisco Dominguez at their home on the 4300 block of Hendrix NE. He had planned to do the same with Dominguez, but was thwarted by passing motorists and instead left the man lying on the side of the road, bleeding, before driving away.</p>
<p>Hope Montano and Dominguez remained in stable but critical condition at an Albuquerque hospital this morning, according to police.</p>
<p>With assistance from an APD helicopter, officers located Martin Montano a short time after the incident on the bridge, police said. He was arrested and eventually charged with two counts of attempted murder, two counts of evidence tampering, two counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, auto theft and aggravated burglary.</p>
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<p>Pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Journal for a complete story.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>10:53 a.m.</p>
<p>According to an Albuquerque Police Department spokesperson, the woman thrown from the Central Avenue Bridge yesterday&#160;is the suspect’s mother.</p>
<p>The suspect’s mother and the male victim are still hospitalized. &#160;The woman is in stable but critical condition.</p>
<p>No other details about the victims are available at this time.</p>
<p>— We will post additional information as it becomes available.</p>
<p>— The following article appeared in the June 5, 2013 edition of the Albuquerque Journal.</p>
<p>by Pat Lohmann / Journal Staff Writer</p>
<p>A 26-year-old man was arrested Tuesday after police said he was seen throwing a woman from the Central Avenue Bridge into the Rio Grande in broad daylight as motorists drove by.</p>
<p>Police say Martin Montaño is suspected of brutally beating the woman and a man, stuffing them in the trunk of a sedan and driving them to the Central Avenue Bridge. Witnesses called police when they saw Montaño pull the pair from the trunk of the car and throw the woman into the river, a police spokeswoman said. The man was left at the side of the road.</p>
<p>Both victims, who police said were between the ages of 50 and 70, were badly injured but listed in stable condition at an area hospital. Police haven’t released the victims’ names, and the two had not yet been questioned.</p>
<p>“Just looking at it you can see that the fall alone could have been fatal. These people were very close to losing their lives,” APD spokeswoman Tasia Martinez said.</p>
<p>A witness pulled the woman out of the river, and paramedics treated the woman before rushing her to the hospital, police said.</p>
<p>Another witness chased Montaño in his vehicle across town after he drove away from the scene, another example of witness intervention that Martinez praised.</p>
<p>“Somebody took it upon themselves to continue following,” she said.</p>
<p>Montaño had not yet been charged Tuesday afternoon.</p>
<p>The incident began around 9:15 a.m. Tuesday when neighbors called police to report seeing a man force two people into the trunk of his green sedan in the 4200 block of Hendrix NE, near Montgomery and Washington.</p>
<p>About eight minutes later, witnesses called police saying they saw a man, whom police said was later identified as Montaño, pull two people out of the trunk of a car and shove the woman off the bridge.</p>
<p>Martinez said the two had been beaten, but she couldn’t describe the type or extent of the injuries.</p>
<p>After the woman was shoved off the bridge, a witness chased Montaño’s car more than five miles to Carlisle and Comanche and alerted police. Montaño was arrested without incident.</p>
<p>Martinez praised the “cohesive” response to the crime, which she said could have resulted in a death had residents not been so vigilant in calling police.</p>
<p>Police haven’t yet released information about a possible motive in the attack, but they believe Montaño lived near the victims and knew them. Montaño was arrested last year on a domestic violence charge in the same Hendrix NE block where he was allegedly seen kidnapping the victims, according to online court records.</p>
<p>Police kept the bridge closed for more than three hours.</p>
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<p /> | APD: Man who threw mom off bridge thought she was a clone | false | https://abqjournal.com/207007/woman-beaten-thrown-off-bridge.html | 2013-06-05 | 2 |
<p>The ACLJ's <a href="" type="internal">Tweet for Youcef</a> social media campaign is growing exponentially as Pastor Youcef's situation has become more dire. As <a href="" type="internal">we reported yesterday</a>, sources in Iran believe the execution order for Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani - the Christian pastor convicted and sentenced to death for his faith - may have been issued.&#160; We can confirm that as of yesterday, Pastor Youcef was still alive.</p>
<p>Yet, it is more critical now than ever that Pastor Youcef's story - more than 860 days illegally imprisoned for his faith - be told around the globe to increase the pressure on Iran to release him. And Tweet for Youcef is helping accomplish just that.</p>
<p>It has been about a month since we launched the Tweet for Youcef campaign, where the ACLJ sends out one tweet a day through users Twitter accounts on behalf of Pastor Youcef. Here is what it is accomplishing:</p>
<p>1,795 individuals have signed up to Tweet for Youcef.</p>
<p>422,063 Twitter accounts are reached each day.</p>
<p>162 of the 193 UN member nations have been reached through Tweet for Youcef (more than 83% of the world's nations).</p>
<p>22 other countries and territories, including the Palestinian territory, have been reached.</p>
<p>33 nations that are majority Muslim or are under some form of Shariah (Islamic) law have been reached for Pastor Youcef, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Syria.</p>
<p>Several people in Iran, including in Tehran, have tweeted calling for Pastor Youcef's release.</p>
<p>It is critical that this effort continues to grow. <a href="" type="internal">Please sign up for this important, truly life-changing effort, and be Pastor Youcef's voice.</a></p>
<p>In addition to the Tweet for Youcef campaign, the ACLJ has also started a petition calling for Pastor Youcef's immediate release and urging Congress to pass a resolution in support of the persecuted pastor. In less than 3 days, more than 72,000 people have already signed this petition. <a href="" type="internal">Please add your name here before it is too late.</a></p> | Tweet for Youcef: The World is Listening | true | http://aclj.org/iran/tweet-youcef-nadarkhani-world-listening | 2012-02-22 | 0 |
<p>July 18 (UPI) — A Florida man captured video of dozens of alligators swimming in a lake and warned visitors to “swim at your own risk.”</p>
<p>Paul Hueber posted a video to Facebook showing <a href="http://www.wftv.com/news/local/watch-florida-man-records-video-of-gator-infested-lake/562809654" type="external">dozens of alligators</a> swimming on the surface of Lake Apopka about 6:45 a.m. July 9.</p>
<p>“Swim at your own risk,” he wrote.</p>
<p>The Facebook post, which has <a href="http://www.clickorlando.com/news/video-shows-gators-swarming-lake-apopka" type="external">since been deleted</a>, said the footage was filmed from shore on Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive.</p> | Video shows Florida lake swarming with alligators | false | https://newsline.com/video-shows-florida-lake-swarming-with-alligators/ | 2017-07-18 | 1 |
<p>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Japan’s Inpex Corp. on Monday won a stake in the development of major oil fields in the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi, deepening the Asian nation’s ties to the United Arab Emirates federation.</p>
<p>The Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. said the deal gives Inpex’s Japan Oil Development Co. Ltd. Division a 5-percent stake in the onshore concession operated by the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Petroleum Operations, also known as ADCO.</p>
<p>The agreement, which is valid from the start of this year, is good for 40 years. Neither company provided financial terms for the deal.</p>
<p>Inpex President and CEO Toshiaki Kitamura said the company’s winning bid likely reflects its track record in Abu Dhabi over many years. The company last year won a 15-year extension on its concession for the emirate’s Upper Zakum offshore oil field, which it has been developing since 1978.</p>
<p>“This new acquisition in Abu Dhabi ... is highly significant in terms of the company’s growth strategies and also largely contributes to the long-term, stable supply of energy to Japan,” Kitamura said in a statement.</p>
<p>Monday’s agreement will put Inpex in partnership with French oil giant Total SA, which won rights to 10 percent of the ADCO project earlier this year. That deal followed the expiration of previous development rights involving Total and others last year.</p>
<p>The project includes 15 oil fields in Abu Dhabi, the capital and largest of the seven emirates in the UAE and the holder of the bulk of the OPEC nation’s oil wealth. Eleven of the fields are currently in operation, while the rest are undeveloped.</p>
<p>ADNOC hopes to raise production from the fields to 1.8 million barrels per day by 2017, up from 1.6 million barrels daily now.</p>
<p>Japan is the world’s third-largest petroleum consumer, after the United States and China, burning about 4.3 million barrels a day last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It relies on imports — mainly from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and other Middle Eastern nations — for almost all of its supply.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at www.twitter.com/adamschreck.</p>
<p>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Japan’s Inpex Corp. on Monday won a stake in the development of major oil fields in the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi, deepening the Asian nation’s ties to the United Arab Emirates federation.</p>
<p>The Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. said the deal gives Inpex’s Japan Oil Development Co. Ltd. Division a 5-percent stake in the onshore concession operated by the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Petroleum Operations, also known as ADCO.</p>
<p>The agreement, which is valid from the start of this year, is good for 40 years. Neither company provided financial terms for the deal.</p>
<p>Inpex President and CEO Toshiaki Kitamura said the company’s winning bid likely reflects its track record in Abu Dhabi over many years. The company last year won a 15-year extension on its concession for the emirate’s Upper Zakum offshore oil field, which it has been developing since 1978.</p>
<p>“This new acquisition in Abu Dhabi ... is highly significant in terms of the company’s growth strategies and also largely contributes to the long-term, stable supply of energy to Japan,” Kitamura said in a statement.</p>
<p>Monday’s agreement will put Inpex in partnership with French oil giant Total SA, which won rights to 10 percent of the ADCO project earlier this year. That deal followed the expiration of previous development rights involving Total and others last year.</p>
<p>The project includes 15 oil fields in Abu Dhabi, the capital and largest of the seven emirates in the UAE and the holder of the bulk of the OPEC nation’s oil wealth. Eleven of the fields are currently in operation, while the rest are undeveloped.</p>
<p>ADNOC hopes to raise production from the fields to 1.8 million barrels per day by 2017, up from 1.6 million barrels daily now.</p>
<p>Japan is the world’s third-largest petroleum consumer, after the United States and China, burning about 4.3 million barrels a day last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It relies on imports — mainly from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and other Middle Eastern nations — for almost all of its supply.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at www.twitter.com/adamschreck.</p> | Japan’s Inpex wins stake in major UAE oil fields | false | https://apnews.com/325deb8027c34cd0919520e188b308d4 | 2015-04-27 | 2 |
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<p>BOSTON — The Federal Trade Commission could take action against TripAdvisor after the Massachusetts-based travel company was accused of deleting hotel reviews that contained allegations of rape and other crimes.</p>
<p>Several people told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this month they were sexually assaulted at Mexican hotels and resorts but the online reviews that mentioned the crimes were taken down.</p>
<p>The Boston Globe says after the report was published Democratic Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin wrote to the FTC, urging an investigation.</p>
<p>The commission aims to prevent unfair or deceptive business practices. It responded Nov. 17, saying it will consider the information provided by Baldwin to determine whether enforcement or other action is “appropriate.”</p>
<p>TripAdvisor says it’s unaware of an FTC inquiry and hasn’t been contacted by the commission.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Commission alerted to review allegations against TripAdvisor | false | https://abqjournal.com/1096604/commission-alerted-to-review-allegations-against-tripadvisor.html | 2 |
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<p>We began our journey and were barely able to reach the town of Abd Rabo. As we drove along, our car dipped to the right and to the left. The ground was rutted from the holes that the Israelis tore into the streets with their bombs, their bulldozing, and their fires. The land was also wounded. A once lush and tranquil neighborhood had been transformed into hell on earth. Our eyes were filled with nothing but devastation, and masses of people covered the place like flies.</p>
<p>Our car came to a halt and we walked down the street to Khaled’s shattered home. And there was Khaled himself, sitting in the rubble of what was once a happier time.</p>
<p>“This house used to have four floors, and a nice garden. It brought us peace and tranquility,” he began to tell us. “The Israeli army came to this house many times before, but the last was in March of 2008.”</p>
<p>He explains how they invaded his home and investigated him and his family. “They found nothing. I am a police officer in the Ramallah government; I have nothing to do with Hamas.</p>
<p>“That day when they left us, they did not take anything or harm anyone,” he continued. “I remember it was 12:50pm on the fourth day of the military ground invasion when the army took control of the region. A real battlefield was born and thousands of people were trapped. Nobody could leave due to the excessive fire from the Israelis, and the soldiers kept on coming, and coming, and coming.</p>
<p>“And then the tanks came. One of them was based only meters away from my house. There were twenty-five of us, and we were all told to leave,” he said as his voice trembled and he began to cry. “The soldiers were eating chips and chocolate, and they were smiling when they killed my daughters.</p>
<p>“My mother, my wife, and my three daughters all held white flags when they tried to leave the house. We saw two of the soldiers get out of their tank, and we told them how we wanted to leave. We waited and waited for their response but were given no answer. Then, to our own surprise, a third soldier emerged and he opened fire on the children with insanity.</p>
<p>“Souad was only seven years old, Summer was three, and Amal was of only two years. My mother was shot as well, and I watched all that I loved fall to the ground. I screamed for them to stop! I ran into the house to call civil defense, ambulances, anyone who could help.</p>
<p>“For one hour the injured were bleeding, and two of my daughters were killed despite the so called ceasefire. No help was able to come to us in time. One of the ambulances tried, but the Israeli soldiers stopped the paramedic and forced him to remove his clothing. They then bombed the ambulance and it was buried in rubble. The paramedic fled naked while their fire surrounded him.</p>
<p>“I left the house with some of my family members,” Khaled continued. “We carried my mother in a crib. I held Summer in my arms, and she was still breathing despite her gaping spinal wound. I thought to myself, ‘no way can I leave little Summer, even if I end up dead like my other two daughters.’ I passed her to my brother and then took the body of Souad in my hands, and my wife held Amal as we left the house.</p>
<p>“The soldiers were firing uncontrollably above their heads and everywhere around them. Many of the houses were demolished by their tanks. As we crossed one of the roads, there was a man and he tried to save us but the snipers saw this and killed both him and his horse. When we finally reached the town of Jabaliya, we saw that everyone had brought all of the injured citizens here. So shocked were we by what we saw that we threw our bodies to the ground, and for one hour we remained there unable to fathom what has become of our people.”</p>
<p>We asked him why he thought they would kill his children. He replied, “I am certain they were drunk, or were given orders to kill everyone including the children. This was on Harets a couple of days ago, that many Israeli rabbis were giving orders to leave no one alive,” he explained. “I don’t know why my daughters were killed. They never committed any crimes, they were children! They did not fire rockets at Israel, although Israel claims to only aim at those who have first fired at them.</p>
<p>“We are a very peaceful people, we have nothing to do with fighting or rockets. I know if I go to the court about what has happened the Israeli army would create thousands of pretexts to make their soldiers appear innocent. They have done this with many other cases before,” he went on.</p>
<p>“It was not a war between two immense armies. Obviously, it was a war between civilians and the fourth largest army in the world: Israel. But they do not call it a war. They call it an operation.”</p>
<p>An operation where tens of thousands of Gazans were either killed or psychologically and physically wounded. The devastation did not only effect the people, but all you can imagine. Yet buildings can be repaired and the land will grow again, but Khaled’s mayhem will never be alleviated. He will never hear the laughter of Saoud and Amal again, but he will hear the aching cries of Summer. She is now paraplegic due to her injuries. The only thing that functions is her mind. A mind that will forever be telling the nightmare of what happened to her life. Even during her first interview in the hospital, in every single detail, she narrated the story to Al-Jazeera as Khaled did to us.</p>
<p>Photos of Khaled and <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb/StoryOfKhaledAbedRabuTheLostChildren#" type="external">the scene of the crime</a>.</p>
<p>Sameh Habeeb is a twenty-three year old journalist based in the Gaza Strip. He has been active for years to bring out the word of his people’s suffering.</p>
<p>Janet Zimmerman is a twenty-one year old journalist and an American citizen, determined to help after she had seen the horrendous crimes that perpetrated in Gaza by Israel. She crossed thousands of miles to evaluate the situation with her own eyes, her own mind, and her own heart. She stumbled across Sameh’s work online, and it was not long before they became friends and united in the struggle to open the eyes of the world to the agonies in which they are so often closed</p> | Innocents Lost | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/02/05/innocents-lost/ | 2009-02-05 | 4 |
<p>From SF Gate:</p>
<p>Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday that he would head home “to determine whether there is a path forward” for his White House bid after he finished a distant fifth in the Iowa caucuses.</p>
<p>At times pausing to collect his emotions, Perry told supporters that he appreciated their work but that he needed to consider whether there was a viable strategy for him to restart his campaign in South Carolina.</p>
<p>“With the voters’ decision tonight in Iowa, I decided to return to Texas, assess the results of tonight’s caucus, determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race,” Perry said, his family standing behind him.</p>
<p>( <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/01/03/national/a003713S08.DTL" type="external">Read Full Article</a>)</p>
<p>Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore, flickr</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Perry: Reassessing bid after Iowa caucuses | false | http://capoliticalreview.com/trending/perry-reassessing-bid-after-iowa-caucuses/ | 2012-01-04 | 1 |
<p>Unlisted in the credits for the visceral production of <a href="https://www.publictheater.org/Public-Theater-Season/Hamlet/" type="external">Hamlet which opened tonight at New York’s Public Theater</a> are the custodians who, after every performance, must clean up the sodden and muddy Anspacher stage after the movie star—and Public Theater alum—Oscar Isaac and his fellow actors have left the stage.</p>
<p>This is not a large space, it is not a large cast, and the most significant props are flowers, a table, and—later—all that soil and muck. The characters are dressed in modern garb, and there is even a very modern restroom where the characters periodically retreat to. Yes, that’s Polonius sitting on the toilet.</p>
<p>It’s not every production of Hamlet where you will see Ophelia make short work of a meal of lasagna, but here Gayle Rankin, a restless and stroppy Ophelia rather than a wispy and tragic one, ravenously piles in mouthfuls of the dish.</p>
<p>So no, this is not a classic Hamlet, but it is one you will not forget in a hurry. And if you’re in the front row, prepare to put your clothes in for dry cleaning.</p>
<p>The production’s spartan-ness and its modernity makes this very much a Sam Gold production—and give the poor man a cold compress; in the last year he has directed distinctive productions of Othello at the New York Theatre Workshop, The Glass Menagerie and A Doll’s House, Part 2, on Broadway and now this.</p>
<p>It was Gold, as Oskar Eustis, the Public’s artistic director, points out in the Hamlet program, who shepherded the magnificent adaptation of <a href="" type="internal">Alison Bechdel’s</a> <a href="" type="internal">Fun Home</a> from the Public to Broadway and then on to touring success.</p>
<p>Some did not like The Glass Menagerie, of course ( <a href="" type="internal">this critic did</a>), and elements of the aesthetic of that production, and of Gold’s Othello and A Doll’s House, Part 2, recur here. All that you may not like about starkly reimagined plays that Gold has done before may rankle here. The red carpet and office chairs are the quintessence of drab.</p>
<p>For Gold, the text is the thing. Décor should startle but not overwhelm. A bare stage gives all the more room for movement. Gold is more keen to find new angles for the characters to face the audience, to shock us with a visual, to produce innovative, mischievous beats in a play, than he is to overgild and over-design.</p>
<p>As in those other productions, lighting is key. If theater-goers recall the mysterious cloak of near-darkness of Othello and Menagerie—and which Gold has employed in his productions of <a href="" type="internal">Annie Baker plays</a> like The Flick and John—then they won’t be surprised when it descends again in Hamlet, with the words of the actors emanating from the gloam.</p>
<p>This production is distinguished by a bracing tour de force performance of Isaac, whose movies include 2013’s <a href="" type="internal">Inside Llewyn Davies, criminally robbed at the Oscars</a>, Ex Machina, and playing Poe Dameron in <a href="" type="internal">Star Wars: The Force Awakens</a> and the forthcoming The Last Jedi.&#160; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/theater/oscar-isaacs-mom-died-now-hes-working-out-his-grief-in-hamlet.html" type="external">He revealed recently in The New York Times</a> that he had read Hamlet to his mother Eugenia as she lay gravely ill; she died in February. “It’s for my mom that I’m doing it,” he said of this production of Hamlet. “It’s to honor her life, but also her death, which was so awful.” He named his son Eugene, born in April, after her.</p>
<p>The play begins and is studded, though not heavily, with comedy, which is not something you might associate with Hamlet. However, Gold is also respectful of the play and its characters.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Keegan-Michael Key</a>, who plays Horatio, addresses us as himself as the actors gather on stage, to ask us to turn off our cellphones, and to not—as one audience member has already attempted—to plug their cellphone into the socket on stage. He also reminds us, regarding the duration of the play, that it is really, really long.</p>
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<p>He’s right. Three and a half hours. You have to commit to this Hamlet.</p>
<p>Key doesn’t mug, but his scenes, whether through his looks to audience or incomprehension, bring fun with them. And it is not just him: Other characters revel for moments in their absurd or overheated plights, and we laugh with them too.</p>
<p>Of the more traditional light relief of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Roberta Colindrez, also playing Reynaldo, and Matthew Saldívar), it is Colindrez’s deadpan and waspish monotone that is winning.</p>
<p>The story is familiar, but Gold and his cast’s interpretive breadth is wide. Isaac’s Hamlet is tortured, crazy, witty, and vengeful. Sometimes he is all of those things together: a bran-tub of moods, all utterly believable, as he deduces that his father was murdered by his scheming brother Claudius (Ritchie Coster, also the play’s fight captain).</p>
<p>Coster also plays the sporadically appearing spirit of the dead king, which makes for a very effective on-stage duality in his dealings with Isaac, who one moment will be wishing his dead father back, and the next minute spitting venom at his suspected murderer; and somehow Coster deftly segues from noble to reptilian in a flash.</p>
<p>Gold too doubles up Ophelia and her father Polonius (the excellent Peter Friedman, who you want to listen to for hours; his cadence and timing are meticulous) as their own gravediggers, and this after a stunning scene in which Ophelia’s drowning is staged using two planters requisitioned from outside the theater, soil from those planters, a hosepipe, and flowers. Stand by for mess.</p>
<p>The energy when Isaac is not on stage dips, and if this play has a flaw it is that it follows all of Hamlet the play’s highways and byways: You feel that three and a half hours by the end. Depending on where you’re sitting in the oddly partitioned and leveled Anspacher, you may not see characters very clearly if at all when they’re in that bathroom, or in another room, or loitering behind pillars. Claudius’ death looked particularly odd when viewed from where I was.</p>
<p>Yet this long, ranging adaptation with its many moods and paces never sinks. Gold doesn’t let it, even when Hamlet is absent from the stage. Isaac’s tones, and his running and cavorting on stage, eventually stripped down to a pair of black briefs and in a T-shirt and babbling lunatically, is a performance made all the more forceful by being realized in such a small space.</p>
<p>What strikes you, because the performers and their director have clearly studied and immersed themselves in the play, is the beauty of Shakespeare’s language (and who could want more than that?), and how much there is in Hamlet: family, power, madness, the creation of art, love, grief, betrayal, and revenge. And all the great-hit lines are here too: “Alas, Poor Yorick…” and “To be or not to be,” which here occurs as it occurs in the play, rather than at its beginning (which the Benedict Cumberbatch adaptation toyed with in 2015). As for Yorick’s skull, well that becomes a mock-foetus at some point. Only Ophelia’s brother Laertes (Anatol Yusuf) is played traditionally straight; stout and outraged by the calumnies around him, he seems to have been beamed in from a more conventional production. (At least he gets to wrestle Hamlet in the dirt near the end.)</p>
<p>How challenging it is to find something new and resonant in these well-known lines for both actors and director, yet this Hamlet does it. It also finds a moving heart to the tortured relationship of Hamlet and his mother Gertrude (Charlayne Woodard); he furiously accusing her of betraying her husband, his father’s, memory in marrying his brother; and she—for much of the time at a regal remove to her son’s madness—recognizing far too late what that means and the truth about her new husband.</p>
<p>Through Isaac’s performance, you really do come to see Hamlet himself as a one-man study in the human condition.</p>
<p>There are some odd gaps in the production; most notably, Hamlet and Ophelia function so separately in the play and seem so independent as characters, they seem more like kindred spirits than lovers when on stage; Hamlet’s later agonized declarations of love for her seem odd, and Ophelia’s ultimate tragedy seems squarely hers.</p>
<p>The body count at the end is well-known. But Isaac’s arresting performance means that we stay rapt until Hamlet’s very last breath, and Shakespeare’s very last word. It is a long evening for sure, but also a beguilingly off-kilter, rewardingly rich one.</p>
<p>Hamlet is at the Anspacher Theater at the Public Theater, until Sept. 3. <a href="https://www.publictheater.org/Public-Theater-Season/Hamlet/" type="external">Book tickets here</a>.</p> | Oscar Isaac Owns the Public Theater’s New Dirty, Sexy, Funny ‘Hamlet’ | true | https://thedailybeast.com/oscar-isaac-owns-the-public-thearers-new-dirty-sexy-funny-hamlet | 2018-10-04 | 4 |
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<p>WASHINGTON — Hours after shuttering much of the federal government, feuding Democrats and Republicans in Congress spent Saturday dodging blame for a paralyzing standoff over immigration and showed few signs of progress on negotiations needed to end it.</p>
<p>The finger-pointing played out in rare weekend proceedings in both the House and Senate, where lawmakers were eager to show voters they were actively working for a solution — or at least actively making their case why the other party was at fault. The scene highlighted the high political stakes for both parties in an election-year shutdown whose consequences were far from clear.</p>
<p>“The American people cannot begin to understand why the Senate Democratic leader thinks the entire government should be shut down until he gets his way on illegal immigration,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., hours after a last-chance Senate vote failed.</p>
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<p>Democrats refused to provide the votes needed to reopen the government until they strike a deal with President Donald Trump protecting young immigrants from deportation, providing disaster relief and boosting spending for opioid treatment and other domestic programs.</p>
<p>Democrats feel “very, very strongly about the issues” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, adding that he believes “the American people are on our side.”</p>
<p>The fighting followed a late-night vote in which Senate Democrats blocked a House-passed measure that would have kept agencies functioning for four weeks.</p>
<p>Republicans began the day hopeful they might pick off Democratic support for a three-week version and bring the episode to a quick end. Democrats are insisting on an alternative lasting only several days — which they think would pressure Republicans to cut an immigration deal — and say they’ll kill the three-week version when the Senate votes on it by early Monday.</p>
<p>The shutdown came on the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration. As lawmakers bickered in the Capitol, protesters marched outside in a reprise of the women’s march from a year ago. The president remained out of sight and canceled plans to travel to his resort in Florida for the weekend. He did tweet, making light of the timing by saying Democrats “wanted to give me a nice present” to mark the start of his second year in office.</p>
<p>Trump worked the phones, staying in touch with McConnell, while White House legislative affairs director Marc Short and budget chief Mick Mulvaney met at the Capitol with House Republicans. GOP lawmakers voiced support for the White House stance of not negotiating while the government was shuttered.</p>
<p>Tempers were short and theatrics high. Lawmakers bickered over blame, hypocrisy and even the posters brought to the House floor. While neither chamber voted on a measure to open the government, the House did vote on whether a poster displayed by Republican Rep. Bradley Byrne of Alabama violated the House rules on decorum. The House voted to allow the poster, which bore a photo of Schumer and the quote “the politics of idiocy.”</p>
<p>While Republicans blamed the breakdown on Schumer, Democrats increasingly focused their messaging on criticizing Trump, whose popularity is dismal. Democrats were using his zigzagging stance in immigration talks — first encouraging deals, then rejecting them — to underscore his first, chaotic year in office.</p>
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<p>“Negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O,” Schumer said.</p>
<p>Short compared Democrats’ actions to “a 2-year-old temper tantrum.”</p>
<p>Republicans seemed content to hope additional Democrats will break as pressure builds and the impact of the shutdown becomes clearer.</p>
<p>In the late-night vote blocking the bill preventing a shutdown, five Democrats from states Trump won in the 2016 election voted to keep government functioning. In a sign that moderates are feeling pressure, more than a dozen centrist senators from both parties have been trying to craft an immigration and spending compromise that party leaders would embrace, but they’ve fallen short so far.</p>
<p>Republicans argued that Democrats were blocking extra Pentagon funds by keeping government closed and thwarting a long-term budget deal.</p>
<p>“I question if Senate Democrats are really united,” Short told reporters. “We think there’ll be more today and hopefully they’ll continue to see that it’s not wise to hold our troops hostage.”</p>
<p>But pressure on Republicans could mount with the new workweek Monday and the impact of the federal shutdown becomes more apparent to people.</p>
<p>While the Statue of Liberty — the nation’s emblem of its immigrant past — and Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell were closed Saturday, visitors had access to other iconic national parks like Yellowstone. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke tweeted a photo of himself talking to students at the World War II Memorial in Washington, blocks from White House.</p>
<p>Social Security and most other safety-net programs were unaffected by the lapse in federal spending authority. Critical government functions continued, with uniformed service members, health inspectors and law enforcement officers set to work without pay. But if no deal is reached before Monday, hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be furloughed.</p>
<p>For leverage, Democrats were banking on Trump’s wobbly presidency and the GOP’s control of the White House, the House and Senate — a triumvirate that until now had never allowed a government closure to occur.</p>
<p>“Republicans in Congress plunged head-first into the Trump shutdown,” Schumer told reporters. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called Republicans “so incompetent and negligent that they couldn’t get it together to keep the government open.”</p>
<p>Which party’s strategy would succeed remained open to debate.</p>
<p>Retired Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., a veteran of shutdown wars, said he believed Democrats believe “the more chaos they can create the better.” He said Schumer’s tough strategy was “a gross overplaying of his hand” and predicted Democrats would eventually relent.</p>
<p>Former Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said both parties needed to be cautious.</p>
<p>“It’s obvious that Democrats are playing to their base and Republicans are playing to their base,” he said. “Everybody loses. It just feeds into the fed-up atmosphere of the American people.”</p>
<p>Democrats have been seeking a deal to protect so-called Dreamers. Around 700,000 of them have been shielded against deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which Trump halted last year. He’s given lawmakers until early March to pass legislation restoring the protections, but he’s demanded added money for his proposed border wall with Mexico as a price.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writers Matthew Daly, Richard Lardner and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.</p> | Democrats, GOP try to dodge blame for shuttered government | false | https://abqjournal.com/1122001/government-shutdown-begins-and-so-does-the-finger-pointing.html | 2018-01-20 | 2 |
<p>On this <a href="https://www.fool.com/podcasts/answers/?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=a0b74500-cad1-11e7-b82b-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Motley Fool Answers Opens a New Window.</a> episode, Robert Brokamp is on his own to interview Rachel Schneider, a senior VP at the Center for Financial Services Innovation, and professor Jonathan Morduch, who teaches public policy and economics at NYU, about their new book, The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty. For the study behind the book, their team tracked essentially everything about the finances of 235 families in five states for a full year, giving them deep insights into where we are succeeding, where we're not, and what obstacles are most commonly in our paths.</p>
<p>Recognizing that personal choices matter, a great deal of what's holding families down comes from macro factors they can't begin to affect. But our elected representatives in Washington, D.C., can. In this segment, the authors lay out a few areas where President Trump could, if he chose to, make a big positive impact on the lives of ordinary Americans -- and they don't mention the word "taxes" even once.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</p>
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<p>This video was recorded on Sept. 26, 2017.</p>
<p>Robert Brokamp: Let's say President Trump finds your book, loves it, calls you into the White House and says, "All right. I agree with you." And to be quite honest, reading about some of these people, I'm sure many of them were Trump voters because they're talking about how they're not getting ahead even though they're working hard and they were expecting some sort of changes. And he says, "Which thing should I be doing to improve this situation?" Not that he's actually going to do it, but what would you tell him?</p>
<p>Jonathan Morduch: It's interesting. We didn't touch politics when in the conversations with the households, but we were definitely in some very Republican areas. What would we say? When we think about security in this country, there's a real divide. There are Americans who are very secure and then Americans like the families we got to know who are struggling in various ways.</p>
<p>And there are really two dimensions of that. One is what's the underlying instability, like the hours going up and down week by week? And the other is what their coping mechanisms are. And you need both. So the top of the list would be some labor market intervention. Perhaps legislation that would say you need to give your workers a week or two weeks' notice so they can plan better. Better would be a month. So there are interventions like that. Or helping collective bargaining so that workers can take back some of the power and get to better contracts.</p>
<p>But then there's a whole series of things which usually don't get talked about in that conversation, which are financial: better financial products, mechanisms, regulations. Rachel has done a lot more thinking on that side, but there are lists of things which really go together and haven't been on the table in the way they ought to be.</p>
<p>Rachel Schneider: And that's the set of things that the business community often can get behind and does like. You can make the argument that there is profit to be made in serving people with better financial services. We need, in fact, better lending. Better savings. Products to help people manage the ups and downs they experience. I think we're at the beginning of a whole wave of innovation in insurance. And so you could think about some really pro-business approaches to encouraging innovation in that space.</p>
<p>I also think government has a real role to play, here, and there's lots of motivation from both sides of the aisle to revisit the way we provide welfare in our country. I think we just passed the 20-year anniversary of welfare reform or we're just about to get to it and I don't think anybody really thinks the way we provide assistance to families in need today is working as well as it should. And so we need to think about new and better policies to help people to manage their economic lives. To know they can be secure and take on risks for their future.</p>
<p>Morduch: Yes, the CFPB [the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau], which is an Obama innovation and pushed by Elizabeth Warren and all kinds of people who Donald Trump wouldn't necessarily see as buddies; that government agency is protecting a lot of Trump voters...</p>
<p>Brokamp: Exactly...</p>
<p>Morduch: ... and in some world it would be great if Donald Trump said, "Hey, these are my people and we need to strengthen this organization, this agency and provide protection to those folks. They need it."</p>
<p>Brokamp: One of the points you make in the book is that various social services [welfare types of safety nets] vary across the country, so a lot of it is administered by the state, and a lot of them do have requirements in terms of assets. And once you have saved up some money, then you're not in the program anymore. But the evidence is that if you let people stay on the program and accumulate more assets, it reduces the chances that they'll come back to the program later.</p>
<p>Schneider: Yes, that is so true. And that just doesn't seem like it makes any sense, and there is state-by-state movement to change it, but it's hard. And that's only one of the many policies you could pull at the threads of and say, "We think we're helping people with that policy but the way it's structured we're making it harder for people to get off of public assistance and stay off."</p>
<p>For example, it's generally pretty onerous to get public assistance. TANF, which is the main way we provide welfare has a work requirement which is fine one way or the other, but it means you've got to document that you're either working or trying to find work, and it caps the amount of time that you can receive welfare. But at the end of two years, regardless of where you are in terms of your employment prospects, you're now done.</p>
<p>And it doesn't really work in any meaningful way to change somebody's trajectory. We'd be better off enabling somebody to actually become self-sufficient. Let's invest that same money in some way that makes the person able to take care of themselves better.</p>
<p>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;referring_guid=a0b74500-cad1-11e7-b82b-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | What Could Trump Do to Ease Average Americans' Personal Finance Woes? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/11/17/what-could-trump-do-to-ease-average-americans-personal-finance-woes.html | 2017-11-17 | 0 |
<p>Chicago Reader To prove that bloggers and Google News robots can't do the work of trained reporters, Reader executive editor Michael Lenehan proposes a yearlong journalism strike. "I am urging reporters and editors around the world to put down their notebooks, close their laptops, hang up their phones. Lie down and be counted! Let’s have no reporting, no editing, no application of any human intelligence whatsoever to events public or private till January 1, 2007. I’m calling it the Year Without Journalism. Let’s all relax, let go, and float blissfully in the information-free state (excuse me, I mean free-information state) that our public awaits so eagerly. ... Let’s see if Wonkette can deal with the devious bastards in the executive branch any better than Judith Miller did." (PDF file)</p> | How to show that real journalists do come in handy at times | false | https://poynter.org/news/how-show-real-journalists-do-come-handy-times | 2005-12-30 | 2 |
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A man who says he suffered a medical episode on his way to work has filed a federal lawsuit accusing an Albuquerque police officer of denying him treatment and unlawfully arresting him on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.</p>
<p>Gary Martinez, who is suing the Albuquerque Police Department, the city and an APD officer, says the charge was later dismissed when the district attorney's office dropped prosecution.</p>
<p>According to the lawsuit, Martinez was driving to work in a vehicle that had an ignition interlock, a breath-testing device that prevents a car from starting if alcohol is detected in a driver's system.</p>
<p>He says an officer who responded to the scene after he lost consciousness ordered him to undergo several field sobriety tests before arresting him, and the officer kept emergency workers from examining him.</p>
<p>The case was filed in federal court Thursday.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Lawsuit: Driver unlawfully arrested after medical episode | false | https://abqjournal.com/753871/lawsuit-driver-unlawfully-arrested-after-medical-episode.html | 2 |
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<p />
<p>Despite President Trump's disdain for Time Warner's (NYSE:TWX) cable network CNN, AT&amp;T CEO Randall Stephenson (NYSE:T) remains confident the $85 billion deal will get done.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"We continue to expect the Time Warner deal to close by year-end and further transform the company” said Stephenson in the company's latest earnings statement released late Tuesday.</p>
<p>While President Trump has been critical of several media organizations, claiming many report "Fake News", CNN has been a frequent lightening rod. Earlier this month in a Twitter post featured the President body slamming CNN with the #FraudNewsCNN.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FraudNewsCNN?src=hash" type="external">#FraudNewsCNN</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FNN?src=hash" type="external">#FNN</a> <a href="https://t.co/WYUnHjjUjg" type="external">pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg</a></p>
<p>His public criticisms have raised speculation that he could influence the deal's fate among regulators as detailed in a recent&#160; <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/donald-trump-cnn-time-warner-merger" type="external">Vanity Fair Opens a New Window.</a> article.</p>
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<p>Stephenson's comments came as the telecom giant reported second-quarter profit of $3.92 billion. &#160;The Dallas-based company said it had profit of 63 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were 79 cents per share.</p>
<p>The results topped Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of 20 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 74 cents per share.</p>
<p>The telecommunications company posted revenue of $39.84 billion in the period, also exceeding Street forecasts. Nineteen analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $39.8 billion.</p>
<p>AT&amp;T shares have decreased 15 percent since the beginning of the year, while the Standard &amp; Poor's 500 index has increased 11 percent. In the final minutes of trading on Tuesday, shares hit $36.20, a decline of 16 percent in the last 12 months.</p>
<p>The Associated Press contributed to this report.&#160;</p>
<p>This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on T at https://www.zacks.com/ap/T</p> | AT&T CEO:Time Warner deal on track for year-end close | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/07/25/at-t-ceo-time-warner-deal-on-track-for-year-end-close.html | 2017-07-25 | 0 |
<p>Illustration: Harry Campbell</p>
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<p>The stately Russell Senate Office Building stands at one corner of a domestic Green Zone, just northeast of the Capitol building at the intersection of Delaware and Constitution avenues. In the past few years a maze of blockades has sprouted along the shaded avenues and curving drives of the Capitol complex. Checkpoints are patrolled by heavily armed police; guards watch for suspicious characters and prohibited items (which now include food and beverages; cans, bottles, and sprays; and bags larger than 13 by 14 inches). At the Russell Building, visitors encounter another set of barriers and metal detectors before being granted admittance to the elegant structure, its ring of Corinthian columns and soaring rotunda recalling a more worldly and optimistic past. Then, at the top of a sweeping staircase, they’ll find a room walled in white marble, draped in deep red, overhung by a gilded ceiling, and fronted, altarlike, with a raised dais.</p>
<p>Depending on how much faith in American democracy still resides in the visitor’s soul, the site’s history may seem to justify its grandeur. Here in the humbly named Caucus Room, the U.S. Congress has held some of its most famous public hearings, beginning with a 1912 investigation into the fate of the Titanic. The Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s was broached here, in what would become a watershed investigation of executive branch corruption. Thirty years later, people around the country got their first glimpse of the Caucus Room in the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings, witnessing the famous exhortation by Army Special Counsel Joseph Welch: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”</p>
<p>The Watergate hearings unfolded here in the early ’70s, beneath the ever-watchful gaze of Senator Sam Ervin (D-N.C.). It was here that Rep. Barbara Jordan (D-Texas), the first Southern black woman elected to Congress, declared: “My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.” Here, too, the erect figure of Oliver North, straight from the basement of the Reagan White House, first hinted at the existence of a secret government to be deployed in times of crisis.</p>
