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<p>Sept. 7 (UPI) — A teen set a new world record by completing a Rubik’s cube in less than 5 seconds at an event in Virginia.</p>
<p>Patrick Ponce, 15, completed the 3×3 Rubik’s cube <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np2G0yr5xI0" type="external">in 4.69 seconds</a> while participating in the Rally In The Valley event in Middletown.</p>
<p>“World record?” the teen said after slamming the solved cube on the table.</p>
<p>Ponce’s reaction drew a large crowd of his peers, who gathered around him to congratulate him on the achievement.</p>
<p>Officials <a href="http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/entertainment/2017/09/watch-this-teen-solve-a-rubik-s-cube-in-4-69-seconds.html" type="external">reexamined the cube</a> after the attempt was complete to determine whether it had been scrambled properly, but ultimately confirmed the record.</p>
<p>Ponce completed the record attempt in 17 moves carefully examining the cube for a few seconds before frantically shifting the pieces to complete the puzzle.</p>
<p>His performance topped the <a href="https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2016/12/13/Australian-breaks-Rubiks-cube-record-by-01-second/5121481640866/" type="external">previous record of 4.73 seconds</a> set by Australian Feliks Zemdegs, 20, in December 2016.</p>
<p>“Hey that’s pretty good,” Ponce said of his record-breaking performance.</p> | Teen completes Rubik's cube in world-record 4.69 seconds | false | https://newsline.com/teen-completes-rubiks-cube-in-world-record-4-69-seconds/ | 2017-09-07 | 1 |
<p />
<p>Photo by Sean P. Anderson | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>Americans have now entered into one of the most sickening and dangerous periods of the 21st century. Trump is not only a twisted caricature of every register of economic, political, educational, and social fundamentalism, he is the apogee of a warrior culture committed to rolling back civil rights, women’s reproductive rights, and all vestiges of economic justice and democracy.</p>
<p>Trump is the fascist shadow that has been lurking in the dark since Nixon’s Southern Strategy. It has now come into the light knowing full well that it no longer has to code or apologize for its hatred of all those who do not fit its white-supramicist and ultra-nationalistic script.</p>
<p>In light of the country tipping over into authoritarianism, we have learned is that liberalism with its third way economic and political polices is dead, nothing more than an ugly corpse decomposing on the national landscape. Its commitment to neoliberalism and the financial elite has helped to usher America into the dark night of authoritarianism.</p>
<p>We have also learned that the economic crisis and the misery it has spurned has not been matched by an ideological crisis, a crisis of ideas, education, and values. In part, that is because the left and progressives have not taken education seriously enough as central to the meaning of politics. Without an informed public, there is no resistance in the name of democracy and justice.</p>
<p>Of course, power is never entirely on the side of domination, and in this coming era of acute repression, we will have to redefine politics, reclaim the struggle to educate, change individual and collective consciousness, engage in meaningful dialogue with people left out of the political landscape, and build broad based social movements. There are hints of this happening among youth of color and we need to be attentive to these struggles.</p>
<p>This is a time to both talk back and fight back. It will not be easy but it can happen and there are historical precedents for this. The main vehicle of change and political agency has to be young people. They are the beacon of the future and we have to both learn from them, support them, contribute where possible, and join in their struggles.</p>
<p>The lights are going out and the time to wake up from this nightmare is today. Forget depression, look ahead, get energized, read, build alternative public spheres, become guerrilla fighters. There are no guarantees in politics, but there is no politics that matters without hope, that is, educated hope.</p>
<p>Here is <a href="http://paulsamueldolman.com/parent/podcasts/pauly-cast/dr-henry-giroux-185/" type="external">a podcast interview</a> I did on the election with Paul Samuel Dolman.</p> | A Call for Resistance in Dark Times | true | https://counterpunch.org/2016/11/11/a-call-for-resistance-in-dark-times/ | 2016-11-11 | 4 |
<p>SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - After Costa Rica's Turrialba volcano awoke last year from more than a century of sleep, Jorge Andres Diaz reckoned it was a fine time for a picnic on the slopes of the 11,000-foot gas-spewing mountain.</p>
<p>His wife, Ana Gabriela Chaverri, thought the idea was a bit mad - but, then again, Diaz always likes to get what seems a little too close to the hot mouth of active volcanoes.</p>
<p>"In situ" volcano measurement - a hairy endeavor that involves sampling gases and particles right as they shoot out of a crater - is a life study for the Costa Rican physicist. The closer he gets to the volcano, he believes, the closer he comes to the data that can ultimately predict eruptions.</p>
<p>Material emitted from volcanoes hints at what's going on down below, says Diaz. If hot magma is stirring underground, he says, that changes the composition of gas and ash flowing up above. Better understanding of the makeup of those signals would perfect prediction capabilities, helping authorities warn nearby residents when to evacuate and airlines when to reroute their planes.</p>
<p>Read more Futurists: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/111021/futurists-milk-green-clothing-qmilch-fashion-design" type="external">Milk from clothing? It does a body good</a></p>
<p>Diaz's wife may take solace in his latest strategy.</p>
<p>He has begun sending small, unmanned aircraft to hover over Turrialba, keeping him at a safer distance from the volcano, still fuming since its ash eruption in January last year.</p>
<p>The Vector Wing 100, Diaz's 8-foot-by-5-foot aircraft, is a high-density foam wing that contains an advanced computer system that can be programmed to cruise the volcano, snap photos, take video in color or infrared, and collect data on the composition of the volcanic plume.</p>
<p>Coupling the in situ data collected by the Vector with analysis made by remote sensors and satellites in space, Diaz aims to map out a clearer picture of plume activity and composition. The study could greatly improve the way scientists predict which way volcano plumes will move, potentially saving lives and money.</p>
<p>In April 2010, the menacing cloud that spread from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull Volcano grounded some 100,000 flights across Europe. Airlines said that they lost over 1.3 billion euros (then $1.7 billion), according to <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/18558053" type="external">The Economist</a>.</p>
<p>"The Icelandic eruption demonstrated the lack of validation that they have on satellite information," said Diaz, who believes that some of the flight cancellations might have been avoided with the right technology in place.</p>
<p>"The images showed part of the volcanic plume, but they were worried about what they could not see. What is the concentration of that plume? At what point does it fall below the detection limit of the instrument? The only way to know is by in situ measurement," he added.</p>
<p>Diaz's seeming obsession with on-the-ground data has roots in breakthrough research he conducted in 1998 at Kilauea, Hawaii.</p>
<p>It was common practice for investigators to bottle up gas samples and take them back to a laboratory to be examined, but ferrying samples around provided incomplete results, Diaz explains.</p>
<p>Helium, which could be a key indicator for predicting eruptions, is so light that it slips through the container seal before reaching the lab.</p>
<p>Diaz's stroke of genius: bring the lab to the volcano.</p>
<p>He took the concept of the mass spectrometer - an instrument that measures the composition of samples and weighs up to 100 kg - and built a miniature, portable version. Bringing it to Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano to sample chemicals at the site, Diaz wowed volcanologists, won awards and even caught NASA's eye.</p>
<p>After earning his PhD from the University of Minnesota, he took on post-doctoral work in 2000 with the Kennedy Space Center, using the device and his plume-savvy to detect hazardous gases at a spaceship launch site.</p>
<p>"There were very few 'post-docs' at NASA from this area of the world," he said proudly during a recent interview at his lab at the University of Costa Rica.</p>
<p>Diaz was determined to bring his fine-tuned knowledge back to Costa Rica, home of hundreds of volcanoes, about a half-dozen of which are active.</p>
<p>He began studying his country's volcanoes from above, first on the NASA WB-57 that flew about 12,000 feet over the mountain, and later on a smaller aircraft known as a Cessna that came within 5,000 feet.</p>
<p>But Diaz wanted to get closer.</p>
<p>When Turrialba erupted last year, dozens of nearby residents were evacuated.</p>
<p>Diaz put on a protective mask and went along with a team of researchers, including a NASA investigator, to monitor the activity near its vent.</p>
<p>"It was very dangerous, you could see the ground shaking," Diaz said. "It's like a jet engine, in terms of the noise you hear, and it's just degassing from the magma. And you say, if that's the amount of gas coming out, imagine how much magma is below that."</p>