<p>But in the past six years, congressional investigations of such bold, searching nature have disappeared. In a post-9/11 environment of silence and fear, the mood inside Congress has mirrored the bunkers and barriers outside: No one dares question the military or the intelligence services too closely, or to push the president too far. The Caucus Room continues to be used for party meetings and social events, and every so often there is a potted inquiry, as in the case of the 2003 hearings on the space shuttle. But on issues of war and peace, of corruption and graft, of civil rights, civil liberties, and constitutional breaches, meek questions are the rule, answered by dull assurances from the White House.</p>
<p>If the Democrats win back control of Congress (or even one of its chambers), if they can come up with the requisite moxie, and if they can muster the political will to reach out to their own base as well as to disaffected Republicans, they will have an opportunity to begin to change all that. They will need to overcome the myriad obstacles the Bush administration has created to keep lawmakers from obtaining and releasing critical information, such as its resistance to briefing congressional committees on intelligence issues, or its heavy hand in redacting congressional reports. When explosive information has leaked out—the fact that documents offering “proof” of Saddam Hussein’s intent to buy uranium from Niger had been forged, or that the United States is operating a network of secret prisons in other countries—the administration’s response has focused on condemning critics for politicizing national security—a charge before which the Democrats usually crumble.</p>
<p>Still, there is a chance that some of the gutsier Dems, with the support of an increasingly fed-up public, could make progress toward exposing the truth. A Democratic majority in the Senate could, for example, place the chairmanship of the intelligence committee in the hands of Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who has largely been stymied in his efforts to spur a thorough investigation of the Niger forgeries and what he suspects may be a broader campaign of deception. Among other things, such an inquiry could lead straight to the Pentagon’s shadowy Office of Special Plans; under gop leadership, no one is too eager to learn much about this office, which led the prewar intelligence cherry-picking, and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) is holding up an inquiry.</p>
<p>Regardless of the election result in November, a few independent-minded Republicans in key positions offer hope that important investigations may gain traction. Under Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), the national security subcommittee of the powerful House Committee on Government Reform has actually summoned the mettle to subpoena Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in its investigation of the chain of command in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse case.</p>
<p>But if lawmakers of either party do not begin to reclaim their constitutional powers—by asking questions such as those listed below—it’s not hard to envision a time when visitors may come to the venerable Caucus Room as if to a museum, to learn about a bygone era when congressional investigations still served as a check on the imperial presidency.</p>
<p>1.Who lost Iraq? It goes without saying that a congressional investigation—a joint inquiry by both houses, given the gravity of the matter—should address the causes, conduct, and effects of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, going back to the days immediately after Bush’s election when the plans for invading Iraq were laid (see “A War Foretold,” Page 61). But beyond that, the conduct of the war on terror has raised myriad vital questions that, at another time, would have been subjects of full-fledged inquiries on their own: the Pentagon’s failure to adequately equip troops with armor, ammunition, radios, and the like; the use of mercenary forces; the contracting process; and the government’s efforts to manipulate the press through outside PR agencies. Also worthy of scrutiny is the role of oil and gas, including the work of the secret Cheney energy task force, which points to prewar discussions with the ceos of major companies about Iraqi oil.</p>
<p>A congressional investigation into the Iraq war must make full use of subpoena power and must be prepared to forward findings of illegal acts to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. Just as important, public hearings could provide an opportunity—and protection—for would-be whistleblowers: Recall that Daniel Ellsberg didn’t take his trove of documents, showing the Defense Department’s true assessment of the war in Vietnam, to the New York Times until after he had been rebuffed by congressional Democrats. Somewhere inside the Defense Department and the intelligence agencies today’s Pentagon Papers are waiting.</p>
<p>2. Did Rumsfeld order torture (and if not, who did)? Last year, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) sought to clear up any confusion over the legality of torture with an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill. As McCain explained on the Senate floor, the measure was designed to “restore clarity on a simple and fundamental question: Does America treat people inhumanely?” This set off a bitter behind-the-scenes battle between the senator and Vice President Dick Cheney, who even as the White House was negotiating with McCain over the exact wording of the bill was privately cornering senators, arguing that the legislation would harm the CIA’s operations. The result was a bill that bans torture at U.S. facilities but leaves open the question of foreign governments mistreating prisoners at the United States’ behest. President Bush then wrote his own interpretation of the legislation, after it passed, in the form of a signing statement that said the White House was free to ignore the measure in the interests of national security. In the end, McCain’s ban may have accomplished nothing except to give the administration an occasion to reaffirm its policy of permitting torture—so long as it involves foreigners being held in prisons that are not on U.S. soil.</p>
<p>Congress should demand a no-holds-barred public accounting of “inhumane treatment” since 9/11 by U.S. intelligence services and by third-country surrogates. Did Bush know about these practices? Did Rumsfeld order torture or supervise the chain of command? How far up the chain did knowledge of, and assent for, the horror at Abu Ghraib go? To which countries were prisoners sent for interrogation? When and how were these prisoners tortured? What are the CIA’s policies on “unorthodox” interrogation techniques? Such hearings would go a long way toward halting the creeping normalization of torture—and they would almost certainly produce prosecutable evidence about the abuses that have already happened.</p>
<p>3. Who blew 9/11? It’s high time to follow up on the startling discoveries of the Senate and House’s joint inquiry, back in December 2002, on pre-9/11 intelligence. In reconstructing the hijackers’ trail, the inquiry’s staff discovered that the FBI had failed to report, and had later balked at making public, information showing that it knew that a bureau informant in the San Diego Muslim community had socialized with two of the hijackers, and that another man who had been investigated by the FBI had rented an apartment to one of them. Both of the future hijackers had been closely followed by the CIA as they made their way from the Middle East to Malaysia; the agents lost track of the men before they boarded a plane to California, where they then lived openly, with driver’s licenses and a phone book listing in their own names. So far, no one has been able to discover how they escaped detection by the FBI—and why the bureau refused to let Congress find out what happened.</p>
<p>The joint inquiry also discovered a Saudi spy operating in California—the same man who had rented an apartment to one of the hijackers—along with suggestions of a larger network, according to former Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.). The spy nominally worked for a Saudi government contractor, and the committee followed a money trail going back to the royal family and the Saudi government, according to Graham. This was a tantalizing find. Congressional sources have suggested that Saudi spooks may have been sent to California to keep tabs on Saudi students who might be tempted by democratic ideas; it has also been speculated that some of these undercover agents could have become enmeshed with Al Qaeda. In any event, the White House has adamantly refused to declassify 28 pages of the final committee report that dealt with Saudi Arabia. When Congress later set up an independent commission to look into 9/11, it pointedly ordered the panel to “build upon the investigations of other entities” such as the joint inquiry. Yet the commission’s report glossed over many questions involving Saudi Arabia. A new select committee could pick up where other probes left off.</p>
<p>4. What did the airlines know, and when did they know it? The bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 ought to have been a wake-up call to aviation across the world. But 13 years later, the FAA was still ignoring warnings from its own staff about security holes at every airport that inspectors checked out. With airlines lobbying against tighter standards and Congress sitting by, the nation’s airline security system was caught flat-footed on 9/11.</p>
<p>As far back as 1993, FAA inspectors showed that people with no authorization made it through San Francisco’s airport security system 60 percent of the time. At Frankfurt in 1996, the FAA’s undercover team broke through security every time it tried—a 100 percent failure rate. By way of addressing the problem, the FAA began telling the airlines when tests were going to be held, and negotiated fines for violations down to a pittance. There was idle talk of hardening the cockpit doors, but the airlines resisted additional security measures because they cost too much. The airlines ran wild in Washington, hiring top lobbyists such as Linda Daschle, the wife of then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, threatening that their industry would face wholesale bankruptcy unless they got their way. (Most of them, of course, have since gone Chapter 11 anyway—but not before their ceos socked away millions more in salaries and bonuses.)</p>
<p>In the months before 9/11, the FAA warned that hijackers could turn a commercial airliner into a suicide missile and conducted classified briefings at 19 of the nation’s largest airports, including Logan, Dulles, and Newark—the points of departure for the hijacked flights—warning of an imminent terrorist attack. Osama bin Laden’s name was repeatedly mentioned. During the same period, FAA officials received 52 different intelligence briefings concerning threats from Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>The moment of truth ought to have come a little after 8 a.m. on September 11, 2001, when Betty Ong, a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11 out of Logan, called AA headquarters and calmly began to describe the hijacking going on aboard that plane. She provided a detailed account of what she saw and heard and stayed on the line until the moment the plane crashed into the first tower.</p>
<p>Did AA officials, as family members later reported based on tapes and transcripts they were shown by the FBI in closed briefings, respond by saying, “Don’t spread this around,” “Keep it close,” and “Let’s keep this among ourselves”? Did that attitude prevent warnings to other pilots—warnings that could have kept Flight 93 on the ground, and could have helped bring Flight 77 down safely before it crashed into the Pentagon? Some member of Congress must have the decency and the guts to ask those questions—not in some backroom closed session, but in the full glare of the TV lights.</p>
<p>5. How wide is the domestic surveillance net? In the mid-1970s, the Church Committee, named after Idaho Democratic senator Frank Church, put out 14 separate reports that exposed the intelligence agencies’ abuses of law. The Pike Committee, named after Rep. Otis Pike (D-N.Y.), conducted a parallel inquiry in the House, focusing mostly on the CIA. Among other things, the investigations discovered the notorious COINTELPRO operation to spy on and disrupt left-wing groups. Thirty years later urgent questions are once again piling up: Just what is the extent of the agencies’ spying inside the United States? What are the true motivations and outcomes of this surveillance? How much money is going into spying programs? There is much evidence that domestic intelligence gathering is not limited to the infamous NSA surveillance project. The ACLU, for one, has obtained numerous files describing FBI cooperation with local police in joint terrorism task forces that have targeted groups such as Greenpeace, United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.</p>
<p>6. Is Big Oil pulling an Enron? The last serious investigation of the oil industry concluded in 1952 with the Federal Trade Commission’s staff report on the International Petroleum Cartel, published by the monopoly subcommittee of the Senate. That study laid out a now-familiar pattern: A major concern of the oil industry has always been the threat of surpluses driving down prices. To prevent surpluses, oil and gas companies have employed means such as instituting quota systems, closing off reserves from market, and setting up cartels, or agreements among producers.</p>
<p>Today, while many experts believe oil will soon run out, there is no actual shortage that could be blamed for driving up gas prices. The hurricanes of 2005 did not put the supply in any serious jeopardy, nor was lack of refinery capacity a real factor. (According to the U.S. Department of Energy, refineries along the Gulf Coast and elsewhere frequently run below capacity, meaning that there was some slack in the system.)</p>
<p>There is, however, evidence to suggest practices reminiscent of Enron’s market rigging: Last year, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a California-based consumer group, released a series of internal memos from Chevron, Texaco, and Mobil that laid out the industry’s thinking. A Texaco memo, for example, warned that “supply significantly exceeds demand year-round. This results in very poor refinery margins and very poor refinery financial results. Significant events need to occur to assist in reducing supplies and/or increasing the demand for gasoline.” An investigation would subpoena internal company documents and take testimony from oil executives under oath—not just in an “unsworn” chitchat like the sideshow put on by the Senate commerce and energy committees last year—to discover whether the companies conspired to rig prices or manipulate supply.</p>
<p>7. Who’s making money off your retirement? It’s been predicted that at least 1 in 10 retirees in 2020 will teeter on the edge of financial collapse or plunge into outright poverty. Social Security is just a small bit of the problem. The potentially much bigger challenge is the disappearance of pensions, most of which have been replaced with 401(k)-type accounts dependent wholly on the securities market. This is an enormous shift: Corporations have succeeded, with amazingly little protest from labor, in transferring the cost—and the risk—of retirement from employer to employee. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. provides some backup when a company with a standard pension plan goes under (think United Airlines). With 401(k)s, there is no insurance. The Securities and Exchange Commission is supposed to regulate mutual funds, which handle most 401(k) money; the sec has nowhere near the resources to keep tabs on the $9 trillion business, so policing is largely left up to the funds themselves.</p>
<p>Before this crisis grows greater, Congress ought to launch a serious investigation into the retirement system. We’ve got to know all the ways companies are bailing on their pension plans—by converting them into 401(k)s, by filing for bankruptcy, or simply by quietly not paying into (or “underfunding”) them for years at a time. We need to understand who controls the money in 401(k)s, what the hidden costs are, and to what extent these accounts are threatened by Wall Street conflicts of interest. For example, thanks to deregulation laws passed during the Clinton administration, commercial banks can now sell the mutual funds that their investment-banking arms manage, but investors have no recourse if their 401(k)s lose value because of bad management. With Social Security privatization refusing to die, and Wall Street eager to get its hands on that money, Congress should do some due diligence.</p>
<p>8. Why is the morning-after pill not at your 7-Eleven? After numerous clinical trials, thousands of pages of reports, and supportive resolutions from major medical groups including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, two Food and Drug Administration advisory committees in 2003 recommended that the FDA allow the emergency contraception pill Plan B to be sold over the counter. Conservative groups threw a fit, and House Republican leaders, including then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay, urged the FDA to reconsider. When Democrats fought back, challenging the nomination of Lester Crawford to head the FDA until they got answers on Plan B, Crawford assured them that “the science part is generally done. We’re just now down to what the label will look [like]. This is going to be a very unusual sort of approval.” After promising a decision on Plan B by September 1, 2005, Crawford instead launched a public comment period. Not much later, he left the agency amid unrelated conflict-of-interest allegations. Now Congress deserves some answers: Why did Crawford overrule his own scientists? On what grounds? And was anyone outside the FDA involved? What about, for example, the calendar entry for then-FDA head Mark McClellan on April 21, 2003—just a few days after the agency got the application for over-the-counter Plan B—for “Conference call w/Jay Lefkowitz re: Plan B submis”? Lefkowitz, a White House go-to guy for conservatives, was at the time the deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy.</p>
<p>9. Grounds for impeachment? Congressional investigators digging into the aforementioned questions cannot ignore the possibility of impeachment proceedings against Vice President Cheney, who figures prominently in almost every one of the scandals engulfing the administration. It was Cheney who ran the government’s response to the 9/11 attacks without constitutional authority, at one point ordering shoot-downs of commercial planes and what would turn out to be a medevac helicopter; who led the secret meetings of administration officials and oilmen to set energy policy; who allowed Ahmed Chalabi to play the U.S. government like a violin; who very well may be the origin of the whisper campaign that culminated in the Plame leak; and, of course, it was Cheney’s former employer (and source of continuing deferred compensation paychecks) that benefited enormously from no-bid contracts in Iraq. Judicial Watch, the conservative legal outfit in Washington, has unearthed an email dated March 5, 2003, sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official whose name had been blacked out, that said of a pending deal under which Halliburton would rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, “We anticipate no issue since the action has been coordinated w VP’s office.” There’s plenty more where that came from; whether any of Cheney’s actions constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors” is for Congress, and the nation, to debate.</p>
<p /> | Sweet Subpoena: Nine Tough Questions for Congress | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2006/09/sweet-subpoena-nine-tough-questions-congress/ | 2018-09-01 | 4 |
<p>HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The Hartford Whalers left Connecticut 20 years ago, but their beloved logo will now appear on vehicles gliding along the state's highways.</p>
<p>The Department of Motor Vehicles on Tuesday unveiled a new commemorative license plate that bears the former professional hockey team's green-and-blue insignia. Forty-five dollars from the sale of each plate, which usually costs $60, will benefit a new infusion and dialysis center at the Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford.</p>
<p>"I ask the Whalers fans to get out there and purchase those license plates, because maybe then they will come back," said Democratic Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, giving a glimmer of hope to the handful of die-hard fans who showed up for Tuesday's announcement in their old Whalers garb. One fan wore the "Pucky," the whale mascot costume.</p>
<p>"We'll keep hoping," Wyman said. "It was two decades ago that we lost on the Whalers, but in our hearts we have not. Just like we will not lose in our hearts the caring for our children."</p>
<p>Stafford Springs Rep. Kurt Vail, a Republican who worked to pass legislation last year creating the plate, said the strong, bipartisan support for the license plate concept indicates how much enthusiasm remains in Connecticut for the team, which became the Carolina Hurricanes in 1997. Vail credited the work of the team's still-active booster club, which first proposed the idea about two-and-a-half years ago.</p>
<p>Bob Crawford, who played for the Whalers and several other NHL teams during his professional hockey career, said Hartford stands out as a "special place" among the cities where he played.</p>
<p>"The Whalers are, they're part of our past, our positive past," he said. "They're part of our present and they will be part of our future with this ongoing cause and other things."</p>
<p>HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The Hartford Whalers left Connecticut 20 years ago, but their beloved logo will now appear on vehicles gliding along the state's highways.</p>
<p>The Department of Motor Vehicles on Tuesday unveiled a new commemorative license plate that bears the former professional hockey team's green-and-blue insignia. Forty-five dollars from the sale of each plate, which usually costs $60, will benefit a new infusion and dialysis center at the Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford.</p>
<p>"I ask the Whalers fans to get out there and purchase those license plates, because maybe then they will come back," said Democratic Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, giving a glimmer of hope to the handful of die-hard fans who showed up for Tuesday's announcement in their old Whalers garb. One fan wore the "Pucky," the whale mascot costume.</p>
<p>"We'll keep hoping," Wyman said. "It was two decades ago that we lost on the Whalers, but in our hearts we have not. Just like we will not lose in our hearts the caring for our children."</p>
<p>Stafford Springs Rep. Kurt Vail, a Republican who worked to pass legislation last year creating the plate, said the strong, bipartisan support for the license plate concept indicates how much enthusiasm remains in Connecticut for the team, which became the Carolina Hurricanes in 1997. Vail credited the work of the team's still-active booster club, which first proposed the idea about two-and-a-half years ago.</p>
<p>Bob Crawford, who played for the Whalers and several other NHL teams during his professional hockey career, said Hartford stands out as a "special place" among the cities where he played.</p>
<p>"The Whalers are, they're part of our past, our positive past," he said. "They're part of our present and they will be part of our future with this ongoing cause and other things."</p> | State unveils license plate for team that left 20 years ago | false | https://apnews.com/amp/0ade820b74f94cbda7876cfb338d2dc1 | 2018-01-23 | 2 |
<p>Costas Lapavitsas is a professor in economics at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. He teaches the political economy of finance, and he's a regular columnist for The Guardian. Costas is also a former parliamentarian for Syriza in Greece.</p>
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<p /> PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And this is Reality Asserts Itself with our guest Costas Lapavitsas, who now joins us in the studio.
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<p />Thanks for joining us again.
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<p />COSTAS LAPAVITSAS, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR, UNIV. OF LONDON: Pleasure.
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<p />JAY: So, just quickly one more time, Costas is a professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. And his most recent book that just hit the shelves is Profiting without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All.
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<p />So let's talk about the history of finance, 'cause of lot of people see this issue as, you know, you get some lobbying by the banks and the government changes its policy. Like, in the Clinton years, you get rid of Glass-Steagall, which was a piece of legislation from 1930s that created a kind of wall between banks speculating and banks taking normal deposits. You weren't supposed to have these things under one roof. But because they got rid of Glass-Steagall, all of a sudden we have 2008 and finance going wild.
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<p />But that's not your view. Finance doesn't come about just because of some particular government's policy. So give us some historical roots of all this.
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<p />LAPAVITSAS: I mean, quite clearly this isn't the case, although policy is very, very important in the context of finance. But to understand why we are where we are, you've got to start from below, as it were, from structural things.
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<p />Now, what can we say generally about finance and its history? I mean, a number of things are important to state at the outset, although we can't go into them. But they are very important to understanding finance.
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<p />Finance, first of all, is a very, very old, very ancient form of profit-making, capitalistic profit-making, because you put some money into the realm of finance, you either lend it or you use it in a financial way, and you expect to make more money. And that's the most basic principle of capital. You give some money--.
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<p />JAY: And if anybody's been watching any of the--like, the HBO series, Rome, some of these most powerful senators are loaning money to the state to help pay for wars, and they charge interest.
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<p />LAPAVITSAS: Indeed. Indeed. You give some money, you receive more money back. That's the basic movement of capital. And you find it in the Greek world. You find it in the Roman world. I mean the ancient Greek world. You find it in the Roman world. You find it in many, many other places long before societies become capitalist, what we recognize as capitalist. So this is a--finance is a very old form of profit-making, capitalistic profit making--very exploitative, very rapacious and aggressive and all the rest of it. So that's the first thing to say about finance.
<p />
<p />But, of course, we live in a capitalist society now, which is a very different thing, meaning that the whole of society's organized on capitalistic principles, not just finance. So what can we say about finance in that context?
<p />
<p />Well, I'm going to say three things which are important. The first is that when we look at the 19th century, which is when proper industrial capitalism emerged, productive capitalism emerged--.
<p />
<p />JAY: Large-scale industry.
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: Actually, just before large-scale industry. When we look at that system of industrial capitalism, although not very big business, but nonetheless clearly capitalistic, finance is very much there. It's impossible to have that without finance. But this kind of finance is a type of finance that supports production.
<p />
<p />JAY: Yeah. So you want to start a business. You go to a bank. You get a loan. You go buy your machinery.
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: And that's one thing you do. And then, as well, say you produce clothing or you produce various other bits of, you know, cloth, yarn, or whatever it is you produce. Then you use finance to give you liquidity, to give you credit to allow you to sell, to buy, and so on.
<p />
<p />JAY: You've got to buy the raw materials, make your product.
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: That's it.
<p />
<p />JAY: And, in fact, you couldn't do it without these kinds of [crosstalk]
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: There is no way.
<p />
<p />JAY: It was needed.
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: That's it. So it isn't just obtaining finance to buy your machinery and to start the plant, but also for working capital, right, to get the thing going. It's impossible to have industrial capitalism without that. So finance is very much there. It's a complex system, but much smaller than what we've got now. And it supported production, basically. And that's the kind of finance that Karl Marx knows, and that's the kind of finance he writes about very well. And that's the kind of finance that other great political economists know and write about, Adam Smith and so on before Marx, and some at the time of Marx, and so on. So that's one kind of finance.
<p />
<p />Then, towards the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, capitalism changes, and it changes in a very, very powerful way. We have the rise of what we might call monopoly capitalism in sort of Marxist terms. What happens there is that the unit of production, the unit of industrial and commercial production, gets much, much bigger. Big business emerges, basically.
<p />
<p />JAY: Yeah, I mean, plants with thousands of workers.
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: Yes, and large corporations emerge. The United States is one of the classic countries in which this happens. American capitalism is transformed in the 1890s, 1900s, when all the various big businesses--we know the robber barons and everybody else.
<p />
<p />JAY: And production becomes very social--this massive plant makes four parts of what will become an automobile.
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: That's it.
<p />
<p />JAY: And this is kind of a division of labor, and on a massive scale, which requires an enormous amount of equipment.
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: An enormous amount of equipment, therefore an enormous amount of capital. This becomes, in a sense, socialized production, but by capital, run privately for private profit. But it is a qualitatively different thing to what you'd have in the 1850s or 1840s, when you would be a small producer, maybe producing to export and so on, but nonetheless small and so on.
<p />
<p />Finance also changes as big business emerges: big finance also emerges, big banks. So as big business emerges, I mean big industrial and commercial business emerges, finance also changes: big finance also emerges, big banks emerge.
<p />
<p />The banks are themselves organized on corporate joint stock bases. These are giants. And they begin to do different kind of financial activity. It isn't simply now providing working capital and some investment capital for the smaller producers. This is big stuff. This is banks operating the stock markets, facilitating the stock market transactions of these big industrials and commercials, playing international games--in a sense, high finance.
<p />
<p />JAY: I mean, sometimes you have situations as you get into the 1920s--you know, a big bank is financing this company to produce something, is loaning money to this other, to that company, then loans money to this company, which has to buy stuff from that company. I mean, the banks are in the middle of everything.
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: The banks are in the middle of everything. They have a finger in every pie. They help capital to form these large concentrations, big business to emerge. They have a close connection with big business. And they often have a controlling influence over these big businesses.
<p />
<p />JAY: And pumping the stock market,--
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: And of course they play the stock market.
<p />
<p />JAY: --'cause they have an investment in such-and-such company, so they want a stock to go up, and they can start telling all these other people, oh, buy this stock.
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: That's it. So banks can play these games. And profit begins to emerge through stock market operations in a systematic and very powerful way. And that becomes a source of all kinds of speculative and other kinds of profit-making activities.
<p />
<p />This kind of capitalism is clearly different from the capitalism that Karl Marx wrote about. It's the capitalism that other Marxists began to write about, Hilferding, Lenin, and so on. It's the kind of capitalism that supports imperialism across the globe. It's a very aggressive capitalism. It's a capitalism that wants to divide the globe, that militarizes, takes over the state, and fights against other capitalisms of this type. And you get all these global empires emerging. And then eventually you get world wars out of these capitals which have come to dominate their states. Okay? So in a sense, to me, that's the first bout of the historic rise of finance. Finance emerges as a very powerful thing in capitalism now. It doesn't just support production.
<p />
<p />JAY: So there's a graph which we'll show on the screen here which shows the percentage of GDP, American GDP, and the percentage which is finance. And you can see in the graph that it goes--from the time of industrialization it goes up, up, up, and then just before the crash of '29-30 it's at this enormous peak. In the Depression it comes down some, and then in World War II it comes down significantly. I mean, talk just a little bit what that is, and then we'll move to the second phase.
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: That's a very, very important thing. Now, we have then this first rise of finance. And it's associated with the First World War and everything that comes after that, the speculative orgy of the 1920s that finishes was the Great Crash in the United States and elsewhere.
<p />
<p />Then the world in the 1930s goes into deep, deep trouble. Global economy doesn't work. The world market splits into very many different parts that don't really particularly trade with each other. And then politics also becomes deeply problematic. Fascism emerges in many parts of Europe. There is the Soviet Union, with communist regime in a large part of Eurasia too. The world looks like a very unstable, very different place.
<p />
<p />During that time, finance in a sense shrinks, declines. The high period, the growth and so on of the previous decades in a sense comes to an end, and finance begins to be controlled in important ways. That's when Glass-Steagall is introduced.
<p />
<p />JAY: Yeah. I mean, this is, I think, a really significant part is that with the crash, so much triggered by all the financial speculation, you can say FDR is able to assert the class interests of the whole capitalist class and system and say, we can't let you guys go out of control, 'cause you're going to sink the whole system. And they are very afraid of a rising working-class socialist movement in the United States and globally. So there is the ability to restrict it for the sake of the system. I mean, the reason I'm saying that, it's important, 'cause obviously a little later on, where we are now, it's not so clear anyone's going to do that.
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: That--I mean, to a certain extent this is undoubtedly true. It happened, basically. But we must bear in mind also the reality of the '30s. It isn't simply what Roosevelt did and so on. It's also what's happening, in a sense, at ground level, that basically capitalism was collapsing. It isn't simply--I mean, this is a really profound crisis, where the links between businesses, the ability of business to reproduce itself is in serious doubt. Unemployment is huge. The thing doesn't work. So finance is placed under control partly because of the ideology of putting this part, this aggressive part of the system under control, but also because people are fumbling and trying to find a way out of this chaos.
<p />
<p />Now, the real controls, though, and the real period of [incompr.] finance comes with the war, when the banking system is used to finance the U.S. war effort in other countries, the war effort of other countries. And then we emerge out of the war with the United States effectively having won it economically, if nothing else. It has recovered from the crisis of the '30s. The banks are now under control. This is a system of controls over banks. Glass-Steagall is in place. The battery of other controls on interest rates and on the lending and other functions of banks are also in place. And big business is also different. This is a kind of business that engages in profitable productive activities on the basis of mass production and mass consumption. We entered a period of 25 or so years--the most extraordinary period in the history of capitalism, basically--of rapid growth and so on, in which finance remains controlled.
<p />
<p />JAY: What was it? A car in every garage, a chicken in every pot, refrigerators, and--
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: You know, all that. All that.
<p />
<p />JAY: --all the consumer appliances and--.
<p />
<p />LAPAVITSAS: All that, which is quite unique in the history of capitalism.
<p />
<p />In a sense, finance grows and gradually gets rid of all those loans they made to the state to fight the war. But it's under control. It's under control. And that cannot have been a bad thing, because, as I say, growth during that period is unprecedented.
<p />
<p />But, of course, capitalism never remains static. Big business grows. Big business begins to go abroad. Big business begins to change the way it works. The world begins to change. And then the 1970s come, and a massive crisis happens in the '70s.
<p />
<p />JAY: Please join us for the next segment of our interview on Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network.
<p />
<p />End
<p />
<p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. | The Rise of the Big Banks - Costas Lapavitsas on Reality Asserts Itself (3/8) | true | http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D767%26Itemid%3D74%26jumival%3D11903 | 2014-05-24 | 4 |
<p>ST. LOUIS (AP) — Rams linebacker Alec Ogletree underwent surgery to repair his fractured right fibula on Tuesday, but coach Jeff Fisher said the team will wait to decide whether to make a roster move with him.</p>
<p>The team will not place Ogletree on season-ending injured reserve, but may still place him on injured reserve/designated for return, which would allow him to return after eight weeks. Fisher said he expects Ogletree to miss more time than that, but left open the possibility that the linebacker could come back this season.</p>
<p>"There's a chance for a return," Fisher said. "So we're going to see how things go."</p>
<p>Ogletree, who suffered the injury in the third quarter of the Rams' 24-22 win over the Cardinals on Sunday, led the team in tackles in each of his first two seasons. He was leading the team with 55 tackles this season.</p>
<p>Ogletree had a career-high 18 tackles in the Week 2 loss to the Redskins, then had 15 tackles and two sacks the following week in a loss to the Steelers. He had a team-high 11 tackles against Arizona.</p>
<p>The Rams will move Akeem Ayers, who signed a two-year deal as a free agent this offseason after winning the Super Bowl with the Patriots, from strong-side linebacker to weak-side linebacker.</p>
<p>Ayers has nine tackles and one pass defended in four games, but has played limited snaps because he comes out when the Rams use sub packages. He played 30 percent of the Rams' defensive snaps against the Cardinals after playing just 16 percent the previous week.</p>
<p>"'Tree was playing that position at a really high level, being very productive at that position — tackles, sacks, he's just all over the field," Ayers said. "By him playing that position so high, when I come in there . I want to keep that same level of intensity going because he was playing at such a high level. I'm excited to play. We have different games. He does what he does well, and I do what I do well."</p>
<p>The Rams added another linebacker Tuesday, signing veteran Jo-Lonn Dunbar, who had started for them at strong-side linebacker the past three seasons but was released at the end of the preseason.</p>
<p>Dunbar takes the open roster spot that had belonged to Chris Givens, the wide receiver St. Louis traded to Baltimore on Saturday.</p>
<p>"He knows the defense," Fisher said. "That's why we brought him back. He stayed in shape, came back and it looks like he's never left. He has a good feel for what we're doing."</p>
<p>The Rams (2-2) rank 13th in the NFL in points allowed (22.2 per game), 14th in pass yards allowed (235.2), 16th in total yardage allowed (355.5) and 26th in rushing yards allowed (120.2) and will travel to face a Packers team on Sunday that ranks in the top 10 in points, rushing yards and total yardage.</p>
<p>NOTES: Chase Reynolds (knee) and Eugene Sims (knee) both returned to the practice field on Tuesday after missing time with injuries. Both players have missed the past three games after playing in the season opener against the Seahawks. . Running back Trey Watts was back on the practice field after serving a four-game suspension for violating the NFL's substance abuse policy. The Rams have a one-week roster exception for Watts and don't have to add him to the active roster.</p>
<p>ST. LOUIS (AP) — Rams linebacker Alec Ogletree underwent surgery to repair his fractured right fibula on Tuesday, but coach Jeff Fisher said the team will wait to decide whether to make a roster move with him.</p>
<p>The team will not place Ogletree on season-ending injured reserve, but may still place him on injured reserve/designated for return, which would allow him to return after eight weeks. Fisher said he expects Ogletree to miss more time than that, but left open the possibility that the linebacker could come back this season.</p>
<p>"There's a chance for a return," Fisher said. "So we're going to see how things go."</p>
<p>Ogletree, who suffered the injury in the third quarter of the Rams' 24-22 win over the Cardinals on Sunday, led the team in tackles in each of his first two seasons. He was leading the team with 55 tackles this season.</p>
<p>Ogletree had a career-high 18 tackles in the Week 2 loss to the Redskins, then had 15 tackles and two sacks the following week in a loss to the Steelers. He had a team-high 11 tackles against Arizona.</p>
<p>The Rams will move Akeem Ayers, who signed a two-year deal as a free agent this offseason after winning the Super Bowl with the Patriots, from strong-side linebacker to weak-side linebacker.</p>
<p>Ayers has nine tackles and one pass defended in four games, but has played limited snaps because he comes out when the Rams use sub packages. He played 30 percent of the Rams' defensive snaps against the Cardinals after playing just 16 percent the previous week.</p>
<p>"'Tree was playing that position at a really high level, being very productive at that position — tackles, sacks, he's just all over the field," Ayers said. "By him playing that position so high, when I come in there . I want to keep that same level of intensity going because he was playing at such a high level. I'm excited to play. We have different games. He does what he does well, and I do what I do well."</p>
<p>The Rams added another linebacker Tuesday, signing veteran Jo-Lonn Dunbar, who had started for them at strong-side linebacker the past three seasons but was released at the end of the preseason.</p>
<p>Dunbar takes the open roster spot that had belonged to Chris Givens, the wide receiver St. Louis traded to Baltimore on Saturday.</p>
<p>"He knows the defense," Fisher said. "That's why we brought him back. He stayed in shape, came back and it looks like he's never left. He has a good feel for what we're doing."</p>
<p>The Rams (2-2) rank 13th in the NFL in points allowed (22.2 per game), 14th in pass yards allowed (235.2), 16th in total yardage allowed (355.5) and 26th in rushing yards allowed (120.2) and will travel to face a Packers team on Sunday that ranks in the top 10 in points, rushing yards and total yardage.</p>
<p>NOTES: Chase Reynolds (knee) and Eugene Sims (knee) both returned to the practice field on Tuesday after missing time with injuries. Both players have missed the past three games after playing in the season opener against the Seahawks. . Running back Trey Watts was back on the practice field after serving a four-game suspension for violating the NFL's substance abuse policy. The Rams have a one-week roster exception for Watts and don't have to add him to the active roster.</p> | Rams LB Ogletree has surgery, could return this season | false | https://apnews.com/amp/ed8bcffa6a5e421b9065c31fe8c7ebc8 | 2015-10-07 | 2 |
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<p />
<p>In grim remarks at the Mojave Air and Space Port, where the craft known as SpaceShipTwo was under development, Branson gave no details of Friday’s accident and deferred to the National Transportation Safety Board, whose team had just arrived.</p>
<p>“We are determined to find out what went wrong,” he said, asserting that safety has always been the top priority of the program that envisions taking wealthy tourists six at a time to the edge of space for a brief experience of weightlessness and a view of Earth below.</p>
<p>“Yesterday, we fell short,” he said. “We’ll now comprehensively assess the results of the crash, and are determined to learn from this and move forward.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Branson added, however, that “we are not going to push on blindly.”</p>
<p>He also criticized early speculation. “To be honest, I find it slightly irresponsible that people who know nothing about what they’re saying can be saying things before the NTSB makes their comments.”</p>
<p>The pilot killed in the test flight was identified Saturday as Michael Tyner Alsbury, 39, of nearby Tehachapi, who worked for Scaled Composites, the company developing the spaceship for Virgin Galactic.</p>
<p>The surviving pilot was identified as Peter Siebold, 43. Siebold was to undergo surgery, but there were no other details on his condition, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said. Siebold also is a veteran of Scaled’s spaceship test program.</p>
<p>More than a dozen investigators in a range of specialties were forming teams to examine the crash site, collect data and interview witnesses, NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher A. Hart told a press conference at Mojave Air and Space Port.</p>
<p>Hart said the investigation will have similarities to a typical NTSB probe, as well as some differences. “This will be the first time we have been in the lead of a space launch (accident) that involved persons onboard,” said Hart, noting that the NTSB did participate in investigations of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters.</p>
<p>Hart said he did not immediately know the answers to such questions as whether the spaceship had flight recorders or the altitude of the accident, but noted that test flights are usually well-documented.</p>
<p>Virgin Galactic plans to fly passengers to altitudes more than 62 miles above Earth, but test flights so far had been well below that.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The NTSB investigators were expected to head to an area about 20 miles from the Mojave airfield where debris from SpaceShipTwo fell over a wide area of uninhabited desert Friday morning.</p>
<p>Branson has been the front-runner in the fledgling space tourism industry, which has drawn interest from hundreds who have paid deposits to reserve seats on eventual launches.</p>
<p>On Saturday, he said that anyone who wanted a refund could get it. However, he said, no one has asked and instead someone signed up on the day of the accident in a show of support.</p>
<p>The spacecraft broke up after being released from a carrier aircraft at high altitude, according to Ken Brown, a photographer who witnessed the accident. The deceased pilot was found inside wreckage; the other parachuted out and was flown by helicopter to a hospital, the county sheriff said.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Branson vows to find cause of spaceship crash | false | https://abqjournal.com/489936/branson-vows-to-find-out-cause-of-spacecraft-crash.html | 2 |
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<p />
<p>The White House</p>
<p>Tuesday’s State of the Union address practically writes itself: President Obama will gesture, once again, at the fanciful notion of bipartisan cooperation (while flexing executive muscle) and restate the need to rebuild America’s middle class — all with an eye on the Senate race in 2014 and beyond.</p>
<p>Whether the president has any muscle left to flex, however, remains to be seen. The kind of congressional chaos that turned Obamacare into a political spectacle of disaster-movie proportions last year could easily recur in other contentious legislative contexts — so, as the New York Times’ Peter Baker <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/us/politics/obama-pursuing-a-modest-agenda-in-state-of-union.html?hpw&amp;rref=us" type="external">noted</a> this weekend, Obama’s focus will zoom in on issues that offer him at least a glimmer of victory:</p>
<p />
<p>But perhaps more so than in any of his previous congressional addresses, Mr. Obama confronts the reality that, except for a possible overhaul of immigration, he has little chance of major legislative victories in the coming year. As a result, aides said, he will present a blueprint for “a year of action” on issues like income inequality and the environment that bypasses Congress and exercises his authority as president to the greatest extent possible</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Politico <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/state-of-the-union-2014-obama-optimistic-message-on-the-road-102604.html#ixzz2rXCSeetK" type="external">pointed to</a> senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer’s SOTU preview email to Obama boosters, sent Saturday:</p>