<p>"He's very brave," David Pieri, investigator of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said of his Costa Rican volcano research partner. "It comes with the territory of being a volcanologist. You want to get the data, and it's always a calculated risk."</p>
<p>At that point, Diaz knew the risk had grown very high. He wanted to continue to monitor the volcano but without having to set foot so close to a potentially damaging ash eruption, or worse. Pilots refused to fly him near the plumes, afraid of crossing through particles that could wreck their aircraft engines.</p>
<p>Diaz needed smaller, inexpensive aircraft - and a way to cut out the pilot.</p>
<p>He unveiled his robotic VW-100 in October and put the video of its test flight to the Top Gun theme "Danger Zone":</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>The university purchased the UAV from Maryland Aerospace for $40,000. Now Diaz is working on a new model that would slash the price to $2,000.</p>
<p>That's probably a good thing. Diaz has crashed his plane 20 times already, so destroying the current model would put a serious dent in his research budget.</p>
<p>At the very least, perhaps there's some reassurance in knowing that no men will have been harmed during the study of that volcano.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="//ad.doubleclick.net/clk;247629356;41126634;k?http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/homepage.html" type="external" /></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>The GlobalPost reporting series "The Futurists" is brought to you in partnership with <a href="" type="external">Intel(R)</a>.</p> | The Futurists: Getting up-close with volcanoes | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-11-22/futurists-getting-close-volcanoes | 2011-11-22 | 3 |
<p>Baltimore’s Inner Harbor area is one of the bright spots in the Maryland city. It’s the home of the U.S.S. Constellation and one of the country’s great aquariums. It has restaurants and shops, and is near Camden Yards, home of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team and M&amp;T Bank Stadium, home of the Baltimore Ravens football team. It is one of the main tourist attractions in Baltimore, drawing large crowds.</p>
<p>But over the past two weeks, violent groups of teenagers have randomly assaulted multiple individuals in and around the Inner Harbor area. For now, the police have no suspects, and are identifying the group behind the assaults only as “juveniles."</p>
<p>The <a href="http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2017/11/01/baltimore-teen-attacks/" type="external">most recent attack</a>, which took place on Tuesday, left one victim with two broken hands and three staples in her head. The victim’s mother, Kia Martin, described the incident to Baltimore’s CBS affiliate station, WJZ:</p>
<p>The group of teens surrounded my daughter and her friends. My daughter was stomped, kicked, punched, thrown to the ground, beat with a baseball bat. I just don’t understand why a group would want to go around and terrorize innocent people. My daughter walks that path to and from school every day.</p>
<p>In another <a href="http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2017/10/31/inner-harbor-attacks/" type="external">article</a>, WJZ notes that violent teen attacks are nothing new for Baltimore. The story cites an assault earlier this year on a random individual who was heading home from work, as well as an attack on councilwoman Rikki Spector, both of which were committed by groups of youths.</p>
<p>Since the end of October, the violent assaults seem to have increased in frequency. On October 21, <a href="http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2017/10/30/teen-attack-inner-harbor/" type="external">a New Jersey family was attacked</a> while walking through the Inner Harbor. The family of ten, who asked to remain unidentified when they spoke with WJZ, were reportedly “swarmed and beaten by a large number of teenagers."</p>
<p>One victim described the incident, recalling that “[t]hey swarmed us. They hit my husband in the head. They knocked him out … and then it was just complete bedlam.” She continued, “They punched my nephew in the face and knocked him to the floor. My sister went to protect her son, and they were kicking her. I was kneeling with my husband screaming ‘Somebody help us, why is nobody helping us?’”</p>
<p>The same night, another unidentified 18-year-old victim was hospitalized after he and his friends were attacked by a group of teenagers. The victim’s mother, who is rightfully reported as feeling “outraged and disgusted," told WJZ that her son “couldn’t go to school or work cause he couldn’t see out of his eye. His eye was closed for days."</p>
<p>Violent crime and murder in Baltimore has increased dramatically since 2015. Between 2010 and 2014, the <a href="http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/police/homicides/" type="external">average annual homicide rate</a> in Baltimore was 216.8. Between 2015 and 2017, the annual average homicide rate rose by more than one hundred victims to 320.7, and 2017 isn’t even over yet. Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis responded to a concerned public about the Inner Harbor attacks with words of reassurance, saying, “I’m certainly aware of those two assaults and our presence is very, very important, specifically at the Inner Harbor." But he added that it’s unrealistic to expect officers to be everywhere at all times.</p>
<p>It’s worth noting that the city of Baltimore has had police recruitment issues since the death of Freddie Gray in 2015 and the riots that followed. According to <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/447066/consent-decrees" type="external">National Review</a>, the police manpower total is now approximately 400 officers less than what the city has maintained in the past. That’s almost a 14% reduction in total police presence. <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Freddie_Gray" type="external">Remember</a>, former Baltimore City States Attorney Marlyn Mosby immediately sought to politicize Freddie Gray’s death and the six officers involved were charged and tried for murder, with all charges later being dropped after three officers were acquitted. Even with the acquittals and dismissal of criminal charges, the officers still face disciplinary action that is ongoing.</p>
<p>The continuing politicization of everything based on race has consequences and this appears to be a good example of the real unintended effects felt in our communities.</p> | Violent Teenagers Terrorize Baltimore’s Inner Harbor With Random Attacks | true | https://dailywire.com/news/23214/violent-teenagers-terrorize-baltimores-inner-tyler-dahnke | 2017-11-06 | 0 |
<p />
<p>I am very upset today over the Northwest Airline debacle. That Northwest could bust a strike by bringing in scab mechanics was bad enough. But now it seems that <a href="http://www.freep.com/money/business/nwa-bar123e_20050823.htm" type="external">they are also simply going to eliminate</a> 1,200 plus union jobs. Indeed, the airline’s spokesperson said,</p>
<p>the airline is considering the legally thorny question of whether to make the 1,200 replacement mechanics it hired to keep flying through the strike into permanent employees.</p>
<p>In short: if you are a worker you have no right to freedom of speech, freedom to collectively bargain, or freedom to protest working conditions – your company can simply dismiss you, eliminate your union job, and hire someone else.</p>
<p>I suspect the NLRB will let them get away with it, too. Under Bush, the NLRB has been extremely pro-strike-busting and anti-workers’ rights. They even <a href="http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=409" type="external">recently upheld a company rule</a> that banned employees from “fraternizing” away from the job, denying workers the freedom of assembly.</p>
<p>The corporate heads want to keep workers down, want to keep them separate and isolated, and want to keep them from collectively asking for fair wages and benefits.</p>
<p>Although my money is with Change to Win’s focus on organizing new workers, its events like the Northwest strike that remind us how much new labor legislation we need and that perhaps there is room for Sweeny’s agenda as well.</p>
<p>By the way, <a href="http://jackpinesavage.blogspot.com/" type="external">Curly Tales of War Pigs</a> who has been extensively covering the NWA strike points the way to the Star Tribune’s <a href="http://www.startribune.com/images/ss/1590_0.html" type="external">strike photo gallery</a>. I highly recommend it.</p>
<p /> | NWA Woes | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2005/08/nwa-woes/ | 2005-08-23 | 4 |
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<p>PITTSBURGH (AP) — Coca-Cola's marketing efforts during the weekend's heatwave in Pittsburgh backfired when the company mistakenly used a map of Philadelphia in a post on Twitter.</p>
<p>Sunday's <a href="https://twitter.com/CocaCola/status/876430688152506368" type="external">tweet</a> said, “Today's forecast in Pittsburgh: Record heat, followed by an ice-cold wave of ahhhhhhh. #ShareaCoke.”</p>
<p>Although temperatures climbed into the high 80s, the tweet was received coolly because the message was accompanied by the wrong map.</p>
<p>Even Mayor Bill Peduto weighed in, responding, “I was elected to represent the people of Pittsburgh, not Philadelphia” – riffing on his recent kerfuffle over President Donald Trump's pullout of the Paris climate accord.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co. apologized Monday, saying the company is “exploring innovative, adaptive technologies to serve up personalized content to our fans … in this case, our map accidentally missed the mark – literally.”</p>
<p><a href="#23123b1a-f8c4-40a6-ae0d-843d660e2199" 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> | Coke tweet targeting Pittsburghers uses map of Philadelphia | false | https://abqjournal.com/1020122/coke-tweet-targeting-pittsburghers-uses-map-of-philadelphia.html | 2017-06-19 | 2 |
<p>In Germany, <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bavaria-55th-german-finger-wrestling-championships-pictures-1459623" type="external">finger fighting</a> is a real thing.</p>
<p>And the sport’s practitioners — big, burly mountain men — take it very seriously.</p>
<p>It works like this: Two men of the same age and weight sit across from each other at a wooden table and use their middle finger to pull on a leather band.</p>
<p />
<p>Philipp Guelland/Getty Images</p>
<p>The player who pulls their opponent across the table, like this guy, is declared the winner.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>Philipp Guelland/Getty Images</p>
<p>The tradition, known as fingerhakeln in German,&#160;is said to have started in the <a href="http://news.msn.co.nz/glanceview/432562/german-finger-wrestling-championships.glance" type="external">17th century</a> in the Alpine region of southern Germany and Austria as a way to settle disputes. It went something like this:</p>
<p>"I’m right."</p>
<p>"No, I’m right."</p>
<p>"Ok, let’s finger fight this out."</p>
<p>At some point men decided there were more efficient ways to resolve arguments and finger pulling was reduced to a form of entertainment.</p>
<p />
<p>Philipp Guelland/Getty Images</p>
<p>The 55th German Finger Wrestling Championships were held in the Bavarian town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen last weekend.</p>
<p>In keeping with the spirit of the tradition, players and spectators still wear lederhosen and hats. And drink beer.&#160;</p>
<p>It goes without saying that heaving a hefty mountain man across a table using nothing more than a finger is hard work. Not surprisingly, injuries such as dislocated or broken fingers are common.</p>
<p />
<p>Philipp Guelland/Getty Images</p>
<p>While strength and technique are important, having a fat finger is key.&#160;"You have to have a fat finger, so that the strap has a good hold," Anton Utzschneider, a finger wrestler for 38 years, was <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/no-laughing-matter-finger-pulling-championships-in-the-alps-a-561007.html" type="external">quoted</a> as saying.</p>
<p>The best part of the competition, at least for the winners, is drinking beer from the trophy.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>Philipp Guelland/Getty Images</p> | Finger fighting is a real sport in Germany. Here's how it works | false | https://pri.org/stories/2014-08-06/finger-fighting-real-sport-germany-heres-how-it-works | 2014-08-06 | 3 |
<p>Our friend and comrade Irving Howe is dead.</p>
<p>The world knew him as the leading intellectual of the American left, a voice (often, a voice in the wilderness) for democratic and socialist values.</p>
<p>We knew him differently. He was our voice (it's our wilderness). And he did not only speak for us but also to us and with us. I know that voice; it's in my bones. What I want to talk about here is its tone and timbre and its message. I don't mean its ideological message, Irving's doctrine, for despite his Marxist training, he was never doctrinaire, never an ideologue. "Socialism," he and Lew Coser wrote in one of the early issues of Dissent, "is the name of our desire." He was driven by a passion, not an ideology. He was politically committed like a man in love: attuned to the needs of the hour, to the actual experience of political life.</p>
<p /> | Irving Howe 1920-1993 | true | https://dissentmagazine.org/article/irving-howe-1920-1993 | 2018-10-04 | 4 |
<p>Flickr/&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/d-b/393457154/sizes/z/in/photostream/"&gt;db&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href="http://www.creativecommons.org"&gt;Creative Commons&lt;/a&gt;).</p>
<p><a href="http://theclimatedesk.org/" type="external" /></p>
<p />
<p>The shifting political winds in Washington may have a far-reaching impact on a wide range of issues: health care, tax cuts, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.</p>
<p>But what about climate change?</p>
<p>Very little was said about global warming during the campaign season, other than the barrage of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueGo7HGmFDY" type="external">negative ads by Republicans</a> accusing their Democratic opponents of supporting “cap and tax” legislation. Kentucky Senator-elect Rand Paul even went so far as to <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-19-rand-pauls-copenhagen-rant-and-other-election-notes/" type="external">criticize</a> President Obama for giving “credibility and credence” to dictators like Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe by supporting global action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.</p>
<p>And then there is this statistic: Of <a href="http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/gop-senate-deniers/" type="external">all the Republicans</a> newly elected to the U.S. Senate last week, only one has openly accepted the science behind anthropogenic climate change (Senator-elect Mark Kirk, of Illinois). As much as half of the new Republican majority in the House has either outright denied the existence of climate change or questioned whether the warming of the planet is caused by humans.</p>
<p>To say the least, congressional action on comprehensive climate change legislation in the next two years seems unlikely. But the results of the midterm elections could have much more damaging consequences for environmental legislation, including <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66T0NP20100730" type="external">efforts</a> by Democrats to increase oversight and regulation of the off-shore drilling industry after the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/tag/gulf-oil-spill/" type="external">Deepwater Horizon disaster</a> in the Gulf.</p>
<p>To sort through all of this, Need to Know’s Alison Stewart spoke with Mother Jones‘&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Kate Sheppard</a>. Sheppard <a href="" type="internal">covered the elections</a> on Tuesday from Colorado, where <a href="" type="internal">she followed</a> the closely watched battle between Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet and his Republican challenger, Ken Buck.</p> | Podcast: Congressional Climate Change? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/kate-sheppard-podcast-need-to-know/ | 2010-11-10 | 4 |
<p>The math in the Senate is not complicated. The Republicans have 52 senators, which means they can only have two defections and still pass the bill. (All Senate Democrats oppose Trumpcare.)</p>
<p>Senate Republicans unveiled their latest version of Trumpcare today. Shortly thereafter, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report finding it would leave <a href="" type="internal">an additional 22 million people uninsured by 2026</a>, with 15 million losing coverage in 2018 alone. Low-income Americans would be hit especially hard as Medicaid would be severely cut and premium subsidies slashed.</p>
<p>There are now three Republicans who have publicly stated that will not only oppose the bill but will vote against a “motion to proceed,” which means the bill would not even get an up-or-down vote.</p>
<p>https://twitter.com/SenatorCollins/status/879471862694256641</p>
<p>https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/879457928452898817</p>
<p>https://twitter.com/pkcapitol/status/878324756797284356</p>
<p>Heller made his comments three days ago, but none of the changes made since then have addressed his concerns about Medicaid cuts.</p>
<p>Unless one of these three Senators change their mind, the Senate bill is already dead. Majority Leader McConnell will be looking to make changes to flip votes, but the path forward is treacherous.</p>
<p>Conservatives like Paul oppose the bill because it doesn’t go far enough to repeal Obamacare. Moderates like Collins and Heller oppose the bill because it goes too far in cutting Medicaid.</p>
<p>McConnell’s problems likely <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/22/us/politics/senate-health-care-whip-count.html?_r=0" type="external">extend far beyond these three Senators</a>: Only 17 Republican senators have made statements firmly supporting the bill. Five other Republicans have publicly expressed serious concerns.</p> | Current version of Senate health care bill is dead | true | https://thinkprogress.org/current-version-of-senate-health-care-bill-is-dead-on-arrival-ab751c395984 | 2017-06-27 | 4 |
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<p>LOS ANGELES – “American Idol” is betting that a judges’ remix with Jennifer Lopez, Harry Connick Jr. and Keith Urban will fare better with viewers than bickering divas Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj did last season.</p>
<p>The rumored addition of Lopez and Connick as judges for season 13 was announced Tuesday by Fox. They’ll join Urban to make up the talent show’s first panel consisting solely of singers – a la NBC’s successful 2011 upstart “The Voice.”</p>