<p>“In this year of action, the president will seek out as many opportunities as possible to work with Congress in a bipartisan way,” Pfeiffer wrote. “But when American jobs and livelihoods depend on getting something done, he will not wait for Congress.</p>
<p>“President Obama has a pen and he has a phone, and he will use them to take executive action and enlist every American — business owners and workers, mayors and state legislators, young people, veterans, and folks in communities from across the country — in the project to restore opportunity for all,” he said. “It will be an optimistic speech. Thanks to the grit and determination of citizens like you, America has a hard-earned right to that optimism.”</p>
<p>The message will also be carefully tailored, of course, to highlight differences between the two dominant, squabbly political parties in hopes of giving Democrats more push-back power during the next inevitable congressional showdown.</p>
<p>–Posted by Kasia Anderson</p> | Obama to Get 'Optimistic,' but Not Too Ambitious, in State of the Union Speech | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/obama-to-get-optimistic-but-not-too-ambitious-in-state-of-the-union-speech/ | 2014-01-27 | 4 |
<p>With the main stream media caught up in bitcoin hype as the cryptocurrency smashes another all-time high this week, few stories cover the possible dangers of the phenomenon.</p>
<p>Anonymity is not always right</p>
<p>In the most recent incident last week, hackers demanded a ransom of at least $6 million in bitcoin from HBO to stop leaking spoilers and episodes from the new season of Game of Thrones. Bitcoin transactions are ideal for criminals because they are hard to track. While some may not sympathize with a TV channel with a multibillion dollar market cap, the same blackmail technique could be used against any of us, and there is little likelihood the criminals would be caught.</p>
<p>The defenders of anonymous payments say any currency can be used for illegal means.</p>
<p>“Demanding bitcoin in an extortion is just a new version of an old problem. Kidnappers and extortionists have demanded cash in the past as a way of remaining undetected. Most crime is still conducted with US dollars. I imagine that HBO can still attempt to fight the extortion the old fashion way,”&#160;American economist at the Ludwig von Mises Institute Mark Thornton told RT.</p>
<p>No one understands it</p>
<p>There are thousands of articles and FAQs about mining and transferring bitcoins, but let’s be honest. The technology is extremely hard to understand and experts do a terrible job of trying to explain it.</p>
<p>“Many people have heard of bitcoin now, but I agree that the vast majority–99%–don’t know what it really is. Of course, bitcoin can be dangerous. It is certainly very volatile. Most people who own bitcoin do so as an investment rather than as money–a medium of exchange. However, I would not recommend investing in it unless you understand it and know the risks,”&#160;Thornton said.</p>
<p>The market speculation aspect of cryptocurrencies is easy to understand with traders trying to make a quick buck. Whether it is rational or safe to invest in something that few understand is mostly ignored by the mainstream media.</p>
<p>Max Keiser of RT’s Keiser Report offers a different view on the subject.</p>
<p>“The problem describing bitcoin is twofold. First, you have to throw out what you think you know about money. Second, you have to become moderately fluent in a few technologies. The beauty of bitcoin is that as the price of bitcoin rises, more people are incentivized to tackle the learning curve out of self-interest. When the price was $3 – when Keiser Report first covered bitcoin – you could afford to ignore it. But as price heads to $5,000 and higher, you can’t afford to ignore the technology and accept the fact that your preconceptions about money are probably wrong,”&#160;Keiser told RT.</p>
<p>Cryptocurrencies have no real value</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/business/399564-bitcoin-record-high-cryptocurrency/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The value of bitcoin has hit an all-time high of above $4,000 this week. A single token is now worth more than three troy ounces of gold. The total value of all cryptocurrencies has surged this year from $17.5 billion to around $120 billion, more than Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Scotland combined.</p>
<p>This phenomenon raises the question of what intrinsic value of something is, whether it’s gold or bitcoin.</p>
<p>“Bitcoin has intrinsic value the same way a gold mine has intrinsic value When you own bitcoin, you own a piece of a network that, like a gold mine, has intrinsic value,”&#160;Keiser explains.&#160;“This is a bit misleading in that gold supply is worth trillions and bitcoin is worth billions. The real question is, what price would bitcoin need to get to the equal value of gold. The answer is, well into the $100,000 per bitcoin. Will it get there? I think so, yes”.</p>
<p>Cryptocurrencies are a speculative bubble</p>
<p>To other investors and analysts, the digital currencies market is just another tulip mania. The period during the Dutch Golden Age is considered the first recorded speculative bubble. The price of tulip bulbs reached extraordinarily high levels. At its peak, a person could buy a home for two bulbs, before prices collapsed in 1637.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/business/397683-howard-marks-cryptocurrencies-not-real/" type="external" /></p>
<p>“Bitcoin can certainly become a ‘bubble.’ The bubble will form in opposition to central bank policies and government threats. A bubble would encourage governments to pop it with new interventionists policies or shutting down the exchanges. So governments do not care about the exchange rate for now, but they easily could as bitcoin continues to increase in value relative to paper currencies,”&#160;Thornton told RT.</p>
<p>You could argue the same things can be said about bank notes. However, they are backed by governments, which are interested in keeping their value more or less stable. Governments don’t care about the bitcoin exchange rate.</p>
<p>Max Keiser disagrees.</p>
<p>“No. The US dollar, stocks, bonds, and property are all in bubbles. Bitcoin (and gold) are underpriced vs. these other assets that are in bubbles. bitcoins are very cheap vs. government bonds – that are trading at multi-hundred-year highs – for example,”&#160;said Keiser.</p>
<p>Lost cryptocurrency is almost impossible to recover</p>
<p>In 2014, Welshman James Howells says he accidentally tossed a hard drive with 7,500 mined bitcoins. At the time he had mined them, they were worth very little. But today they would be worth almost $25 million. While there are many tutorials to recover bitcoins in case of a technical difficulty, if you don’t know where are your bitcoins are physically, you will likely lose them forever.</p>
<p>“It’s extremely improbable, and effectively impossible [to recover lost coins]. This is what the security of bitcoin is actually based on. If you’ve lost your private key, the system is so secure that you may not be able to recover it,”&#160;says Greg Schvey, a bitcoin researcher.</p>
<p>Risk of unknown technical flaws in system</p>
<p>The bitcoin system is still relatively new and could contain unexploited flaws. If such a flaw is found, the exploiter could steal a vast amount of money and even destroy the bitcoin economy. Last month, one of the world’s largest bitcoin exchanges Bithumb was hacked, compromising 30,000 accounts with several million dollars in bitcoin stolen. It is just a fraction of the robbery of the Mt. Gox exchange, where $460 million in bitcoin (at then current prices) disappeared in 2014.</p>
<p>Bitcoin is overhyped</p>
<p>In terms of the main stream media’s responsibility when covering the bitcoin phenomenon, Max Keiser offers a final thought.</p>
<p>“It’s impossible to overhype bitcoin. The way bitcoin is changing society is as profound as Gutenberg’s printing press or Edison’s light bulb,”&#160;he said.</p> | Are bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies overhyped & dangerous? | false | https://newsline.com/are-bitcoin-other-cryptocurrencies-overhyped-dangerous/ | 2017-08-16 | 1 |
<p>The regular news cycle this week was rightfully eclipsed by the horrific evil that took place in Las Vegas on October 1. The victims’ families, those injured, and the American public at large, are still trying to make sense of what happened. New details have been slowly trickling out, but frustratingly, the shooter's motivations are still shrouded in mystery. And because of that, sitting down to write the column this week was a challenge. It’s difficult to make jokes and poke fun when I know so many are hurting so deeply.</p>
<p>My hope is that a few useless headlines will provide a brief moment of respite from the sadness and anger that has weighed so heavily on all our hearts since 58 lives were taken last Sunday. So without further ado, this week’s most pointless headlines:</p>
<p>1. <a href="http://www.wbaltv.com/article/cristo-rey-jesuit-hs-evacuated-in-baltimore/12788221" type="external">Pumpkin Spice Air Freshener Prompts School Evacuation, Fire Officials Say</a> (NBC – Baltimore)</p>
<p>When I clicked on this article, I was genuinely curious to see if the school was evacuated because administrators were afraid of the pumpkin spice scent turning their student population into <a href="http://people.com/food/martha-stewart-pumpkin-spice-wwhl-basic-bitches/" type="external">"basic b*tches."</a> It turns out, "hazardous materials crews were called for a strange odor." Five people at the scene were hospitalized, and "dozens of students were triaged at the scene," just to play it safe.</p>
<p>Even with all of that, something tells me this event still resulted in fewer hospitalizations than <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/09/22/pumpkin-spice-pizza/" type="external">pumpkin-spice pizza</a>.</p>
<p>2. <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/05/poll-americans-divided-party-lines-243466" type="external">Study: Americans More Divided Along Party Lines Than Ever</a> (Politico)</p>
<p>I would normally never say this, but I hope this was a government-funded study. I’d really like the opportunity to get meta with a leftist and argue against the benefits of government-subsidized research into this obvious topic. Just picture it: I lay out my case, my leftist opponent tells me I’m wrong and threatens me with violence (the usual), and boom… I’ve rendered the study useless by confirming its central tenets.</p>
<p>3. <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/10/04/al-franken-in-conversation-with-salon-fighting-trump-has-been-easier-than-we-thought/" type="external">Al Franken In Conversation With Salon: Fighting Trump "Has Been Easier Than We Thought"</a> (Salon)</p>
<p>It’s adorable that you think you’re winning.</p>
<p>4. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2017/10/04/fda-tells-bakery-that-love-is-not-an-ingredient/#3e72e4bb75fb" type="external">FDA Tells Bakery That 'Love' Is Not An Ingredient</a> (Forbes)</p>
<p>Nashoba Brook Bakery: First you take some rolled oats, then add slivered almonds, coconut, brown sugar, maple syrup, salt and love.</p>
<p>FDA: What was that last one?</p>
<p>Nashoba Brook Bakery: Uhh.. Salt?</p>
<p>FDA: You’re in serious trouble.</p>
<p>5. <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/10/05/today_in_conservative_media_liberals_need_to_stop_lying_about_guns.html" type="external">Today In Conservative Media: Liberals Need To Stop Lying About Guns</a> (Slate)</p>
<p>This is a recurring featured article at Slate. One of their lefty writers reads a few articles from conservative publications and then generalizes all the complexity of conservative thought into a short snapshot article. Think of it like going to the zoo, or going on a safari adventure… Leftists take a thirty second peek into the world of the strange and elusive conservative from the safe space of a website that aligns with and deepens their confirmation biases.</p>
<p>I will say, these articles frequently contain significantly more value and far fewer falsehoods than Slate’s typical “dog poo in a flaming paper bag” style of opinion based “news.” That’s probably because the bulk of their content is quotes taken from the works of outstanding writers like The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti, and National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke.</p> | WATER STILL WET: The Most Pointless Headlines From The Week | true | https://dailywire.com/news/22018/water-still-wet-most-pointless-headlines-week-tyler-dahnke | 2017-10-07 | 0 |
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<p>The European Commission fined banks Credit Agricole , HSBC and JPMorgan Chase a total of 485 million euros ($520 million) for their part in a cartel to fix the price of financial benchmarks linked to the euro.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>They were part of a seven-bank cartel that colluded between September 2005 and May 2008 to distort the Euribor benchmark interest rate used to reflect the cost of interbank lending.</p>
<p>Credit Agricole was fined 114.7 million euros, HSBC 33.6 million euros and JPMorgan Chase 337.2 million euros.</p>
<p>Deutsche Bank , RBS and Societe Generale admitted guilt in December 2013. Barclays avoided a fine because it alerted the Commission.</p>
<p>U.S. and European regulators have so far handed down big fines to more than 10 banks and brokerages for rigging the London interbank offered rate (Libor) and its euro cousin Euribor. Prosecutors have also charged more than a dozen men with fraud-related offences.</p>
<p>(Reporting By Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)</p> | EU fines Credit Agricole, HSBC, JPMorgan for Euribor fixing | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/12/07/eu-fines-credit-agricole-hsbc-jpmorgan-for-euribor-fixing.html | 2016-12-07 | 0 |
<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to speak at a convention of religious broadcasters next month in Tennessee.</p>
<p>A news release from the National Religious Broadcasters says Pence will address the group's annual convention on Feb. 27 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort &amp; Convention Center in Nashville.</p>
<p>The convention, called Proclaim 18, will run from Feb. 27 until March 2.</p>
<p>Jerry Johnson, the group's president, says evangelical broadcasters eagerly anticipate hearing what the former conservative radio show host has to say.</p>
<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to speak at a convention of religious broadcasters next month in Tennessee.</p>
<p>A news release from the National Religious Broadcasters says Pence will address the group's annual convention on Feb. 27 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort &amp; Convention Center in Nashville.</p>
<p>The convention, called Proclaim 18, will run from Feb. 27 until March 2.</p>
<p>Jerry Johnson, the group's president, says evangelical broadcasters eagerly anticipate hearing what the former conservative radio show host has to say.</p> | VP Pence to address religious broadcasters in Nashville | false | https://apnews.com/amp/8c1524391eb84adf877407796066f15e | 2018-01-25 | 2 |
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<p>We’re back for our second installment of the Feministing Follow Friday.</p>
<p>Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/nyregion/court-blocks-stop-and-frisk-changes-for-new-york-police.html?_r=0" type="external">blocked</a> important remedial restrictions on New York’s “stop and frisk” program, including an independent monitor. Although presumptive mayor-to-be Bill de Blasio has spoken out against the police strategy, the fight to end stop and frisk, other forms of racial profiling, and over-criminalization across the country is clearly far from over. Check out these great activists, writers, and projects leading the way.</p>
<p>Nominate for next week’s installment in the comments! We’re particularly looking for activists tweeting about their on-the-ground work. Links appreciated. And, of course, make sure to follow <a href="" type="internal">@feministing</a>.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Alexandra Brodsky</a> spends too much time on the internet.</p> | Feministing Follow Friday: Anti-Criminalization Edition | true | http://feministing.com/2013/11/01/feministing-follow-friday-anti-criminalization-edition/ | 4 |
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<p>A South Los Angeles woman who had dropped her two children off at a police station later died after an encounter with officers in which one of them kicked her in the groin.</p>
<p>Alesia Thomas, a drug addict who feared she could not care for her children, reportedly resisted when officers moved to arrest her. A patrol camera caught police in a struggle with Thomas that included one officer stomping on her genitals, as well as additional force. Footage then shows Thomas breathing shallowly in the back seat of a police car. She was pronounced dead shortly after being taken to a hospital.</p>
<p>An initial official account did not mention the kick by a female officer. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said in a statement that he wanted investigators to determine whether drugs or a medical condition could have played a role in Thomas’ death. Two witnesses said they thought police had treated Thomas fairly.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>The Raw Story:</p>
<p>The Thomas case occurred in the early morning hours of July 22 after she left her 3-year-old and 12-year-old children at the LAPD’s Southeast Area station, according to a department account released the following day. Green, who oversees the Southeast Area station, confirmed that Thomas tried to surrender custody of the children to police because she was a drug addict and felt she could not care for them.</p>
<p>Officers went in search of Thomas, finding her at her home in the 9000 block of South Broadway. After questioning her briefly, the officers attempted to arrest her on suspicion of child endangerment, the department’s account said.</p>
<p>Thomas “began actively resisting arrest” and one of the officers took her to the ground by sweeping her legs from beneath her, the LAPD’s official account said. Two others handcuffed Thomas’ hands behind her back and attempted to lead her to a patrol car while a supervising sergeant observed, according to the department’s version.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2o3Jdc/www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/31/woman-dies-after-genital-kick-from-lapd-officer/" type="external">Read more</a></p> | L.A. Woman Dies After Arrest That Included Kick in Groin | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/l-a-woman-dies-after-arrest-that-included-kick-in-groin/ | 2012-08-31 | 4 |
<p>By Chris Michaud</p>
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) – The last privately owned Leonardo da Vinci painting and one of fewer than 20 by the Renaissance artist known to still exist is hitting the auction block, Christie’s announced on Tuesday.</p>
<p>“Salvator Mundi,” an ethereal portrait of Jesus Christ which dates to about 1500, is expected to sell for about $100 million at Christie’s in November, making it among the most highly-valued works ever to be sold at auction.</p>
<p>“This is truly the Holy Grail of art rediscoveries,” said Alan Wintermute, Christie’s senior specialist for Old Master paintings, explaining that the portrait sometimes called the male Mona Lisa had long been thought to have been lost or destroyed.</p>
<p>The portrait depicts Christ in vivid blue and crimson robes holding a crystal orb.</p>
<p>First recorded in the private collection of King Charles I, the work was auctioned in 1763 before vanishing until 1900, by which time Christ’s face and hair had been painted over, which Wintermute said was “quite common” practice.</p>
<p>Sold at Sotheby’s to an American collector in 1958 for 45 pounds, it again sold in 2005 as an overpainted copy of the masterwork, he said.</p>
<p>The new owner started the restoration process, and after some six years of research it was authenticated as da Vinci’s more-than 500-year-old masterpiece, which culminated in a high-profile exhibition at London’s National Gallery in 2011.</p>
<p>The auction house did not identify the seller, a European private collector who acquired the work after its rediscovery in 2005 and lengthy restoration. The painting stands as the first discovery of a da Vinci painting since 1909.</p>
<p>“Salvator Mundi” will be sold at Christie’s in New York at its Nov. 15 sale of post-war and contemporary art following public exhibitions in Hong Kong, London and San Francisco.</p>
<p>“We felt that offering this painting within that context is a testament to the enduring relevance of this picture,” said Loic Gouzer, chairman of Christie’s post-war and contemporary art.</p>
<p>Speaking to its $100 million estimate, Wintermute reflected “There has never been anything like it sold, and so the market will decide.”</p>
<p>The same sale at Christie’s will feature Andy Warhol’s monumental “Sixty Last Suppers,” a piece from one of the pop artist’s final series before his death in 1987.</p>
<p>The 32-foot, multiple-image work is estimated to fetch $50 million.</p>
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<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | Da Vinci portrait of Christ expected to fetch $100 million at auction | false | https://newsline.com/da-vinci-portrait-of-christ-expected-to-fetch-100-million-at-auction/ | 2017-10-10 | 1 |
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<p>Author James Frey got more than just a tongue lashing from Oprah after his memoir, <a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061jamesfrey1.html" type="external">A Million Little Pieces</a>, was exposed as a fraud. Disgruntled book buyers also filed a class action against Frey and his publisher asking for a refund. The case settled and Frey and Random House agreed to pay up to $2.35 million to people who got duped into buying the book.</p>
<p>Frey and his publisher, though, must be breathing sighs of relief. <a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/1001071frey1.html" type="external">The Smoking Gun reports</a>than despite newspaper ads urging people to claim their refunds, only about 1300 of the 4 million people who bought the book actually did, meaning that damage to Frey and Random House will be far smaller than expected. (And in case you were thinking about filing a claim now, it’s too late. The deadline was Monday.) Clearly the lawyers haven’t noticed that no one reads newspapers anymore. Now if they’d put the ads on say, Craigslist…</p>
<p /> | Maybe The Lawyers Should Have Gone on Oprah | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/10/maybe-lawyers-should-have-gone-oprah/ | 2007-10-03 | 4 |
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<p>State District Judge Raymond Ortiz, agreeing with a ruling by the Public Employee Labor Relations Board, said the administration should have negotiated with a union representing state workers before abolishing the positions in May 2011.</p>
<p>The judge’s order was filed last week and announced today by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 18.</p>
<p>There was no immediate word from the governor’s office whether it would appeal Ortiz’s order.</p>
<p>Security guards were placed at HSD income support field offices after a worker was stabbed and injured&#160; by a client in the Las Cruces office in 1996.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The union says the Martinez administration decided to do away with the guards in six of those offices as a cost-cutting measure. The offices are in Silver City, Truth or Consequences, Moriarty, Belen, Ruidoso and Grants.</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Judge rules Human Services Dept. must reinstate security at six offices | false | https://abqjournal.com/212318/judge-rules-human-services-dept-must-reinstate-security-at-six-offices.html | 2 |
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<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The 19th-century body of a girl found last year inside a small metal casket under a San Francisco home has been identified.</p>
<p>The nonprofit Garden of Innocence project said Tuesday that the child was 2-year-old Edith Howard Cook, who died on Oct. 13, 1876.</p>
<p>The girl was apparently left behind when the remains of about 30,000 people originally buried in San Francisco's Odd Fellows Cemetery in the Richmond District were moved in the 1920s to Greenlawn Memorial Park in Colma.</p>
<p>Researchers caught a big break when they found a map of the old cemetery at a University of California, Berkeley library and matched it to the Cook's burial plot.</p>
<p>DNA taken from Edith's well-preserved body matches Marin County resident Peter Cook – Edith's grandnephew.</p>
<p><a href="#d54e8cc8-1564-45ed-8687-1976470caa7d" type="external">© 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</a> Learn more about our <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/privacy" type="external">Privacy Policy</a> and <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/terms" type="external">Terms of Use</a>.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Body found under San Francisco home identified as 1876 girl | false | https://abqjournal.com/1001259/body-found-under-san-francisco-home-identified-as-1876-girl.html | 2017-05-09 | 2 |
<p>Despite their failure to prevent or interrupt injury to children, registries are resilient. People want to feel safe, and policy makers are invested in delivering these feelings.</p>
<p>When police arrived at her house to arrest her on May 8, 2013, Tammy Bond turned to her niece and said: “Aunt Tammy did something wrong.”</p>
<p>At age 45, she had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old. She was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and, like 26,000 others in Illinois, required to register as a sex offender for the rest of her life.</p>
<p>She has great difficulty finding housing or employment. She cannot eat in fast-food restaurants with playgrounds. If a recent Chicago ordinance had passed, she would have been banned from public libraries during the summer. No other conviction results in this level of interference with daily life once time behind bars has been served.</p>
<p>Prison reform is the topic of the day. Last year, former President Bill Clinton <a href="" type="external">renounced</a> the 1994 omnibus crime bill that helped fill the nation’s prisons. The Black Lives Matter movement has insistently called attention to structural racism throughout the justice system. A strange coalition is building in favor of reform at the federal level, made up of Democrats such as President Obama and anti-big-government Republicans such as Rand Paul and Jeb Bush.</p>
<p>Yet for the hundreds of thousands of adults like Bond who must register as sex offenders, penalties are only getting harsher. In one high-profile example, President Obama <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/02/02/congress-acts-to-mark-passports-of-sex-offenders#.AQuL1eAF3" type="external">signed a law</a> earlier this month&#160;requiring that sex offenders’ passports have a “unique identifier.”&#160;</p>
<p>In this reformist moment, the treatment of sex offenders could set a problematic precedent. In 2015, New York state Sen. Thomas Croci (R) introduced a bill to create a public registry for people convicted and suspected of terrorism. For politicians seeking to cut prison costs, why not repurpose the tools used to surveil and contain sex offenders—public registries, community notification apps, restrictions on mobility and employment, even passport stamps—to control other populations defined as dangerous or undesirable?</p>
<p>Bond believes that what she did was wrong. She was a teacher; the 16-yearold was her student. The relationship lasted two months. “I knew it shouldn’t have happened,” she says. “I am sorry for what I did. But it is too late for regret—at this point, it is done.”</p>
<p>She pled guilty and was sentenced to 180 days in jail and four years of probation. That’s a comparatively light sentence, likely because she had no prior criminal history and a private attorney, and because, according to Bond and her lawyer, the student initiated the relationship and did not say that he was coerced. Sentencing trends for sex offenses indicate that her gender and sexual orientation may also have worked in her favor, although her race—African American—likely worked against her.</p>
<p>Three days after her release from jail, Bond registered at the local police station as a “sexual predator.” She felt “embarrassed, unworthy, just like people think of sex offenders—the scum of the earth.” She couldn’t afford the $100 registration fee; the police waived it.</p>
<p>She couldn’t go home. Her house, which she owns, is catty-corner from a part-time child care facility. Illinois law prohibits registered sex offenders from living within 500 feet of a “school, playground, or any facility providing programs or services exclusively directed toward people under age 18.”</p>
<p>Some laws are even more extreme. In Florida’s Miami-Dade County, sex offenders may not live within 2,500 feet of parks or schools. Unable to reside within city limits, a group of registered sex offenders lives under a causeway.</p>
<p>Bond, luckily, had a friend who could take her in temporarily, but finding an apartment of her own was a struggle. Before renting a place, Bond had to wait for the police department to check whether there were childcare facilities nearby, a process that can take days—by which time apartments were often unavailable.</p>
<p>She also struggled to find a job, despite having worked steadily since she was a teenager. If she wasn’t automatically screened out by her answer to the routine interview question, “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?”, she says that in second interviews the question would come up, “OK, so you were teaching for five years—why did you stop?”</p>
<p>“And the only way I could think to answer was to be honest, because it would come out,” Bond says. Background checks, routine for any employer, would flag Bond as a sexual predator with a conviction for aggravated criminal sexual abuse.</p>
<p>She can’t help but contrast her experience with that of three other women incarcerated with her. All three secured employment shortly after their releases, despite having fewer formal educational credentials than Bond. None were sex offenders.</p>
<p>Even Walmart, where Bond had worked to put herself through university, turned her down. “I thought that they knew me and my work ethic,” she says, “and they would not hire me.”</p>
<p>Nine months after she was released, she finally did find work as a homebased telemarketer and transcriber. The employer willing to hire her? Another registered sex offender who created an agency explicitly to employ people on the registry.</p>
<p>The term “sex offender” conjures up the worst of the worst, and many registered sex offenders have harmed children in unfathomably awful ways. According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, <a href="http://nctsn.org/nctsn_assets/pdfs/caring/ChildSexualAbuseFactSheet.pdf" type="external">1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys</a> will potentially experience some form of sexual abuse before the age of 18. Younger children are often most at risk. The Department of Health and Human Services <a href="http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/cm2012.pdf" type="external">reported</a> in 2012 that of 62,936 people under age 18 who were reported as sexually abused to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, about one-quarter were between the ages of 12 and 14, and one third younger than 9.</p>
<p>The National Center for Missing and&#160;Exploited Children <a href="http://www.missingkids.com/en_US/documents/Sex_Offenders_Map.pdf#page=1" type="external">estimates that there are approximately 850,000 registered sex offenders</a>in the various state and local registries across the United States. Tammy Bond is not a very representative example: About <a href="https://issuu.com/soissues/docs/who_are_the_people_in_your_neighborhood_-_a_descri?e=1600522/5039472" type="external">98 percent are men</a>. At the same time, African Americans like Bond are disproportionately represented, accounting for 22 percent of those convicted of sex offenses and only <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html" type="external">13 percent</a> of the population.</p>
<p>In more meaningful ways, however, we don’t know what a “typical” sex offender looks like. There is little centralized national data on registered sex offenders, so it is difficult to know how many reflect our idea of the worst of the worst. Research by University of Washington Tacoma professor Alissa Ackerman and colleagues suggests that the overwhelming majority of victims of registered sex offenders are minors—as high as 90 percent in states where the age range of the victim is available. Yet, complicating matters, data makes it hard to identify how many people in the registries were 18 or under themselves at the time of the crime. According to a 2009 research brief from the U.S. Department of Justice, juveniles—most of them teenagers— <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/227763.pdf" type="external">account for one-quarter</a> of those convicted of sex offenses (although not necessarily of those registered). <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/09/11/us-sex-offender-laws-may-do-more-harm-good" type="external">Federal law</a> requires people as young as 14 to publicly register for sex crimes, but states vary in their compliance with this law.</p>
<p>We also don’t know much about the nature of registered offenders’ crimes. A patchwork of federal, state and local laws determines who must register, and can include those convicted of sexting, <a href="http://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/nsor/sortab1.htm" type="external">possessing child pornography, soliciting prostitution</a>, even <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2007/09/11/no-easy-answers/sex-offender-laws-us" type="external">public urination</a>. The language of a charge may not convey much about the risk someone poses: For example, Bond was convicted of “aggravated criminal sexual abuse.” And a myriad of charges reflect our attempts to untangle the unresolved thicket surrounding age, sex and consent: Is a person convicted of <a href="http://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2013/11/11/lewd-and-lascivious-behavior-laws-a-milwaukee-story/" type="external">“lewd and lascivious behavior,”</a> a charge still levied against gay men who engage in public sex, a danger? Can a 16-year old consent to any sexual activity? If a 14-year-old emails out naked photos of himself on a dare, is he distributing child pornography?</p>
<p>While there is no easy answer to what to do about people who sexually harm children, research illustrates that registries fail to deliver on their promise of public safety. Amanda Agan, a post-doctoral fellow in economics at Princeton who studies registries, published an influential article in a 2011 issue of The Journal of Law &amp; Economics: “Sex Offender Registries: Fear without Function?”</p>
<p>Agan analyzed the effectiveness of registries in three different ways. First, she analyzed arrest rates in each state before and after registry laws were initiated, and she concluded that there were no significant changes in sex offense rates following the implementation of a registry.</p>
<p>Second, Agan examined the re-arrest data for approximately 9,600 sex offenders who were released from prison in 1994. About half of those people lived in states where they were required to register, while the other half lived in states where they did not need to register. There was no significant difference in the two groups’ recidivism rates.</p>
<p>Third, Agan explored whether the public knowledge of where a sex offender resides would predict where sex crimes might occur. Agan researched specific blocks in neighborhoods in Washington D.C. and concluded there was no statistically significant relationship between the number of registered offenders in a city block and rates of arrests related to sexual offenses.</p>
<p>Taken as a whole, Agan says, the existing research shows that “registries and post-release notification laws do not on balance seem to be effective at reducing sex crimes or recidivism by sex offenders.”</p>
<p>The most-cited theory for their ineffectiveness is the simple fact that children are rarely abused by strangers, making it pointless to ban sex offenders from schools and playgrounds. According to a landmark 2000 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which utilized sexual assault victimization data from a newly available database—the National Incident-Based Reporting System—strangers account for only 7 percent of sexual assaults against children.</p>
<p>Another theory, Agan notes, is that “these laws reduce opportunities for sex offenders to reintegrate into society,” perversely facilitating potential recidivism. Registries isolate people by stigmatizing them and cutting them off from housing, legal employment and social services.</p>
<p>What, then, works to reduce sexual abuse of children?</p>
<p>Anti-violence organizer and Reverend Jason Lydon is founder and national director of Black and Pink, the world’s largest organization for incarcerated people who identify as LGBTQ. Some of the 10,000 members inside prison are serving time for sex offenses and some have also experienced sexual violence.</p>
<p>“Ending sexual violence against children requires a deep cultural shift that includes efforts of ending poverty, dismantling patriarchy and all other forms of oppression,” says Lydon. Acknowledging that may sound utopian, he offers a concrete starting point: meaningful sex education, beginning in early elementary school. Good trainings, he says, include discussions of consent and create spaces “for children to understand their bodies and sexuality in a way that is not stigmatizing, while simultaneously educating adults on healthy ways to interact with children.”</p>
<p>Other solutions are being built. The survivor-founded organization <a href="" type="external">Stop It Now!</a> frames child abuse as a public health problem and works to educate adults and communities about prevention. The Secret Survivors initiative, a film and theater project by nationally acclaimed troupe <a href="http://www.pingchong.org/" type="external">Ping Chong + Company</a>, uses oral history to raise the visibility of sexual violence against children.</p>
<p>In 2009, the Justice Policy Institute calculated how much the 2006 federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) would cost each state to implement in the first year. The estimates ranged from $848,009 (Wyoming) to $20,846,306 (Illinois) to $59,287,816 (California). What if these funds were channeled from registries to comprehensive sexual education for all?</p>
<p>Despite their failure to prevent or interrupt injury to children, registries are resilient. People want to feel safe, and policy makers are invested in delivering these feelings.</p>
<p>When Bond learned that her sex offender classification would mean she couldn’t return to her home, she began writing state officials “from the governor on down.” Receiving few answers, she requested in-person meetings. “You wouldn’t believe how many responses I got back after that,” she says. Legislative assistants quickly replied to dissuade her from visiting.</p>
<p>The exception was former Illinois Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon, who wrote back to say that she found Bond’s perspective useful. She helped connect Bond with <a href="http://ilvoices.com/" type="external">Illinois Voices for Reform</a>, a statewide advocacy network founded in 2010 by Tonia Maloney. At age 19, Maloney’s son was convicted of criminal sexual assault for a consensual relationship with a 16-year-old—and of child pornography for possessing a topless photo of the girl. The network’s mission is to promote “the elimination of sexual abuse and the preservation of civil rights for all individuals through the use of effective legislation based on empirical research.”</p>
<p>Illinois Voices is swimming against the legislative tide. Illinois lawmakers have recently barred sex offenders from fast food restaurants with playgrounds. They’ve also introduced legislation to ban sex offenders from county fairs, require them to register—and pay the $100 fee—in the county where they work as well as where they live, and compel them to notify the police department if their employment is terminated. Most of these proposals are still pending in committee. Proposed legislation would also expand the registry to include people convicted of “sexually motivated” battery. In November 2014, Chicago Alderman Marty Quinn proposed an ordinance that would ban sex offenders from using libraries in the summer.</p>
<p>At the same time, with prison reform in the air, Illinois is rethinking facets of its criminal justice system. Under former Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, the state <a href="http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/12/19/quinn-gets-go-ahead-to-close-illinois-prisons/" type="external">shuttered</a> seven correctional facilities between 2012 and 2013.</p>
<p>In 2015, incoming Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner continued to look for ways to trim costs and reduce prison overcrowding. He <a href="http://www.illinois.gov/Government/ExecOrders/Documents/2015/ExecutiveOrder2015-14.pdf" type="external">established</a> the <a href="http://www.icjia.org/cjreform2015/about/meetings.html" type="external">Illinois State Commission on Criminal Justice and Sentencing Reform</a> with the goal of reducing the prison population by 25 percent over the next decade. The 28-member commission has a sweeping mandate for a “comprehensive review of the State’s current criminal justice and sentencing structure, sentencing practices, community supervision and the use of alternatives to incarceration.”</p>
<p>Registries would seem to fall under this rubric. Maintaining the software, physical space and the trained personnel needed for registration costs time and money. Public radio journalist Rob Wildeboer has documented that as registration requirements escalate, many sex offenders in Chicago violate the conditions of their parole and are reincarcerated at substantial cost.</p>
<p>On June 3, 2015, Bond drove alone to Springfield and sat through the commission’s four-hour meeting. The public comment period was scheduled to start at 4:20 p.m. A day away from work, plus gas and parking, cuts into her tight budget. Why did she go?</p>
<p>“I know who I am,” she says. “If I hide, nothing is going to happen. I can’t wait for the next person to come along and fight the fight. I am not willing to sit still and let law after law pass, and then I might be like the people in Florida living under a bridge.”</p>
<p>Stepping up to speak, Bond identifies herself as a registered sex offender and described the onerous requirements that she and others on the registry face: how challenging it is to find work and housing. She does not claim innocence. She does not ask for her case to be reevaluated. Plainspoken, she asks the commission to consider those convicted of sex offenses in their recommendations.</p>
<p>The detailed, 24-page initial report from the commission, released July 1, 2015, includes many public comments, but not Bond’s. Nor does it mention sex offenders or sex offenses. Neither does the first part of the final report, published in December 2015; the second part will be released in spring 2016.</p>
<p>Only so much registry reform can happen on a state level. Federal legislation governs many of the requirements that shape the lives of people convicted of sex offenses across the United States. The Wetterling Act in 1994 and Megan’s Law in 1996 created national frameworks for sex offender registration and community notification. The 2006 Adam Walsh Act, which included SORNA, established more stringent registry requirements and opened the door to civil commitment for federal sex offenders deemed sexually violent: the indefinite detention in treatment centers or prisons after serving their sentences.</p>
<p>As of 2014, only 17 states were in full compliance with SORNA, and several states refuse to comply, citing the exorbitant cost of full implementation. The penalty for failing to comply is a 10 percent decrease in federal money available to a state to support anti-crime initiatives from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, and for some states forfeiting these resources is less expensive than full compliance.</p>
<p>Given the costs of registries and their ineffectiveness at reducing sexual violence, it is misguided to exclude them from current prison reform debates. Part of any such examination should be looking past the extreme stigma attached to people convicted of sex offenses and listening to how registries have ruined lives. Shutting people in the registry out of the conversation will push those who require social services and support farther to the margins. And monitoring this expanding population will require new surveillance technologies and practices that can be used against other communities in unforeseeable ways.</p>
<p>Conversely, looking squarely at sex offenders raises a core question: If not registries and endless surveillance, then what will make our children, and our communities, safer? This question forces us to consider meaningful ways to protect children from sexual violence and other harm—such as poverty, in which 14.7 million American children live, according to the federal definition.</p>
<p>Among people with convictions for sex offenders, Bond is one of the lucky ones. She has a strong support network, caring family members, a welcoming church, no other criminal history, access to good healthcare and some employment, although not enough.</p>
<p>“Most sex offenders are hiding behind the stigma,” she says. “If I have to put myself out there and be criticized or ridiculed or whatever people might do—I don’t find that beneath me.”</p>
<p>Like what you’ve read? <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/itt-subscription-offer?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;noskip=true" type="external">Subscribe to In These Times magazine</a>, or <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/support-in-these-times?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;noskip=true" type="external">make a tax-deductible donation to fund this reporting</a>.</p>
<p>Erica R. Meiners is author of several books, including Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies (2009), (2009) and For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State (forthcoming from University of Minnesota 2016), and articles in wide range of academic journals, magazines, blogs and anthologies, including Meridians, Windy City Times, Women’s Studies Quarterly, ReThinking Schools, Captive Genders, and Jacobin. The Bernard J. Brommel Distinguished Research Professor at Northeastern Illinois University, she is currently a Soros Justice Fellow writing on reducing our nation’s reliance on criminalization to end sexual violence.</p> | We’re Rethinking Prisons. Is It Time to Rethink Sex Offender Registries? | true | http://inthesetimes.com/article/18862/rethinking-prisons-rethinking-sex-offender-registries | 2016-02-18 | 4 |
<p />
<p>Some employees aren't afraid to retaliate against their bosses because they know they can get away with it, new research suggests.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The study found that employee retaliation against abusive bosses — which includes things like spreading gossip about their boss, playing a mean prank or making an obscene gesture — is most likely to occur in situations in which the supervisor lacks the means to punish an aggressing subordinate.</p>
<p>The researchers said that the outcome of situations in which employees are aggressive toward their supervisors depends on the extent of both the supervisor's coercive power and the subordinate's self-control. The study discovered that the combination of low supervisor coercive power and low employee self-control vastly increases the likelihood of retaliation. <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4749-celebrity-employees-never-hire.html" type="external">[5 Celebrity Personality Types To Avoid Hiring]</a></p>
<p>"Our findings [demonstrate] that the absence of self-control capacity or resources need not necessarily lead individuals to behave aggressively in response to abusive supervision," the study's authors wrote. "Given the proper incentives (i.e., perceiving potential punishment from supervisors), individuals appear to be quite capable of mobilizing their inner resources to override their natural inclination to directly harm an abusive supervisor."</p>
<p>Huiwen Lian, who did much of the research for the study as a doctoral candidate at the University of Waterloo in Canada, said that at first, retaliating against an abusive boss sounds intrepid even to the point of folly, but upon further analysis, the less courageous and foolish it turns out to be.</p>
<p>"There's a great difference between retaliating against a powerful boss who can do you a lot of harm and a boss who cannot — and cases of the latter are much more common than instances of the former," Lian said.</p>
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<p>The study was based on surveys of 384 employees in a wide variety of industries. Questions in the survey centered on the following:</p>
<p>The research also revealed that a high degree of self-control not only keeps subordinates' hostility to supervisors from generating outright acts of aggression, but also diminishes the amount of hostility that subordinates actually feel.</p>
<p>"By reappraising the situation in favor of a nonhostile interpretation or deploying attention away from anger-provoking stimuli or thoughts, individuals may mitigate the extent to which they experience negative emotions," the study's authors wrote.</p>
<p>The authors propose that companies screen job applicants for self-control at both the supervisory and subordinate levels, and that they provide training in it for employees at both levels. In addition, organizations should create situations that motivate employees to increase their self-control.</p>
<p>"In particular, our findings suggest that punishment or perceived potential negative consequences can be particularly effective at mitigating aggressive behaviors directed toward supervisors," they wrote in the study.</p>