<p>Pop star and actress Lopez will be back on “American Idol” after a two-season run as judge in 2011 and 2012 that was a boon for the show and her career. Connick, a respected jazz singer and musician, proved adept as a mentor in several “Idol” appearances.</p>
<p>Urban’s return to the contest was announced last month by Fox Chairman Kevin Reilly, who said the singer didn’t get a chance to show his personality in his first turn as a judge. Urban appeared overwhelmed last season by the Carey-Minaj crossfire that drew complaints from some viewers.</p>
<p>“I think this season of ‘Idol’ is gonna be a blast,” Urban said in a statement Tuesday. “New team, new energy and a whole new field of artists to be discovered and given a chance!”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Lopez, Connick back on ‘American Idol’ | false | https://abqjournal.com/257395/lopez-connick-back-on-american-idol.html | 2013-09-04 | 2 |
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<p>Since then, there have been numerous developments in Navajo Nation law, federal law and also technical and infrastructure changes within the branch and the Navajo Nation government. These changes now require an update to the law.</p>
<p>Work sessions within the branch are currently under way to review Title 7.</p>
<p>The first thing that is being addressed by the branch is the way Title 7 is written. Because it was modeled on the laws of other jurisdictions, it does not contain statements of mission and philosophy that are specific to our Navajo Nation. Additionally, it also contains lengthy procedural provisions that are more suitable to be addressed separately in court rules.</p>
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<p>Title 7 will need significant re-drafting in all its sections to keep pace with the last 30 years of developments.</p>
<p>Secondly, because of the checks and balance protections written in to Title 7, it is now part of our organic laws. There are certain statutes in the Navajo Nation Code that establish the structure of the government and are therefore considered the core of the Navajo government. There is a need to review Title 7 not only with the legislators but also with the Government Development Commission and the people.</p>
<p>Thirdly, there very likely will be governmental differences in the reform of any laws deemed organic. The Navajo Nation courts, like many judiciaries, are the weakest governmental unit as a result of lack of our own funding. Courts everywhere are dependent on their legislatures for funding.</p>
<p>Historically, there have been many attempts to control our judges.</p>
<p>In the 1950s, there was an experiment to elect judges. In the 1970s, the Navajo Nation Council created a separate appellate body, consisting only of council delegates, to handle governmental disputes. Neither of those methods were successful and no longer exist. The lesson learned is the permanent need for a separate and impartial judiciary.</p>
<p>At this time, the selection and removal of judges remains in council control. Appointments of justices and judges are presently by the president with confirmation by the council.</p>
<p>Evaluations of probationary justices and judges are by the chief justice and Judiciary Committee (now the Law and Order Committee). Removal of justices and judges is by recommendation of an independent Judicial Conduct Commission to the president and council for reasons of misconduct.</p>
<p>In order to ensure the stability of the courts, it is time for an independent commission to be made responsible for appointments and evaluations.</p>
<p>This may best be achieved by using a “merit selection” system through an independent commission and without an election component.</p>
<p>Selection and evaluation through such a commission would ensure accountability, stability and independence. It would also render unnecessary the need for elective candidates to raise funds, advertise and make campaign promises, all of which can compromise judicial independence.</p> | Time to review and update Navajo Nation’s code of law | false | https://abqjournal.com/196206/time-to-review-and-update-navajo-nations-code-of-law.html | 2013-05-06 | 2 |
<p>The German government says it has stopped the vetting process for a Chinese firm's purchase of chipmaker Aixtron SE after the U.S. government nixed the takeover.</p>
<p>President Barack Obama last week ordered Fujian Grand Chip to drop its attempt to acquire Aixtron's California subsidiary, over national security concerns.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The Chinese firm announced it was abandoning the 670 million euro ($721 million) takeover Thursday.</p>
<p>A spokesman for Germany's Economy Ministry, Andreas Audretsch, told reporters in Berlin on Friday that "the case is closed."</p>
<p>Audretsch said the German government is committed to protecting jobs, but added that "I wouldn't want to see this linked with any speculation about what might happen to Aixtron."</p> | Germany says Aixtron case 'closed' after Chinese bid blocked | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/12/09/germany-says-aixtron-case-closed-after-chinese-bid-blocked.html | 2016-12-09 | 0 |
<p>Nancy Cartwright, the face behind the voice of Bart Simpson, is here to tell you in her non-cartoon voice about the excitement of recruiting new members for the Church of Scientology, which has long counted her among its members. There’s a “crusade” afoot in 2010, according to Cartwright … and other enthusiastic Scientologists in this (leaked?) video … to bring “ideal orgs” to every neighborhood — in buildings we can all “dig on!” And ones that serve really good food too!</p>
<p>It’s unclear, if you will, whether the COS wants this video to be accessible to those outside its fold, so watch it quick, as it’ll probably disappear if that isn’t the case. –KA</p>
<p>YouTube via <a href="http://gawker.com/5424117/this-is-the-crusade-leaked-scientology-video-features-the-voice-of-bart-simpson?skyline=true&amp;s=i" type="external">Gawker</a>:</p>
<p /> | Scientology: Coming to Your Neighborhood? | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/scientology-coming-to-your-neighborhood/ | 2009-12-12 | 4 |
<p>A wide-eyed Lance Spencer, 12, stood against the wall, between a stone block once used to auction slaves and a glass-boxed gallery where a worker was adjusting the lights on a shawl that belonged to abolitionist Harriet Tubman.</p>
<p>"It's cool!" the seventh-grader at Eliot-Hine Middle School in Washington, D.C., exclaims. "That's what I think is interesting so far. - I wanted to see our history. I've learned so much, but there's more that I want to know."</p>
<p>Lance, two classmates and his broadcast-media teacher, Mandrell Birks, were threading their way through a nearly impassable gallery choked with reporters, curators and construction workers as the National Museum of African American History and Culture offered a preview of its collection.</p>
<p>"This lesson here is something that can change their lives forever," says Birks. "An entire museum to speak about what's not in the books is completely amazing to me!"</p>
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<p>It's also still amazing to founding director Lonnie Bunch, who stood grinning on the stage in the theater named for Oprah Winfrey, which was filled with a standing-room-only audience for the first time. Despite the frantic construction continuing during the tour, Bunch insists the museum will be ready for its close-up when it opens Sept. 24 on the National Mall.</p>
<p>"Stress was standing - on empty land trying to figure out how we were going to raise $30 million to get going!" Bunch declares. "We are so ready, it's ridiculous. Ten days? Piece of cake!"</p>
<p>What's not cake is the level of emotion some of the more than 3,000 artifacts on display evoke in even the most casual of viewers. Staff here have been trained to handle visitors who may be overwhelmed by items ranging from Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman's hymn book, to ankle shackles used to restrain slaves crossing the Atlantic to the Americas during the Middle Passage, to a slave cabin used at the Point of Pines Plantation on Edisto Island, S.C.&#160;Museum specialist Mary Elliott says that the cabin was leaning when she first saw it on the island, and a team took the building apart "like a puzzle," restored it and preserved the wood. She saw it again in Richmond, Va., before they put it back together.</p>
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<p>"It was like seeing a person come back to life. That was the most powerful moment for me," Elliott says, her eyes shining. "I just went and stood inside and just looked around. Even without the siding, I could see the walls, I could feel the people. I could hear their voices."</p>
<p>Many things in this museum hold lives and have voices, explains curator Nancy Bercaw.</p>
<p>"We have a bull whip on view. The first time I saw it in storage, I just looked at it and had to turn away. The level of emotion of seeing that object was something I'm having a hard time explaining," says Bercaw, curator of the "Slavery and Freedom" exhibition.&#160;She chokes up a little when asked how she felt the first time she saw an auction block that was put in its case just yesterday.</p>
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<p>"On that stone block, people would have been sold away and never see their loved ones again," Bercaw says slowly. "You know these people and honor them, so it's a question of really seeing, really recognizing; it's a question of saying these were human lives, and focus on the person who once stood on that block."</p>