<p>The research, published in the February issue of the Academy of Management Journal, was co-authored by Douglas Brown, Lindie Liang and Rachel Morrison of the University of Waterloo; D. Lance Ferris of Pennsylvania State University; and Lisa Keeping of Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.</p>
<p>Originally published on BusinessNewsDaily.</p> | Lack of Power Makes Bosses Vulnerable to Abuse | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/01/23/lack-power-makes-bosses-vulnerable-to-abuse.html | 2016-04-07 | 0 |
<p />
<p>American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE:AEO) said chief executive Robert Hanson is leaving the retailer, while executive chairman Jay Schottenstein will step in as his interim replacement.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The company also announced that Roger Markfield agreed to postpone his retirement and will continue in his current role as vice chairman and executive creative director.</p>
<p>Shares fell 3.9% to $13.75 in after-hours trading on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Hanson, formerly a longtime executive at Levi Strauss, resigned at a time when American Eagle is struggling to boost sales. The Pittsburgh-based retailer, which focuses on teen apparel, has logged three consecutive quarters of declining revenue.</p>
<p>Schottenstein was previously the company’s CEO from 1992 to 2002.</p>
<p>Also on Wednesday, American Eagle backed its outlook for per-share earnings in the fourth quarter. The company is scheduled to report earnings on March 11.</p> | American Eagle CEO Robert Hanson Resigns | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/01/22/american-eagle-ceo-robert-hanson-resigns.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
<p>Romenesko Archives One year ago this week on Romenesko: &gt; <a href="" type="internal">Ex-Sun-Times boss Radler came up with "three-man newsroom" idea</a> &gt; <a href="" type="internal">Duke Chronicle apologizes for referring to jock's "orangutan arms"</a> &gt; <a href="" type="internal">McClellan loses it when Helen Thomas asks about "trashy rumors"</a> &gt; <a href="" type="internal">Nobody treats their employees better than Knight Ridder," says CEO</a> &gt; <a href="" type="internal">Columbia Spectator's racy new sex column gets mixed reviews</a> &gt; <a href="" type="internal">NPR ombud says it's okay for Kristof to rescue prostitutes, but...</a></p>
<p>Two years ago this week on Romenesko: &gt; <a href="" type="internal">Dallas Morning News staffers get $100 for knowing paper's business goals</a> &gt; <a href="" type="internal">War journalists are positive, cautious about embedding in Iraq</a> &gt; <a href="" type="internal">CBS newsman Martin: This will be a war like no other we've seen</a> &gt; <a href="" type="internal">Iowa gov's remarks draw laughs from journos making about $22K year</a> &gt; <a href="" type="internal">Sacramento Bee is sorry for portraying Kobe Bryant as a drunk</a> &gt; <a href="" type="internal">Tina Brown really loves Larry King's mastery of the lowbrow on CNN</a></p> | Nostalgia trip: Digging through the Romenesko Archives | false | https://poynter.org/news/nostalgia-trip-digging-through-romenesko-archives-1 | 2005-02-15 | 2 |
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<p />
<p>Tom Mix, the original cowboy, established an American archetype that would endure for more than a century.</p>
<p>In 1913, Fielding arrived in the Meadow City and made 10 films over a few short months. Mix made at least 20 more in the San Miguel County railroad town in the fall of 1915.</p>
<p>The frontier was bustling, motion pictures were picking up steam, and, for a minute, Las Vegas, New Mexico, was the center of it all.</p>
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<p>“This was the pioneering of the film industry,” says John Snyder, a Colorado-based Western historian and film aficionado.</p>
<p>In the vast scope of New Mexico history, Las Vegas’ brief turn as the moviemaking capital appears only as a footnote. But the Fielding and Mix movies — short, silent, black-and-white, many lost over time — imprinted this part of northeastern New Mexico in the collective consciousness as a definitive backdrop of the American West. Their Vegas stints are remembered well by film historians and film-inclined Las Vegas residents, and their legacy survives in film and television projects that continue to shoot in and around Las Vegas for some of the same reasons, not to mention state financial incentives for the industry.</p>
<p>In 1912, the same year that New Mexico became a state, Fielding was making movies in Silver City, in New Mexico’s southwestern corner. He visited Las Vegas at the invitation of a local business group and was warmly received in what was then a cosmopolitan Southwestern city. He liked the look, reported the Santa Fe New Mexican ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2iLkprb)." type="external">http://bit.ly/2iLkprb).</a></p>
<p>“It was (Fielding’s) habit to go to a place, get the feel for it, make a couple movies and move on and look for a different kind of scenery,” said Elmo Baca, a Las Vegas history buff and owner of the Indigo Theatre near the plaza in old town Las Vegas.</p>
<p>Fielding did more than get the feel. He rented the entirety of the prominent downtown Plaza Hotel, renaming it Hotel Romaine. He recruited some 5,000 local extras for his mammoth production “The Golden God,” which depicted a futuristic class struggle set in 1950 and included an enormous battle scene that took 17 days to shoot, according to the New Mexico Film Office. (“The Golden God” reels were ultimately lost in a fire.)</p>
<p>A screenwriter colleague once wrote of Fielding, “He was unique. Repellent, yet fascinating; uncanny — often tender, appealing. His plays, if you saw him at his best, transpired in the open. They were ‘Westerns,’ but unconventional ones.”</p>
<p>Fielding was indeed an innovative director even in the context of a relatively new medium, Baca said. He presented more nuance than white-hat-versus-black-hat, wrote Native characters as protagonists and was willing to take risks, Baca said, as in the morality play against big business and the military complex of “The Golden God.”</p>
<p>Mix, meanwhile, was on his way to becoming America’s first matinee idol. His biggest films, including a run of some 160 pictures in the 1920s, would come later in his career, but his time spent in Las Vegas was instrumental to his development as a writer and performer, Snyder said.</p>
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<p>Mix, like Fielding, craved an element of authenticity in his pictures, Snyder said. Both found the real Western people and places they sought in Las Vegas, then an essential stop on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway line. The area’s wide-open skies, framed by gently sloping mesas giving way to broad plains, seemed a proper setting for what would become archetypal Western stories about hard men amid the boundless American wilderness.</p>
<p>“(Mix) became a huge advocate of filming on location and filming Native Americans, filming people with Spanish heritage, as real people who deserved to be treated with dignity and be treated as part of the crews and the cast,” Snyder said. “(And) he had tremendous respect for real cowboys who could really ride and really shoot and really rope.”</p>
<p>Mix, in his trademark 10-gallon hat, is generally regarded as the first cowboy movie star. He was immortalized in the final lines of the 1993 Western Tombstone as an attendee who wept at Wyatt Earp’s funeral. His pictures became for many a vision of the frontier, said Jon Hendry, business agent of the New Mexico film workers union.</p>
<p>“Tom Mix pictures traveled all over the world,” Hendry said. “People in Europe saw that, saw the West, and said, ‘I want to be there.’ Well, they wanted to be in Las Vegas, New Mexico; they just didn’t know that. . It’s an incredibly important place in the history of film.”</p>
<p>A century of vast change has come and gone, but the filmmaking appeal of Las Vegas is largely the same as in those silent black-and-white days. No two houses, and thus no two streets, look alike, said Kathy Hendrickson, who leads Las Vegas tours with Southwest Detours. The diversity of looks — old and new at once — is what has kept filmmakers coming back over time.</p>
<p>“We have such interesting architecture, we have mountains, we have plains, Victorian homes, adobes, all of it together,” Hendrickson said. “It’s got its own little quirky character.”</p>
<p>“With 900 buildings on the National Register (of Historic Places) and a focus on preservation, we to some degree still look a lot like we used to,” said Annette Velarde, community development director. “Not that we haven’t modernized, but preservation has kept that look and that appeal.”</p>
<p>The appeal touches more than just the filmmakers. Hendrickson recalled how she led a tour this summer for a man who had driven from Connecticut with his girlfriend to see the downtown Las Vegas filming locations of Red Dawn, the 1984 action flick starring Patrick Swayze. The man even brought khaki fatigues worn by characters in the film, changed into them, and posed for pictures on the veranda of the Castaneda Hotel, the backdrop of a climactic scene.</p>
<p>Whether Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in “Easy Rider” (1969), the Sam Peckinpah-directed “Convoy” (1978), Matt Damon in “All the Pretty Horses” (2000), Simon Pegg and Nick Frost driving with “Paul” (2011) or the cult-hit neo-Western series “Longmire,” each entry in the Las Vegas canon has presented its own picture of the West, building on those early black-and-white foundations.</p>
<p>“You could really make a case that Las Vegas has made an interesting contribution to that (Western) genre,” Baca said. “And that all began with Fielding.”</p>
<p>“No Country for Old Men,” the Coen brothers’ 2006 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, won four Academy Awards, including best picture and best director. Hendry and others remember its scenery as identifiably Las Vegas.</p>
<p>“How many towns in the U.S. of that size have won an Oscar? Two? C’mon,” Hendry said. “With ‘No Country For Old Men,’ the scenes you think of, the scenes in your mind, were all done in Las Vegas.”</p>
<p>Hendry thinks creating a historic overlay district, using money collected from location fees and permits, would be one way to preserve the city’s film history while drawing visitors to the town of 14,000.</p>
<p>“Put some signs up: This is where we shot Tom Mix movies, this is where we shot Convoy, Red Dawn, Speechless, Longmire — I could go on for hours,” Hendry said. “How cool would that be?”</p>
<p>Velarde says there’s a chance for a private entrepreneur to step in and make a tour a reality.</p>
<p>“The end goal is to have a working studio tour, because we really are one big film backdrop,” she said.</p>
<p>Kerry Loewen, meanwhile, is eager to show off the grandly refurbished Trolley Building, home to the media arts and technology department of New Mexico Highlands University. The gleaming facility, renovated at a cost of $8.2 million, opened in August. Could this space, with its professional-class computer labs, studios, green-screen room and more — and the students who populate it — someday mesh with the area’s film industry?</p>
<p>“Oh, it already has,” said Loewen, the department chairman.</p>
<p>The autumn production of “Making a Killing,” a detective drama starring Christopher Lloyd and Aida Turturro, brought a handful of film students to shadow professionals on set and hired some to serve as production and art assistants.</p>
<p>Patricia Chavez, a senior film student from Villanueva, a small community south of Las Vegas, said having the chance to assist professional set dressers was validation that she had chosen the right program; others she knew had gone to study film at the state’s flagship university in Albuquerque. “I learned how to stay out of the way, how to take direction,” she said, laughing. “How to think fast and how to ask questions. It was a great experience.”</p>
<p>There are currently 15 students in the undergraduate film track at Highlands, Loewen said. Of the new building, he said, “My view is: If you build it, they will come.”</p>
<p>Ever since the 1910s, they have been.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Santa Fe New Mexican, <a href="http://www.sfnewmexican.com" type="external">http://www.sfnewmexican.com</a></p> | The celluloid legacy of Las Vegas, NM | false | https://abqjournal.com/923252/the-celluloid-legacy-of-las-vegas-nm.html | 2017-01-08 | 2 |
<p>After disastrous revelations Monday, which claimed that Netflix executives, who dropped Kevin Spacey after a single sexual harassment accusation, had retained Danny Masterson amid an LAPD investigation into multiple allegations of sexual abuse, <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/363266-netflix-cuts-ties-with-danny-masterson-after-rape-allegations" type="external">Netflix has dropped the former "That 70s Show" star</a> from their streaming network.</p>
<p>The Hill reports that Netflix executives decided only Monday that Masterson should be "written out" of the network's proprietary "dramedy," "The Ranch," even though the LAPD reopened their investigation back in April. Netflix released a statement early Tuesday morning</p>
<p>“As a result of ongoing discussions, Netflix and the producers have written Danny Masterson out of ′The Ranch,’” a spokesman told the Huffington Post. “Yesterday was his last day on the show, and production will resume in early 2018 without him.”</p>
<p>The Huffington Post revealed Monday that a Netflix executive told one of Masterson's four rape accusers that network bigwigs "didn't believe" the allegations, and that they were pursuing an internal investigation before dropping the star. The network released a statement appearing to confirm the executives statements, and maintaining that Netflix would explore the allegations on their own before making any decisions about the show's future.</p>
<p>But pressure mounted overnight; a signature, calling on Netflix to cancel Masterson's show, garnered 30,000 signatures, and social media outrage hit a fever pitch.</p>
<p>The allegations against Masterson aren't new. At least one woman reported to the LAPD, back in 2004, that Masterson had violently raped her. But the LAPD mysteriously dropped their investigation into the star's alleged behavior after the Church of Scientology (of which Masterson is a member) engaged in a pressure campaign, flooding the LAPD with hundreds of letters attesting to Masterson's character.</p>
<p>In March, however, journalists dug up other allegations, and revealed the Church of Scientology's involvement in Masterson's case, leading the LAPD to reopen its investigation and, at the beginning of summer, submit the case to the LA County Prosecutor, who is deciding whether to pursue rape charges.</p> | Netflix Finally Cuts Ties With Danny Masterson After Sexual Abuse Allegations | true | https://dailywire.com/news/24332/netflix-finally-cuts-ties-danny-masterson-after-emily-zanotti | 2017-12-05 | 0 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>In Kentucky, the concern is very real for residents: Should a proposed pipeline carry natural gas liquids from fields in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia through their state to export facilities along the Gulf Coast?&#160; <a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>If built, the pipeline would cut across 22 counties in Kentucky’s northern, central and western regions, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Faithful America, two groups who call those liquids “hazardous” say.</p>
<p>For many faith groups, environmentalists and residents, the answer is clear: The pipeline should not be built.</p>
<p>More than 36,000 signatures opposing the pipeline were delivered on Nov. 7 to Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear at the state Capitol, according to the grassroots and religious groups. Faithful America, a Christian social justice group, circulated the petition.</p>
<p>“When people of faith around the country learned of our efforts here to care for Kentucky’s people, land, water and heritage and oppose this dangerous hazardous liquids pipeline, they responded in large numbers,” Rev. Cynthia Cain, a minister with Unitarian Universalist Church, said in a statement.</p>
<p>“For too long, too many of us have stepped aside and [let corporations rule]. We are simply here to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ It’s time for a change. The stakes are high,” said Rev. David Whitlock of the Lebanon Baptist Church in a statement.</p>
<p>“Taking care of the land is part of our Christian responsibility,” he added. “Because we are in relationship with God, we are in relationship with the land.”</p>
<p>Community member Susan Classen also talked about the relationship between religion and respecting the environment: “The possibility of the hazardous liquids pipeline invites us to wake up to the imperiled future it would create.”</p>
<p>The groups report that a receptionist from the governor’s office received the petitions. Later, they said, the governor issued a statement acknowledging concerns of residents.</p>
<p>The participants in the Nov. 7 day of action closed their event by singing the song, “For the Beauty of the Earth,” outside the governor’s office.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.kftc.org/" type="external">Kentuckians for the Commonwealth</a>&#160;is a community organization dedicated to equality, democracy and non-violent change. The group, which has about 7,000 members, works on social, economic and environmental justice issues.&#160;&#160;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Contact author</a></p>
<p>&#160;&#160; <a href="" type="internal">enivronment</a>, <a href="" type="internal">environmental news</a>, <a href="" type="internal">fracking news</a>, <a href="" type="internal">hazardous liquids news</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Kentuckians for the Commonwealth</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Kentucky</a>, <a href="" type="internal">natural gas pipeline news</a></p> | Kentucky Faith Groups: Protect Land, Stop Gas Pipeline | true | http://equalvoiceforfamilies.org/kentucky-faith-groups-protect-land-stop-gas-pipeline/ | 4 |
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<p>(Adds details)</p>
<p>ISTANBUL, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Turkey’s central bank kept interest rates steady on Thursday, saying it would stick “decisively” to a tight policy stance until inflation improves, despite President Tayyip Erdogan’s repeated calls for cheap credit.</p>
<p>The bank left its late liquidity window, the highest of several instruments it uses to set policy, at 12.75 percent, after making its first hike in eight months at its December meeting.</p>
<p>All 15 economists polled by Reuters had forecasted the bank would leave the repo rate unchanged at 8 percent, as well as the overnight lending rate, at 9.25 percent, and the overnight borrowing rate, at 7.25 percent. Those rates were also unchanged.</p>
<p>“The tight stance in monetary policy will be maintained decisively until inflation outlook displays a significant improvement, independent of base effects and temporary factors,” the bank’s monetary policy committee said in a statement.</p>
<p>While the bank emphasises its fight against inflationary pressure, Erdogan, a self-declared opponent of high interest rates, wants banks to lend more at lower rates to stimulate the economy.</p>
<p>Turkey’s annual inflation stood at 11.92 percent at the end of 2017, sharply above the bank’s official target of 5 percent.</p>
<p>Turkey’s economy has rebounded strongly from a downturn that followed by an 2016 coup attempt, helped by a series of government stimulus measures, and expanded by 11.1 percent year on year in the third quarter, its fastest expansion in six years.</p>
<p>The lira firmed to 3.7920 after the announcement from 3.8000 immediately before the decision. (Writing by Ezgi Erkoyun; Editing by Daren Butler and David Dolan)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea’s March crude oil imports from Iran dropped 39.3 percent from a year earlier on slowing demand for Iranian oil, the country’s customs data showed on Sunday.</p>
<p>In March, the world’s fifth-biggest crude oil importer, imported 1.37 million tonnes of Iranian crude, or 324,612 barrels per day (bpd), from 2.26 million tonnes from the previous year when the import volume hit a record high, according the customs data.</p>
<p>South Korea, one of Asia’s major Iranian oil customers, mainly buys condensate, or an utlra-light oil, but its data does not provide a breakdown of imports by types.</p>
<p>Seoul has reduced its purchases of Tehran’s oil in recent months compared to last year’s levels, despite the Middle Eastern country’s efforts to retain its Asian buyers by cutting official selling prices.</p>
<p>That came as the National Iranian Oil Company had cut supplies to South Korea by 3 million barrels each month from the start of this month due to lower production and a start of a new splitter, according to three sources.</p>
<p>South Korean condensate buyers were also seeking to diversify supplies should the United States impose new sanctions against Iran.</p>
<p>For the first quarter of 2018, South Korea’s imports from Iran fell 39.4 percent to 3.45 million tonnes, or 280,736 bpd, versus 5.69 million tonnes over the same period last year, according to the data.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, crude imports from Qatar in January-March of this year were 2.19 million tonnes, or 178,652 bpd, up 2.4 percent from 2.14 million tonnes during the same period last year. South Korea typically switches to Qatari condensate to replace Iranian one.</p>
<p>Overall, South Korea’s March crude oil imports were 10.91 million tonnes, or 2.58 million bpd, down 14 percent from 12.68 million tonnes from last year, according to the data.</p>
<p>In the first three months of this year, South Korea imported 36.70 million tonnes of crude, or nearly 3 million bpd, down 0.4 percent from 36.88 million tonnes from the previous year.</p>
<p>The country’s final data for March crude imports data will be released by state-run Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC) later this month.</p>
<p>Reporting by Jane Chung; Editing by Sam Holmes</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services on Saturday recommended investors vote against the re-election of five Equifax Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EFX.N" type="external">EFX.N</a>) directors who served on the company’s audit and technology committees prior to a 2017 data breach.</p> Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell
<p>The Atlanta-based consumer credit company last fall said hackers had stolen personally identifiable information of U.S., British and Canadian consumers, including names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, driver’s license and credit card numbers. Over time, Equifax has increased the number affected to more than 147 million people.</p>
<p>ISS said in a report to shareholders sent to Reuters by a spokesman that the company’s reputation and shareholder value had been damaged by the extent of the breach and the company’s slow response to it, placing a cloud over the company.</p>
<p>In response, it recommended against voting for directors Mark L. Feidler, G. Thomas Hough, John A. McKinley, Elane B. Stock and Mark B. Templeton, who served on the two committees with relevant oversight duties. It recommended votes in support of the remaining five director candidates at the company, including Siri S. Marshall, head of the governance committee.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EFX.N" type="external">Equifax Inc</a> 116.0 EFX.N New York Stock Exchange -0.91 (-0.78%) EFX.N
<p>An Equifax spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the recommendations.</p>
<p>Equifax has said breach-related costs could reach $439 million through year-end, potentially making it the most costly U.S. hack yet disclosed. The company has lost 19 percent of its market value since the massive cybertheft was disclosed. Its shares traded at $116 on Friday. [L2N1QK1Q1]</p>
<p>The credit reporting company is facing 100s of lawsuits by consumers, financial institutions and even the city of Chicago relating to the cybersecurity breach. The company disputes the claims and has said it intends to defend against them.</p>
<p>ISS also recommended “cautionary support” for the company’s say-on-pay resolution, noting the compensation committee’s decision to not pay annual incentives, steps to adjust incentive metrics and strengthen clawback provisions. However, it said there are ongoing questions about former Chief Executive Richard F. Smith’s pay and “the issue warrants continued monitoring.”</p>
<p>It also recommended a vote in favor of a shareholder resolution seeking a report on political contributions by the company, saying holders would benefit from more disclosure of the company’s political spending, payments to trade groups, its management of related risks.</p>
<p>The company’s annual general meeting is scheduled for May 3.</p>
<p>Reporting by Gary McWilliams; Editing by Alistair Bell</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - Martin Sorrell, who built WPP into the world’s biggest advertising agency through 33 years of dealmaking, quit on Saturday after an allegation of personal misconduct.</p> FILE PHOTO: Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive Officer of WPP, attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 23, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo
<p>The departure of the CEO who built a two-man outfit into one of Britain’s biggest companies with 200,000 staff in 112 countries leaves WPP without a boss at a pivotal time for the industry and when the group is under great strain.</p>
<p>WPP stunned the market last week when it said it had appointed lawyers to investigate alleged misconduct by Sorrell. He denied the allegations but in a letter to WPP staff published late on Saturday he said the “current disruption” was “putting too much unnecessary pressure on the business”.</p>
<p>He said he had decided that “in your interest, in the interest of our clients, in the interest of all shareowners, both big and small, and in the interest of all our other stakeholders, it is best for me to step aside”.</p>
<p>Chairman Roberto Quarta will become executive chairman until a new chief executive is found, while Mark Read, a WPP digital executive, and Andrew Scott, chief operating officer, Europe, have been appointed as joint chief operating officers.</p>
<p>Read, who previously sat on WPP’s main board, is well regarded in the industry while Scott was involved in its acquisition strategy and was not involved with clients.</p>
<p>The company will consider internal and external candidates for the top job in a process that could take several months.</p>
<p>“Obviously I am sad to leave WPP after 33 years,” Sorrell said in a statement. “It has been a passion, focus and source of energy for so long. However, I believe it is in the best interests of the business if I step down now.”</p>
<p>WPP said the investigation, which regarded financial impropriety, had concluded. It made no further comment but repeated a previous statement that the allegation did not involve amounts that were material to the company.</p>
<p>A source close to Sorrell said he had been unhappy with how the investigation was handled, leaving him uncertain whether he could work with the board again.</p>
<p>Analysts have speculated that the sprawling group, which was being restructured after a year of lower spending from some clients, could now sell off some assets if led by different management.</p> PASSION AND FOCUS
<p>The longest-serving CEO on the FTSE 100 blue chip index, Sorrell built WPP into one of Britain’s biggest companies by three decades of relentless dealmaking. He is one of the most high profile, and best paid, executives in the country.</p>
<p>In his time the group expanded to own top creative agencies including J. Walter Thompson and Young &amp; Rubicam, as well as media planners and buyers, market-research firms and public relations groups such as Finsbury.</p>
<p>Present in 112 countries, WPP serves clients including Ford, Unilever, P&amp;G and a string of major corporations around the world.</p>
<p>It largely outperformed its peers Omnicom, Publicis and IPG in the years that followed the financial crisis as the group pitched aggressively for new work. But it has been hit in the last 18 months by a downturn in spending from consumer goods groups Unilever and P&amp;G, and the loss of some big accounts.</p>
<p>The migration of advertising online and the encroachment into market research of consultancies such as Accenture have compounded the pressures. Its shares are down around 30 percent this year.</p>
<p>The company said Sorrell would be available to assist with the transition, and the man synonymous with the British marketing group told the staff they would come through this difficult time.</p>
<p>“As a founder, I can say that WPP is not just a matter of life or death, it was, is and will be more important than that,” Sorrell said. “Good fortune and Godspeed to all of you. Now back to the future.”</p>
<p>Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Kevin Liffey, Alistair Bell and Daniel Wallis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(This version of the April 13th story corrects title of Scott Morris as senior fellow of Center for Global Development)</p>
<p>By David Lawder</p>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration is expected to support a $13 billion capital increase for the World Bank in a deal that will reform the development bank’s lending rules and increase China’s shareholding, three people close to the matter said on Friday.</p>
<p>U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is expected to lend his support for the plan at next week’s World Bank and International Monetary Fund spring meetings, the sources said. But the deal will need an endorsement from the World Bank’s shareholders and approval from its board of directors.</p>
<p>“Barring unforeseen challenges, there will be a capital increase,” one of the sources told Reuters.</p>
<p>U.S. backing for the capital increase was first reported by the Financial Times.</p>
<p>The Trump administration was initially skeptical of the World Bank’s long-running effort to boost its capital, proposing major cuts to multilateral development banks last year.</p>
<p>U.S. Treasury Undersecretary David Malpass has long criticized multilateral development banks for contributing to the build-up of debt in poor countries, and has chided the World Bank’s lending to higher income countries such as China, saying they should “graduate” to non-concessional loans.</p>
<p>“When the World Bank does not graduate these countries, less funding is available to reach countries with greater development needs and there is an excess burden placed on shareholder capital,” Malpass, who heads international affairs at the Treasury, said in congressional testimony last year.</p>
<p>The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been formally announced, said it would include reforms that would raise financing costs for higher-income countries.</p>
<p>Scott Morris, a former Treasury official who now is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said the capital increase deal is a victory for World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, an Obama administration nominee who has cultivated a relationship with the Trump administration, launching a women’s empowerment fund in cooperation with President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka.</p>
<p>Morris said the increase in shareholding for China “reflects reality of the global economy” with China’s growing economic clout. But it is unclear how Mnuchin will characterize the shift given Trump’s threats to impose steep tariffs on Chinese goods over China’s intellectual property practices, he added.</p>
<p>Under terms of the deal, according to the sources familiar with it, China’s shareholding in the World Bank would rise to about six percent from 4.68 percent currently. China would still be in third place behind the United States and Japan.</p>
<p>About $7.5 billion of the capital increase would go to the World Bank’s main concessional lending arm, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, with $5.5 billion going to the International Finance Corp, the group’s private sector lending arm.</p>
<p>A U.S. Treasury spokesman declined to comment, while a World Bank spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | UPDATE 1-Turkish central bank keeps rates steady faced with high inflation South Korea's March Iranian crude oil imports down 39.3 percent year-on-year Proxy adviser ISS recommends against five Equifax directors over cyberbreach Martin Sorrell quits as head of world's biggest ad group WPP U.S. to back $13 billion World Bank capital increase: sources | false | https://reuters.com/article/turkey-cenbank-rates/update-1-turkish-central-bank-keeps-rates-steady-faced-with-high-inflation-idUSL8N1PD2WJ | 2018-01-18 | 2 |
<p>A <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/fasd/index.html" type="external">new federal health campaign</a> meant to reduce the number of babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome is doubling as a handy guide to victim-blaming.</p>
<p>According to the new recommendations released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday, all women who consume alcohol are at risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease (STD) or ending up pregnant.</p>
<p>Without pointing to its underlying reasoning, a CDC infographic simply states that “drinking too much” can lead to STDs, violence, and an unintended pregnancy “for any woman.” Without understanding the CDC’s thinly veiled logic, this makes no scientific sense.</p>
<p>Though the CDC <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/fasd/index.html" type="external">doesn’t mention rape or sexual assault anywhere</a> in its campaign, this logic fits into a larger pattern related to the issue. (On its website, the federal agency lists sexual assault as one of the “ <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm" type="external">short term risks</a>” of consuming alcohol.) The assumption that <a href="" type="internal">women should avoid drinking</a> so they don’t become the subject of unwanted sexual attention — which can lead to an unintended pregnancy or an STD — is <a href="" type="internal">one of the many victim-blaming pieces of advice</a> that women regularly hear about how they should avoid being raped.</p>
<p>The CDC’s guidance fails to mention that men are equally more vulnerable to contracting an STD or impregnating a woman when they are under the influence of alcohol.</p>
<p>It doesn’t seem to matter if a woman is or isn’t planning on getting pregnant. The CDC suggests that simply drinking alcohol could make any woman forget to practice safe sex, thus leading to her to have a baby with fetal alcohol syndrome. All blame is placed on this imaginary, irresponsible woman.</p>
<p>“More than 3 million US women are at risk of exposing their developing baby to alcohol because they are drinking, having sex, and not using birth control to prevent pregnancy,” the CDC affirms.</p>
<p>Another CDC graphic recommends physicians give birth control to female patients who drink alcohol, because of this “risk.”</p>
<p>Telling pregnant women to <a href="http://www.vocativ.com/news/278919/pregnancy-alcohol-use-cdc" type="external">avoid all alcohol consumption</a> has <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151006192032.htm" type="external">sparked past controversy</a> in the medical community — since scientists have yet to pinpoint when in a pregnancy alcohol is actually damaging to a fetus.</p>
<p>However, the CDC notes: “The baby’s brain, body, and organs are developing throughout pregnancy and can be affected by alcohol at any time.”</p> | The CDC Has Some Insulting Advice For Women Who Drink | true | http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/02/03/3745802/cdc-victim-blaming/ | 2016-02-03 | 4 |
<p>President Barack Obama has described the Dallas shootings as a "vicious, calculated, despicable attack," according to television news coverage. Obama spoke to reporters Friday morning in Warsaw, Poland, where he's participating in a NATO summit. He described the killings as a "tremendous tragedy" and as "senseless murders." Obama said of the multiple suspects, some of whom have been captured or are reportedly dead, "We will learn more about their twisted motivations. Let's be clear: There is no possible justification" for the attacks. And he added: "Justice will be done." Shots were fired on police officers working at what had been a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas Thursday night following two officer-involved deaths of black men this week.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2016 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | President Obama Calls Dallas Police Shootings a 'despicable' Attack, Promises Justice | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/07/08/president-obama-calls-dallas-police-shootings-despicable-attack-promises.html | 2016-07-08 | 0 |
<p>A Syrian refugee who blew himself up Sunday night outside a music festival in Germany had pledged allegiance to ISIS in a video, Bavaria's interior minister said.</p>
<p>Fifteen people were injured — four of them seriously — in the blast, which occurred just two days after a <a href="" type="internal">gunman killed nine people</a> at a mall in Munich.</p>
<p>The 27-year-old was turned away from the event by security workers in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that is also home to a U.S. Army base. He was wearing a backpack carrying explosives and metal projectiles.</p>
<p>Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said a video was found on the bomber's phone showing him pledging allegiance to ISIS and announcing "revenge" against Germany "for standing in the way of Islam."</p>
<p>Officials said the bomber’s request for asylum in Germany was rejected a year ago because he had already been granted leave to remain by Bulgaria. The hotel where he had been staying was raided early Monday by police looking for evidence.</p>
<p>Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in nearby Nuremberg, said more casualties were likely if the bomber had managed to enter the open-air concert venue.</p>
<p>Thomas Trzybinski, 32, a supervisor for a company that provides security for U.S. Army installations in Ansbach, told NBC News on Monday morning that he was walking near the festival when the explosion went off.</p>
<p>"It was like boom, boom, boom, boom, and it was so loud it was like, 'Oh, my God, what was that?'" Trzybinksi said.</p>
<p>"Not even a few seconds later, people were running my way, and the first thing I heard was [that] a backpack blew up," he said. "I didn't know what to do at the first time, so I just followed them, you know, because I had no clue what's going on."</p>
<p>Hermann said the man had been under psychiatric treatment after at least two previous suicide attempts.</p>
<p>"It's terrible ... that someone who came into our country to seek shelter has now committed such a heinous act and injured a large number of people who are at home here, some seriously," he told a news conference.</p>
<p>"It's a further, horrific attack that will increase the already growing security concerns of our citizens. We must do everything possible to prevent the spread of such violence in our country by people who came here to ask for asylum."</p>
<p>Ansbach mayor Carda Seidel said the bomber was one of 644 refugees living in the town, and confirmed reports that he was due to be deported back to Bulgaria imminently.</p>
<p>Earlier Sunday, <a href="" type="internal">another Syrian man seeking asylum</a> used a machete to kill a woman after an argument at the central Omnibus station in Reutlingen, about 22 miles south of Stuttgart, local police said.</p>
<p>The 21-year-old attacker injured another woman and a man before he was arrested a few minutes later close to the crime scene.</p>
<p>Reutlingen is 130 miles west of Munich, where <a href="" type="internal">nine people were killed</a> by an 18-year-old gunman in a city shopping center Friday.</p> | Ansbach Suicide Bomber Had Pledged Allegiance to ISIS: Official | false | http://nbcnews.com/news/world/ansbach-bomb-syrian-refugee-behind-blast-had-tried-suicide-previously-n615976 | 2016-07-25 | 3 |
<p>A group of Michigan lawmakers have <a href="http://legislature.mi.gov/documents/2013-2014/billintroduced/House/pdf/2014-HIB-5697.pdf" type="external">introduced a measure</a> to roll back a controversial abortion restriction that <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/03/13/michigans_sweeping_rape_insurance_law_goes_into_effect/" type="external">went into effect</a> this past spring. The new law requires women in the state to purchase a separate insurance policy for abortion coverage, even in cases of rape or incest.</p>
<p>The measure has been widely derided as “ <a href="" type="internal">rape insurance</a>,” since it essentially forces victims of sexual assault to pay out-of-pocket for an abortion procedure unless they thought ahead and purchased a separate insurance rider. During the legislative fight over the bill, State Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D) disclosed her <a href="" type="internal">own experience with sexual assault</a> to explain why she was opposed to the proposed law. Now, Whitmer continues to fight back.</p>
<p>“This law hurts all women,” Whitmer said at a <a href="http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2014/06/democrats_launch_rape_insuranc.html" type="external">press conference this week</a> to announce the repeal effort, which she is spearheading. “Not just women who are victims of incest or rape, or who experience the gut-wrenching effect of a miscarriage, but every single woman or man who has to make the decision about whether or not to pre-purchase abortion rider insurance for the women who are covered by their insurance, including their daughters.”</p>
<p>Whitmer also <a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20140616/NEWS06/306160097/abortion-whitmer-repeal-law-roberts" type="external">called the law</a> “one of the most misogynistic laws I’ve ever seen.”</p>
<p>Dr. Timothy Johnson, who works at the University of Michigan’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, pointed out that the law is <a href="http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2014/06/tim_skubick_abortion_insurance.html" type="external">creating confusion</a> among medical professionals. Some women experience serious complications that result in the loss of a wanted pregnancy, and it’s unclear whether those situations fall under the state law’s definition of an abortion. “This is creating a lot of uncertainty in the doctor-patient relationship. The last thing we want is to have to worry about who has to pay for a necessary procedure,” he <a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20140616/NEWS06/306160097/abortion-whitmer-repeal-law-roberts" type="external">said at the press conference</a>.</p>
<p>The lawmakers who introduced the repeal effort acknowledged that it’s unlikely they’ll succeed in the Michigan legislature, which is dominated by abortion opponents. Indeed, now that they’ve successfully restricted women’s abortion coverage, conservative lawmakers continue to introduce other stringent anti-choice measures. Earlier this month, a group of 16 male politicians introduced a radical “heartbeat” measure that would <a href="" type="internal">criminalize nearly all abortions</a>.</p>
<p>Still, Democrats are hoping to mobilize <a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/michigan-state-senate-repeal-michigan-s-abortion-insurance-opt-out-law-a-k-a-rape-insurance" type="external">public opposition</a> to the so-called “rape insurance” law. “Michigan has been an embarrassment in terms of how we treat private medical decisions between a woman and her doctor,” Libby McGaughey, vice president of public advocacy for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, said in a statement. “It’s good to finally see some reasonable legislation being introduced in Lansing.”</p>
<p>And Michigan Democrats aren’t alone. Pro-choice lawmakers in <a href="" type="internal">Virginia</a> and <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/06/ohio_house_democrats_look_to_s.html" type="external">Ohio</a> have also recently introduced measures to roll back their states’ attacks on abortion rights.</p>
<p>Michigan’s new insurance restriction has captured a lot of media attention over the past several months, but it’s <a href="" type="internal">hardly the only state</a> that’s enacted this particular policy. Cutting off access to insurance coverage for abortion is an <a href="" type="internal">very popular method</a> of restricting reproductive rights, and complicated laws that segregate abortion from the rest of women’s reproductive health care are in place across the country. Obamacare’s state-level exchanges have <a href="" type="internal">introduced a new avenue</a> for abortion opponents to further this artificial divide.</p> | Democrats Fight To Repeal Michigan’s New ‘Rape Insurance’ Law | true | http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/06/20/3451268/democrats-michigan-abortion-repeal/ | 2014-06-20 | 4 |
<p>&lt;img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-33801" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/superbowl-1024x535.jpg" alt="SuperBowl" width="1024" height="535" srcset="https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/superbowl-1024x535.jpg 1024w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/superbowl-300x157.jpg 300w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/superbowl-768x401.jpg 768w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/superbowl.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /&gt;</p>
<p>Recently you may have noticed the left’s fascination with Tom Brady and the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Not because they’re fans of the team, of course. But because of their burning obsession with anything Trump-related (see&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Liberals Demand You Boycott Patriots for Connections to Trump</a>&#160;and&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Sports Media Pressures Tom Brady to Talk Trump</a>).</p>
<p>Naturally, while watching the game, liberal whineholes took to Twitter… To live vicariously through the Atlanta Falcons in a way they couldn’t with Hillary Clinton. At one point, the Falcons were up 28-9 going into the 4th Quarter. The left was ecstatic…</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>TOUCHDOWN!!!!!</p>
<p>Take that Trump! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SB51?src=hash" type="external">#SB51</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RiseUp?src=hash" type="external">#RiseUp</a> Falcons <a href="https://t.co/ozt3Fzv8K7" type="external">pic.twitter.com/ozt3Fzv8K7</a></p>
<p>— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) <a href="https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/828421321046507520" type="external">February 6, 2017</a></p>
<p />
<p />
<p>I smell victory. <a href="https://t.co/nTpp1rVCEF" type="external">https://t.co/nTpp1rVCEF</a></p>
<p>— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) <a href="https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/828424220531105792" type="external">February 6, 2017</a></p>
<p />
<p>And then, as we all know, the Patriots went on to score 25 points in the greatest comeback ever in Super Bowl history. In short, the left picked their team simply out of hatred for those connected to Trump. “Their team” was posed to win, but it simply wasn’t in the stars. Sound familiar?</p>
<p>&lt;img class=" wp-image-17231 aligncenter" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Laughclapreaction-1.gif" alt="Laughclapreaction GIF" width="470" height="264" /&gt;</p>
<p>Bamboozled again!</p>
<p>That, plus this tweet must have stung…</p>
<p />
<p>When it comes to politicizing things, the left just can’t stop. And to be fair, it seems as though at this point they no longer have any self control. Like Chris Christie at an all you can eat buffet.</p>
<p>This revelation hardly comes as news, I know (see <a href="" type="internal">Everything Wrong With ’84 Lumber’ Pro-Illegal Immigrant Super Bowl Commercial…</a>). This is simply further proof of progressives’ bitter, trifling soiled diaperness. To which there is no end in sight.</p>
<p>Look, politics aside – it was a great game. One that will go down in NFL history to be sure. But the fact that leftist crybags suffered a defeat similar to that of 2016? Well, it makes it all the sweeter.</p>
<p>&lt;img class=" wp-image-21232 aligncenter" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/TragicIrony-Penguin-GIF.gif" alt="TragicIrony Penguin GIF" width="472" height="236" /&gt;</p>
<p>Ah well. Better luck in 2020!</p>
<p>In the meantime, enjoy more liberal meltdowns…</p>
<p />
<p />
<p /> | FAIL: Top Liberal Tweets Politicizing Super Bowl Backfire in Best Way Possible… | true | http://louderwithcrowder.com/liberals-politicizing-super-bowl/ | 2017-02-06 | 0 |
<p>Federal health regulators have granted tentative approval to a highly contested drug for muscular dystrophy that has become a flashpoint in the debate over patient access to experimental medicine.</p>
<p>The Food and Drug Administration said it cleared Sarepta Therapeutics' injection for a rare form of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a deadly inherited disease that affects boys. It's the first FDA approval for the degenerative condition, which causes muscle weakness, loss of movement and eventually death.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Monday's announcement comes nearly five months after the agency and a panel of outside advisers panned the drug at a public meeting, saying there was little evidence of its effectiveness. But regulators faced an immense outcry from patient groups and physicians seeking access to the drug.</p> | FDA tentatively approves first drug for muscular dystrophy | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/09/19/fda-tentatively-approves-first-drug-for-muscular-dystrophy.html | 2016-09-19 | 0 |