<p>Along with cool artifacts such as the fedora Michael Jackson wore during his 1992 Victory Tour and rock "n" roll star Chuck Berry's bright-red Cadillac are more disturbing pieces such as an 1835 bill of sale for a 16-year-old Negro girl named Polly, for $600. There's also an entire segregation-era Southern Railway car, which is so large, it had to be lowered into the museum before the building was complete.</p>
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<p>"We want to make the whole concept of segregation and discrimination not abstract, but concrete and real," explains Spencer Crew, curator of the "Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom" exhibition. "We want people to understand what that means in the lives, particularly, of African Americans in this country. - It really meant you were seen as different. You were seen as not having the same level of importance as other individuals, and it was something that was put in your face whenever you would travel, especially on trains."</p>
<p>Crew suggests that people also see a plane used to train the Tuskegee Airmen, the renowned African-American pilots for the Army Air Corps service during World War II, and the lunch-counter stools from Greensboro, N.C., as well as the interactive counter that tells the history of the sit-ins.</p>
<p>Director Bunch says that the African-American experience is the American experience, and it is the story of the nation, not just of one community.</p>
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<p>"This building will be available for the public to engage this rich history for as long as there is an America," Bunch says.</p>
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<p>Allison Keyes is an award-winning correspondent, host and author. She can be heard on CBS Radio News, among other outlets. Keyes, a former national desk reporter for NPR, has written extensively on race, culture, politics and the arts. Follow her on <a href="" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | You May Choke Up at Some of the Items on Display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture | true | https://theroot.com/you-may-choke-up-at-some-of-the-items-on-display-at-the-1790856848 | 2016-09-15 | 4 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" />JUNE 1, 2011</p>
<p>By JOSEPH PERKINS</p>
<p>It’s been 22 years since Rancho Seco nuclear power plant generated its last megawatt. The facility, 25 miles southeast of downtown Sacramento, was the casualty of a public referendum in which a majority of voters in the state’s capital city decided the plant should be shut down.</p>
<p>Ben Davis Jr., an anti-nuke activist, is credited with first suggesting the idea of idling <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco_Nuclear_Generating_Station" type="external">Rancho Seco’s two reactors</a>. Now, two decades later, the Santa Cruz resident has come out of retirement to gather signatures for a state ballot measure that would shutter California’s two remaining nuclear power plants — San Onofre in San Diego County and Diablo Canyon in San Luis Obispo County.</p>
<p>Rancho Seco’s closure cost its owner, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, some $660 million, a portion of which almost certainly was passed along to its ratepayers. It also permanently removed the nuclear plant’s 913 megawatts from the grid — capacity that, if fully utilized, was enough to serve most of SMUD’s business and residential customers.</p>
<p>The fallout from decommissioning both San Onofre and Diablo Canyon would be exponentially greater than Rancho Seco’s shut down. The two nuclear power plants generate 15 percent of California’s electricity. Removing that output from the state grid would have an impact on the state comparable to the electricity crisis of the early 2000s.</p>
<p>Most California residents remember those bad old days.</p>
<p>Because state utilities could not generate enough electricity to meet growing customer demand, the utilities had to purchase megawatts from out-of-state providers at markups of us much as 2,000 percent.</p>
<p>Yes, there was evidence of market manipulation by out-of-state electricity providers. But those providers would not have been able to get away with their alleged price gouging if California was not so reliant on imported electricity; if the state’s utilities had been generating enough megawatts to meet homegrown demand.</p>
<p>Davis, described as “eccentric, stubborn” by one of his friends in California’s anti-nuke community, has obviously ignored the lesson of the early 2000s. His ballot measure is predicated on the dubious notion that California can readily replace the electricity generated by San Onofre and Diablo Canyon by erecting more solar arrays and building more wind farms.</p>
<p>California’s non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office disagrees. In <a href="http://www.lao.ca.gov/ballot/2011/110306.aspx" type="external">a recent report</a>, it notes that nuclear power supplies “base load” energy to the state’s electricity grid. What that means is that, unlike solar and wind, which are intermittent sources of megawatts, nuclear provides a reliable, uninterrupted power source.</p>
<p>If Davis somehow succeeds in removing San Onofre’s 2,350 megawatts and Diablo Canyon’s 2,240 megawatts from the grid, residents throughout the state can look forward to regular rolling blackouts, the LAO warns.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, decommissioning California’s two remaining nuclear power plants will drive up electricity rates from Sacramento to San Diego.</p>
<p>Part of that is simply a matter of supply and demand. If the state eliminates 15 percent of its electricity output, prices are certain to climb. The other part is that the anti-nuke community will insist that the lost 15 percent be replaced by solar and wind. Those renewable energy sources cost more than twice as much per kilowatt hour as nuclear.</p>
<p>Then there’s the very real possibility that Southern California Edison and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Diego_Gas_%26_Electric" type="external">San Diego Gas &amp; Electric</a>, owners of San Onofre, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_%26_Electric" type="external">Pacific Gas &amp; Electric</a>, owner of Diablo Canyon, could seek compensation from the state of California for the losses incurred by the involuntary shut down of their plants. The LAO’s Office estimates that the losses could total more than $4 billion.</p>
<p>None of the costly scenarios laid out by the LAO, or by pointy headed opinion writers like yours truly, matters to Davis and California’s anti-nuke zealots. If they can shut down the state’s last two nuclear power plants, they are quite willing to subject California residents to the nation’s highest electricity rates.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Banning Nukes: $4 Billion CA Budget Hit | false | https://calwatchdog.com/2011/06/01/banning-nukes-4-billion-ca-budget-hit/ | 2018-06-20 | 3 |
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<p>The Trump administration intends to develop a "state of the art" missile defense system to protect against attacks from Iran and North Korea, the White House said in a policy position posted on its website on Friday.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The statement, posted on the White House website within minutes of Donald Trump's inauguration, did not provide details on whether the system would differ from those already under development, its cost or how it would be paid for.</p>
<p>(Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Arshad Mohammed)</p> | White House: Trump to Develop Missile Defense System Against Iran, North Korea | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/01/20/white-house-trump-to-develop-missile-defense-system-against-iran-north-korea.html | 2017-01-20 | 0 |
<p>“It’s kind of nice seeing those same old mountains,” said U.S. Army Sgt. James T. Schmidt, an infantry squad leader from Decatur, Ill., assigned to Company C, 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, Task Force No Slack, while looking through his night vision goggles as the sun sets from a hilltop in the Shal Valley in eastern Afghanistan’s Nuristan Province, Nov. 8. This is Schmidt’s second combat tour to the same region in Afghanistan. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/5178899234/" type="external">Photo</a> by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Mark Burrell, 210th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment.</p> | We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for November 18, 2010 | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/were-still-war-photo-day-november-18-2010/ | 2010-11-18 | 4 |
<p>(Image courtesy The New Press)</p>
<p>‘Before I Do’&#160;</p>
<p>By Elizabeth F. Schwartz, afterword by Jim Obergefell</p>
<p>The New Press</p>
<p>$14.95</p>
<p>240 pages</p>
<p>The box was too small for a toaster.</p>
<p>There was no pony in there, no new car, not even a stuffed animal. The box was too small for all that, but it held so much more: dreams, ideas, happiness, congratulations. And if you’re lucky, your wise new fiancé tucked “ <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Before-Do-Legal-Marriage-Otherwise/dp/1620971542/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1484849231&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=before+i+do+a+legal+guide+to+marriage+gay+and+otherwise" type="external">Before I Do</a>” by Elizabeth F. Schwartz in the box with your beautiful engagement ring.</p>