<p>Aug. 13 (UPI) — A plan to plant 1 billion trees in Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was achieved this month, said <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Imran_Khan/" type="external">Imran Khan</a>, leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which governs the province.</p>
<p>Khan, a former cricket star, began the Billion Tree Tsunami Afforestation Project in 2015 to reverse the trend of heavy deforestation in the region. The initiative’s goal was to hit the 1 billion tree mark by the end of 2017. But the goal appears to have been met nearly five months ahead of schedule.</p>
<p>“If you plant trees, we have discovered, by the river banks it sustains the rivers. But most importantly, the glaciers that are melting in the mountains, and one of the biggest reasons is because there has been a massive deforestation. So, this billion tree is very significant for our future,” Khan told <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/one-billion-trees-planted-in-pakistan-nw-province/3983609.html" type="external">Voice of America</a>.</p>
<p>Inger Anderson, Director General of the&#160; <a href="https://www.iucn.org/news/forests/201708/pakistan%E2%80%99s-billion-tree-tsunami-restores-350000-hectares-forests-and-degraded-land-surpass-bonn-challenge-commitment" type="external">International Union for Conservation of Nature</a>, praised the Billion Tree Tsunami organizers for making efforts to reverse deforestation in Pakistan.</p>
<p>“IUCN congratulates the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on reaching this momentous milestone,” Anderson said. “The Billion Tree Tsunami initiative is a true conservation success story, one that further demonstrates Pakistan’s leadership role in the international restoration effort and continued commitment to the Bonn Challenge.”</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.bonnchallenge.org/" type="external">Bonn Challenge</a> is an effort to restore 350 hectares of deforested land by 2030. The Pakistani effort currently accounts for 350,000 restores hectares of land.</p>
<p>Since 1990, the planet has lost 1.3 million square kilometers of forests, according to <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.K2/" type="external">World Bank</a> data. The regions that have seen the heaviest losses are Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.</p>
<p>In Latin America and the Caribbean, nearly 1 million square kilometers of forest was destroyed between 1990 and 2015, reported the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/23/deforestation-where-is-the-world-losing-the-most-trees/" type="external">Telegraph</a>.</p> | Pakistan meets goal of planting 1 billion trees to help reverse deforestation | false | https://newsline.com/pakistan-meets-goal-of-planting-1-billion-trees-to-help-reverse-deforestation/ | 2017-08-13 | 1 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>After&#160; <a href="" type="internal">George Zimmerman’s wife pled guilty</a>&#160;this week, to lying about the financial donations for her husband’s case, she revealed a number of startling things that may impact a civil case against George Zimmerman.</p>
<p>Shellie Zimmerman&#160; <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/george-zimmermans-wife-felt-court/story?id=20103462" type="external">told ABC News</a>&#160;that she is unsure whether she will stay married to her husband. This is not just because he failed to show up at her hearing, while she stood by him through his tried. In fact, she explains that she had separated from George the night before . In&#160; <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/george-zimmermans-wife-felt-court/story?id=20103462" type="external">an interview with reporter Christi O’Connor</a>, she claims that she “had walked out on him after a particularly nasty argument on the night before” he shot the young Trayvon Martin.</p>
<p>“I was staying at my father’s house,” she said. “We had gotten into an argument the night before and I left.”</p>
<p>When O’Connor asked about the argument that caused her to walk out on him in 2012, and interesting question was raised.</p>
<p>“Does George have a temper? How volatile did it get the evening before?”</p>
<p>“Not going to answer that,” Zimmerman replied.</p>
<p>To most, that would sound like a “yes, he does.”</p>
<p>But all of this aside, George said repeatedly that he was not out “patrolling” when he saw Trayvon. Instead, he claimed all along that <a href="" type="internal">he was running to Target</a>. He mentioned in his interview with Sean Hannity terms like “us” and “we” would go shopping on Sunday nights (after “mentoring” kids, of course). But he never explained why his wife was not with him this time if that were in fact the case. But now we find out that he wife was not even there at the time, and they were separated, and she was living with her father.</p>
<p>George explained that he went shopping Sunday evening because that is when he and his wife have the chance, after “mentoring.” But he did not explain why she was not there this time, or why he chose then to go since he was clearly not out “mentoring” anyone, but was leaving from home, without his estranged wife.</p>
<p>Does this mean that Zimmerman lied about why he was out and what he was doing when he followed the unarmed 17 year old. His wife’s statements might explain why he might have been taking out his frustration on someone who he thought deserved it. He certainly seemed like he wasn’t going to take no for an answer from the 911 operator. But now we may know why.</p> | Did Zimmerman Lie? Wife Left George the Night Before He Shot Trayvon | true | http://politicalblindspot.com/did-zimmerman-lie-wife-left-george-the-night-before-he-shot-trayvon/ | 2013-09-01 | 4 |
<p />
<p>One fundamental question plagues countless small businesses: How to grow and keep the business going. Maybe you're not gaining enough customer traction, or maybe you've hit a wall and sales are flat. In any case, the plan just doesn't seem to be working, at least not as you hoped it would.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>I'm willing to bet that you've tried, are trying, or are willing to try all sorts of incremental strategies to solve the problem. But more often than not, they're not going to work.</p>
<p>Why not? Well, you're probably not a business expert. Don't feel too badly about that; few business owners are. They start companies because the opportunity arises, they're subject matter experts, or they're passionate about doing something. In any case, they probably don't know a whole lot about what it takes to achieve sustainable growth.</p>
<p>The way to do that isn't rocket science, but the funny thing is this: Every time I explain it to a CEO or business owner, they nod their heads like it's obvious, but for some reason, they almost never seem to think it applies to them. They think their product or idea is different. They think they're a special case.</p>
<p>Well, I'm here to tell you and them: it isn't and they're not.</p>
<p>Just look at the next big thing: wearable computing like Google Glass and Apple's rumored iWatch. Nobody knows if either will actually be successful. Nobody ever knows. In fact, years ago, Google's founders shopped the concept of a search company around endlessly to everyone who would listen. Everyone passed, except for one.</p>
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<p>It's hard to come up with a product or concept that's got a snowball's chance in hell of making it, let alone achieving sustainable growth over the long haul. And you know what? It's even harder, if not downright impossible, if you ignore the basic rule of what it takes for a business to be successful, as most companies do.</p>
<p>Here's the rule: Customer traction and sustainable growth occurs at the intersection of three things:</p>
<p>A big problem. Something that a significant group of customers really need or want but doesn't exist, at least not in a useable or affordable form.</p>
<p>A unique solution. An affordable product or service that solves the problem significantly better than competitive solutions and can be cost-effectively made and sold.</p>
<p>A competitive advantage. A competitive advantage that can be defended and sustained over the long haul.</p>
<p>Granted, customers don't always know what they need or want until you show it to them. That's absolutely true. Lots of experts thought Apple shouldn't get into the smartphone business. Good thing Steve Jobs didn't listen. Still, that's not the point.</p>
<p>The point is, once you've come up with your solution and it's not working, don't spend years trying to tweak it. Instead consider that maybe, just maybe, you missed the mark and incremental modifications aren't going to cut it. At least look at the three things and test your assumptions and execution. I guarantee you missed something important.</p>
<p>Of course, there are lots of other factors that matter, but you're not going to achieve long-term growth without hitting the intersection of those three things. Not only that, but you should periodically revisit the equation because we live in a fast-paced world. Things change. Markets change. Competitors change. Customers change. Technology changes.</p>
<p>How often to revisit your strategy depends on a number of factors, most notably how hot and volatile your market is. Start out annually and see if that works. Trial and error usually works fine. But stay on top of it because one thing's for sure: If you wait until sales have flatlined, you waited too long.</p>
<p>One more thing. Don't even try coming up with an excuse for why your company, idea, or product is different. I've heard it all before and from some very, very smart founders, CEOs and yes, even VCs. I admit, there are exceptions, but they're few and far between. It's far more likely that you're just drinking too much of your own Kool-Aid.</p>
<p>This column originally appeared on Inc.com.</p> | Business Planning's as Easy as 1, 2, 3 | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/09/17/business-planning-as-easy-as-1-2-3.html | 2016-04-07 | 0 |
<p>The grave of&#160;Yasser Arafat was opened Tuesday, allowing forensic experts to collect samples to determine if the Palestinian leader was poisoned.</p>
<p>"The operation is finished, the tomb has been resealed and the samples have been given to the French, Swiss and Russian experts," officials from the investigating&#160;Palestinian commission <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/9705080/Remains-of-Yasser-Arafat-reburied-after-poison-test.html" type="external">told the Telegraph</a>.</p>
<p>The investigation began after Al Jazeera reported on a Swiss discovery suggesting radioactive poison, polonium 210, was found on Arafat's clothes&#160;provided by Suha Arafat, his widow.&#160;</p>
<p>Darcy Christen, spokesman for Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland - where the initial test was conducted - <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/27/us-palestinians-arafat-idUSBRE8AP1A120121127" type="external">told Reuters</a>:&#160;"Samples will be taken according to a very strict protocol and these samples will be analyzed."</p>
<p>He added, "In order to do these analyses, to check, cross-check and double cross-check, it will take several months and I don't think we'll have anything tangible available before March or April next year."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/9705080/Remains-of-Yasser-Arafat-reburied-after-poison-test.html" type="external">The Telegraph points ou</a>t&#160;polonium 210 killed Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-Russian agent critical of his government, in 2006.</p>
<p>Arafat's tomb in the West Bank Ramallah compound&#160;was re-closed earlier Tuesday.</p>
<p>Jean-Rene Jourdain, deputy director at the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gl_FV0T-FgnLJp7tl3I4evzAZo8Q?docId=CNG.835fd35602deea7365c8e516ca071819.31" type="external">told the AFP</a> weeks were required to determine if the&#160;polonium was made-made or not.</p>
<p>He added, "Even if traces of polonium are found, it doesn't mean that they are man-made."</p>
<p>Regardless of what the investigations conclude, GlobalPost's Israel correspondent, Noga Tarnopolsky, expressed skepticism that the matter of how Arafat died will ever be laid to rest.</p>
<p>"For a long time there was a Palestinian policy of setting out lies as if they were the truth, and hoping they'd catch on, as in the infamous case of the 'Jenin massacre.' Most of these myths never take off in the Western world, but they become enshrined as persistent semi-truths in the Arab world.... The myth of the murder of Arafat, often by extravagantly baroque methods, is likely to persist forever," she wrote.</p>
<p>However, she added that there are signs these policies are changing.</p>
<p>"It was very interesting to note in the recent Gaza war that Palestinian authorities did not exaggerate the number of fatalities. For me, that was an indication that the pendulum may be shifting."</p>
<p>CNN reports:</p>
<p />
<p /> | Yasser Arafat's grave opened for murder investigation | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-11-27/yasser-arafats-grave-opened-murder-investigation | 2012-11-27 | 3 |
<p>CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s stock market shares plunged by 22 billion Egyptian pounds (just over $3 billion) in Sunday trading as low oil prices dragged down regional economies.</p>
<p>The benchmark EGX30 index closed 5.23 percent down, with 170 stocks declining and just five showing gains.</p>
<p>Stock broker Yasser Rashad said there was an immediate dip at the start of Sunday’s session over fears that share prices would continue to drop for the rest of the week.</p>
<p>Wael Ziada, head of research at regional investment giant EFG Hermes, said the drop is a knock-on effect caused by the steep decline in oil prices. The markets in Egypt and Gulf Arab countries “are correlated in terms of their performance because the investor base intersects.”</p>
<p>Oil prices have shed nearly half their value since late June, including a 4 percent tumble Friday that left benchmark U.S. oil prices at $57.81 a barrel, their lowest level since May 2009, when the U.S. was still in recession.</p>
<p>Egypt is a net importer of oil products, therefore “we should benefit from the decline in oil prices,” Ziada said.</p>
<p>However, Egypt relies heavily on aid from Gulf countries to keep its economy afloat. Any net benefit for Egypt from the decline in oil prices hinges on the willingness of the nation’s main Gulf benefactors — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait — to continue to help Egypt despite their declining oil revenues. The three have pledged to continue to help Egypt’s ailing economy.</p>
<p>The three oil-rich nations have pumped billions of dollars into Egypt’s emptying coffers since the overthrow last year of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. The three view Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group, as a threat to their security.</p>
<p>A Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research report published last week said that “although GCC support may be somewhat less forthcoming at current oil prices, enough is likely to be provided to muddle through for now.”</p>
<p>Besides Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Emirates, the Gulf Cooperation Council also includes Bahrain, Qatar and Oman.</p>
<p>In the Gulf region, markets continued to decline on Sunday.</p>
<p>Dubai’s stock index dropped 7.6 percent by closing Sunday, the first day of trading for the week. Qatar lost nearly 5.9 percent at closing. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi’s indexes fell more than 3 percent each. Investors are concerned that the drop in the price of oil, which is the backbone of Gulf economies, could lead to less government spending and reduced economic growth.</p>
<p>The Dubai stock exchange has lost&#160;65 billion dirhams, or roughly $17.7 billion, in market value over the past week due to the plummeting crude prices, according to the&#160;United Arab Emirates-based The National newspaper.</p>
<p>Last month, an International Monetary Fund official said that Egypt’s economy had begun to recover after nearly four years of political turmoil. The EGX30 index has shown overall gains of 28.49 percent so far this year.</p>
<p>The government aims to attract investment by hosting a three-day international economic conference in March. It recently partially lifted fuel subsidies and is pursuing revenue-enhancing measures aimed at deficit reduction.</p>
<p>_______</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Aya Batrawy contributed to this report from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.</p>
<p>CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s stock market shares plunged by 22 billion Egyptian pounds (just over $3 billion) in Sunday trading as low oil prices dragged down regional economies.</p>
<p>The benchmark EGX30 index closed 5.23 percent down, with 170 stocks declining and just five showing gains.</p>
<p>Stock broker Yasser Rashad said there was an immediate dip at the start of Sunday’s session over fears that share prices would continue to drop for the rest of the week.</p>
<p>Wael Ziada, head of research at regional investment giant EFG Hermes, said the drop is a knock-on effect caused by the steep decline in oil prices. The markets in Egypt and Gulf Arab countries “are correlated in terms of their performance because the investor base intersects.”</p>
<p>Oil prices have shed nearly half their value since late June, including a 4 percent tumble Friday that left benchmark U.S. oil prices at $57.81 a barrel, their lowest level since May 2009, when the U.S. was still in recession.</p>
<p>Egypt is a net importer of oil products, therefore “we should benefit from the decline in oil prices,” Ziada said.</p>
<p>However, Egypt relies heavily on aid from Gulf countries to keep its economy afloat. Any net benefit for Egypt from the decline in oil prices hinges on the willingness of the nation’s main Gulf benefactors — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait — to continue to help Egypt despite their declining oil revenues. The three have pledged to continue to help Egypt’s ailing economy.</p>
<p>The three oil-rich nations have pumped billions of dollars into Egypt’s emptying coffers since the overthrow last year of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. The three view Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group, as a threat to their security.</p>
<p>A Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research report published last week said that “although GCC support may be somewhat less forthcoming at current oil prices, enough is likely to be provided to muddle through for now.”</p>
<p>Besides Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Emirates, the Gulf Cooperation Council also includes Bahrain, Qatar and Oman.</p>
<p>In the Gulf region, markets continued to decline on Sunday.</p>
<p>Dubai’s stock index dropped 7.6 percent by closing Sunday, the first day of trading for the week. Qatar lost nearly 5.9 percent at closing. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi’s indexes fell more than 3 percent each. Investors are concerned that the drop in the price of oil, which is the backbone of Gulf economies, could lead to less government spending and reduced economic growth.</p>
<p>The Dubai stock exchange has lost&#160;65 billion dirhams, or roughly $17.7 billion, in market value over the past week due to the plummeting crude prices, according to the&#160;United Arab Emirates-based The National newspaper.</p>
<p>Last month, an International Monetary Fund official said that Egypt’s economy had begun to recover after nearly four years of political turmoil. The EGX30 index has shown overall gains of 28.49 percent so far this year.</p>
<p>The government aims to attract investment by hosting a three-day international economic conference in March. It recently partially lifted fuel subsidies and is pursuing revenue-enhancing measures aimed at deficit reduction.</p>
<p>_______</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Aya Batrawy contributed to this report from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.</p> | Egypt stock market loses $3B amid oil plunge | false | https://apnews.com/4ac323eb817e4c0c8f12189b5db49117 | 2014-12-14 | 2 |
<p>ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss prosecutors have dropped an investigation of film director Roman Polanski after finding the statute of limitations did not allow pursuing allegations by a former German actress and model that he raped her in 1972 when she was 15 years old.</p>
<p>The woman, Renate Langer, made the allegations to Swiss authorities only in September.</p>
<p>When they emerged, a lawyer for the 84-year-old French-Polish film director called them an absurd attempt to generate media attention.</p>
<p>Prosecutors in the central canton of Bern said late on Wednesday the time limit for filing charges had expired.</p>
<p>Langer was the fourth woman to accuse Polanski publicly of sexually assaulting them when they were teenagers.</p>
<p>Swiss authorities arrested Polanski in 2009 on his arrival in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award at a film festival. He was released two months later on bail under “house arrest” in his Gstaad chalet.</p>
<p>This was for fleeing U.S. sentencing in 1978 for unlawful sex with 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in Los Angeles, in 1977 in a case in which he pleaded guilty at the time.</p>
<p>In August, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon rejected a request by Geimer to have the criminal case against Polanski dismissed, ruling that the director remained a fugitive from justice.</p>
<p>In a statement to Reuters last month, Polanski’s lawyer reiterated that Polanski had acknowledged having had a sexual relationship with Geimer, and repeated that he strongly denied all other allegations against him.</p>
<p>In July 2010, Polanski was released from Swiss house arrest after authorities decided against extradition because of potential technical faults in the U.S. request and because he had for years come to Switzerland in good faith.</p>
<p>The New York Times has quoted Langer as saying she was speaking out only now because she had read an account of another woman who came forward in August and because her parents were no longer alive.</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> | Swiss drop rape inquiry against director Polanski | false | https://newsline.com/swiss-drop-rape-inquiry-against-director-polanski/ | 2017-11-09 | 1 |
<p>Does it really take an expensive brain scan to diagnose Alzheimer’s? Not everybody needs one but new research suggests that for a surprising number of patients whose memory problems are hard to pin down, PET scans may lead to changes in treatment.</p>
<p>The findings, reported Wednesday, mark a first peek at a huge study under way to help determine if Medicare should start paying for specialized PET scans that find a hallmark of Alzheimer’s — a sticky plaque called amyloid.</p>
<p>Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, and classic symptoms plus memory tests often are enough for a reliable diagnosis. But unusual symptoms could mark another form of dementia that, while there are no cures, could require different symptom care. And on the other end of the spectrum, it’s hard to tell if mild memory loss might be an early Alzheimer’s signal, a more treatable condition such as depression, or even age-related decline.</p>
<p>“We’re not accurate enough,” said Dr. Gil Rabinovici of the University of California, San Francisco, who is leading the new research.</p>
<p>“Patients know there’s something wrong. Often they can sense in their gut that it’s not normal aging,” he added. Without a clear-cut test, “doctors are very reluctant to make the diagnosis in many cases.”</p>
<p>Until a few years ago, amyloid build-up could only be seen during autopsies. Older types of PET scans show what region of the brain appears most affected, of limited help.</p>
<p>Yet it’s not clear how best to use the new amyloid-detecting scans, which can cost up to $6,000. They can rule out Alzheimer’s if there’s little amyloid. But cognitively healthy seniors can harbor amyloid, too, and Medicare won’t pay for the new scans outside of a few research studies.</p>
<p>One of those is the IDEAS study, which is testing the impact of amyloid-detecting PET scans in more than 18,000 Medicare beneficiaries. To enroll, patients either must have atypical dementia with an unclear cause — or have particularly puzzling “mild cognitive impairment,” or MCI, early memory problems that raise the risk of later developing dementia. Researchers check if doctors’ initially recorded treatment plans — medications, counseling or additional testing — were altered by patients’ PET results.</p>
<p>That happened in about two-thirds of the cases, according to preliminary findings from nearly 4,000 patients who were the first to enroll.</p>
<p>Most changes involved medications that can temporarily ease Alzheimer’s symptoms, said Rabinovici, who presented the findings at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London. The PET scans found 70 percent of the dementia patients indeed had amyloid build-up, pointing out those who might benefit from those drugs and those who won’t.</p>
<p>More intriguing, just 54 percent of the MCI patients had amyloid build-up, putting them at higher risk for later Alzheimer’s. For the rest, “Alzheimer’s disease was effectively ruled out, so it’s something else,” Rabinovici said.</p>
<p>The early findings don’t prove PETs affect health outcomes.</p>
<p>But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services helped plan the research and insisted on this midpoint check to be sure the study should continue, said Maria Carrillo, the Alzheimer’s Association’s chief medical officer. Researchers also will compare the 18,000 study participants with Medicare records of similar patients who didn’t get PET scans, seeking final evidence of benefit.</p>
<p>“To get that right diagnosis, that’s really important,” said Cynthia Guzman of Napa, California, whose initial Alzheimer’s diagnosis was ruled out in an earlier PET scan study.</p>
<p>Guzman had unusual fluctuating memory problems. Some days she functioned normally. Others, she’d stop her car at a stop sign without knowing how she got there or where she was going. Eventually, tremors and hallucinations led specialists to conclude she has Lewy body dementia. Knowing, Guzman said, has allowed her to avoid a list of common medications that could worsen her symptoms.</p>
<p>While any treatment changes today may be modest, researchers are hunting drugs that eventually might at least slow Alzheimer’s rather than just treat symptoms, more impetus for a precise diagnosis.</p>
<p>“We all hope for a day when this will be critically important,” said Dr. Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, who wasn’t involved with the IDEAS study.</p>
<p>For now, in addition to people who qualify for the IDEAS study, the Alzheimer’s Association and Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging say:</p>
<p>—Unusually young dementia patients, younger than 65, also might be candidates for a PET scan.</p>
<p>—The scans shouldn’t be used as a screening tool for people without symptoms or who worry they’re at risk.</p>
<p>—Nor are they for people who can be diagnosed by standard means, or to determine disease severity.</p> | Brain Scans May Change Care for Some People with Memory Loss | false | https://newsline.com/brain-scans-may-change-care-for-some-people-with-memory-loss/ | 2017-07-19 | 1 |
<p>National Journal Get the little things right. The reason many Americans wouldn't mind if traditional news orgs went right down the tubes is right in front of us, says William Powers. "Too many of these outlets don't get the details right -- or, rather, they get too many of them wrong. I'm not talking about factual accuracy, which remains the core mission of all news outlets. But in a world of fetishists, the core mission is not enough. Just as coffee isn't just a hot drink anymore, the news isn't just a bunch of facts strung together on deadline. Both are experiences." (Visit <a href="http://starbucksgossip.typepad.com" type="external">Starbucks Gossip</a>, which Romenesko runs when he's not wearing his Poynter hat.)</p> | What newspapers can learn from Starbucks, Apple Computer | false | https://poynter.org/news/what-newspapers-can-learn-starbucks-apple-computer | 2005-07-15 | 2 |
<p>Shell opened its first electric vehicle recharging points at three gas stations in Britain on Wednesday, part of the oil giant's efforts to respond to a global push toward zero-emission vehicles.</p>
<p>Three charging stations are in London, Surrey and Derby, with seven more expected by the end of the year. It comes only days after Shell agreed to buy electric vehicle charging firm NewMotion.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"We recognize that the electric vehicle market is growing in the U.K. It's growing very fast," said Jane Lindsay-Green, future fuels manager of Shell U.K., adding that statistics show an increase in electric vehicle registrations. "We recognize that electric vehicles are part of the future of transport in the country and we want to make sure that we offer our customers choice and that they have the option to recharge on one of our forecourts if they want to."</p>
<p>The CEO for Royal Dutch, Ben van Beurden has said the company is planning for the day when demand for oil starts fading as major economies move away from oil and increasingly turn to electric-powered cars.</p>
<p>Since the Paris climate deal was agreed on in late 2015, governments are committing to tougher action on emissions and shareholders are pushing for more long-term plans.</p>
<p>Shell says the U.K. is the first country in which its recharging service will be available. The company is working with London transport authorities as the city seeks to remove gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles from its streets by 2050.</p>
<p>One of the world's largest energy retailers for petrol and lubricants, it is not surprising that Shell would add electric charging to other services, such as selling coffee or pizza, said David Elmes of Warwick Business School.</p>
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<p>"The step further is whether they start to see themselves as an energy services company, optimizing the multiple sources and uses of energy in homes, offices, factories, communities, etc.," he said, adding that the NewMotion acquisition would fit into this area. "Shell haven't been as clear on their ambitions in that area as, say, Total but you can imagine it's an option they are considering."</p>
<p>NewMotion operates more than 30,000 private charging points for homes and businesses in the Netherlands, Germany, France and the U.K.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>James Brooks contributed to this report.</p> | Shell opens its first electric vehicle charging points | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/18/shell-opens-its-first-electric-vehicle-charging-points.html | 2017-10-18 | 0 |
<p />
<p>Capt. Shachar Erez is the first openly transgender officer in the Israel Defense Forces. (Photo courtesy of Capt. Shachar)</p>
<p />
<p>Capt. Shachar Erez in <a href="http://awiderbridge.org/i-am-not-special-i-am-instead-equal/" type="external">a commentary</a> that A Wider Bridge, which describes itself as an “LGBTQ advocacy group building connections between the Israeli and North American LGBTQ communities,” posted on its website on July 27 wrote “barring transgender individuals from serving their country is not a policy based on credible professional opinion.”</p>
<p>“It is simply pure transphobic discrimination,” said Erez.</p>
<p>Erez described himself as a “proud officer” who has served in the Israeli military for 5 1/2 years. He acknowledged he was not out when he enlisted, but “realized that in order for me to be the best commander to my soldiers that I could be, I had to be honest with them about my full, authentic self.”</p>
<p>“The military is a place where everybody is equal, and judged only by their ability to do their job,” wrote Erez. “Being trans has never affected my ability to serve or be fairly viewed by my peers.”</p>
<p>Israel and 17 other countries — Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. — allow trans people to serve in their respective armed forces. <a href="" type="internal">Trump’s announcement,</a> which he made on July 26 in a series of tweets, reverses the Obama administration’s efforts to allow trans people to openly serve in the U.S. military and those who are out to enlist.</p>
<p>The Canadian Armed Forces on July 26 tweeted it welcomes Canadians “of all sexual orientations and gender identities” and encouraged them to enlist.</p>
<p />
<p>A spokesperson for the British government declined to comment to the Washington Blade on Trump’s announcement.</p>
<p>“We are clear that all LGBT+ members of our armed forces play a vital role in keeping our nation safe,” added the spokesperson in an email. “We will continue to welcome people from a diverse range of backgrounds, including transgender personnel.”</p>
<p>Julie Ward, a British member of the European Parliament who participated in this summer’s <a href="" type="internal">WorldPride in Madrid,</a> described the U.S. ban as a “disgraceful action from a world leader.”</p>
<p />
<p>Activists from countries that allow trans people to serve in their militaries echoed Ward.</p>
<p>Sally Goldner, a trans and bisexual advocate in the Australian city of Melbourne, told the Blade the ban “sends a message that it (is) okay to demean a group of people simply for being in that group” and could spur further hate speech and violence based on gender identity. Goldner also echoed <a href="" type="internal">House Minority Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)</a> and other critics of Trump’s announcement who have noted the Pentagon spends more on Viagra than healthcare for trans servicemembers.</p>
<p>“The cost argument is nonsense,” Goldner told the Blade.</p>
<p>Viktor Heumann, founder of Trans*parent, a trans advocacy group in the Czech Republic, also rejected the cost argument. Heumann in an email to the Blade described Trump’s assertion that trans servicemembers are a “disruption” as “rather vague.”</p>
<p>“Trump’s Tweet is yet another loud and populistic declaration that further stigmatizes the already marginalized group of transgender people,” said Heumann. “It is a malevolent signal that it is acceptable to bar access to a certain type of profession for trans people.”</p>
<p>“Although trans people in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world have more pressing concerns than representation in the U.S. Army that are related to their housing situation; access to healthcare and hate crime rates, Trump’s rhetoric sadly makes us (more) vulnerable in all of these respects,” added Heumann.</p>
<p>Editor’s note: Michael K. Lavers traveled to Israel and the West Bank in November 2016 with A Wider Bridge.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">A Wider Bridge</a> <a href="" type="internal">Australia</a> <a href="" type="internal">Austria</a> <a href="" type="internal">Belgium</a> <a href="" type="internal">Bolivia</a> <a href="" type="internal">Canada</a> <a href="" type="internal">Czech Republic</a> <a href="" type="internal">Denmark</a> <a href="" type="internal">Donald Trump</a> <a href="" type="internal">Estonia</a> <a href="" type="internal">Finland</a> <a href="" type="internal">France</a> <a href="" type="internal">Germany</a> <a href="" type="internal">Israel</a> <a href="" type="internal">Julie Ward</a> <a href="" type="internal">Netherlands</a> <a href="" type="internal">New Zealand</a> <a href="" type="internal">Norway</a> <a href="" type="internal">Sally Goldner</a> <a href="" type="internal">Shachar Erez</a> <a href="" type="internal">Spain</a> <a href="" type="internal">Sweden</a> <a href="" type="internal">transgender</a> <a href="" type="internal">Transparent</a> <a href="" type="internal">United Kingdom</a> <a href="" type="internal">Viktor Heumann</a></p> | Israeli military’s first transgender officer criticizes Trump | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2017/08/01/israeli-militarys-first-transgender-officer-criticizes-trump/ | 3 |
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<p>Ronald Reagan’s 71-year-old adopted son Michael spent all day Monday trying to distance his father from Republican nominee Donald Trump, saying the late 40th president would never support “this kind of campaign.”</p>
<p>Michael Reagan’s tweetstorm started early Monday morning after Mr. Trump <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-accuses-hillary-of-cheating-on-bill-229011" type="external">implied</a> during a Pennsylvania rally that Hillary Clinton had cheated on her husband, former President Bill Clinton.</p>
<p>“No way do I or would my father support this garbage,” Mr. Reagan <a href="https://twitter.com/ReaganWorld/status/782811060101230592" type="external">wrote</a>. “If this is where he is going I cannot follow him.”</p>
<p>“I can hear my father saying I didn’t leave the Party the Party left me,” he <a href="https://twitter.com/ReaganWorld/status/782812080193753088" type="external">continued</a>. “The direction he is headed will never win him the White House…No FILTER No Potus.”</p>
<p>“Jane Wyman was my mother, but I can tell u that Nancy would vote for Hillary and was appalled to hear people say he reminds them of RR,” Mr. Regan <a href="https://twitter.com/ReaganWorld/status/782816676945330176" type="external">wrote</a>.</p>
<p>He also expressed <a href="https://twitter.com/ReaganWorld/status/782824616481857537" type="external">gratitude</a> that his father was not alive to witness the 2016 election.</p>
<p>“Not the Party of Reagan,” Mr. Reagan&#160; <a href="https://twitter.com/ReaganWorld/status/782963099376627712" type="external">wrote</a>. “He would tell us to vote the down ticket to stop Hillary.”</p>
<p>“Vote for Trump if you will, but stop comparing him to my father,” he <a href="https://twitter.com/ReaganWorld/status/783100058761691136" type="external">wrote</a>&#160;Monday night. “My father would not support this kind of campaign.”</p>
<p>Mr. Reagan, a conservative radio talk show host, has been an outspoken opponent of Mr. Trump since he announced his candidacy last summer. He&#160; <a href="" type="internal">said</a> in September 2015 that his father would be “appalled” by Mr. Trump’s political success.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. <a href="http://license.icopyright.net/3.7280?icx_id=/news/2016/oct/4/michael-reagan-stop-comparing-trump-to-my-father/" type="external">Click here for reprint permission</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Michael Reagan: Stop comparing Trump to my father | true | http://washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/4/michael-reagan-stop-comparing-trump-to-my-father/ | 2016-10-04 | 0 |
<p>&lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/hagedornforcongress/photos/pb.189742239707.-2207520000.1408647086./10152666715854708/?type=3&amp;src=https%3A%2F%2Ffbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net%2Fhphotos-ak-xpa1%2Ft31.0-8%2F10603925_10152666715854708_4313881064970658543_o.jpg&amp;smallsrc=https%3A%2F%2Ffbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net%2Fhphotos-ak-xpa1%2Ft31.0-8%2Fs960x960%2F10603925_10152666715854708_4313881064970658543_o.jpg&amp;size=2034%2C2048&amp;fbid=10152666715854708"&gt;Hagedorn for Congress&lt;/a&gt;/Facebook</p>
<p />
<p>On Friday, we <a href="" type="internal">reported</a> on Minnesota Republican congressional candidate Jim Hagedorn’s history of incendiary comments about women, American Indians, gays, people he suspected of being gay, and President Obama’s family. Two days later, Hagedorn <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hagedornforcongress/posts/10152700833529708" type="external">took to Facebook</a> to issue an apology…of sorts:</p>
<p>Over the years I have written political satire and commentary, most of which defended conservative ideals and took aim at national politicians I felt were failing the American people and hurting our country.</p>
<p>Even though most of my writings were composed more than 10 years ago, national and DFL liberals are determined to attack me personally, mostly by exhibiting snippets of out-dated, misunderstood or out-of-context material and calling me derogatory names.</p>
<p>In this case, the rather worn and tired Democrat tactic of personal destruction and demonization is designed to deflect attention from the serious problems confronting our nation and the failed big government record of President Barack Obama and devoted liberal followers like incumbent DFL Congressman Tim Walz.</p>
<p>Of course, these same politically correct liberals remain undeterred by the offensive writings authored in the past by Al Franken. In spite of this hypocrisy, I do acknowledge that some of my hard-hitting and tongue-in-cheek commentary was less than artfully constructed or included language that could lead to hurt feelings. I offer a sincere and heartfelt apology.</p>
<p>Rather than dwell in the rigged game of political correctness, my campaign will forge ahead and continue to engage with the people of southern Minnesota and address the issues that will decide our country’s future during these critical times.</p>
<p>A better way to avoid the “rigged game of political correctness,” would be to not disparage all American Indians as “thankless” welfare recipients. You can read more about Hagedorn’s past comments <a href="" type="internal">here</a>.</p>
<p /> | GOP Congressional Candidate Apologizes for Calling Female Senators “Undeserving Bimbos” | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/jim-hagedorn-minnesota-bimbos-apology/ | 2014-08-25 | 4 |
<p>CONCORD, N.H. (AP) _ These New Hampshire lotteries were drawn Saturday:</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $343 million</p>
<p>Megabucks Plus</p>
<p>17-20-24-34-37, Megaball: 1</p>
<p>(seventeen, twenty, twenty-four, thirty-four, thirty-seven; Megaball: one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $4.45 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Day</p>
<p>4-5-3</p>
<p>(four, five, three)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>1-8-1</p>
<p>(one, eight, one)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Day</p>
<p>1-0-8-9</p>
<p>(one, zero, eight, nine)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Evening</p>
<p>6-9-5-3</p>
<p>(six, nine, five, three)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>28-36-41-51-58, Powerball: 24, Power Play: 2</p>
<p>(twenty-eight, thirty-six, forty-one, fifty-one, fifty-eight; Powerball: twenty-four; Power Play: two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $384 million</p>
<p>CONCORD, N.H. (AP) _ These New Hampshire lotteries were drawn Saturday:</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $343 million</p>
<p>Megabucks Plus</p>
<p>17-20-24-34-37, Megaball: 1</p>
<p>(seventeen, twenty, twenty-four, thirty-four, thirty-seven; Megaball: one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $4.45 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Day</p>
<p>4-5-3</p>
<p>(four, five, three)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>1-8-1</p>
<p>(one, eight, one)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Day</p>
<p>1-0-8-9</p>
<p>(one, zero, eight, nine)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Evening</p>
<p>6-9-5-3</p>
<p>(six, nine, five, three)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>28-36-41-51-58, Powerball: 24, Power Play: 2</p>
<p>(twenty-eight, thirty-six, forty-one, fifty-one, fifty-eight; Powerball: twenty-four; Power Play: two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $384 million</p> | NH Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/e02559970784490d824e6143e71e5e11 | 2017-12-31 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The president’s decision to escalate the U.S. effort in Iraq comes just three days after a bruising American election and amid persistent arguments that more U.S. troops are needed to bolster the struggling Iraqi forces. In particular, there have been calls to send troops to the western Anbar province, where extremists have been slaughtering men, women and children.</p>
<p>Obama authorized the Pentagon to send 1,500 troops to Iraq in addition to the 1,600 previously allowed. He also is asking Congress for more than $5 billion to fund the fight. Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the military will set up several training sites across Iraq to instruct 12 Iraqi brigades, and also establish two operations centers where small advisory teams can work with Iraqi forces at the headquarters and brigade levels.</p>
<p>A senior military official said one of those centers will be in Anbar Province, and that it is likely that the bulk of the additional troops will be in Iraq by the end of the year. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Kirby said the new changes were based on a request from the Iraqi officials, the assessment of military commanders on the progress that Iraq’s military has made in the fight and as part of a campaign plan “to defend key areas and go on the offensive against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” another name for IS.</p>
<p>The U.S. troops will not be in combat roles but will do the training in protected locations around the country. Until now, U.S. troops have largely been confined to Baghdad and Irbil, including two operations centers in those cities.</p>
<p>The funding announcement is part of a $5.6 billion request to Congress and came just after Obama met with congressional leaders Friday. That funding would cover the overseas military operations and other military equipment and requirements to combat the Islamic State group militants, who have seized control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria.</p>
<p>The U.S. has been launching airstrikes on Islamic State group militants and facilities in Iraq and Syria for weeks, as part of an effort to give Iraqi forces the time and space to mount a more effective offensive. Early on, the Islamic State group gained ground across Iraq, as local Iraqi units threw down their weapons and fled or joined the insurgents.</p>
<p>Lately, however, with the aid of the U.S. strikes, IS has suffered a number of losses in Iraq, where it is fighting government forces, peshmerga and Shiite militias aided by Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah group.</p>
<p>Last week, Iraqi forces recaptured the town of Jurf al-Sakher. IS also lost Rabia, Mahmoudiyah and Zumar, a string of towns near the Syrian border, last month. Besieged Iraqi troops have also managed to maintain control of Iraq’s largest oil refinery outside the town of Beiji north of Baghdad, despite numerous attempts by the Islamic State group to capture it.</p>
<p>The $5.6 billion request was expected to be a top item on the agenda of Friday’s meeting between Obama and congressional leaders. Official details are expected to be delivered to Capitol Hill next week.</p>
<p>The funding comes on top of an earlier $58.6 billion request to cover overseas military operations in the war on terror. It’s expected to be addressed in the upcoming lame duck session of Congress. Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Friday that he has “long been concerned that the president has underfunded our combat operations against terrorists.”</p>
<p>He said he will give the funding request fair consideration, but added, “I remain concerned that the president’s strategy to defeat ISIL is insufficient. I would urge the president to reconsider his strategy and clearly explain how this additional funding supports a new direction. Such clarity is more likely to find swift congressional approval.”</p>
<p>ISIL is one of several acronyms for the Islamic State.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Josh Lederman contributed to this report.</p> | Obama authorizes 1,500 more troops for Iraq | false | https://abqjournal.com/493123/obama-authorizes-1500-more-troops-for-iraq.html | 2014-11-07 | 2 |
<p />
<p>The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit on Wednesday to halt Halliburton Co from merging with Baker Hughes Inc, arguing the merger of the No. 2 and No. 3 oil services companies would hurt competition in the sector.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The deal would eliminate competition in 23 products or services for U.S. oil exploration and production, both onshore and offshore, the Justice Department said in a statement.</p>
<p>"The proposed deal between Halliburton and Baker Hughes would eliminate vital competition, skew energy markets and harm American consumers," U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in the statement. "Our action makes clear that the Justice Department is committed to vigorously enforcing our antitrust laws."</p>
<p>The Justice Department said that Halliburton had offered divestitures aimed at saving the deal but that these were inadequate.</p>
<p>Halliburton said it would "vigorously contest" the lawsuit.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>"The companies believe that the DOJ (Justice Department) has reached the wrong conclusion in its assessment of the transaction and that its action is counterproductive, especially in the context of the challenges the U.S. and global energy industry are currently experiencing," the company said in a statement.</p>
<p>Halliburton has hired two antitrust litigators, Richard Parker of O'Melveny &amp; Myers LLP and Stephen Weissman of Baker Botts LLP, to handle the case, according to sources close to the deal.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Bill Rigby)</p> | US Sues to Block Halliburton-Baker Hughes Merger | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/04/06/us-sues-to-block-halliburton-baker-hughes-merger.html | 2016-04-06 | 0 |
<p>Early results from a Brookings Institution study on the First Amendment’s standing among college students foreshadow an ominous future for free speech rights.</p>
<p>University of California at Los Angeles professor and Brookings senior fellow <a href="/topics/john-villasenor/" type="external">John Villasenor</a> released preliminary findings this week on the free exchange of ideas at universities. The scholar said his poll of 1,500 current undergraduate students at U.S. four-year colleges and universities was so “disturbing” that he wanted to “get some of the key results out into the public sphere immediately.”</p>
<p>“Freedom of expression is deeply imperiled on U.S. campuses,” the professor said Monday. “In fact, despite protestations to the contrary (often with statements like ‘we fully support the First Amendment, but…), freedom of expression is clearly not, in practice, available on many campuses, including many public campuses that have First Amendment obligations.”</p>