<p>So you put a ring on it, made the proposal, and now you’ve got a wedding to plan. It’s all quite exciting, but slow down a minute. If you’ve grown up thinking that this day would never come, then you might not’ve thought about what marriage entails.</p>
<p>“LGBT people,” says Schwartz, “have not lived in a world with premarital guidance for LGBT couples. We have suffered systemic exclusion.”</p>
<p>Just because you can be married now is no reason that you should, she points out. Yes, you’re in love, and yes, you’ve been together forever, but now’s the time to be sure you know exactly what you’re in for. That starts by asking yourselves a series of difficult but important questions.</p>
<p>Once you’ve gotten that (perhaps uncomfortable) part out of the way, be sure that any past relationships are completely and legally finished and “do not create confusion with multiple statuses with multiple people.” Know what paperwork you need in order to proceed and what questions you’ll be asked as you’re filling it out.</p>
<p>This pre-wedding period is a good time to talk to a financial expert, a tax consultant and a lawyer. Don’t trust word-of-mouth to protect your finances; the laws in your state may horrify you if wedded bliss goes bust. Talk about debt: how much each of you has and how you perceive it. Educate yourself on insurance coverage, asset protection, pre-nups and estate planning.</p>
<p>And if all this preparation makes you start to think that maybe marriage isn’t such a good idea after all, Schwartz (who plans a Feb. 15 D.C. <a href="https://www.evensi.us/first-comes-love-elizabeth-schwartz-amp-martha-m-ertman-the/191361837" type="external">appearance</a>) says it’s OK. There are valid reasons for not taking the plunge and there are alternatives. One of them may be a much better fit for you.</p>
<p>Getting engaged is an exciting time. Putting the brakes on everything isn’t the most romantic notion, but it’s maybe the most prudent. “Before I Do” explains why.</p>
<p>Though she says her advice in this book is appropriate for anyone, author Elizabeth F. Schwartz focuses more on gay and lesbian couples, as well as trans individuals and their prospective spouses. She does so, in part, because she feels that they’ve only seen marriage “on the fringes.”</p>
<p>That somewhat sets this book apart from the thousands of other wedding-planner books on bookshelves; what really makes it different, however, is that Schwartz admits her no-nonsense words may talk prospective brides and grooms out of having a wedding. Readers who might’ve somehow taken marriage lightly before will absolutely be convinced otherwise.</p>
<p>“Failure to plan has terrible consequences,” says Schwartz, and this book erases that omission. Read “Before I Do,” though, and rest assured that you can toast one another smarter.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Before I Do</a> <a href="" type="internal">Elizabeth F. Schwartz</a> <a href="" type="internal">Jim Obergefell</a></p> | Guide to gay marriage | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2017/01/19/guide-gay-marriage/ | 3 |
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<p>While you were sleeping, the landscape of the US financial system changed dramatically. CNBC is calling it, “The biggest shakeup in the history of the US financial system.” The country is in a “once-in-a century” financial crisis, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. The New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/business/15lehman.html?ref=worldbusiness" type="external">reported</a> late Sunday that Bank of America has reached a $44 billion deal to buy troubled investment firm Merrill Lynch. Another firm wasn’t so lucky: Unable to find a buyer over the weekend, 158-year-old investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy Monday morning. Lehman’s liquidation will mark the largest collapse of a Wall Street bank since <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drexel_Burnham_Lambert" type="external">Drexel Burnham Lambert</a> folded in the wake of the junk bond scandal almost two decades ago.</p>
<p>The problems don’t end there. “We will see other major financial firms fail,” Greenspan said on “This Week.” Giant insurance company American International Group (A.I.G.) asked the Federal Reserve for $40 billion, “without which the company may have only days to survive,” according to the Times. Washington Mutual, too, may be in trouble, after its shares plummeted late last week and Moody’s Investor Service downgraded the bank’s debt to “junk” status. And in Europe, a Swiss newspaper <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTHO43401920080914" type="external">reported</a> that Swiss bank UBS will have to take another $5 billion in write-downs.</p>
<p>We’ll see what happens over the course of the day on Monday, but A.I.G., at least, seems to be in serious trouble. Adam Bakhtiar, a CNBC analyst, called Sunday’s events a “tidal wave of horrific news.” James K. Galbraith, an economist and <a href="/news/feature/2008/09/exit-strategy-how-to-burn-the-speculators.html" type="external">contributing</a> <a href="/news/feature/2008/07/december-surprise.html" type="external">writer</a> for Mother Jones, wrote in an email that while he has “a pretty good record on attacking Wall Street,” his “schadenfreude is very much under control at the moment”:</p>
<p>The world will not be a better place with two free-standing investment banks—Goldman [Sachs] and Morgan [Stanley]—and a half-dozen major commercial banks, if that, running everything. Further, there is a risk that the unraveling will become disorderly and out of control from this point, as assets hit the market in fire sales and do not find takers. This will affect pension funds and greatly compound the collapse of the wealth position of the middle class…. The collapse of Wall Street will hit Main Street like Ike hit Houston.</p>
<p>So how do we get out of this crisis? Well, the prime mover of all of these problems is the collapse of the housing bubble in the United States. “There’s no question that this is in the process of outstripping anything I’ve seen, and it still is not resolved and it still has a way to go,” Greenspan said Sunday. “And indeed, it will continue to be a corrosive force until the price of homes in the United States stabilizes.”</p>
<p>The collapse of Lehman and the broadening crisis will undoubtedly be topic “A” for the presidential campaigns this week. Barack Obama and John McCain want to lead this country. How do they plan to respond to Monday morning’s news?</p>
<p /> | BofA Buys Merrill; Lehman Files for Bankruptcy; AIG, WaMu Teeter | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2008/09/bofa-buys-merrill-lehman-files-bankruptcy-aig-wamu-teeter/ | 2008-09-15 | 4 |
<p>In the aftermath of back-to-back fatal air crashes, the U.S. Marine Corps has told all of its flying squadrons to halt operations for a 24-hour period. But military and elected officials stressed that it will take more than a day to fix the Marines' deep training and maintenance problems.</p>
<p>Gen. Robert Neller, the Marine Corps' commandant, ordered the safety stand-down on Aug. 11 in order "to focus on the fundamentals of safe flight operations," according to an official release.</p>
<p>The stand-down affects around a thousand aircraft at bases all over the world, including some involved in air strikes on the Taliban and Islamic State. Each squadron can choose which day to pause its flights, as long as it's in the next two weeks. "No operational commitments will be impacted," the release stressed.</p>
<p>Lately, Marine flights have been anything but safe. On Aug. 5, one of the Corps' V-22 tiltrotor crashed off the coast of Australia, killing three people. In early July a Marine KC-130 aerial tanker plummeted to the ground in Mississippi, claiming the lives of all 16 passengers and crew.</p>
<p>Both mishaps are under investigation.</p>
<p>Marine aircraft have been involved in 11 major accidents in the fiscal year that ends in September. That's two more than in the 2016 fiscal year. Twenty-one Marines have died in air crashes in 2017. Just eight died the previous year. Marine aviation is in a "state of crisis," Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned in a January report.</p>
<p>The Marines agree. "Current readiness, at the squadrons and for Marine aviation as a whole, is below the level required," Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, then the Corps' top aviation officer, wrote in the 2017 edition of the Marines' annual aviation summary, published in March. &#160;</p>
<p>"Approximately 80 percent of our aviation units lack the minimum number of ready basic aircraft for training, and we are significantly short ready aircraft for wartime requirements," Gen. Glenn Walters, one of the Marines' assistant commandants, told the House Armed Services Committee in February.</p>
<p>In a sign of desperation, in 2016 the Marines began pulling old F/A-18 fighter jets from storage at a facility in the Arizona desert and refurbishing them in order to boost the frontline fighter force. The plan was to deliver nine refurbished F/A-18s in 2016, seven in 2017 and the final seven in 2018. But government workers rushed to complete the last seven jets and delivered them back to the Marines in July, a year early.</p>
<p>McCain blamed the crisis on the mandatory "sequestration" budget caps that have sliced billions of dollars from planned maintenance and training accounts since 2011. "The Marine Corps is in the process of modernizing nearly its entire fleet of aircraft, but those new aircraft have not shown up yet," McCain explained in his report.</p>
<p>"In the meantime, many Marine Corps aircraft have been pushed well beyond their service life," the senator continued. "As a result, the majority of Marine aircraft now sit in depots awaiting maintenance. So many aircraft are unusable that pilots are unable to meet training requirements."</p>
<p>To begin repairing the damage, McCain proposed repealing the sequestration law and boosting defense spending by tens of billions of dollars per year over recent levels. The Marine Corps is assuming that Congress will end sequestration -- or at least waive the law's budgetary caps for a few years. It's unclear whether pro-defense lawmakers can amass the votes to end or alter sequestration.</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>But even if they succeed in doing so and the Marines get more cash for aircraft maintenance and flight training, the Marines' aviation plan anticipates a return to full readiness no earlier than 2020. There will almost certainly be more crashes. And possibly more stand-downs. "Much work needs to be done," Walters said.</p> | After Nearly a Dozen Major Accidents in Past Year, Marines Take Drastic Action | true | https://thedailybeast.com/us-marines-order-all-aircraft-grounded-for-24-hours | 2018-10-06 | 4 |
<p>Mitt Romney’s response to the attacks against the U.S. in Egypt and Libya has provoked new interest in the question of where, as a general matter, Romney stands on foreign policy matters. In the pro-Obama MSM, this interest takes the form of arguing that Romney is, hide the children, a “neo-con.”</p>
<p>Jason Horowitz of the Washington Post takes this tack in an <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/romneys-attacks-on-obama-foreign-policy-show-neocons-dominance/2012/09/13/b59e0916-fdc4-11e1-8adc-499661afe377_story.html" type="external">article</a> called “Romney’s attacks on Obama foreign show neocons’ dominance.” Horowitz never bothers to tell us what he means by “neoconservative,” and it’s not clear that he knows.</p>
<p>Actually, there is nothing neoconservative about Romney’s response, which consisted of criticizing a statement that he thought (as I do) “sympathized” with those who carried out attacks against the U.S. The State Department claims that it had problems with the same statement and President Obama ultimately rejected it. Does that make Obama a neoconservative?</p>
<p>The case that Romney’s reaction was neoconservative (if Horowitz had cared to present one) would have to rest on the candidate’s statement that is “a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values.” But this sentiment is not confined to neoconservatives. Romney’s articulation of it is so widely shared that no politician, including Obama, would publicly advocate its negation — i.e. that it is sometimes a good course for America to apologize for its values.</p>
<p>Those who see neocons under their bed, or who exploit the term for ulterior motives, are missing a key point: unwillingness to apologize for American values is not the same thing as being willing to impose them on others through military, or even political, action.</p>
<p>Horowitz also errs by dividing the world of foreign policy analysis into only three schools: isolationist, realist, and neoconservative. As Robert Merry argued in his book Sands of Empire, there is another option: nationalist. (Merry, himself something of a neocon baiter, considers Romney a neoconservative, but that’s a topic for another post). Merry correctly identifies former Vice President Cheney and former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld as nationalists (though he seems to think they were “captured” by the neocons). Ronald Reagan was the quintessential nationalist.</p>
<p>Romney’s expression of disgust with the initial U.S. position on events in Egypt reflects pure nationalism, and nothing more. It is almost precisely the reaction we would expect from Reagan. It is, one hopes, the reaction of most Americans even after decades of indoctrination by an anti-nationalist education system.</p> | Mitt Romney, nationalist | true | http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/09/mitt-romney-nationalist.php | 2012-09-14 | 0 |
<p>In this latest episode of his <a href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english" type="external">TeleSUR</a> show “Days of Revolt,” Truthdig columnist, author and activist Chris Hedges takes on the considerable and timely topics of police brutality and entrenched racism in America.</p>
<p>Helping Hedges break it down is Larry Hamm, longtime organizer and founder of the Newark, N.J.-based <a href="http://njpop.org/wordpress/" type="external">People’s Organization for Progress</a>.</p>
<p>WATCH: <a href="http://tdig.it/1UBrAyV" type="external">VIDEO: Chris Hedges, Cornel West on the Demonization of the Black Poor</a></p>
<p>As Hedges notes, although recent flare-ups of police violence and lethal racism, captured and distributed via new technologies and devices, have drawn national attention to these issues, their history is long and ignominious.</p>
<p />
<p>“Police brutality is deeply rooted in contemporary urban communities,” agrees Hamm.</p>
<p>What’s more, Hamm notes, African-Americans in particular are “part of a system of racial control that has existed since Africans came to the United States.”</p>
<p>Watch the full 25-minute discussion between Hamm and Hedges below:</p>
<p>OMPlayer.setup({medio:”telesur”,slug:”days-of-revolt-428666″,width:600,height:450});</p>
<p>–Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Kasia Anderson</a></p> | VIDEO: Chris Hedges and Larry Hamm Talk Police Violence and America's Deep-Rooted Racism | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/video-chris-hedges-and-larry-hamm-talk-police-violence-and-americas-deep-rooted-racism/ | 2015-08-19 | 4 |
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<p><a href="" type="internal" />Gov. Susana Martinez said Monday that New Mexico will declare a state of emergency, which would release money to assist New Mexico businesses and communities affected by the spill. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and tribal officials in the Navajo Nation issued disaster declarations Monday.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Bloomfield activated an emergency waterline to send water to Aztec. Bloomfield is not affected by the Animas spill but is shutting down the watering of parks to conserve the supply it is now sharing with its neighbors.</p>
<p>The five New Mexico systems shut down their river water intake systems last week based on testing and analysis at nine locations on the San Juan and Animas rivers, said Ron Curry, District 6 administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.</p>
<p>Curry and other EPA officials had no estimate on how many people are affected by the closures when they spoke with reporters in a telephone conference call Monday.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"We do not anticipate any reopening decision until at least (Monday) Aug. 17," said Shaun McGrath, administrator for EPA Region 8 in Denver.</p>
<p>Ali Furmall with the New Mexico Environment Department carries water samples taken from sites within 500 feet of the Animas River near Farmington. (Roberto E. Rosales/Journal)</p>
<p>The decision to resume use of river water for drinking, agricultural and recreational uses will be based on testing and analysis of water samples across the length of the spill, McGrath said.</p>
<p>"The timing of these decisions could vary among local, state and tribal governments based on local conditions and by uses," he said.</p>
<p>The five systems are those of Aztec and Farmington, the Lower Valley Water Users Association in Kirtland, the Morning Star Water Supply System and the North Star Water Users Association near Aztec.</p>
<p>Farmers in the Animas and San Juan river valleys said they have no water to irrigate their crops.</p>
<p>D'rese Sutherland, who with her husband owns Sutherland Farm on the Animas River near Aztec, said they halted irrigation Friday of their 80 acres of chile, pumpkins and other vegetables.</p>
<p>"We definitely won't be putting water on our crops until we get word that we're good to go," she said. "We will probably rely on third-party testing."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The farm received some rain Friday, "so we are probably good for about a week," she said.</p>
<p>The Animas flowed clear on Monday, she said, with only a tinge of the mustard-yellow color visible over the weekend.</p>
<p>The Sutherlands continued to rely on drinking water from the North Star Water Users System, which is among the five systems that have stopped drawing water from the river.</p>
<p>North Star has alerted its users that it has water storage sufficient for 60 to 75 days, she said.</p>
<p>The plume of heavy metals released Wednesday into the Animas River from the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colo., turned the Animas into a thick yellow soup late last week.</p>
<p>The plume reached the San Juan County cities of Aztec, Farmington and Kirtland over the weekend, and arrived in Utah early Monday, officials said. Albuquerque officials have said the spill is not expected to affect the city's water supply.</p>
<p>The Animas River flows into the San Juan River near Farmington. The San Juan flows west through Shiprock, then northwest into Utah, where it joins the Colorado River just north of Lake Powell, a huge reservoir in southern Utah and northern Arizona.</p>