<p>Some questions <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/09/18/views-among-college-students-regarding-the-first-amendment-results-from-a-new-survey/" type="external">included</a>:</p>
<p>Results <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-chilling-study-shows-how-hostile-college-students-are-toward-free-speech/2017/09/18/cbb1a234-9ca8-11e7-9083-fbfddf6804c2_story.html?tid=ss_tw&amp;utm_term=.120bee0de6c2" type="external">were</a> as follows:</p>
<p><a href="/news/2017/sep/6/nina-farnia-national-lawyers-guild-of-san-francisc/" type="external">SEE ALSO: ‘We are all antifa,’ National Lawyers Guild of San Francisco says</a></p>
<p>“These results are notable for several reasons,” <a href="/topics/john-villasenor/" type="external">Mr. Villasenor</a> said. “First, the fraction of students who view the use of violence as acceptable is extremely high. While percentages in the high teens and 20s are ‘low’ relative to what they could be, it’s important to remember that this question is asking about the acceptability of committing violence in order to silence speech. Any number significantly above zero is concerning.”</p>
<p>The Brookings survey took place between Aug. 17 and Aug. 31, 2017, and involved a geographically diverse population across 49 states and the District of Columbia.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. <a href="http://license.icopyright.net/3.7280?icx_id=/news/2017/sep/19/thugocracy-rising-19-of-college-students-support-v/" type="external">Click here for reprint permission</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Thugocracy rising: 19% of college students support violence to silence dissent, study shows | true | http://washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/19/thugocracy-rising-19-of-college-students-support-v/ | 2017-09-19 | 0 |
<p>Update: George McGovern <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/politics/george-mcgovern-a-democratic-presidential-nominee-and-liberal-stalwart-dies-at-90.html?pagewanted=all" type="external">died</a> in Sioux Falls, S.D., early Sunday morning.</p>
<p>Certain people throughout history are destined, at least in the short term, to become synonymous with lost causes. This strengthens, rather than diminishes, the principles by which they lived.</p>
<p>A presidential election can be thought of as a referendum on national values. When Sen. George McGovern suffered a landslide defeat to President Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election, it signaled a nationwide rejection of liberalism. It is difficult to blame the American public of the early ’70s. Democratic presidents, then in place for a decade, effectively started the Vietnam War, a disastrous decision that helped end nearly 30 years of confidence in elected leaders that had built up since the social welfare programs of the New Deal. Now, the public had little reason to trust its elected leaders. Predictably, voters threw out the incumbent party in 1968 and elected a Republican.</p>
<p>Full knowledge of the Watergate break-in, in which Nixon paid men to collect information from the Democratic National Committee headquarters, was less than a year away when he was re-elected in 1972. Americans had no reason to believe the man was an outright crook. But he turned out to be. And the scandal that resulted, combined with President Ford’s pardon of Nixon after he resigned, diminished the public’s trust in government even further and made cynicism a greater part of the national fabric.</p>
<p />
<p>It might not have been necessary. During the campaign he eventually lost, McGovern, a decorated World War II pilot, called for the end of the Vietnam War, amnesty for draft evaders and a 37 percent reduction in spending on the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned about when he left office in 1961. During a Senate speech in 1963 that marked him as the first member to challenge the U.S. military’s growing involvement in Vietnam, McGovern said:</p>
<p>“The current dilemma in Vietnam is a clear demonstration of the limitations of military power … [Current U.S. involvement] is a policy of moral debacle and political defeat. … The trap we have fallen into there will haunt us in every corner of this revolutionary world if we do not properly appraise its lessons.”</p>
<p>McGovern was not immune to political pressure, however. As a senator he voted in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave President Lyndon B. Johnson authority to escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam. McGovern later explained that his first instinct was to vote no, but that he became convinced it was important to support Johnson politically. He went on to express remorse for the decision. After spending three weeks in Vietnam in 1965, McGovern decided “not merely to dissent, but to crusade” against the war.</p>
<p>He attempted to end the conflict through legislation, criticizing his colleagues who refused to do so during a speech that included the following admirable denunciation:</p>
<p>“Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reeks of blood. Every senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval and all across our land — young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or faces or hopes. There are not very many of these blasted and broken boys who think this war is a glorious adventure. Do not talk to them about bugging out, or national honor or courage. It does not take any courage at all for a congressman, or a senator, or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed. But we are responsible for those young men and their lives and their hopes. And if we do not end this damnable war those young men will some day curse us for our pitiful willingness to let the executive carry the burden that the Constitution places on us.”</p>
<p>McGovern’s amendment failed, but statements like that made him into a hero among progressives. They did not, however, endear him to his colleagues. Believing now that only a president could bring the war to an end, McGovern pointed his crusade toward the White House. He lost. The war lasted more than four additional years, and took thousands more American and Vietnamese lives.</p>
<p>Earlier this week, McGovern’s family reported that the 90-year-old had been admitted to hospice care and subsequently became unresponsive. He is not expected to live long. McGovern’s impending death gives us the occasion to consider the direction America might have taken if the 1972 referendum on values had not selected a leader in favor of war and money but instead had put into power a man who exhibited empathy. As was <a href="" type="internal">said</a> in the 2005 documentary “One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern”:</p>
<p>Can you imagine if McGovern had become president? Can you imagine a world without Watergate, without yellow ribbons, without Madison Avenue-induced patriotism? Can you imagine a world that wasn’t hungry?</p>
<p>With that earnest endorsement, we honor George McGovern in his final days as our Truthdigger of the Week.</p>
<p>See a lengthy conversation between McGovern and Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer held in late 2009 <a href="" type="internal">here</a>.</p>
<p /> | Truthdigger of the Week: George McGovern | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/truthdigger-of-the-week-george-mcgovern/ | 2012-10-21 | 4 |
<p />
<p>What’s some <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/us/politics/12nevada.html" type="external">voter disenfranchisement</a> on the way to a primary victory?</p>
<p>Nevada’s state teachers union and six Las Vegas area residents filed a lawsuit late Friday that could make it harder for many members of the state’s huge hotel workers union to vote in the hotly contested Jan. 19 Democratic caucus in Nevada.</p>
<p>The 13-page lawsuit in federal district court here comes two days after the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Nevada endorsed Senator Barack Obama, a blow to Mrs. Clinton…</p>
<p>The lawsuit argues that the Nevada Democratic Party’s decision, decided late last year, to create at-large precincts inside nine Las Vegas resorts on caucus day violates the state’s election laws and creates a system in which voters at the at-large precincts can elect more delegates than voters at other precincts…</p>
<p>The at-large precincts are being established because thousands of hotel workers cannot leave work to participate in the midday caucuses in their home precincts. The Nevada State Education Association has said it would not endorse any Democrat, but some of its top officials have endorsed Mrs. Clinton. The association’s deputy executive director, Debbie Cahill, for instance, was a founding member of Senator Clinton’s Nevada Women’s Leadership Council.</p>
<p>I know a number of Democrats who don’t mind Hillary Clinton or her policies, but hate the way she and her campaign <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/01/6786_desperate_in_nh_1.html" type="external">play the game</a> of politics. Filing a lawsuit ( <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2007/12/6601_keeping_the_oba.html" type="external">through surrogates</a>, <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2007/12/6535_clinton_support_1.html" type="external">of course</a>) to hinder the turnout of a union that has endorsed her opponent is a great example. Of course, I suspect that those same Democrats won’t mind if HRC or any other Democratic candidate plays this sort of hardball with the Republican candidate in the general…</p>
<p /> | Clinton Supporters Sue to Suppress Turnout in Nevada | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2008/01/clinton-supporters-sue-suppress-turnout-nevada/ | 2008-01-13 | 4 |
<p />
<p>Alcoa (NYSE: AA) is one of the largest aluminum and parts makers. It's struggling through the commodity downturn while looking to break itself in two. For someone looking for a special situation it's an interesting story, but dividend investors sure don't have a whole lot to get excited about. Here are four "similar" companies offering more than Alcoa's meager 1.5% yield.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Alcoa logo. Source: Alcoa.</p>
<p>Steel yourselfThe core of Alcoa's business is aluminum. It makes the metal and specialty parts out of aluminum and other metals. But aluminum isn't the only metal that's been in the doldrums. Steel has been hit hard by the commodity downturn, too. But, surprisingly. that's why you might want to look at Nucor (NYSE: NUE) and Steel Dynamics (NASDAQ: STLD).</p>
<p>It's true that aluminum is displacing steel in many applications, but steel is still an important part of many industries, ranging from construction to automobile manufacturing. The big steelmakers plan to keep it that way, too, as they increasingly look to move upscale. For example, Nucor and Steel Dynamics are both working on specialty steel that's light and strong to maintain the metal's dominance in the auto sector.</p>
<p>In fact, moving up the "value chain" is a key goal for Nucor. For starters, it helps the company fend off the competitive threat from imports and alternative metals such as aluminum, but it also means it can charge more money for the steel it's selling as compared with more commodity-like products. As an example of the company's success, it was able to grow its shipments to the auto sector by 20% year over year in 2015. That's basically the same logic Alcoa's followed as it's built up its aluminum parts business. Steel Dynamics, meanwhile, is on the same bandwagon, with CEO Mark Millett noting that the company was able to achieve utilization of around 73% in the fourth quarter versus the industry's 65% partially because of its value add products.</p>
<p>Both Steel Dynamics and Nucor are profitable in industries where many competitors are bleeding red ink. And, perhaps most important here, Nucor yields around 3.8% (with a multi-decade record of annual disbursement inreases), and Steel Dynamics yields around 3.1%. In other words, you have two steel industry leaders that both more than double what Alcoa offers dividend investors. That's assuming, of course, that you're willing to step outside the aluminum space.</p>
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<p>Speaking of space ...Another company you might want to look at is 3.1% yielding Leggett &amp; Platt (NYSE: LEG). Leggett &amp; Platt is probably best known for making things such as bed springs and retail fixtures. However, in recent years it's pushed into new markets, including aerospace. That's one of the core growth markets for Alcoa.</p>
<p>The relatively small industrial company's business has been sluggish of late, as it deals with weak economic growth. However, its specialized products business, which houses its aerospace products, managed to grow revenues 7% last year and expand its EBIT margins. This segment, which makes up about a quarter of revenues, is by far Leggett's most profitable.</p>
<p>Like Nucor, Leggett has a multi-decade history of increasing its dividend each year. Couple that with a yield -- 3% -- twice as large as Alcoa's and this metal fabricator is worth a look if you have been interested in Alcoa but want more dividend income. Note, too, that Leggett doesn't make metal. It just makes parts, which is essentially like Alcoa's so-called Value Add business, which is set to be spun off later this year.</p>
<p>Sticking with aluminumIf you just can't get yourself to look at a metal other than aluminum, then you might want to dig into Kaiser Aluminum Corp. (NASDAQ: KALU). The company is much smaller than Alcoa but, like Alcoa's Value Add business, is focused on specialty aluminum parts. The aerospace and automotive sectors have been key growth engines for the company, with revenues in each sector expanding by an annualized rate of around 12% over the past decade. Such value added businesses represent around 60% of revenues.</p>
<p>The stock yields around 2.4%. Not as much of an uptick as offered by the other three companies, but it's still nearly a full percentage point more than Alcoa. And Kaiser just upped its dividend by 12%, another positive for dividend investors. Alcoa's dividend has been stagnant since falling to $0.12 a year per share in 2010.</p>
<p>That said, Kaiser's earnings this year are clouded by a big one-time item from the first quarter because of changes to its retirement plans. That, however, has little to do with its business results on an ongoing basis. So take 2015 results with a grain of salt. They aren't as bad as the GAAP numbers suggest.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/AA" type="external">AA</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>At the end of the day, if you're looking at Alcoa and feel the yield is a little light for your taste, there are other options for you to consider. Nucor and Steel Dynamics, while focused on a different metal, are both working to move up the value chain, much like what Alcoa has been doing with its business leading up to its pending breakup. Both offer yields that are at least twice as high as Alcoa's.</p>
<p>Leggett &amp; Platt, meanwhile, just does parts and has been looking to aerospace as a growth engine -- just like Alcoa. It yields more than twice as much as Aloca, too, if you can look outside the aluminum box. Even the aluminum buff, however, can find a higher yield at a company like Kaiser Aluminum, which is similar in nature to Alcoa's Value Add business and, like Leggett, is growing in the aerospace market.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/20/4-stocks-with-better-dividends-than-alcoa-inc.aspx" type="external">4 Stocks With Better Dividends Than Alcoa Inc. Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/ReubenGBrewer/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Reuben Brewer Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Nucor. The Motley Fool recommends Nucor. 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> | 4 Stocks With Better Dividends Than Alcoa Inc. | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/02/20/4-stocks-with-better-dividends-than-alcoa-inc.html | 2016-03-27 | 0 |
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce’s new president and CEO will be Ernie C’deBaca, who has been holding the position on an interim basis, the chamber announced Friday.</p>
<p>C’deBaca replaces Alex Romero, who retired effective April 28. Romero has been appointed as a University of New Mexico regent.</p>
<p>C’deBaca said Friday that the chamber, under his direction, would “continue to help small businesses to succeed.”</p>
<p>“Our mission has everything to do with economic development,” he said.</p>
<p>The chamber joins with others “to try to show a greater emphasis on buying local,” C’deBaca said.</p>
<p>Coming up in the next month or so will be a redesign of the Hispano chamber’s website so that it will be “more dynamic” and provide greater benefits for members, he said.</p>
<p>C’deBaca was a chamber board member for 12 years and was chairman in 2006.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Hispano Chamber of Commerce names new president | false | https://abqjournal.com/1023453/hispano-chamber-of-commerce-names-new-president.html | 2 |
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<p>Cracow—Somewhere on the far side of what Tom Wolfe called the Halusian Gulp, Father Francis X. Murphy, C.Ss.R., is reading the July 11 Washington Post and groaning—if, that is, his purgatorial purification has been effective.</p>
<p>For it was Father Murphy who, covering the Second Vatican Council for The New Yorker under the pseudonym “Xavier Rynne,” concocted the cowboys-and-Indians hermeneutic of all things Catholic that has plagued the mainstream media’s reporting and commentary on the Catholic Church for two generations: There are good-guy Catholics, known as “liberals” or “progressives,” who want to make the Church relevant to contemporary society and culture; and there are bad-guy Catholics, known as “conservatives” or “traditionalists,” who want to retreat into catacombs of intransigence because of their inability to grasp or comprehend a modern (and, latterly, postmodern) world they regard with horror.</p>
<p>Now, to be sure, a writer like Murphy, trying to explain the 21st ecumenical council in history to the generally secularized readership of The New Yorker, had a problem on his hands. How could even a gifted and witty scribe (which Murphy/Rynne was) explain, let alone make exciting, arcane debates over doctrine, often conducted in a strange vocabulary, for people who regarded “doctrine” as a synonym for “mindlessness” and “intellectual immaturity,” and in a culture where pragmatism and “technique” had conquered all? Murphy/Rynne had excellent inside sources in Rome, where he had long worked; what he needed was what would now be called—cue fingernails scraping down blackboard—a “narrative.” So Murphy/Rynne hit on a brilliant strategy, perfectly adapted to the Sixties and the middle years of Kennedy Camelot: treat Vatican II as a political contest between the forces of light and the forces of reaction; run everything and everybody at the council through those filters; and then watch readers acclaim, with one voice, “I get it!”</p>
<p>So, beginning 50 years ago this coming October, “Xavier Rynne”/Francis X. Murphy set in analytic concrete an interpretation of the Catholic Church, its internal affairs, and its engagement with public life that is ubiquitous in the 21st-century mainstream media—and not only in the United States. Here too in Poland, the cowboys-and-Indians hermeneutic dominates the national media, although the preferred good-guy/bad-guy categories are “open Church” and “closed Church.” The same nonsense prevails throughout the rest of Europe, even as the European Catholicism that most enthusiastically embraced the “progressive” or “open Church” model shrinks into ecclesial and public inconsequence.</p>
<p>The problem, of course, is that the cowboys-Indians/left-right optic is incapable of grappling with the fact that the Catholic Church is about true-and-false, not liberal-and-conservative. So why its long shelf life? The tenacity of the Rynne hermeneutic is, in a way, quite understandable. In a culture in which people imagine that religious conviction is a lifestyle choice of no more intellectual or moral consequence than the choice of a pet, it takes serious effort to grasp that what the Catholic Church teaches about the nature of God or the requisites for ministerial ordination is entirely different from the choice between a schnauzer and a dachshund. And in a secularized culture in which “choice” is the one sacred word, a Church that insists that its leadership teaches authoritatively is going to be easily portrayed as ham-handed, insensitive, out of step. Yet for all that the Rynne optic on matters Catholic is a perfect fit for postmodern America (as it was a perfect fit for the Sixties), its profligate use is too often a sign of intellectual laziness—and, I would suggest, a violation of a basic journalistic canon, according to which the reporter’s first task, like the historian’s, is to understand the subject as he, she, or it understands himself, herself, or itself.</p>
<p>The perceptual distortions the Rynne optic inevitably creates were on full display in a story in that July 11 Post about teachers at a Catholic Sunday school in the diocese of Arlington, Va., who had resigned rather than profess that they believed, and would teach, what the Catholic Church believes and teaches. One might, at first blush, think it entirely unexceptionable that the Catholic bishop of Arlington, who has responsibility for the integrity of the Catholic “brand” in his diocese, would require that teachers in his parish schools and Sunday schools believe and teach what the Church believes and teaches. But that was not the Post‘s view of the matter. Its reporter crafted a narrative straight out of the Rynne playbook and portrayed the dispute in Arlington as one between conscience-driven laity (women, of course) and an ecclesiastical establishment dominated by authoritarian males (who had not learned the lessons of ecclesiastical acquiescence to the Nazis, no less!). That the Catholic Church has not only the right but the responsibility to ensure that what is taught in its schools is what the teaching authority of the Church teaches to be true went completely unremarked in the story.</p>
<p>But why should it be remarked, if all this is just a matter of choice among opinions, none of which has any greater claim to authority than another? Why not assume that “conscience” is some kind of trump card that has nothing to do with truth? Why not parse the entire Arlington situation (and thousands of others like it, over the decades) as a political struggle pitting crusty conservatives against heroic liberals?</p>
<p>When Rynne/Murphy created the liberals-vs.-conservatives story line of modern Catholicism in the fall of 1962, there was, it must be said, something to it. Pope John XXIII did open the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962, by appealing to history as the “teacher of life” and gently scolding the “prophets of gloom” who saw nothing but disaster in modernity. The early days of Vatican II were dominated by a political struggle in which entrenched curial forces committed to a specific way of doing theology and a specific understanding of the Church and its authority battled for control of the council’s agenda with bishops who had more pastoral experience and whose thinking was being shaped by theologians open to a variety of methods in Catholic theology. Echoes of that struggle, which was won by the forces Rynne portrayed (and not without reason) as the good guys, continued until the council closed on December 8, 1965.</p>
<p>All of that can be freely admitted. At the same time, it is also true that elements of Rynne’s “good guy” faction then went more than a bit overboard, imagining Vatican II as a council of rupture with the past—a new starting point for the Church’s self-understanding and teaching, untethered to an authoritative tradition and taking its intellectual cues, not from the Bible or the Creeds, but from the ambient public culture. And when that began to happen, some of Rynne’s good guys—including the present pope, then a theological adviser to the cardinal archbishop of Cologne, an influential council father—foresaw deep trouble and began to speak and write of Vatican II as a council that had to be understood in continuity with the past. And according to this optic, while Vatican II certainly stretched and expanded older forms of Catholic self-understanding, it did so in an organic way, developing what was already implicit in the Church’s doctrine. Vatican II did not, in other words, reinvent the Catholic Church. For the Church had no authority to reinvent the constitutional form it had been given by Christ himself, just as it had no authority to reinvent the truths that the Church had grasped over the centuries under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.</p>
<p>Some things, in other words, were not matters of “choice.” Some things were settled. And while the Church’s understanding of settled things could be deepened, the settled things th emselves were not ultimately fungible.</p>
<p>The party of ultimate fungibility is dying in the Catholic Church. It has almost no resonance in those places where the Church is growing rapidly, like Africa. It has proven itself a pastoral failure in Europe. It has proven itself intellectually sterile throughout the developed world, where a younger generation of theologians is far more interested in exploring the Catholic tradition than deconstructing it. There is ample room in the Catholic Church for theological exploration, but in the future, that exploration is going to take place within certain boundaries; and when those boundaries are breached, the “brand” is going to be defended. This is not so much a matter of authority—as in “Who’s in charge?”—as it is a matter of doctrinal integrity, clear identity, and evangelical purpose. For both doctrinal integrity and clear identity are essential if the Catholic Church is to become the vibrant evangelical movement it must be in order to preach the Gospel effectively and form communities of decency and compassion in an increasingly hostile cultural environment.</p>
<p>So, as we approach the golden anniversary of the opening of Vatican II, perhaps it’s time to lay “Xavier Rynne” to rest once and for all. There are a virtual infinity of interesting Catholic stories available to inquiring journalists; virtually none of them makes sense if parsed in liberal-vs.-conservative terms. Rynne/Murphy had a good run. But the days when that optic on all things Catholic made even a modicum of sense are long past. Only the intellectually lazy or ideologically besotted will fail to recognize that—and to move beyond it, into that real engagement with history for which Blessed John XXIII rightly called.</p>
<p>George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.</p> | Catholics and Modernity | false | https://eppc.org/publications/catholics-and-modernity/ | 1 |
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<p>Aug. 2 (UPI) — A small plane made an emergency landing on a crowded beach in Portugal on Wednesday, killing two sunbathers, maritime authorities said.</p>
<p>The plane landed on a beach in Caparica, 20 miles south of Lisbon, killing an 8-year-old girl and a 50-year-old man on the beach.</p>
<p>The two occupants of the aircraft were uninjured, the Portuguese maritime authority said.</p>
<p>Maritime police, rescue swimmers and emergency medical vehicles responded to the scene.</p> | Emergency plane landing kills 2 on Portuguese beach | false | https://newsline.com/emergency-plane-landing-kills-2-on-portuguese-beach/ | 2017-08-02 | 1 |
<p>This week, small-cap biotech company Flexion (NASDAQ: FLXN)&#160;received its first FDA approval for Zilretta, a&#160;non-opioid sustained-release&#160;steroid injection for knee pain. In this week's episode of <a href="https://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=6a6cc82a-af2a-11e7-a56d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Industry Focus: Healthcare Opens a New Window.</a>, analysts Kristine Harjes and Michael Douglass explain why this approval is so exciting for patients and investors, where Flexion could go from here, and the most important things for owners and investors who are interested in the company to look out for in the next few quarters. The hosts also talk about Mylan (NASDAQ: MYL)&#160;and Teva Pharmaceutical's (NYSE: TEVA) legal battle over Copaxone, and what it means for both companies that the FDA has now approved Mylan's biosimilar of the drug before the lawsuits have wrapped up.</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</p>
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<p>10 stocks we like better than Flexion TherapeuticsWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
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<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of October 9, 2017</p>
<p>This video was recorded on Oct. 11, 2017.</p>
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<p>Kristine Harjes: Welcome to Industry Focus, the podcast that dives into a different sector of the stock market every day. It's&#160;Wednesday, Oct. [11]. I'm your host, Kristine Harjes,&#160;and I'm joined today by my esteemed colleague and good friend,&#160;healthcare analyst Michael Douglass. Welcome&#160;back to the show, Michael!</p>
<p>Michael&#160;Douglass: Thanks, Kristine!&#160;It's great to be back!</p>
<p>Harjes: I'm very excited to have you here with me today. We have two topics on deck. The first one relates to biosimilars, and the second one is about a new drug approval for a company called&#160;Flexion Therapeutics, which we will get to&#160;after we first cover biosimilars. Do&#160;you want to kick us&#160;off with that first topic, Michael?</p>
<p>Douglass: Sure. It's a long story.</p>
<p>Harjes: So settle in.</p>
<p>Douglass: Yeah,&#160;exactly. This is going to be a long episode -- no.&#160;Teva Pharmaceuticals has a drug called Copaxone. It's the market share leader in&#160;multiple sclerosis. It's&#160;very popular and pretty expensive, and it makes Teva&#160;a lot of money, about $4 billion a year. Now, Copaxone is about 20% of Teva's sales,&#160;but because it's such a high-margin drug, it&#160;actually makes up a much bigger percentage of their overall profit. Copaxone is&#160;formulated in both 20 mg and 40 mg doses. The 20 mg dose&#160;basically meant once-per-day dosing. Teva moved over to the 40 mg dose&#160;once the patents for the 20 mg dose expired, allowing&#160;generic competition to come in. So essentially, what they did was they took this drug that could be dosed once a day and changed it to a drug that could be dosed&#160;every two days.&#160;So, suddenly, there was a difference,&#160;and a lot of patients converted over, and they used&#160;this to protect their market share.</p>
<p>This is something that you see a lot of&#160;different pharmaceutical companies doing&#160;for a lot of different drugs&#160;and in a lot of different ways -- either dosing,&#160;safety issues, in some way&#160;trying to make the drug a little bit better so&#160;they can protect themselves from market share reductions by generic competition. However, Teva's 40 mg Copaxone dose is now in peril, because Mylan has a&#160;biosimilar that has been approved.</p>
<p>Harjes: Right. Just&#160;a little bit of background on biosimilars -- this is&#160;something that we talk about all the time on the show, so&#160;if you're a regular&#160;listener, feel free to tune out for the next 20 seconds. But just in case we have any newer listeners with us, biosimilars are&#160;essentially really complex generic drugs. Traditionally,&#160;if you have a small-molecule drug, you can make a&#160;generic version of it very easily. It's just a chemical formula that you repeat, whereas,&#160;if you have a more complex biologic drug like Copaxone, it's&#160;more difficult to duplicate, so&#160;then you get&#160;the word "biosimilar" because it's actually not an exact replica. It's merely similar. It&#160;functions exactly the same, and you do have to prove that. There's&#160;a whole set of safety regulations that the FDA has set up. So that's what we're talking about here when we say&#160;biosimilar.</p>
<p>Mylan is&#160;deciding to do something that is called&#160;launching at risk. This is&#160;an interesting choice of strategy.&#160;I can't say that I disagree with it. What it means is,&#160;they are currently tied up in court with Teva about&#160;whether or not&#160;they are allowed to launch this 40 mg dose. Mylan's&#160;argument is that, "Hey,&#160;your patent shouldn't renew just because you made a longer-lasting dose&#160;of this exact same drug." So they think they should be able to launch their generic version of it, their biosimilar. Teva is&#160;obviously on the opposite side of that. They don't want to just hand over&#160;all of their sales to some generic copycat version&#160;that can come and undercut them on price and steal&#160;all of their market share.</p>
<p>They're&#160;currently still in court duking this out,&#160;but the FDA gave Mylan&#160;the green light for both the 20 mg and the 40 mg&#160;versions of their biosimilar,&#160;meaning that they're now allowed to launch it, and they just&#160;have to accept the potential risk of,&#160;if they lose the lawsuit, if Teva wins their appeal, they might have to pay up a bunch in damages to Teva.</p>
<p>Douglass: Yes. And&#160;just to give you a bit of background,&#160;AstraZeneca sued&#160;Apotex after Apotex did an at-risk launch of&#160;a generic form of&#160;Prilosec from 2003 to 2007. The&#160;district court in 2015&#160;awarded AstraZeneca 50% of Apotex's gross margin on the&#160;generic form of that drug as damages. So that gives you a bit of a sense as to how much Mylan&#160;might end up having to pay up.</p>
<p>Now,&#160;things are a little bit different here.&#160;Prilosec was a small-molecule drug. So the generic form of it was a lot easier to formulate, as we've&#160;already discussed. For a biosimilar, even if Mylan lost -- and of course, there's no guarantee of that -- it's a&#160;much more complicated bit of pricing&#160;because there's so much more R&amp;D that has to go&#160;into creating that biosimilar drug. So I think even if this plays out against Mylan, we could see a very different sort of result in terms of&#160;damages from the legal challenge. But&#160;of course, we're not lawyers, and&#160;we're not very good at predicting the future, so&#160;it's hard to say from here.</p>
<p>Harjes: Unfortunately. I wish we were.</p>
<p>Douglass: I do, too.</p>
<p>Harjes: It'd make our jobs a lot easier if we were just right&#160;every single time.</p>
<p>Douglass: [laughs] How do they do that?</p>
<p>Harjes: One more&#160;detail that I want to throw out about this story before we move on is, there&#160;actually already is a different company here that has a 20 mg biosimilar of Copaxone. This is a company called&#160;Momenta (NASDAQ: MNTA), which is&#160;partnered with&#160;Novartis on&#160;the biosimilar. So that's another thing to consider. It's&#160;not hugely important, because Momenta only&#160;reported under $20 million in revenue from their 20 mg dosage in the last quarter. So, not huge. But it's still&#160;something worth watching, because if Mylan does get their 40 mg&#160;biosimilar out there -- and by all means, they're going to do that -- that'll&#160;probably steal a bunch of market share from the 20 mg dose.</p>
<p>When you think about&#160;the type of patients who will start on a biosimilar as opposed to the brand-name version, it's usually your newer patient starts. Those are&#160;the ones that are directly competing here.&#160;It's the drug from Momenta, the 20 mg version, versus now this new Mylan 40 mg version. If&#160;you have the choice between&#160;taking something once every three days versus every day, the patient's&#160;convenience is going to win every time.</p>
<p>Douglass: And&#160;I think it's important as well to take a step&#160;even further back and really consider that this issue with&#160;biosimilars with Mylan and Teva and also with&#160;Pfizer&#160;and&#160;J&amp;J, as&#160;Todd and I discussed a couple of weeks ago, is&#160;really highlighting how different, in a lot of ways,&#160;the market dynamics are with biosimilars versus&#160;traditional small-molecule generics. This is really a new approval pathway in the&#160;United States. There's a lot of litigation going on&#160;because it's still so new. And&#160;also, frankly, because the difference in price isn't, so far, as substantial. We're not talking 90% off or more. It's playing out&#160;differently. I think this is going to really help&#160;all of us as investors better understand how each of these companies, when they lose&#160;patent protection on a brand-new product, what that&#160;trajectory is going to be and how&#160;it's going to be different from traditional small-molecule generics.</p>
<p>It's&#160;a really interesting time to be in&#160;healthcare because of all this transition,&#160;but it also means there's a lot less understanding of what that means today. In a year or two years,&#160;I think we'll have a much better sense, and we can,&#160;all of us as investors, much better model out what we think will&#160;happen to each of these companies as&#160;they lose patent protection on their drugs.</p>
<p>Harjes: Absolutely. Bottom line for&#160;investors: This is good news for Mylan. Their shares soared about&#160;16% on the news of the FDA green light. This&#160;happened on Oct. 4. Shares of Teva,&#160;on the other hand, were down about 17%. So,&#160;not so good news for Teva, which is kind of a bummer, because that's&#160;not a company that's doing well lately. So, more bad news for Teva, and&#160;a little bit of good news for Mylan,&#160;which could certainly use it after their&#160;EpiPen scandal that's still&#160;plaguing them a decent bit.</p>
<p>Before we move on to our&#160;second topic of the day, Flexion&#160;Therapeutics, a couple of times through this episode I have had a sip of the water in my mug,&#160;and I could hear the bubbles,&#160;and I'm not sure if you could actually hear them&#160;through the microphone, but&#160;it reminded me that I wanted to talk a little bit about what this water is,&#160;because it's not just any water. This sounds like an ad read, but it's not.</p>
<p>Douglass: [laughs] To be clear, we are talking.</p>
<p>Harjes: I believe Vince on his Consumer Goods show a couple of weeks ago&#160;mentioned that a company called Topo Chico was&#160;bought out by&#160;Coca-Cola. So Dylan Lewis, the Tech show host,&#160;bought us a bunch of Topo Chico to try out. Michael, you had it. What did you think?</p>
<p>Douglass: It tasted like&#160;Perrier, but better. And I struggle to say that,&#160;because I have a lot of really positive memories of Perrier, drinking it in&#160;Paris while my wife and I were there. It was very romantic; it was very nice. But this had a little something extra.&#160;I can't quite quantify what it was. It&#160;certainly wasn't my expectations going in&#160;that it would be materially different.&#160;I figured mineral water is mineral water. But there was something different about the flavor,&#160;even though, when I look at the ingredients, they're exactly the same, or&#160;as far as I can tell, they are.</p>
<p>Harjes: The&#160;ingredients are water and bubbles.</p>
<p>Douglass: [laughs] Right. It&#160;doesn't get much more vanilla, if you will, than that.</p>
<p>Harjes: I mean,&#160;I really liked it. That's why I'm still drinking it while we film this. It's so bubbly. That, to me, is what&#160;distinguishes it from the other fizzy waters that I've had, and also why I felt the need to apologize for the bubbly noises that I'm not sure might be emanating through the speakers.&#160;[laughs] Anyway.</p>
<p>Douglass: [laughs] Moving on to Flexion.</p>
<p>Harjes: This is when the Healthcare show tries to&#160;talk about consumer goods, this is what happens. Back to healthcare, our wheelhouse. A&#160;company called Flexion&#160;Therapeutics, which is a fairly small-cap stock -- I believe their market cap is around $880 million when I checked this morning. Their ticker is FLXN, if you're looking to find them. We&#160;talked about them on July 25, as one of our three stocks&#160;trading under $30. And&#160;they were well under $30 at that point, but they're&#160;actually getting pretty darn close to their $30 mark after&#160;they announced an FDA approval for Zilretta, a&#160;non-opioid sustained-release&#160;steroid injection for knee pain.</p>
<p>Douglass: Right. I think&#160;a little bit of background, two different areas, is important here. The last time is,&#160;last time they hit a market cap this big,&#160;or even particularly close to this big, there was&#160;a lot of talk about&#160;Sanofi&#160;(NYSE: SNY) buying them out. Now,&#160;of course, your question is probably, why would Sanofi want to buy them out? Well, in part because Sanofi has a competitor drug called&#160;Synvisc-One, which&#160;brings us, actually, to the second piece, which is, knee-pain&#160;treatment generally starts with ibuprofen or aspirin. That's what happens when you have an ache&#160;and you don't quite know what to do with it. Then&#160;you go to corticosteroid injections, and then&#160;ultimately opioids. This is a&#160;non-opioid drug, so it gives an&#160;alternative treatment, which, for anyone concerned about painkillers in general, is really of interest, both as&#160;consumers and investors.</p>
<p>Now, Sanofi's competing drug,&#160;Synvisc-One, brought in 116 million euros last quarter for Sanofi. So there's&#160;certainly some opportunity here. When you see,&#160;most analysts are saying&#160;that they think Zilretta&#160;could be worth $500 [million] to $600 million a year in peak annual sales, which would put it about on part with what Synvisc-One is bringing in now, plus or minus.</p>
<p>Harjes: Yeah. So, you can see Sanofi being&#160;a little bit nervous here. Whether or not Sanofi would now buy up Flexion,&#160;that remains to be seen. My hunch would be probably not. They looked at the data&#160;from this drug and decided they weren't going to make&#160;the acquisition. If they wanted to make it now&#160;just because the FDA has now green-lighted&#160;this drug, they would have to pay up a heck of a lot more. On&#160;the old buyout speculation, the stock was rising&#160;to about its current levels of&#160;just under a billion dollars. So given that now it's trading on its own merits at&#160;nearly a billion dollars, Sanofi&#160;would probably have to pay quite a bit more than that to acquire this drug&#160;and the company with it. So it remains to be seen whether Sanofi actually will&#160;actually suffer a hit due to the new competition.</p>
<p>But&#160;the drug did perform pretty well&#160;in trials. It reduced pain in patients with&#160;osteoarthritis of the knee&#160;by a median of 50%,&#160;which is a lot, at the 12-week mark. It's&#160;set at a fairly reasonable price.&#160;I don't have in front of me what Synvisc-One is priced at, but Zilretta will be priced at&#160;wholesale of $570 a dose, which,&#160;of course, in healthcare, that doesn't mean that's&#160;the final price.</p>
<p>Douglass: That's doesn't mean that much.</p>
<p>Harjes: It translates to a net price of about $500 per dose, which ends up being about $2,000 per year. And&#160;this is a huge indication. When you look at that price,&#160;it's not the price that you would see for some rare-disease drug, or&#160;a lot of your oncology drugs. But&#160;this is a condition that about 14 million Americans suffer from, and about 5 million of them receive&#160;treatment via injections -- words are&#160;getting difficult -- every single year.</p>
<p>Douglass: It's all those bubbles.</p>
<p>Harjes: That's what it is. So when you also consider that there's a potential for off-label usage, Flexion is studying this same drug in use in hips and shoulders, which&#160;you could probably see doctors already&#160;starting to prescribe in the&#160;off-label setting,&#160;particularly as the trials continue and&#160;we start to get positive data there.</p>
<p>Douglass: Hopefully.</p>
<p>Harjes: Yeah, fingers crossed.&#160;But regardless,&#160;it's absolutely expected to become the standard of care in&#160;osteoarthritis knee pain and achieve blockbuster status.</p>
<p>Douglass: Yeah. So this is a big deal for Flexion. For Sanofi, it's not necessarily that big of a deal -- 116 million euros per quarter is a lot of money, to be clear,&#160;but if you're the size of Sanofi, it's&#160;not really that big. This is definitely really good news for Flexion. It's&#160;potentially some bad news for Sanofi. But not in any big, material kind of way. Also, it's important to note, Flexion has a bunch of former Sanofi execs in places in&#160;management, so you can probably feel pretty good that they have some sense of what Sanofi's mindset&#160;could be. At least that's what I would hope and expect.</p>
<p>Harjes: Yeah,&#160;and those sorts of connections will also be really important now that they have the&#160;approval, they can go out into the field and market this drug,&#160;hopefully&#160;with some relationships that have already existed. Of course,&#160;it'll take time to mobilize the sales force. So the first few quarters of sales won't be terribly exciting. But it'll be something that we watch as this drug&#160;ramps up to its full potential.</p>
<p>Particularly because of how devastating&#160;the opioid epidemic has been, to see news like this of a non-opioid drug&#160;get approval and hopefully&#160;start to do really well, that's good news&#160;from a human perspective, from an&#160;investing perspective. It's definitely all good stuff here.</p>
<p>As far as the company goes, they&#160;look like they have a pretty good balance sheet. They have $360 million in cash as of June 30,&#160;last time they reported. They have a little bit of debt, $150 million in debt. It's&#160;definitely one that I'll be watching. I think it's worth&#160;monitoring those first couple of quarters, seeing how it does competing against Synvisc-One. But it's still&#160;a pretty small company&#160;working in a huge indication. So it's definitely a watch-list item for me.</p>
<p>Douglass: Yeah. When a&#160;company is trading at, let's say roughly 2 times peak sales, it&#160;starts getting interesting. And I would also throw out there, for anyone who's&#160;currently invested in Flexion or&#160;plans to be watching it in the next couple of quarters, keep in mind, sales force&#160;isn't supposed to be in the field until some time in November. So this first quarter is going to look bad. Not because they're&#160;doing anything wrong, necessarily, just because it takes time.</p>
<p>And even so, it takes a few quarters for that ramp to really happen, so&#160;even if this becomes the new standard of care and even if it knocks Synvisc-One out of the park, which we don't necessarily expect it to&#160;demolish it or anything like that, that still takes time. So make sure that&#160;you have patience, that you're watching cash burn in terms of how much&#160;all that extra marketing expense starts draining that cash balance that Kristine&#160;just talked about, and&#160;remember that we're long-term investors here. We're&#160;not looking for this quarter or the next quarter or the quarter after sales. We're&#160;looking for what that can tell us about a couple of years down the road.</p>
<p>Harjes: That's&#160;a great takeaway. Thank you, Michael. And&#160;thank you for being here with me today.</p>
<p>Douglass: Thanks&#160;for having me.</p>
<p>Harjes: As always, people on the program may have interests 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. Today's show was&#160;produced by Taylor Harris, who's&#160;filling in for Austin Morgan. And we&#160;really did not make it easy on him, so thank you, Taylor. Austin, hope all is well with you. We miss you. For Michael Douglass, I'm Kristine Harjes. Thanks for listening, and Fool on!</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFAnchor/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=6a6cc82a-af2a-11e7-a56d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Kristine Harjes Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Johnson &amp; Johnson. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFEnterprise/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=6a6cc82a-af2a-11e7-a56d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Michael Douglass Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Johnson &amp; Johnson. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Johnson &amp; Johnson. The Motley Fool recommends Momenta Pharmaceuticals and Mylan. 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=6a6cc82a-af2a-11e7-a56d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | A New FDA Approval Sends Small Cap Flexion Soaring | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/10/13/new-fda-approval-sends-small-cap-flexion-soaring.html | 2017-10-13 | 0 |
<p>Aug. 15 (UPI) — If the U.S. military implements President <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Donald_Trump/" type="external">Donald Trump</a>‘s directive to ban transgender people from serving, it would cost the U.S. government about $960 million, according to a report.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.palmcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/cost-of-firing-trans-troops.pdf" type="external">study released</a> by the Palm Center estimates the cost to replace the transgender service members would be 114 times more than the $8.4 million to provide them care for gender transition.</p>
<p>“President Trump said that he wants to fire honorably serving transgender troops in order to save money, but that begs the question, ‘How much money would it cost to implement the president’s vision?'” Palm Center executive director Aaron Belkin said. “It would be much more expensive to fire transgender troops then to let them keep serving. The president wants to spend $1 to save a dime, and that really doesn’t make much business sense.”</p>
<p>The other three co-authors are current and retired professors at the Naval Postgraduate School: Frank J. Barrett, Mark J. Eitelberg and Marc J. Ventresca.</p>
<p>The San Francisco-based Palm Center is a research institute focused on dialogue about critical and controversial public policy issues. It estimates the number of transgender service members at 12,000.</p>
<p>To come up with the $960 million estimate, the authors multiplied the number of those service members by the average cost of recruiting and training a replacement for those discharged. The transition-related healthcare figures came from the Rand Corp.</p>
<p>They also considered the work of a Blue Ribbon Commission in 2006 consisting of a former secretary of defense and other military experts who estimated the cost of implementing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality at $363.8 million, or $38,872 per person.</p>
<p>In 2011, the Government Accountability Office issued a report on costs associated with “don’t ask, don’t tell” over six years, 2004-09. It estimated the cost of discharging 3,664 service members for homosexuality was $193.3 million, or $52,800 per separation.</p>
<p>The number of transgender service members and their healthcare costs vary with other sources.</p>
<p>Rand estimates the number of transgender service members at 1,300; the Williams Institute of Law estimates 15,500.</p>
<p>The Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group, estimates direct and indirect costs of allowing transgender people to serve be $3.7 billion over 10 years.</p>
<p>In the Palm Center study, the authors determined the average annual cost of providing transition-related care for the entire population of transgender troops is $656 per transgender service member per year. It noted most transgender personnel don’t require transition-related care for their entire military careers.</p>
<p>Trump announced a ban on transgender service members in a <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890193981585444864?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&amp;ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2017%2F07%2F26%2Fpolitics%2Ftrump-military-transgender%2Findex.html" type="external">tweet on July 26:</a>: “After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.”</p>
<p>A day later, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford issued a letter that the policy would not be changed until the White House issued further “guidance.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/08/09/5-military-members-sue-Trump-over-transgender-directive/1951502300307/" type="external">On Wednesday</a>, five unnamed military service members filed suit against Trump and other top military brass over the directive.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/14/politics/mattis-transgender-ban-military-trump/index.html" type="external">On Monday</a>, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said that the White House had still not provided policy guidance on the matter and the Pentagon was still studying it.</p>
<p>“The policy is going to address whether or not transgenders can serve under what conditions, what medical support they require, how much time would they be perhaps non-deployable leaving others to pick up their share of everything. There’s a host of issues and I’m learning more about this than I ever thought I would and it’s obviously very complex to include the privacy issues which we respect,” Mattis said.</p> | Study: Transgender troops ban could cost $960M | false | https://newsline.com/study-transgender-troops-ban-could-cost-960m/ | 2017-08-15 | 1 |
<p>It must be tough being the child of Bill and Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>Conservative activist Robert Morrow attended Chelsea Clinton’s book signing in Austin, Texas Friday with camera in hand.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>“Has your mother ever told you that you’re the daughter of Webb Hubbell, and not Bill Clinton,” he said while Chelsea was looking down, signing a copy of “It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired &amp; Get Going.”</p>
<p>The question was in reference to a long-time rumor alleging Chelsea was the result of an affair between the Clinton lawyer and Hillary.</p>
<p>Looking up, smiling, Chelsea responded, “I am so proud to be my parents’ daughter,” without actually naming her parents.</p>
<p>The store staff thanked Morrow, seemingly as a way get him to move on, but obliged another question.</p>
<p>Referring to Clinton’s book being geared towards kids, Morrow asked, “Would you say Bill Clinton also targets teenage girls, except for sexual reasons?”</p>
<p>“I would say my book is really resonating with kids,” Clinton responded. “I was at the Ann Richards School earlier today and I’m so grateful that it’s resonating to the young girls and the young boys that I’ve been talking to across the country.”</p>
<p>“Thank you so much,” the book store staff said repeatedly after Morrow’s question.</p> | VIDEO: Chelsea asked if Bill preys on young girls | true | http://theamericanmirror.com/video-chelsea-asked-if-bill-preys-on-young-girls/ | 2015-10-12 | 0 |
<a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/034341.shtml?tswind120#contents" type="external">National Hurricane Center (NHC)</a> predicts substantial coastal flooding&#160;from Florida to the Carolinas. Projected rainfall: The storm is expected to veer away from the coast after hitting the south and mid-Atlantic&#160;states. Share on
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<a href="" type="internal">Email</a> | Hurricane Matthew to Hit US Coast Thursday | false | http://thewhim.com/hurricane-matthew-hit-us-coast-thursday/ | 2016-10-06 | 2 |
<p>President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attend the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball at the Washington Convention Center on January 20.</p>
<p>Former U.S. President George W. Bush looks out over Washington as his helicopter departs on January 20. Bush was heading to Andrews Air Force Base following the inauguration ceremonies for U.S. President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>Passengers wait to be rescued on the wings of a US Airways Airbus 320 jetliner that safely ditched in the frigid waters of the Hudson River in New York, after a flock of birds knocked out both of its engines.</p>
<p>Israeli soldiers mourn during the funeral of their comrade Alex Mashavisky at a cemetery in Beersheba on January 7. Mashavisky was killed during Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>Slumdog Millionaire lead actor Dev Patel and supporting actress Freida Pinto arrive at the 81st Academy Awards at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood on February 22.</p>
<p>Financier Bernard Madoff passes the gathered press as he arrived at federal court on March 12 in New York City.</p>
<p>Josef Fritzl covers his face as he arrives at the second day of his trial at the country court of St. Poelten on March 17 in Austria. The 73-year-old was on trial for murder, rape and incest after allegedly imprisoning his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathering seven children with her.</p>
<p>A Sri Lankan boy performs during a Muslim religious festival just as a bomb exploded in Akuressa on March 10. A suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber killed 14 people and wounded 35, including Sri Lanka's telecommunications minister.</p>
<p>Women stand with their Afghan hound before going into the parade ring during the Crufts dog show in Birmingham, England, on March 5.</p>
<p>Armed pirates took control of the French sailboat Tanit, including hostages Florent and Chloe Lemacon with their son Colin, off the coast of Somalia.</p>
<p>A man wears a decorated protective mask in hopes of avoiding the swine-flu outbreak in downtown Mexico City on April 27.</p>
<p>G-20 leaders Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdel Aziz, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, U.S. President Barack Obama, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and New Partnership for Africa's Development Meles Zenawi pose for a family photo during the G-20 summit at the ExCel Centre in London, on April 2.</p>
<p>Michelle Obama walks with Britain's Queen Elizabeth II at the reception at Buckingham Palace on April 1.</p>
<p>Soldiers from the U.S. Army First Battalion, 26th Infantry, take defensive positions after receiving fire from Taliban positions in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan's Kunar Province on May 11. Spc. Zachery Boyd of Fort Worth, Texas, far left, was wearing "I love NY" boxer shorts after rushing from his sleeping quarters to join his fellow platoon members.</p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of supporters of leading opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims there was voting fraud in Iran's election, turned out to protest the results at a mass rally in Azadi (Freedom) Square in Tehran, on June 15.</p>
<p>Janet Jackson, Paris Michael Katherine, La Toya Jackson, Jermaine Jackson and Prince Michael Jackson attend a memorial service for their brother and father, music legend Michael Jackson, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on July 7.</p>
<p>President Barack Obama's daughter Sasha hides behind the sofa as she sneaks up on him at the end of the day in the Oval Office on August 5.</p>
<p>Family members gather around the coffin of Senator Edward Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery on August 29. Democratic lion Kennedy was laid to rest in the burial grounds overlooking the U.S. Capitol, close to the graves of his slain brothers.</p>
<p>The freed Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, 57, is surrounded by his sons and grandsons and hugged by his mother and daughter at home in Tripoli, Libya, the day after his release from Scotland</p>
<p>U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is met with protesters with signs as he arrives to testify before the Congressional Oversight Panel on TARP on Capitol Hill on September 10.</p>
<p>Kanye West takes the microphone from Taylor Swift during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall on September 13.</p>
<p>Residents stand on electric wires to stay on high ground while others wade in neck-deep floodwaters caused by Typhoon Ondoy in Cainta Rizal, east of Manila on September 27. Nearly 60 people were killed, Manila was blacked out, and airline flights were suspended as the powerful typhoon battered the main Philippines island of Luzon.</p>
<p>Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Derrick Mason lands on his head after catching a touchdown pass as New England Patriots safety Brandon Meriweather looks on during the first quarter of an NFL game on Oct. 4 in Foxboro, Massachusetts.</p>
<p>Six-year-old Falcon Heene is carried by his father, Richard, second from right, who encourages his 10-year-old son, Bradford, and wife Mayumi to step outside the family's home in Fort Collins, Colo., after Falcon was found hiding in a box in a space above the garage on Oct. 15. The "balloon boy" at first had been reported to be aboard a flying-saucer-shaped balloon fashioned by his father and then carried by high winds on to the plains of eastern Colorado.</p>
<p>On Nov. 24, President Barack Obama greets White House gatecrashers Michaele and Tareq Salahi at a State Dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.</p>
<p>President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama share a laugh as they wait for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's motorcade to depart the State Dinner.</p>
<p>American murder suspect Amanda Knox is accompanied by penitentiary police officers as she leaves the court after a final hearing before the verdict, in Perugia, Italy, on Dec. 4. Knox was found guilty of murdering her British roommate.</p>
<p>An Iranian police officer is taken away after being beaten by protesters during an anti-government protest in Tehran on Dec. 27.</p> | The Year in Pictures | true | https://thedailybeast.com/the-year-in-pictures | 2018-10-03 | 4 |
<p />
<p>Woo-hoo! It's&#160;payday! But how do you spend all that money?&#160;Does <a href="https://www.recruiter.com/salary.html" type="external">your salary Opens a New Window.</a>&#160;go straight out the door, do you have a bit of loose change to spend, or do you save as much as you possibly can?</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>It's likely that first option, according to <a href="https://www.wizzcash.com/blog/paydays-uk-britons-spending-saving-habits/" type="external">a new infographic Opens a New Window.</a> from UK payday loans provider Wizzcash. The company polled nearly 1,000 people in the UK to find out about their monthly spending and saving habits, and the results make for pretty rough reading:</p>
<p>- 34 percent of respondents said they run out of cash before the month is out.</p>
<p>- 31 percent say they've fallen into debt after a payday spending spree.</p>
<p>- Nearly half say they struggle to save more than £100 a month.</p>
<p>Furthermore, plenty of people rely on credit – including credit cards, overdrafts, and loans – to&#160;get through the month.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>[The <a href="http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/04/26/Americans-Low-Savings-Rate-Bad-Sign-Good-Economy" type="external">American financial situation Opens a New Window.</a> isn't much better, which is why we felt it a good idea to run these numbers from the UK. – ed. note]</p>
<p>Check out the full infographic below – and think about how your spending habits match up:</p>
<p>Irma Hunkeler works for <a href="http://blueglass.co.uk/" type="external">BlueGlass.co.uk Opens a New Window.</a>, a digital marketing agency.</p> | How Do You Spend Your Paycheck? [Infographic] | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/08/03/how-do-spend-your-paycheck-infographic.html | 2016-08-08 | 0 |
<p />
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI) is set to report fourth-quarter earnings on Nov. 8.During the earnings presentation, management will surely pay plenty of attention to the merger with Tyco and the spin-off of the automotive-experience business into the new entity,Adient.But there's much more to a company's earnings than just this, so let's look at some things we'll probably hear about when the company reports and how we could interpret them.</p>
<p>Recognizing a significant <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/30/johnson-controls-is-investing-millions-in-agm-batt.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">opportunity Opens a New Window.</a> in the start-stop battery market, management, last quarter, announced that it would be investing approximately $780 million from 2015 through 2020 in absorbent glass mat (AGM) battery manufacturing capacity. Currently, the company retains about 70% market share and is working diligently to maintain its dominant position.</p>
<p>In the third quarter, the company reported that global shipment of AGM batteries grew 22% year over year. Driven by 79% growth in China and 78% growth in the Americas, the company reported a 4% increase in sales in mature markets -- Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.</p>
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<p>According to Alex Molinaroli, the company's CEO, start-stop growth "is the future of our business over the next five years," so investors should be keenly focused on this point in the earnings report. Specifically, they can look to see if management achieves its guidance for AGM sales to increase 22% in fiscal 2016, which it expects to drive growth -- between 9% and 11% for fiscal 2016 -- in the power-solutions segment.</p>
<p>As important as the power-solutions segment is to the company, the building-efficiency segment -- which reported more than twice the revenue of power solutions last quarter -- will surely account for the lion's share of attention.</p>
<p>Having merged with Tyco, Johnson Controls has greatly increased its fire and security solutions. Image source: Johnson Controls corporate website.</p>
<p>Plus, Johnson Controls recently completed its merger with Tyco, resulting in a company that management believes "is uniquely positioned as a leader in products, technologies, and integrated solutions for the buildings and energy sectors." Management plans to include about one month of Tyco's results in the fiscal 2016 consolidated financial statements.</p>
<p>Excluding foreign exchange effects and the joint venture with Hitachi, the segment reported a 4% revenue increase, driven by the Asian market, which reported a 9% increase -- much higher than North America, where systems and service for North America grew only 3%, as did products for North America.</p>
<p>Investors should expect to see continued growth in the segment, driven by China. On the Q2 conference call, Molinaroli reported that the quoting activity is strong in China because of success with its joint venture with Hitachi, as well as "some fairly significant-size orders" in the company's large tonnage business.</p>
<p>A third thing to keep an eye on when the company reports is whether it meets its free cash flow guidance. Identifying a $1.5 billion target for adjusted free cash flow for fiscal 2016 during an investors' conference last December, management has consistently affirmed its guidance throughout the year.</p>
<p>In line with expectations, the company reported $400 million in adjusted free cash flow for Q3. On the conference call, management conceded that it expects several factors will contribute to lower adjusted free cash flow in Q4 compared than in the same period last year. Because of about $200 million in additional capital expenditures and between $50 million and $100 million in cash restructuring costs in the fourth quarter, management anticipates seeing adjusted free cash flow come up short of the $1.4 billion it reported in Q4 last year. Nonetheless, it remains confident that it will achieve its $1.5 billion target.</p>
<p>In merging with Tyco, Johnson Controls recognizes significant growth potential, but investors must remember that Johnson Controls is also taking on about $2 billion of Tyco's debt and $4 billion in new debt associated with the completion of the transaction. This, in addition, to the $7.5 billion of net debt Johnson Controls had at the end of the third quarter, suggests that it's imperative for the company to achieve its free cash flow targets to adequately service its debt.</p>
<p>Excluding the impact of the Tyco merger, the company is guiding for Q4 earnings to fall between $1.17 and $1.20 per diluted share. Management is guiding full-year fiscal 2016 guidance from a range of $3.85 to $4.00 in earnings per diluted share to a new range of $3.95to$3.98. Though these figures are important, there are plenty of other figures to keep a keen eye on -- figures that will provide much more clarity into how the company is performing.</p>
<p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2691&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/scott81236/info.aspx" type="external">Scott Levine Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Johnson Controls. The Motley Fool is short Johnson Controls. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 3 Things to Look For When Johnson Controls Reports Q4 Earnings | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/04/3-things-to-look-for-when-johnson-controls-reports-q4-earnings.html | 2016-11-04 | 0 |
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<p>The Aggies (17-10, 9-1 WAC) used a late first half run and an early second half run to pull away from the Roadrunners (10-16, 5-5 WAC).</p>
<p>“We definitely played well enough to win, but we’ve got to play better basketball,” said NM State coach Marvin Menzies. “We settled down in the second half and we started to focus on our shifts and once we cleaned that up it was good for us.”</p>
<p>NM State was paced by redshirt freshman forward Pascal Siakam, who led all scorers and rebounders with 20 points and seven boards.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Seniors Daniel Mullings and Remi Barry each scored 14 points, as Mullings dished out five assists. Sophomore Ian Baker chipped in 11 points.</p>
<p>Mullings became the sixth Aggie to score 1,600 points in the game, now with 1,602 for his career.</p>
<p>Senior Tshilidzi Nephawe added nine points with five rebounds to reach 712 career rebounds and tie Jim Bostic (1972-75) for 11th on the career rebounding list.</p>
<p>Bakersfield got 11 points from Kregg Jones and nine from Kevin Mays and Javonte Maynor.</p>
<p>The Aggies opened the game with a quick seven-point lead, but struggled over the next seven minutes allowing the Roadrunners (10-16, 5-5 WAC) to erase the advantage and take a six-point lead.</p>
<p>NM State played catch up before taking off with three minutes remaining in the half as Mullings coverted a layup and foul into a 3-point play to start an 11-4 run to send the Aggies to the intermission with a 35-31 advantage.</p>
<p>Then after trading scores in the first two minutes, the Aggies went on a 15-4 run capped by a Siakam slam for a 12-point lead at that point to take control of the contest.</p>
<p>“(Siakam) missed some shots early,” said Menzies. “But once he started to gather and be a little bit more aggressive in his moves he was more effective.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Aggies also battled the Runners hard on the boards, trailing by eight in the first half, NM State recovered in the second to be outrebounded by one, 30-29.</p>
<p>NMSU also forced 16 turnovers for CSUB, scoring 24 points on them as the Aggies held their opposition to less than 60 points for the seventh time in the last 10 games.</p>
<p>“We are playing good basketball defensively and offensively as well,” Menzies said.</p>
<p>“We’ve got good players who are playing together that have good energy and I’m happy that we’re starting to see the fruits of our labor from early on in the summer.”</p>
<p>The Aggies got their 27th straight WAC victory at home and extended the longest winning streak in the conference to seven games.</p>
<p>NMSU starts a three-game road stretch, starting&#160; Thursday at Utah Valley at 7 p.m.</p>
<p><a href="https://d3el53au0d7w62.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/NMS021415.pdf" type="external">New Mexico State 74, Bakersfield 58: box score</a></p> | Aggie men top Bakersfield, maintain WAC lead | false | https://abqjournal.com/541924/aggie-men-top-bakersfield-maintain-wac-lead.html | 2 |
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<p>U.S. stocks finished January higher on Tuesday despite a two-session selloff following a controversial immigration ban from President Donald Trump. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 107.04 points, or 0.5%, to finish at 19,864.09, with shares of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase &amp; Co. weighing on the average. For January, the Dow closed up 0.5%. The S&amp;P 500 index closed down 2.03 points, or 0.1%, at 2,278.87, for a monthly gain of 1.8%. Industrials and financials weighed on the index Tuesday. The Nasdaq Composite index ticked up 1.07 points to finish at 5,614.79, for a monthly gain of 4.3%.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | U.S. Stocks Preserve Monthly Gains Amid Selloff | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/01/31/us-stocks-preserve-monthly-gains-amid-selloff.html | 2017-01-31 | 0 |
<p>Hillary Clinton lamented having stayed “too focused on a path” in the 2016 election. (Screenshot via CSPAN)</p>
<p>As Hillary Clinton has reemerged in the national spotlight to promote her new book, some critics have groaned and wondered why she won’t just go away. They were not among the crowd at the Warner Theatre on Monday night.</p>
<p>In fact, the veneration for the first female U.S. presidential nominee of a major political party was palpable among attendees, who paid upwards of $82 for a ticket to the event.</p>
<p>The topic of discussion was her new book “What Happened” — a self-examination of the 2016 presidential campaign and actions that led to her loss and the election of President Trump to the White House — and Clinton had many explanations for that outcome and the way forward.</p>
<p>Clinton laid out a balanced approach to explain her loss, attributing the outcome not just to her missteps, but also outside forces that tipped the election in Trump’s favor.</p>
<p>“I just decided I was going to write it, and it was painful,” Clinton said. “I say in the book that I’d write about something, and I’d have to go lie down because it was just so hard to think about the mistakes I made and missed opportunities, but then also to come to grips with these other big forces at work that I think had a determinative impact on the outcome.”</p>
<p>Clinton recalled after the election before she started writing the book in February being “so devastated,” trying to feel better by cleaning out closets and taking walks in the park. The process of the writing the book, Clinton said, was “cathartic,” but also important for her view of democracy.</p>
<p>“It really hit me there were these very important issues that needed to be discussed, debated even, that our democracy and country relied upon that kind of self-examination,” Clinton said.</p>
<p>A key factor Clinton identified in her loss was not realizing the game had changed since her runs with her husband President Bill Clinton in the 1990s and her earlier campaign in 2008 — even during the 1960s and 1970s — when clear policy proposals were crucial for presidential candidates.</p>
<p>“You realize that the press is not putting out the policy that you’re putting out everyday, they’re covering an empty podium,” Clinton said. “And I kept thinking, ‘Well, we’re still going to break through because we really care do about what kind of jobs and infrastructure and health care and other things you want to do for them and their families and their incomes, but there’s a disconnect.”</p>
<p>Although Clinton said she “stayed too focused on a path” and “was not as adept” at changing to the new environment, she cautioned a less detailed approach might not be the path in the future and speculated “people will want details” again in 2020.</p>
<p>Lissa Muscatine, co-owner of Politics &amp; Prose and Clinton’s chief speechwriter in the State Department and the White House, moderated the forum and queried Clinton on factors attributed to her loss, from Russian interference to fake news and misogyny.</p>
<p>Clinton recalled feeling compelled to exercise constraint as a woman and not respond during the second presidential debate when Trump could be seen on camera lurching close behind her as she spoke.</p>
<p>“As you might think back — funny gestures, facial expressions, heavy sighs — these really do affect viewers,” Clinton said. “And I just ended up believing that in addition to the gender-linked aspect of this, there was a history of people in presidential debates who had deviated in a way to show frustration, anger, dismissiveness, whatever their feelings were, and paid a heavy price for it, and I thought whatever price they paid, I would pay double or triple.”</p>
<p>Clinton recalled with indignation the Russians hacking the emails of her campaign chair John Podesta, which she described as being “stolen,” and given to Wikileaks — a website Clinton called “nothing more than a tool of Putin and the Kremlin.” Clinton said Trump’s associates “certainly” knew about it, citing a tweet from Roger Stone that Podesta’s time in a barrel would soon come.</p>
<p>Although Clinton said the emails were “anodyne,” she said they were later weaponized as fake news — in one case to potentially violent consequences as a result of the Pizzagate scandal in which Clinton was accused of running a child trafficking ring out of the basement of D.C. pizzeria. (The restaurant doesn’t even have a basement).</p>
<p>“Even I have to say I don’t believe it was meant to be believed to influence somebody to pick up an AR-15 and drive from North Carolina to Washington to liberate the imaginary children from the imaginary basement of the pizza parlor,” Clinton said. “But in came this young man believing that he was on a mission because he saw it on Facebook, he saw it in other places online, he saw it in quote, news outlets. And so, he was there on a mission of rescue. People could have gotten killed; he [fired] his automatic weapon inside this pizza parlor.”</p>
<p>Citing her loss to Trump by 53 percent among white women, Clinton said a major factor was former FBI Director James Comey reopening the email investigation — only for him to close it again one day before the election .</p>
<p>“All of sudden, people are told being told something’s going on, they’re going to investigate her again, or whatever,” Clinton said. “We could see that a lot of women in particular turned away. They were discouraged. I don’t blame them. They didn’t know what to believe. I mean, it was outrageous.”</p>
<p>When Muscatine mentioned Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whom Clinton heavily criticizes in her book for raising doubts about her connections to Wall Street, the audience at the Warner Theatre audibly booed and hissed.</p>
<p>But there were also moments of levity at the event. Muscatine at one point engaged Clinton in a game of having to choose one of a pair of words. Asked about “tea” or “coffee,” Clinton replied “coffee.” Asked about “beach” or “mountains,” Clinton replied “beach.” Asked about “Trump” or “Putin,” Clinton replied she’d have to “take that under advisement” because she “ran against both of them.”</p>
<p>Attendees at the event — who consisted mostly of middle-class women but also members of D.C.’s LGBT community — came to the Warner Theater adorned in Clinton campaign T-shirts leftover from the 2016 election. One vendor outside sold campaign buttons with slogans reading “Hillary 2016” and “Hil Yes!”</p>
<p>Blake Smith, 20, a gay student at George Washington University, worked for Clinton’s presidential campaign and came to the event wearing a T-shirt comprised of a collage of images of Clinton.</p>
<p>“I just think she gets a bad rap,” Smith said. “And I think that people treat her really unfairly, and I think that she’s really, genuinely a good person and she cares about this country.”</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">election 2016</a> <a href="" type="internal">Hillary Clinton</a> <a href="" type="internal">What Happened</a></p> | Clinton returns to D.C. lamenting mistakes of 2016 campaign | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2017/09/19/clinton-laments-having-stayed-too-focused-on-a-path-in-2016-race/ | 3 |
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<p>Shares of commodities producers rose after the Federal Reserve's policy statement. The dollar rose slightly after the statement, which left the door open for a rate hike later this year. That weighed on some metals prices, and gold futures closed lower after the statement. But the Fed's confidence in the outlook for economic growth was a positive for the price of industrial metals. German steel giant Thyssenkrupp and India's Tata Steel unveiled plans to merge their steelmaking businesses in Europe after years of floating the suggestion to investors.</p>
<p>-Rob Curran, [email protected]</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>September 20, 2017 16:22 ET (20:22 GMT)</p> | Materials Stocks Move Up After Fed Statement - Materials Roundup | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/09/20/materials-stocks-move-up-after-fed-statement-materials-roundup.html | 2017-09-20 | 0 |
<p>May 25 2003 By&#160;Gary Hughes</p>
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<p>AUSTRALIAThe AgeAustralia's Catholic and Anglican churches have received more than 1640 complaints of sexual abuse, according to the first national figures compiled on the extent of the crisis confronting religious leaders.</p>
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<p>The Catholic Church has received about 1200 complaints during the past 10 years - approximately 200 of them in Melbourne.</p>
<p>Of the 1000 complaints received outside the Melbourne archdiocese, 75 per cent have been substantiated and acted upon.</p>
<p>The Anglican Church, which does not have its own national figures, has had more than 440 complaints, with 153 received in Melbourne.</p>
<p>The Sunday Age compiled the first national figures after conducting its own audit of sexual abuse complaints by individually contacting every Catholic and Anglican diocese in Australia.</p>
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<p>The Catholic Church eventually decided to respond nationally, providing figures through the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. It would not give figures for individual dioceses.</p> | Church abuse: the full picture | false | https://poynter.org/news/church-abuse-full-picture | 2003-05-24 | 2 |
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<p>Make no mistake; the Senate immigration bill was already a difficult and pragmatic move to the center for both sides. Yet Pearce’s limited “guest worker” plan represents an immoral proposal to instate a permanent caste system, keep 11 million immigrants as second-class, and never grant those families the chance at dignity or the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship.</p>
<p>Pearce’s proposal does nothing to honor the chance to pursue the American Dream for immigrants desperate to earn a life outside of the shadows in our country. Those hard-working immigrant families are our neighbors, classmates, fellow churchgoers, taxpayers and owners of thriving local businesses.</p>
<p>Yet the Southern Poverty Law Center itself recently characterized proposed guest worker programs as “close to slavery.” We don’t have to look farther than the dark history of the “bracero” program and its devastation to so many Latino families to understand why such a limited proposal is offensive to many.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Confining so many to a status tantamount to indentured servitude is not a New Mexican value. Unlike the sharp anti-immigrant measures taken by our neighboring states like Arizona, we’re proud in New Mexico of having taken a much more integrative approach. New Mexico was one of the pioneering states enabling immigrants to apply for drivers’ licenses. Our state Constitution includes a provision for bilingual government.</p>
<p>A recent poll conducted by Latino Decisions revealed that 60 percent of New Mexican Latinos have an undocumented family member, friend or co-worker. A guest-worker program alone would treat these individuals as disposable workers and confine them to systematic exploitation, uncertain futures and low wages.</p>
<p>They’d be inhibited from changing jobs because of poor conditions and bound to the employers who “imported” them. According to a 2013 poll conducted by Third Eye Strategies of 400 active voters in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional district, only 10 percent of voters in Pearce’s congressional district preferred a guest worker program with no possibility of citizenship to giving immigrants some light at the end of the tunnel.</p>
<p>Immigrants are a vital part of our economy, and permanent legal status would create an estimated 11,000 jobs in Pearce’s district alone, according to the American Action Network. Their prosperity and contributions as taxpayers make our communities stronger. That’s why his dehumanization of so many of our immigrant neighbors strikes a chord in our communities.</p>
<p>Latinos across the country are paying close attention to this topic (immigration policy is important to the votes of 79 percent of Latinos according to a recent Latino Decisions poll). For many of us, the question is a moral one.</p>
<p>Pearce has good reason to be concerned about the impending clash between the ideology behind that approach and the core values of the most Latino congressional district represented by a Republican in the country.</p>
<p>Still, Pearce’s gamble with resisting any path to citizenship for immigrants stands to help pile on the diminishing relationship between the Republican Party and Latinos.</p>
<p>We take pride in a New Mexican belief that it’s not where you were born that makes you an American; it’s how you contribute to the strengthening of our country that counts. Withholding the American dream from honest hard-working immigrant families indefinitely and confining them to a living second class not only offends so many of our core values; it also risks continuing the tailspin of the GOP brand amongst Latinos.</p>
<p>That, for the nation’s most Hispanic congressional district represented by a Republican, should not be credited as offering a “middle ground to fix immigration.”</p>
<p /> | Pearce’s proposal not middle ground | false | https://abqjournal.com/279311/pearces-proposal-not-middle-ground.html | 2 |
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<p>President Obama rolled out a plan on Monday to reduce the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade by combining cuts to benefit rights and war savings with tax increases. He vowed to veto any bill that relies solely on spending reductions to address the deficit.</p>
<p>Tax increases for wealthy Americans and corporations make up $1.5 trillion of the package, part of which will come from an expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts. Reductions in health and benefit rights programs amount to $580 billion, with $248 billion coming from Medicare and $72 billion from Medicaid. The Obama administration said the change to Medicare would not result in any increase in the program’s eligibility age.</p>
<p>It is virtually impossible to imagine Republicans agreeing to increase taxes on the rich. Anti-tax conservatives are already attacking the plan as socially divisive. The president anticipated as much: “This is not class warfare,” he said. “It’s math.” –ARK</p>
<p>The New York Times:</p>
<p />
<p>Mr. Obama is seeking $1.5 trillion in tax increases, primarily on the wealthy and corporations, through a combination of letting Bush-era income tax cuts expire on wealthier taxpayers, limiting the value of deductions taken by high earners and closing corporate loopholes. The proposal also includes $580 billion in adjustments to health and entitlement programs, including $248 billion to Medicare and $72 billion to Medicaid. In a briefing previewing the plan, administration officials said on Sunday that the Medicare savings would not come from an increase in the Medicare eligibility age.</p>
<p>… $800 billion of the $1.5 trillion in tax increases would come from allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire as scheduled for wealthier taxpayers, while extending them for individuals making less than $200,000 a year and families making less than $250,000.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/politics/obama-vows-veto-if-deficit-plan-has-no-tax-increases.html?_r=1&amp;hp=&amp;pagewanted=all#&amp;wtoeid=growl1_r1_control" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Obama Does the Math on Deficit Reduction | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/obama-does-the-math-on-deficit-reduction/ | 2011-09-19 | 4 |
<p />
<p>When people are considering joining&#160;a new company, they often try to negotiate more vacation time or more time to spend with family after the birth/adoption of a child. Because of this, many progressive U.S. employers have started to make these <a href="https://www.recruiter.com/hr-policies.html" type="external">policies Opens a New Window.</a> part of their standard benefits packages.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>In more ways than one, the U.S. is migrating toward employee care practices that reflect benefits workers in the United Kingdom and Europe have enjoyed for years. Much of the change is intended to appeal to a new generation of workers born between 1982 and 2004: the millennials.</p>
<p>Generally, millennials are known to want more flexibility from their working environments and office hours. They crave autonomy and are driven by the will to climb the ladder faster than the generations that came before them did. It's no doubt millennials are an innovative group, living on social media ( <a href="https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/millennials-social-media/" type="external">88 percent say they get their news from Facebook Opens a New Window.</a>) and longing for real-time activities.</p>
<p>But how will this generation's needs change as they age? When it comes to retaining the millennial worker, today is important, but thinking ahead to tomorrow is maybe even more important.</p>
<p><a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/12/news/economy/millennials-change-jobs-frequently/" type="external">Based on a survey by LinkedIn Opens a New Window.</a>, CNN Money tells us the new normal is for millennials to change jobs four times in their first decade out of college. But as millennials eventually start families, many will feel the pull of competing priorities and start making longer commitments to employers as they try to balance their work and personal lives.</p>
<p>For most people, the working parent lifestyle involves juggling deadlines and daycare, long hours and competing priorities. From an employer's standpoint, acknowledging these struggles is crucial. Once employers have recognized these challenges, they can work on offering work environments that cater to their employees' needs&#160;in order to properly support their workers during these happy and challenging times in their lives.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/generous-parental-leave-policies-in-america-2015-8" type="external">According to Business Insider Opens a New Window.</a>, some of the most forward-thinking employers in the country have not only discovered this, but have also put new policies in place to offer employees support during major life changes so they can return to work with more focus and dedication.</p>
<p>As more companies consider implementing progressive parental leave programs and generous vacation policies, they should first consider a few questions to determine whether or not such policies are right for their businesses:</p>
<p>1.&#160;What Does the Company Culture Say About Your&#160;Business?</p>
<p>If your business is focused on innovating your next product, service, or solution, then your internal culture should follow suit and support an innovative lifestyle at work. Building out a culture of innovation will require companies to embrace progressive change and choose policies that are in line with the standout benefits that attract and retain top talent. Employers can look to leading technology companies like Netflix, Google, PayPal, Twitter, Microsoft, Facebook, and Adobe for some guidance here.</p>
<p>2. What Are the Key Traits of the Employees You Want to Attract?</p>
<p>A vibrant workforce is born when&#160;the latest knowledge is combined with the newest technologies and innovations. It's important for companies to align their&#160;benefits with other progressive innovators in their industries if they want to attract top talent.</p>
<p>Millennials want solid careers early on in life and are willing to put in the time and energy to find the right paths that suit their needs. Employers should look out for millennials who are&#160;passionate, driven, dedicated, and honest – millennials who will go the extra mile to establish themselves professionally.</p>
<p>If those are the kinds of employees an organization wants, then it will have to offer the right benefits to get them.</p>
<p>3.&#160;What Impact Will More Generous Leave Benefits Have on the Business?</p>
<p>Research shows that parental leave benefits apply to a very small segment of the workforce each year. Although there are cost implications to rolling out a policy of this kind, the proper investment in employees today can build longer lasting relationships that benefit companies well into the future.</p>
<p>–</p>
<p>If a company&#160;prioritizes attracting innovative millennials, it will have to create a workplace lifestyle that permeates throughout the entire employee base. When it comes to helping&#160;employees balance their work and personal lives, an&#160;innovative mindset can help employers shift the way they think and change what they do for the better.</p>
<p>As the millennial generation continues to disrupt expectations of what a typical workplace should look like, it is simultaneously improving working conditions for everyone else. Millennials are&#160;building new synergies between work and vacation and between having&#160;families and climbing the corporate ladder. Millennials are writing the next chapter of the American workplace – and it's something we can all look forward to.</p>
<p>Bruce O'Neel is an HR vice president at <a href="http://www.csgi.com/" type="external">CSG International Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Millennials: Disrupting Expectations and Building the Workplace of the Future | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/08/31/millennials-disrupting-expectations-and-building-workplace-future.html | 2016-09-05 | 0 |
<p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) _ These Minnesota lotteries were drawn Thursday:</p>
<p>Daily 3</p>
<p>9-1-7</p>
<p>(nine, one, seven)</p>
<p>Lucky For Life</p>
<p>08-12-15-16-41, Lucky Ball: 9</p>
<p>(eight, twelve, fifteen, sixteen, forty-one; Lucky Ball: nine)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $45 million</p>
<p>Northstar Cash</p>
<p>05-09-11-13-22</p>
<p>(five, nine, eleven, thirteen, twenty-two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $25,000</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) _ These Minnesota lotteries were drawn Thursday:</p>
<p>Daily 3</p>
<p>9-1-7</p>
<p>(nine, one, seven)</p>
<p>Lucky For Life</p>
<p>08-12-15-16-41, Lucky Ball: 9</p>
<p>(eight, twelve, fifteen, sixteen, forty-one; Lucky Ball: nine)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $45 million</p>
<p>Northstar Cash</p>
<p>05-09-11-13-22</p>
<p>(five, nine, eleven, thirteen, twenty-two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $25,000</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p> | MN Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/ce8ec1e0a15645d8beda76c72ba4f2c7 | 2018-01-12 | 2 |
<p>When it comes to the team owners in the NFL, the only thing that matters to them are their profits so when the Ravens faced a situation where Ray Rice had knocked his now wife unconscious in a fit of domestic abuse, they needed to save their asset (not a person) and also help the salary cap hit (8 million) the team would take if Rice was suspended for the season so they turned to the abuse victim and asked her to blame the abuse on herself.</p>
<p><a href="http://deadspin.com/janay-rice-says-ravens-told-her-to-apologize-at-that-pr-1665112586" type="external">Dead Spin:</a></p>
<p>The most revelatory part of the conversation was when Janay revealed that it was the Ravens who suggested she publicly apologize for the "role she played" in her own beating, and that the team gave her and Ray a "general script" of what to say at that <a href="http://deadspin.com/ray-rice-sometimes-in-life-you-will-get-knocked-down-1580795933" type="external">disastrous press conference in May</a>.</p>
<p>Lauer: Did you want to be a part of that press conference?</p>
<p>Rice: I was ready to do anything that was going to help the situation.</p>
<p>Lauer: When you say, "Help the situation." Help Ray and his career?</p>
<p>Rice: Both. Help the way we looked in the media. Help his image. Help, obviously, his career. So they told us earlier that week that we would do the press conference, and I was fine with it.</p>
<p>Lauer: And did anyone at the Ravens say, "Janay, it would be really good if you issued some kind of apology."</p>
<p>Rice: They suggested it, yes.</p>
<p>Lauer: Did they come up with the wording?</p>
<p>Rice: No, not specifically. They basically gave us a general script.</p>
<p>Rice went on to say that she would have never participated in the press conference if the Ravens hadn't urged her to attend, and that she "completely understood" the public backlash to her apology.</p>
<p>Before the second Rice video was released, the Baltimore Ravens constantly denied any involvement in situation and <a href="" type="internal">vociferously defended Ray Rice's behavior,</a> which is horrible enough, but to take advantage of a young woman and ask Janay Rice to apologize was unconscionable.</p> | Baltimore Ravens Told Janay Rice To Apologize At Press Conference | true | http://crooksandliars.com/2014/12/baltimore-ravens-told-janay-rice-apologize | 2014-12-01 | 4 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Cynthia Varela Casaus, 38, has been arrested and charged in connection to the beating death of her son, 9-year-old Omaree Varela. But Casaus is not the only one in trouble. Two Albuquerque police officers have been placed on leave after they failed to report their visit to&#160;Omaree’s home when he called 911.</p>
<p>Omaree called 911 back in June 2013, and later died as a result of&#160;child abuse injuries in December 2013. An autopsy found that Omaree had cigarette burns, lacerations, a bite mark and bruises.</p>
<p>Albuquerque Chief Administrative Officer Rob Perry said that, “as of February 4 the two officers who were dispatched on the call have been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation.</p>
<p>“There are many aspects of this call which are extremely troubling. If it is determined by the internal affairs investigation that officers involved did not respond in accordance with proper procedures, swift action will be taken to hold those individuals accountable.”</p>
<p>The 911 call recorded the cries of a child while an angry male voice was cursed at him, saying, “I wish you weren’t here,” and, “I don’t want to be your dad,” as well as, “I don’t want to deal with you anymore.”</p>
<p>Listen to the recording below:</p>
<p>The officers said that they notified the Child, Youth and Families Department (CYFD), but only said that there was, “possible,” child abuse, according Henry Varela, communications director for the agency.</p>
<p>“We continue to stress the importance of every person reporting any suspicion of child abuse or neglect to CYFD,” Varela said.</p>
<p>The police never made any arrests, and never stressed how serious the 911 call was.</p>
<p>“In consultation with the mayor,” Perry continued, “I have directed that Chief [Allen] Banks conduct an immediate and thorough internal affairs investigation in order to get to the bottom of this case as quickly as possible.”</p>
<p>Chief Banks admits that the officers did not follow standard procedure.</p>
<p>“They did not write a report in this case,” Banks said. One officer said, “‘I’ll call CYFD,’ but he never called CYFD.”</p>
<p>“We’re going to investigate it,” Banks pledged. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it, and there’s going to be consequences if there isn’t some damn good legal explanation for that.”</p>
<p>Now, the community and other members of Omaree’s family, like Essie Sotelo and her daughter, Shana Smith (pictured above), who helped to raise Omaree,&#160;are demanding that these officers be held accountable for their failure to report the abuse.</p>
<p>Watch the local report to here more…</p>
<p>(Article by James Achisa; image via local&#160;Albuquerque KRQE; additional footage via KOAT)</p> | Police Ignored 9-Year-Old Boy’s 911 Call For Help, Now He’s Dead | true | http://politicalblindspot.com/police-ignored-9-year-old-boys-911-call/ | 2014-02-10 | 4 |
<p>INDEPENDENCE, Ohio (AP) — LeBron James worked up a healthy sweat after practice, staying longer to go over plays with Cleveland’s coaches before doing some post-up drills.</p>
<p>He knows what’s ahead.</p>
<p>The calendar has flipped to April, and if the NBA standings don’t change, James will face a first-round playoff series against the Miami Heat, the team he led to two titles and four straight finals before leaving last summer to go home.</p>
<p>LeBron vs. the Heat. Oh, the TV ratings.</p>
<p>James has never faced close friend Dwyane Wade in the postseason, but the possibility has got him thinking — and maybe switching into postseason mode a little earlier.</p>
<p>“Just to go against a champion, a competitor like himself and that franchise,” James said of the chance for a Cavs-Heat matchup. “Obviously I’m not there yet, but I am kind of in playoff mentality.”</p>
<p>Down to their final seven games of the regular season, the Cavs returned from a two-day break Wednesday to prepare for Thursday’s home game against the Heat, still clinging to the No. 7 seed in the Eastern Conference.</p>
<p>James said he and his teammates were “really sharp” during practice, and the four-time MVP said the short retreat was good for body and soul.</p>
<p>“It gave people a mental break, I believe,” James said. “It made you miss the game a little bit. So, it’s fun to get back there on the court.”</p>
<p>The Cavs were worn out. After playing 15 of the last 20 games on the road, coach David Blatt gave his players some down time following a lackluster one-point win over lowly Philadelphia on Sunday. Blatt felt it was the perfect respite with important games this week against Miami and Chicago.</p>
<p>“We haven’t had that luxury for a long time and hopefully it helped the guys,” Blatt said.</p>
<p>Kevin Love believes it did his balky back some good. Love has had a back issue most of the season and he had to leave Sunday’s game after being hit with an elbow. Following practice, Love reported that his back “feels good. Two days helped.”</p>
<p>Love also said he sweat so much during practice that he had to run to the locker room and change. He didn’t take part in the any contact, and Blatt said Love is a game-time decision against the Heat.</p>
<p>Blatt reported that Iman Shumpert (jammed ankle) was a full participant and is expected to face Miami.</p>
<p>Despite the current standings and the Cavs losing twice to Miami this season, Blatt said he isn’t treating Thursday’s game any differently.</p>
<p>“Still a lot of things that can happen of course on both ends,” he said, “so I don’t see any particular special preparation for that game.”</p>
<p>James appeared to have a different approach. When the media was allowed into the gym, James and Cleveland’s assistant coaches were on one court talking through some offensive sets. As James pointed to spots on the floor, Blatt, who was named Eastern Conference coach of the month for March, joined the group.</p>
<p>Later, James explained his actions.</p>
<p>“It’s just I have a feel for the game,” he said. “I know what helps our team and we got great minds. Our coaching staff is great. I thank them that they allow me to give some input on what I think we should do at times, but ultimately it’s their call.”</p>
<p>While much has been made of the relationship between James and Blatt, now on the cusp of his first NBA postseason, both seem to be on the same page as the Cavs chase a championship. At times, James has taken over the huddle or called plays on the floor, and Blatt said that’s fine.</p>
<p>“That’s obviously not an all-the-time case, but it’s going to happen during the course of a game, sure,” he said.</p>
<p>As for getting rest over the final weeks, James said he’ll wait until after the Cavs play the Heat and Bulls.</p>
<p>“My body can always use some games (off),” he said. “But at the same time, we’re a team that’s coming together at the right time and you want to try to kind of keep the rhythm as well.”</p>
<p>INDEPENDENCE, Ohio (AP) — LeBron James worked up a healthy sweat after practice, staying longer to go over plays with Cleveland’s coaches before doing some post-up drills.</p>
<p>He knows what’s ahead.</p>
<p>The calendar has flipped to April, and if the NBA standings don’t change, James will face a first-round playoff series against the Miami Heat, the team he led to two titles and four straight finals before leaving last summer to go home.</p>
<p>LeBron vs. the Heat. Oh, the TV ratings.</p>
<p>James has never faced close friend Dwyane Wade in the postseason, but the possibility has got him thinking — and maybe switching into postseason mode a little earlier.</p>
<p>“Just to go against a champion, a competitor like himself and that franchise,” James said of the chance for a Cavs-Heat matchup. “Obviously I’m not there yet, but I am kind of in playoff mentality.”</p>
<p>Down to their final seven games of the regular season, the Cavs returned from a two-day break Wednesday to prepare for Thursday’s home game against the Heat, still clinging to the No. 7 seed in the Eastern Conference.</p>
<p>James said he and his teammates were “really sharp” during practice, and the four-time MVP said the short retreat was good for body and soul.</p>
<p>“It gave people a mental break, I believe,” James said. “It made you miss the game a little bit. So, it’s fun to get back there on the court.”</p>
<p>The Cavs were worn out. After playing 15 of the last 20 games on the road, coach David Blatt gave his players some down time following a lackluster one-point win over lowly Philadelphia on Sunday. Blatt felt it was the perfect respite with important games this week against Miami and Chicago.</p>
<p>“We haven’t had that luxury for a long time and hopefully it helped the guys,” Blatt said.</p>
<p>Kevin Love believes it did his balky back some good. Love has had a back issue most of the season and he had to leave Sunday’s game after being hit with an elbow. Following practice, Love reported that his back “feels good. Two days helped.”</p>
<p>Love also said he sweat so much during practice that he had to run to the locker room and change. He didn’t take part in the any contact, and Blatt said Love is a game-time decision against the Heat.</p>
<p>Blatt reported that Iman Shumpert (jammed ankle) was a full participant and is expected to face Miami.</p>
<p>Despite the current standings and the Cavs losing twice to Miami this season, Blatt said he isn’t treating Thursday’s game any differently.</p>
<p>“Still a lot of things that can happen of course on both ends,” he said, “so I don’t see any particular special preparation for that game.”</p>
<p>James appeared to have a different approach. When the media was allowed into the gym, James and Cleveland’s assistant coaches were on one court talking through some offensive sets. As James pointed to spots on the floor, Blatt, who was named Eastern Conference coach of the month for March, joined the group.</p>
<p>Later, James explained his actions.</p>
<p>“It’s just I have a feel for the game,” he said. “I know what helps our team and we got great minds. Our coaching staff is great. I thank them that they allow me to give some input on what I think we should do at times, but ultimately it’s their call.”</p>
<p>While much has been made of the relationship between James and Blatt, now on the cusp of his first NBA postseason, both seem to be on the same page as the Cavs chase a championship. At times, James has taken over the huddle or called plays on the floor, and Blatt said that’s fine.</p>
<p>“That’s obviously not an all-the-time case, but it’s going to happen during the course of a game, sure,” he said.</p>
<p>As for getting rest over the final weeks, James said he’ll wait until after the Cavs play the Heat and Bulls.</p>
<p>“My body can always use some games (off),” he said. “But at the same time, we’re a team that’s coming together at the right time and you want to try to kind of keep the rhythm as well.”</p> | LeBron, Cavs return to practice, Love still slowed by back | false | https://apnews.com/9a334f22ffc74dea88fa78c8105f8eb9 | 2015-04-01 | 2 |
<p>Published time: 7 Nov, 2017 14:14</p>
<p>Former Welsh government minister Carl Sargeant has been found dead in his home just days after being suspended from the Labour Party over his “personal conduct.” He is believed to have taken his own life.</p>
<p>His family said they are “devastated beyond words” at the loss of “the glue that bound us together,” according to The Independent. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the death was “terrible and deeply shocking news,” while his deputy Tom Watson said it is a “tragedy beyond words.”</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/408440-sex-women-harassment-mps/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Sargeant quit his post as cabinet secretary for communities and children in Cardiff last week after what he called “shocking and distressing” allegations were made against him. The nature of those allegations are not known.</p>
<p>Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones said Sargeant had been “removed” from the cabinet, while Sargeant said he wanted an independent investigation “to allow me to clear my name.”</p>
<p>His family said in a statement on Tuesday: “Carl was a much loved husband, father and friend. He wasn’t simply a part of our family. He was the glue that bound us together. He was the heart of our family. We loved him so very much.</p>
<p>“He was the most kind and caring husband, father, son and friend. We are devastated beyond words, and we know our grief will be shared by all those who knew and loved him.”</p>
<p>Sargeant had been a member of the Welsh Assembly since 2003. He was made minister for social justice and local government in 2009 and was appointed cabinet secretary for communities and children in May last year.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>Last week, after his resignation, Sargeant said he wanted to clear his name by independent means. He said in a statement, according to Huffington Post: “I met with the [Welsh] First Minister today and he informed me allegations had been made about my personal conduct, which was shocking and distressing to me.</p>
<p>“The details of the allegations have yet to be disclosed to me.” He added that “given the nature of the allegations” he agreed with the first minister that it was right he “stands aside” from cabinet.</p>
<p>He added: “I look forward to returning to government once my name has been cleared.”</p> | MP named in Westminster ‘sex-pest’ scandal has been found dead | false | https://newsline.com/mp-named-in-westminster-sex-pest-scandal-has-been-found-dead/ | 2017-11-07 | 1 |
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<p>WASHINGTON — America’s work force will only grow over the next two decades if new immigrants arrive to replace retiring Baby Boomers, a report from the Pew Research Center finds.</p>
<p>In a report out Wednesday, Pew projects that the U.S. working-age (25-64) population will grow from 173 million in 2015 to 183 million in 2035. But new immigrants will account for all the growth. Without them, the number of working-age Americans would drop to 166 million by 2035.</p>
<p>As Baby Boomers retire, the number of U.S.-born working-age adults with U.S.-born parents will account for a smaller share of working-age population: 66 percent in 2035, down from 74 percent in 2015.</p>
<p>The Pew report echoes what many economists have been saying: The U.S. needs immigrants as Baby Boomers retire, and an unusually large share of working-age Americans choose not to look for work.</p>
<p>An aging workforce and disappointing gains in productivity have dragged down U.S. economic growth, which came in at a lackluster 1.9 percent annual rate from October through December.</p>
<p>The report comes as President Donald Trump calls for the construction of a border wall to keep Mexicans from crossing into the United States in search of work. He also supports stepped-up deportations of immigrants living in the U.S. without permission.</p>
<p>Pew’s projections are based on current rates of immigration and combine legal immigrants with those who enter the United States illegally.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Pew: US labor force would shrink without new immigrants | false | https://abqjournal.com/964591/pew-us-labor-force-would-shrink-without-new-immigrants.html | 2 |
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<p>The justices said that defendants don't have a constitutional right to cross-examine child accusers unless their statements to school officials were made for the primary purpose of creating evidence for prosecution.</p>
<p>The ruling is expected to make it easier for prosecutors to convict people accused of domestic violence.</p>
<p>The case involves Darius Clark, a Cleveland man convicted of beating his girlfriend's three-year-old son. Clark says the trial court denied him the constitutional right to confront his accuser when it said the boy didn't have to testify but still considered statements he made to preschool teachers describing abuse.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court reversed a lower court and upheld Clark's conviction.</p>
<p>The court's ruling resolves a split among lower courts about the role played by teachers, social workers and others who have a legal duty to report suspected child abuse that they notice in the course of their work. Ohio's highest court had ruled that the duty to report abuse effectively turned teachers into agents of the state for law enforcement purposes, even though no police were involved.</p>
<p>Writing for the court, Justice Samuel Alito said the fact that teachers have a legal duty to report child abuse suspicions to authorities does not transform a conversation between a concerned teacher and a student into a law enforcement mission aimed at gathering evidence for prosecution.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The case began in 2010 when preschool teachers at a Head Start program asked the boy about bruises and welts they saw around his left eye. Asked who caused the injuries, the boy said "Dee," referring to Clark.</p>
<p>Clark was later indicted, and the court allowed the teachers to testify at trial about statements the boy made identifying Clark. The boy was deemed "incompetent" to testify. Clark was convicted of felonious assault and child endangering.</p>
<p>A state appeals court overturned Clark's conviction and the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed, ruling that teachers who are legally bound to report possible cases of abuse are in the same position as law enforcement officials when they question children.</p>
<p>Forty-two states filed a brief supporting Ohio. They argue that excluding from evidence the statements children make to teachers, counselors and others who must report abuse will only protect abusers and impair the ability of states to protect children.</p>
<p>The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers submitted a brief arguing that children are susceptible to suggestion and giving unreliable testimony. The group said defendants have a constitutional right to cross examine witnesses, even when they are children.</p> | Supreme Court allows use of child abuse evidence | false | https://abqjournal.com/600468/supreme-court-allows-use-of-child-abuse-evidence.html | 2 |
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<p>Editor's note: This story was originally published on May 29, 2014.</p>
<p>QORYOOLEY, Somalia — In the end, it wasn’t clan militias or Islamic militants but a government soldier who killed Dr. Osman.</p>
<p>Over his 54 years, the pharmacist had earned a reputation for fair dealing in business, kindness among friends, and piety in the mosque. A family man, he had survived Somalia’s clan wars and then kept his head down when the Islamic militants known as Al Shabaab overran his hometown in southern Somalia five years ago. A follower of a softer, mystical branch of Islam, he obeyed the ultraconservative occupiers’ harsh new rules — don’t smoke, don’t chew khat, pay the Islamic tax, go to the mosque five times a day without fail — and carried on.</p>
<p>In February of this year, the military offensive to retake towns like Osman’s, “liberating” them from extremist rule, began. As the fighting drew near Qoryooley [pronounced “kor-ree-oh-lay”], Osman sent his wife and seven children to the capital Mogadishu, telling them they would be safer there. He stayed behind to look after the pharmacy he had built from scratch. He told his family not to worry.</p>
<p>On March 23, after a fierce multi-hour firefight, Somalia's flag was hoisted in Qoryooley for the first time in half a decade.</p>
<p>And on a Tuesday afternoon five weeks later, a soldier in Somali uniform shot Osman in the back of the head.</p>
<p>The bullet entered below the pharmacist’s right ear. It exited through his left cheek, taking with it teeth and bone, then sliced across his left hand, leaving two fingers dangling by bloody tendrils.</p>
<p>Osman’s cousin later told me the story he had heard. The soldier had accused Osman of being a member of Al Shabaab, and wanted to bring him “to the river” for questioning. Fearing a summary execution, Osman said he would only be questioned at the army base. The soldier assented, but then as the pharmacist was locking up the shop, shot him from behind with an AK-47.</p>
<p>As grieving relatives carried the body away wrapped in a bloodstained bedsheet, Osman’s cousin added a crucial detail: the killer, from Mogadishu, was a member of a different clan.</p>
<p>Somalia’s devastating clan conflict is reemerging, threatening to unravel the country’s <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/series/mogadishu-somalia-peace-elections-al-shabaab-transition-civil-war" type="external">gradual progress</a>. As Osman’s murder shows, the end of Al Shabaab and the beginning of peace are not the same thing.</p>
<p>The future hinges on the Somali National Army (SNA) — the very group of individuals that included Osman’s killer.</p>
<p>“Even Al Shabaab,” Osman’s cousin said, “didn’t kill us in cold blood.”</p>
<p>A Ugandan AMISOM soldiers walks in front of an Al Shabaab mural painted on a the outer wall of a building in Qoryooley, Somalia. (Tristan McConnell/GlobalPost)</p>
<p>In 1991, the ousting of military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre triggered the disintegration of Somalia’s army. Barre’s loyal senior officers fled into exile. Lower-level soldiers joined the clan militias that had forced him out.</p>
<p>As rival clan warlords fought for control of Mogadishu, their rockets and bullets destroyed the prize they sought. The militias gained renown as casual killers and ruthless predators. With a gun as their license they did as they pleased for the next two decades — which is to say, they fought for anything of value.</p>
<p>Famines in 1992 and 2011 together claimed around half a million lives. Decades of unrest generated the largest and most widespread diaspora communities on the planet.</p>
<p>Al Shabaab, meaning "The Youth" in Arabic, emerged in 2006 as a rare cross-clan force united by radical Islamism — at least at the leadership level. It fought a guerrilla war against US-backed Ethiopian troops and then the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), a peacemaking force deployed to Somalia in 2007. For a while Al Shabaab was winning. When I <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/africa/100209/inside-somalia-with-african-union-forces" type="external">visited in 2010</a>,&#160;Al Shabaab controlled all but a few square miles of the capital and almost all of the countryside. The 5,000 AMISOM soldiers controlled little more than the airport, seaport and the road to parliament.</p>
<p>The UN’s decision to more than quadruple the number of AMISOM troops over the intervening years turned the tide of the war. But although the forces evicted Al Shabaab from Mogadishu in August 2011, IEDs, close-quarter assassinations, mortar attacks, and suicide bombings inside the capital since then have shown the jihadists’ long reach. Al Shabaab also retaliated against Kenya for its presence in AMISOM with an attack on Nairobi’s <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/section/westgate" type="external">Westgate Mall</a>&#160;in September 2013.</p>
<p>Somalia’s future rests on attempts to build a professional army: As in Afghanistan or Iraq, security is a prerequisite for good governance.</p>
<p>But turning Somalia’s anarchic and competing collection of militias into a unified, national force is no easy task.</p>
<p>Mogadishu International Airport is Somalia’s version of the Baghdad <a href="http://monocle.com/film/affairs/mogadishu-take-off/" type="external">"Green Zone."</a> Jazeera, a few miles outside the fortified perimeter, is the crucible of an international project on which the success of all other foreign engagement with Somalia hangs: to professionalize the Somali army. The stakes could not be higher, nor the challenge greater.</p>
<p>Beneath a blistering sun hundreds of SNA soldiers are being trained in battle readiness by a force of 100 troops from the European Union. Since 2010 the EU has trained more than 3,000 of the SNA’s estimated 20,000 soldiers. AMISOM has taken over classroom instruction, while the US, through private contractor <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/world/africa/11somalia.html?pagewanted=all" type="external">Bancroft Global Development</a>, has trained the mixed-clan <a href="http://www.africareview.com/News/US-trained-Somali-commandos-graduate/-/979180/2232946/-/lxwo27/-/index.html" type="external">Danab</a>&#160;company —&#160; “lightning” in Somali — a specially trained and equipped infantry unit.</p>
<p>In the Somali army, units are mostly clan-based. But when the soldiers arrive at Jazeera they are mixed together in the hope of creating integrated, multi-clan fighting groups. They are given a package of documents labeled "Fight for Somalia" that includes a copy of the constitution. Every morning they sing the national anthem while standing in front of the Somali flag.</p>
<p>In a sweltering, tin-roofed, cinderblock classroom in late April, a group of soldiers were being taught how to strip down and rebuild AK-47 assault rifles and PKM belt-fed machine guns.</p>
<p>Outside on the scraggly thorn-bush and trash-covered dunes more Somali troops, armed with wooden sticks, went through drills overseen by a broad-shouldered Swedish soldier. “Bang! Bang!” they shouted, charging an imaginary machine-gun nest. Then they carried away their make-believe wounded.</p>
<p>Somali National Army troops are trained by European Union soldiers in Jazeera, Mogadishu. (Tristan McConnell/GlobalPost)</p>
<p>Another class, lacking actual vehicles with which to practice roadside bomb identification, walked around hazard tape that marked a car-sized rectangle in the sand, holding plastic bottles as stand-ins for inspection mirrors.</p>
<p>For many of the Somali soldiers it was the first real training they had ever had.</p>
<p>But mindset is as important as technique.</p>
<p>“This generation has known only war, they grew up fighting,” said Colonel Jesus Gonzalez, the EU mission’s Spanish senior training officer. “They don’t know how to read or write but they are very good fighters, but as individuals. What we are trying to create is a spirit of fighting together, for Somalia.”</p>
<p>After a few weeks these soldiers will be back on the front lines. How they behave when they are there will to a large degree determine whether Somalia’s future is one of growing stability or descent into more war.</p>
<p>Ugandan AMISOM soldiers march out of their base to begin a dawn patrol in Qoryooley town, Lower Shabelle, Somalia. (Tristan McConnell/GlobalPost)</p>
<p>Past behavior gives little ground for hope.</p>
<p>Desertion is commonplace. “You leave 200 men somewhere and the next day there are only 20,” said Colonel Ali Aden Humad, the Djiboutian spokesman for the 22,000-strong AMISOM force, when I spoke to him in the air-conditioned container that serves as his office at Mogadishu Airport. “There’s no backbone, no mid-ranking non-commissioned officers to keep the army in good shape.”</p>
<p>Loyalty is a constant worry. “The Somali National Army are not infiltrated by Al Shabaab, they are Al Shabaab,” one exasperated Ugandan intelligence officer told me.</p>
<p>Government-issued weapons and uniforms are readily available on Mogadishu’s black market. In February the United Nations Monitoring Group, set up to investigate infringements of the country’s arms embargo, <a href="http://somalianewsroom.com/2014/02/19/full-text-un-somaliaeritrea-monitoring-group-memo-on-arms-diversion/" type="external">reported</a>&#160;that weapons were being deliberately “diverted” from government stocks to clan militias and even Al Shabaab.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2013/521" type="external">The UN</a>&#160;and <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/03/07/somalia-rape-normal-government-can-change" type="external">human rights groups</a>&#160;have accused uniformed security personnel of <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/120720/somalia-famine-women-rape-sexual-abuse" type="external">rape and sexual violence</a>.</p>
<p>Deadly clashes and turf wars frequently erupt between police, district militiamen, and soldiers who are supposed to be working together to keep the peace.</p>
<p>And as Al Shabaab retreats, dangerous clan and resource conflicts are re-emerging. In the absence of a stronger and more orderly Somali military force, the power and stability vacuum could drive people back into the arms of the Islamic militants under whose reign they were at least safe, if not free.</p>
<p>A Somali man walks through a Ugandan AMISOM patrol on the outskirts of Qoryooley, Lower Shabelle. (Tristan McConnell/GlobalPost)</p>
<p>Nowhere is that danger starker than in Lower Shabelle, a 150-mile-long wedge of coastal land south of Mogadishu. The Shabelle River that gives the region its name has made these plains Somalia’s breadbasket, an area that challenges the common perception of Somalia as a harsh and inhospitable place prone to famine and drought. A thick stripe of deep green mango trees marks the Shabelle River out from the flat of the land. Decades-old Italian-built locks, sluice gates and irrigation canals water the vegetable fields and orchards. Palm trees dot the rutted roads.</p>
<p>The town of Qoryooley sprawls on either side of a long, broad dirt road lined with shade-giving "neem" trees. Most buildings are single story and made of cinder blocks or mud bricks. Homes are painted dull colors, but shopfronts are adorned with bright murals advertising their wares: pills, plates of food, sacks of flour and cement, spare tires.</p>
<p>This is Al Shabaab heartland. Nearby Bulo Marer was the site of a failed attempt by French commandoes to rescue their captured intelligence officer, codenamed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulo_Marer_hostage_rescue_attempt" type="external">Denis Allex</a>, in early 2013. In the wake of last year’s Westgate attack US Navy SEALs tried, <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/somalia/131007/the-navy-seals-somalia" type="external">and failed</a>, to snatch an Al Shabaab tactician from Baraawe, further south.</p>
<p>(Google Earth/GlobalPost)</p>
<p>The morning of Osman the pharmacist’s murder, a month after the government capture of Qoryooley, I watched at the makeshift military base as US-trained Ugandan soldiers used hand-launched surveillance drones to spot clusters of suspected militants just a few miles away in Far Xaano. Larger groups were believed to have fallen back to Bulo Marer and Baraawe, one of the group’s last major strongholds and the target of the next phase of the military offensive.</p>
<p>In the center of Qoryooley, as the day wore on, scores of men sat in the shade of wooden awnings that stick out into the street. They far outnumbered the women who scurried by dressed in hijabs. Some of the men drank sweet tea made with camel milk as they chatted; others gazed across the dusty road as donkey carts trundled past.</p>
<p>Residents of Qoryooley, in Lower Shabelle, drink tea in the early morning. (Tristan McConnell/GlobalPost)</p>
<p>A convoy of Ugandan AMISOM soldiers moved through town, the rumble and clatter of armored personnel carriers drowning out the Muslim call to prayer.</p>
<p>Most of the town’s residents did not want to talk to foreigners or give their names out of fear that Al Shabaab fighters or sympathizers might accuse them of treachery, regardless of what they had to say.</p>
<p>But 70-year-old Ibrahim Mohamed, whom I found sitting on a doorstep wearing a traditional sarong-like "macawis," a short-sleeved shirt, and a keffiyeh draped over his shoulders, was more bold.</p>
<p>The reason there were so few women and children around, Mohamed said, his beard stained orange with henna, was because many had sent their families away for safety and now found they were unable to return.</p>
<p>“When Al Shabaab was here there was free movement in and out but now that has stopped,” he said.</p>
<p>The flow of goods and produce stopped with it, partly the result of a surprisingly low-tech tactic by the retreating militants: closing river locks in areas downstream, flooding the surrounding area to halt the AMISOM-SNA advance, which has no air support. The roadblocks and flooding have turned Qoryooley into an island.</p>
<p>“Ramadan is on its way and if the situation continues people will starve,” said a man who did not want to be named. “We can’t afford what’s here and nothing is coming in.”</p>
<p>Cooking oil, he told me, had more than doubled in price over the last few weeks, and pasta had increased by a quarter. Schools were closed and security was worse than it had been in years. Local administrators had been appointed but seemed unwilling to spend much time in the town itself where, on most nights, gunfire and occasional explosions could be heard.</p>
<p>A Ugandan AMISOM soldier stands guard in a complex of buildings formerly used as a base by Al Shabaab in Qoryooley, Lower Shabelle, Somalia. (Tristan McConnell/GlobalPost)</p>
<p>That morning, as Ugandan AMISOM soldiers crouched behind trucks, peered around corners, and trained their rifles on alleyways and windows, there was almost no sign of Somali government authority, apart from a tattered flag hanging from a pole in the courtyard of a derelict administrative compound. The previous black flag of Al Shabaab’s jihad lay tangled in the dirt nearby.</p>
<p>Mohammed Abdi, the 52-year-old SNA commander in Qoryooley, tossed aside a cigarette and struggled awkwardly into his camouflage jacket when I arrived. On his feet were scuffed leather <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winklepicker" type="external">winklepickers</a> with stacked heels.</p>
<p>He spoke sympathetically of the blocked roads hampering civilian movement.</p>
<p>He also said there were 220 of his troops in town. I had only seen a handful, lounging around the tumbledown army headquarters or ambling along the street looking as bemused as the locals by the show of Ugandan force.</p>
<p>When one of those soldiers encountered Osman a few hours later, half a dozen shortcomings came into play at once.</p>
<p>Osman did not die immediately after being shot, despite his grievous wounds. In fact, he remained alive until the following morning.</p>
<p>Bystanders took him in a pickup truck to the military base. The army doctors stopped the bleeding, bandaged Osman's wounds and gave him painkillers. But there was no blood for a transfusion, and no one knew Osman’s blood type, anyway. His wife and children were far away, stuck like other wives and other children in Mogadishu. They didn’t get to say goodbye.</p>
<p>In the wake of the killing, soldiers in the town did not have a good explanation for what had happened. Some believed, like Osman’s cousin, that the soldier had accused the pharmacist of Al Shabaab sympathies. Others had a working theory that the killer himself was an Al Shabaab sympathizer. Still others pointed to clan rivalries.</p>
<p>Weeks after the pharmacist’s death, a Ugandan officer told me the killer had been arrested and then released a few days later. He said the man was arrested again outside Mogadishu but did not know whether a trial had begun.</p>
<p>“Securing the place is one thing but what comes afterwards in terms of installing a better administration that can meet the needs of the people is definitely a challenge,” Nick Kay, the British diplomat who heads the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM), said when I met him at his Mogadishu Airport office.</p>
<p>“I think it will take some time before people in these areas feel the full benefit of the military successes.”</p>
<p>The question is whether Somalia can afford that time.</p>
<p>Ugandan soldiers perpare to deploy a shoulder-launched surveillance drone over the town of Qoryooley, Lower Shabelle, Somalia. (Tristan McConnell/GlobalPost)</p>
<p>With its emphasis on Islam, Al Shabaab succeeded in suppressing Somalia’s clan divisions some of the time while successfully exploiting them at others. The same was true of Siad Barre’s old dictatorship. Somalia’s problem is thus a classic one: a strong central force, whatever its drawbacks, keeps sectarian conflicts at bay. Dismantling that force invites factionism.</p>
<p>Somalia’s regional and Western allies want a strong government, but a federal rather than a centralized one. The idea is that if power is shared among political elites, the zero-sum battle for control of Mogadishu will end, at last.</p>
<p>But the provisional constitution drafted on this theory in 2012, and due to be ratified before elections in September 2016, is proving a powerful source of fresh tension. The constitution allows two or more regions to join together to form a federal state. Disputes over where those new boundaries are drawn, and over how much and what sort of power is devolved (and to whom), are driving the resurgence of clan rivalries in the power vacuum Al Shabaab left behind.</p>
<p>“Lower Shabelle is ground zero for these very contentious clan debates over how federal states are drawn up,” said Ken Menkhaus, a professor of political science at Davidson College in North Carolina and a leading expert on Somalia. Menkhaus told me that what’s going on in Lower Shabelle is, in essence, “a land grab.”</p>
<p>“The fact is the Somali government and its external allies are fighting two different wars,” he said. “The external actors are fighting Al Shabaab but the Somalis are mainly clan-based armed groups that are scrambling to control valuable territory.”</p>
<p>The local territorial fight can take precedence, as&#160;when the government last year briefly allied&#160;with one clan warlord who was planning joint operations with Al Shabaab in a dispute over control of the southern <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/somalia/121028/somalia-kismayo-al-shabaab-un-charcoal-embargo" type="external">money-spinning port</a>&#160;of <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/somalia/121029/somalia-aid-kismayo-who-al-shabaab" type="external">Kismayo</a>.</p>
<p>Members of a local militia train on a beach south of Merka in Lower Shabelle, Somalia. (Tristan McConnell/GlobalPost)</p>
<p>The re-emergence of local grievances trumping the Al Shabaab fight was clear when I visited Ceel Jaale, on the beach a few miles south of Merca, where the national army is no more welcome than the jihadists who were beaten back last year.</p>
<p>The local clan here is the Biamal, and that means members of the SNA from Mogadishu are viewed as enemies: In the clan wars that erupted in 1991, the Biamal fought the Habar Gidir, a sub-group of the clan that dominates Mogadishu and the current administration.</p>
<p>“The government sends the Somali National Army but they don’t know the area,” Mohamed Osman, Merca’s district commissioner, told me as he, with other local dignitaries and officials, watched hundreds of young men — and some women — training on the beach as new recruits to a local militia. The trainees marched and stood at attention, performed ambushes with sticks for guns, and executed a strangely balletic slow-motion marshal arts display.</p>
<p>“This militia is better equipped to protect the local people because they are from here,” he said.</p>
<p>He confirmed that the majority of the recruits were from the Biamal clan.</p>
<p>A local elder was more forthright than the politician. “For more than 20 years they,” Yusuf Ali Bore said, referring to the Habar Gidir, “have been trying to occupy this area, to conquer us. It’s a kind of colonization,” he said.</p>
<p>Ugandan special forces soldiers participate in a nighttime cordon and search operation looking for Al Shabaab members in Mogadishu. (Tristan McConnell/GlobalPost)</p>
<p>Somalia’s chief of defense forces, an avuncular man with spectacles and a grey mustache, works in a large office at the defense ministry, sitting in a leather swivel chair beneath a portrait of himself. Like many senior officers, General Dahir Adan Elmi served under the dictator Siad Barre. When the government collapsed he went into exile, where he stayed for 21 years before coming out of retirement. “I came back because I think I can help the Somali army, in a couple of years, to rebuild itself to stand on its own two feet,” he told me.</p>
<p>The general said it is a tough job to construct a military mid-conflict out of the available components: a top-heavy officer class, and ex-retirees plus “local militia, tribal militia, freelance militias” all from different clans and regions.</p>
<p>His wish list for the Somali army reveals just how unfit it is: “We need more capacity building, more training, more small arms and ammunition. We need fuel, food, field hospitals, physical structures and buildings. And we need a biometric system,” he added, with a laugh. “Because most [Somalis] have the same name! There are so many Mohameds, so [at] any time which Mohamed are you talking about?”</p>
<p>Some suggest the way to transcend clan in the armed forces is to return to the kind of intensive military training that the likes of Gen. Elmi enjoyed in Siad Barre’s days, when for two years new, young recruits lived and trained together away from their families. “That cleaned them of the clan and made them national, obedient to their officers and the flag,” said Zacharia Yusuf, Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group. It is, he noted, a method used to great success by Al Shabaab. It’s also the sort of intensive training that AMISOM, the EU, and the US are now trying to carry out on a shorter time scale at Jazeera.</p>
<p>When Somalia’s nascent armed forces get it right, they are capable of success, as shown by the offensive which pushed Al Shabaab out of Qoryooley and a string of other towns. Operation Eagle, as it was called, placed SNA soldiers for the first time in the vanguard with AMISOM troops close behind.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Footage from the fight to retake Qoryooley, courtesy of AMISOM.</p>
<p>And there is a test case for what Somali forces can do with greater resources and better training. The special forces of the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), known locally as the Alpha Squad, have reportedly been coached by the CIA and are better armed, better trained, and better equipped than any of their colleagues. Tasked with finding Al Shabaab operatives in Mogadishu, they carry out regular night raids on suspected cells.</p>
<p>Suspected Al Shabaab members sit blindfolded after being detained during a night raid by Somali and other special forces in Mogadishu. (Tristan McConnell/GlobalPost)</p>
<p>On a typically sweaty night in early May, Ugandan Special Forces, African Union police, the Somali army and police, and NISA conducted a joint operation to find and arrest a group of Al Shabaab bomb-makers and assassins close to the city’s Suqba’ad Market.</p>
<p>Arriving in a convoy of armored vehicles, the soldiers and police fanned out, establishing a secure cordon around a couple of blocks of low-rise cinder block buildings. The Alpha Squad, their identities hidden behind balaclavas, moved in and seized 10 men suspected of being Al Shabaab militants and sympathizers.</p>
<p>The suspects were blindfolded and made to kneel in the dirt. “There is still some investigation to do but we believe they are from the Amniyat,” a NISA officer told me, referring to an inner circle of terrorist planners and assassins close to Al Shabaab’s leader <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/kenya/131001/who-al-shabaab-leader-ahmed-godane" type="external">Ahmed Abdi Godane</a>.</p>
<p>“We’ve been after these guys for a long time,” said army intelligence officer Colonel Farah Ali.</p>
<p>As dawn approached the suspects were loaded into pick-up trucks and driven away, bound for trial. The muezzin call sounded and the Muslim faithful appeared out of the gloom, passing armed and wary soldiers on their way to the mosque for morning prayers.</p>
<p>The roads to Qoryooley were still closed. Somewhere in the dim light, across the city, was Osman’s bereaved family.</p>
<p>A suspected Al Shabaab member sits blindfolded after being detained during a night raid by Somali and other special forces in Mogadishu. (Tristan McConnell/GlobalPost)</p> | Inside the fight for Somalia's future | false | https://pri.org/stories/2014-05-29/inside-fight-somalias-future | 2014-05-29 | 3 |
<p>Photo by frankieleon | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>After a long reflection with a dear friend about some difficult events she had encountered in 2017, she ended with the typical statement, “let’s hope 2018 will be a better year.” I don’t know why&#160;this statement sounds to me as one full of defeat and hopelessness. It is a statement that many people repeat one year after another, even though they know deep inside that it is a fake form of&#160;optimism we console ourselves with, like a scared child singing in a dark alley to keep himself distracted from darkness. It is a way to seek solace about the fact that most of us are held hostages&#160;in the hands of few oppressive political and economic elites suffocating us. So, let’s get directly to the bad news without fooling ourselves further: 2018 won’t be new or happy while we are&#160;being ruled by the same war-mongers seeking to destroy everything meaningful and beautiful on our precious earth.</p>
<p>Those in power love it when we hold on to our fake optimism year after year, instead of revolting against these worn out celebrations. They love it when they see millions of mindless consumers&#160;storming stores to buy and consume more shiny and glittering gifts, as if they are genuine signs of loving and caring for each other. They love it when we keep quiet and do business as usual&#160;while “hoping for a better new year.” &#160;So, let’s declare it loud and clear: We are not happy! Also, there is nothing new with these traditional celebrations hijacked by businessmen who have&#160;reduced them into nothing more than an excuse for consuming goods. We need to change that by revolting as Jesus did at the temple when he drove out in a justified anger all those who were&#160;selling and buying there. Christmas and New Year should not be a temporary dose of heroine to sedate people and have them consume more goods, go on vacations, or sit with family and friends&#160;at the dinner tables of triviality to boast presumed “achievements” or share pathetic stories about “changing the world”.</p>
<p>As such, the question most worthy of pondering, as we get ready to bury the body of another precious year is: Can a new year really be happy with all this injustice going on in the world under&#160;our watch? This is not an analytical or an academic question. It is a dark reality that should be painfully obvious to any person with a beating heart. If there is any accuracy to William Faulkner’s&#160;words in that “the past is never dead. It is not even past,” then it follows that 2018 won’t be a happy year as long as the causes of human misery, wars, and destruction still exist, and so long&#160;many humans keep their mouths and eyes shut before all this injustice for temporary and pathetic gains.</p>
<p>The New Year won’t be a happy one so long as those waging economic wars and wars with bombs are still not held accountable for their crimes against humanity. 2018 won’t be a happy or a&#160;new one so long as we continue to be enslaved by the discriminatory laws enacted by those who have enough money and power to break them all whenever they please. &#160;2018 won’t be a good&#160;year so long as we don’t hold accountable those who think they have the right to displace and ruin millions of human lives; or cut parts of different countries like a piece of cloth according to&#160;their whims, religious beliefs, or political interests. The coming year won’t be a happy one so long as many of us choose to turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed against millions of&#160;precious human lives in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Palestine, the list could go on. The New Year won’t be a happy one so long as we passively accept the starvation and suffering of millions of&#160;innocent human lives subjected to the most inhumane economic sanctions imposed on them like it was done to the Iraqi people for 13 years. Like it is being done today to millions of innocent&#160;humans in Russia, North Korea, and Iran. And, by the way, the countries listed above are not “dirty” names we should fear pronouncing, writing, or sympathizing with, as the oppressive Western&#160;powers and propaganda want us to believe. Every country is a sacred ground as long as there is a single innocent human life inhabiting it. As an Iraqi-American, I know that most so-called&#160;“expert” narratives that paved the way to the Iraq war were outright false. Therefore, I have no reason to believe similar propaganda promoted today about all the countries listed above, either.&#160;Like any others in this world, these countries are filled with precious human lives and innocent people wishing for a more tolerable world.</p>
<p>Happy New Year? Oh, dear friends, this statement is like a dagger that gets pushed one inch deeper into my chest each time I hear it. I don’t know why it reminds me of Erich Maria Remarque’s&#160;words who writes in&#160;All Quiet on the Western Front, “Sweet dreams though the guns are booming.” At this time of the year, this statement should be revised to be “Merry Christmas and Happy&#160;New Year though the guns are booming!” We should then display it on every home, every school, every shop, and at the corner of every street to remind ourselves of our sad human reality&#160;before which we continue to stand motionless and unable to take brave actions.</p>
<p>Oh, my friends, let’s not celebrate the traditional holidays that no longer mean anything to many of us. Let’s find a new celebration day to celebrate every human life. Let’s do away with all&#160;celebrations imposed on us by the oppressive political and religious establishments around the world. In 2018, let’s stop consuming. Let’s stop killing each other. Let’s stop waging wars against&#160;each other. Let’s stop imposing economic sanctions on each other. Let’s stop closing borders in the face of each other. Let’s do away with all the fake, expensive, shiny, and nicely wrapped gifts&#160;of indifference. Let’s work a bit harder on the most precious human gift possible—the gift of listening carefully to each other.</p>
<p>Oh, my friends, please don’t ask me about my “resolutions” for 2018. I may disappoint you as I don’t have any plans for joining a new gym, following a healthy organic diet, buying a new car,&#160;remodeling my kitchen, or going on a fancy cruise. My resolution for 2018 is, despite all my despair, to continue to build bridges with my alphabet to help us get over the unquantifiable hate,&#160;racism, and inequality on this lonely planet. In 2018, let’s stop wars and violence. Let’s be resolved to unite humanity in a genuine way, not in the artificial and exploitative way through which&#160;globalization-promoters seek to turn this world into one small village for the selected rich and powerful to control and plunder. In the meantime, until humanity begins heading in that direction,&#160;perhaps we should not wish each other a Happy New Year. Given the discouraging events of 2017 and the previous years, 2018 will just be a continuation of pain and suffering if we continue&#160;operating with the same mindsets. Therefore, for now, let me declare loudly once again: I am neither happy nor is there anything new under the sun.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 2018 Won’t be New or Happy, Either! | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/12/29/2018-wont-be-new-or-happy-either/ | 2017-12-29 | 4 |
<p>GREENFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Massachusetts police have a new mystery to solve: Who wrote a 1944 love letter discovered within the walls of a house being remodeled?</p>
<p>The Greenfield Police Department took to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/greenfieldmapolice/" type="external">Facebook</a> on Saturday to ask for the public’s help in figuring out the backstory behind the handwritten letter. Police say the letter is dated April 19, 1944, and was penned by a man who identified himself only as Walter.</p>
<p>The letter was addressed to Miss Betty Miller, of Greenfield. In the letter, Walter makes no attempt to hide his affections. He writes: “I have always thought more of you than any other girl, and I still do.”</p>
<p>Police say they only have one motive: reuniting the letter with Miller or her family.</p>
<p>GREENFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Massachusetts police have a new mystery to solve: Who wrote a 1944 love letter discovered within the walls of a house being remodeled?</p>
<p>The Greenfield Police Department took to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/greenfieldmapolice/" type="external">Facebook</a> on Saturday to ask for the public’s help in figuring out the backstory behind the handwritten letter. Police say the letter is dated April 19, 1944, and was penned by a man who identified himself only as Walter.</p>
<p>The letter was addressed to Miss Betty Miller, of Greenfield. In the letter, Walter makes no attempt to hide his affections. He writes: “I have always thought more of you than any other girl, and I still do.”</p>
<p>Police say they only have one motive: reuniting the letter with Miller or her family.</p> | Man’s 1944 love letter found within remodeled home’s walls | false | https://apnews.com/55cfa924ce134330a5cdf59303ffb350 | 2017-12-23 | 2 |
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