<p>Contaminated water continued to escape from the King Mine near Silverton on Monday but was treated in four collection ponds before its release, EPA spokesman David Gray said.</p>
<p>Farmington meeting</p>
<p>Residents who live near the Animas River gather Monday at the Farmington Civic Center to hear the latest water test results. (Roberto E. Rosales/Journal)</p>
<p>Jan Schembara and her son, Micah Groth, were among more than 200 people attending a public meeting Monday at the Farmington Civic Center. The purpose of the meeting, hosted by San Juan County and attended by representatives of both the state Environment Department and the EPA, was to update people on the spill and its consequences.</p>
<p>Schembara and Groth live in Farmington and have water available now from the city's water reserves. What they want to know is how long they can depend on having a good water supply.</p>
<p>"We have a garden in our yard," Schembara said. "Do we need to stop watering right away, because we are going to have to start rationing? And I am also concerned about the long-term effect on our environment. That river meanders a long way."</p>
<p>Groth, a landscaper, said he is worried about the effect of the spill on the local economy, particularly the agricultural business.</p>
<p>Kim Carpenter, San Juan County manager, said 60,000 people live within a mile on either side of the Animas and San Juan rivers, and there are 60,000 head of livestock and 1,600 wells in that area.</p>
<p>Environment Department employee Nancy McDuffie said that of 250 samples tested Monday, nothing of concern had been detected. She said the department will send teams to the homes of people who have wells within 500 feet of the rivers to do more exhaustive testing of the water in those wells.</p>
<p>Ryan Flynn, secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department, attended Monday's meeting. He warned people not to use well water until they have been told it was OK to do so.</p>
<p>Flynn told the Journal that Monday's meeting was the second public meeting held in Farmington. He said the first, attended by 350 people, lasted four or more hours and had been tough but necessary.</p>
<p>"You have to be upfront and honest," Flynn said. "People are angry and they are scared. They need to express their concerns. Sometimes, it is not even questions. It's just people wanting to get things off their chests."</p>
<p>Aztec City Manager Josh Ray announced water restrictions Monday intended to conserve the city's reserve water supply.</p>
<p>Aztec has relied since Friday on three reservoirs that hold 73 million gallons of water to provide the city's needs of 1.4 million gallons a day, he said.</p>
<p>The city's reserves will last about 50 days at the current rate of use, he said. The city has been relying on its reserve supply for five days.</p>
<p>The Stage 1 water restrictions Ray implemented Monday afternoon instruct city water customers not to water yards, gardens, trees or shrubs, except during certain times and days.</p>
<p>The Animas River was starting to clear up near Farmington on Monday. (Roberto E. Rosales/Journal)</p>
<p>Farmington, which turned off its pumps on the Animas River on Thursday morning, has about 90 days of stored water reserves, Public Works Director David Sypher said.</p>
<p>Farmington is not considering water restrictions for now, he said.</p>
<p>EPA critics</p>
<p>Martinez and Flynn have been blistering in their criticism of the EPA, particularly for not notifying state officials for 24 hours after the spill.</p>
<p>Members of New Mexico's congressional delegation joined the criticism Monday, sending a letter to the EPA asking that it develop a comprehensive plan for addressing those communities, farms and ranches that are without water and urging better communication with state officials.</p>
<p>The letter says the lack of water is already taking a toll on residents and their livelihoods.</p>
<p>The New Mexico Environment Department is offering free water testing for people affected by the spill from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the San Juan County Sheriff's Office substation in Lee Acres, 21 County Road 5500 in Farmington.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for the department said those hours may be extended if the demand for water testing continues. One scientist involved in the testing said a line of people were waiting at 8 a.m. Monday to get their water tested.</p>
<p>The Associated Press contributed to this report.</p>
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<p /> | State of emergency in NM | false | https://abqjournal.com/626504/state-of-emergency-in-nm.html | 2 |
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<p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — As Case Keenum convened the Minnesota huddle with 10 seconds left, the situation staring down the Vikings was as simple as it was daunting.</p>
<p>With the go-ahead field goal by the New Orleans Saints that silenced this deafening stadium still fresh in the air, the Vikings were well beyond any moment of anxiety. All that was left for Keenum to do on that last snap was to throw the ball up like he used to do in his Texas backyards and hope for the best.</p>
<p>Keenum completed his last-ditch heave near the sideline Sunday on the game’s final play to Stefon Diggs, <a href="http://www.vikings.com/media-vault/videos/Minneapolis-Miracle-Keenum-To-Diggs-For-The-Win/899f7d74-51b0-43f8-a5ea-695e884af19d" type="external">who slithered away from the Saints for a 61-yard touchdown</a> to give the Vikings <a href="http://www.vikings.com/media-vault/videos/Full-Highlights-Vikings-29-Saints-24/1713011c-87ac-4fb8-b1a5-27bee99482c3" type="external">a 29-24 victory</a> and a spot in the NFC championship game at Philadelphia.</p>
<p>“At that point, I’m just a kid throwing a football to another big kid,” Keenum said with a smile, “and he just runs and scores.”</p>
<p>One more win, against the Eagles, and the Vikings will become the first team to play in a Super Bowl on their home turf. Instead of the usual win-or-go-home stakes, they’re in a win-and-go-home situation.</p>
<p>“It never ends that way,” Diggs said. “Usually, it’s reality. It’s life. So things go and you walk home and worry it about tomorrow.”</p>
<p>Instead, Drew Brees and the Saints were the ones trudging off the field in defeat.</p>
<p>“We’re still a bit shell-shocked after what happened there at the end,” said Brees, who steered the Saints in position for Wil Lutz’s 43-yard kick with 25 seconds remaining that punctuating a forceful rally from a 17-point deficit that stood until 1:16 was left in the third quarter.</p>
<p>The field goal was set up by a fourth-and-10 completion by Brees to Willie Snead for 13 yards to the Minnesota 33 with 40 seconds left. Brees connected with Michael Thomas for two of his three touchdown passes in a span of 3:09 that spilled into the fourth quarter. The second score was set up at the Minnesota 40 by an interception by Marcus Williams, when an off-balance throw into traffic by Keenum served as his one costly moment of recklessness, a “bonehead play,” as he put it.</p>
<p>Keenum settled back in. He guided the Vikings to two more field goals by Kai Forbath, including a 53-yarder with 1:29 left that was his third of the game against his former team and gave them their lead back after a blocked punt by George Johnson had set up the Saints for a touchdown pass by Brees to Alvin Kamara.</p>
<p>Then came the play that put Keenum and Diggs in permanent rotation on the NFL’s all-time highlight reels.</p>
<p>“We knew there was still a possibility, still some hope,” Keenum said.</p>
<p>This wasn’t quite Franco Harris and the Immaculate Reception for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1972 playoffs, but these Vikings are on some kind of special path after turning to Keenum in the second game of the season after original starter Sam Bradford was sidelined by a knee injury.</p>
<p>The Vikings were out of timeouts and nearly out of options when Keenum dropped back from his 39 and threw high into a crowd. Diggs jumped in front of Williams, who rolled awkwardly underneath Diggs during an ill-fated attempt at making a low tackle.</p>
<p>Devastatingly for the Saints, nobody was behind him in the secondary, as Diggs made sure to note right before he made the break on his route during the play the Vikings, believe it or not, call “Seven Heaven.”</p>
<p>Diggs kept his balance as he landed, kept his feet in bounds and kept on running untouched into the end zone as the crowd at U.S. Bank Stadium erupted with euphoria. Keenum raced around the field, looking for anyone to hug.</p>
<p>“I’m shocked. I don’t know what else to say. This is the first time ever I’m out of words,” Vikings defensive end Everson Griffen said.</p>
<p>Keenum, the undrafted and undersized all-time leading passer in NCAA history who was making his first career playoff start and has long looked up to Brees, was having a hard time finding the words to describe the experience. He finished with 318 yards, going 25 for 40, with Diggs catching 137 yards on six catches.</p>
<p>“A heck of a game, wasn’t it?” head coach Mike Zimmer said. “And the good guys won.”</p>
<p>Diggs was still in full uniform when he took the podium for his postgame interview, the ball from the winning catch resting safely in front of him on the lectern.</p>
<p>“It’s plays like this that you dream about your whole life,” he said, “and it finally happens.”</p>
<p>PICKED OFF</p>
<p>Brees saw his 13th career postseason game end in a crushing final moment, his 25-for-40 performance for 294 yards tainted a bit by two interceptions before halftime. One came on a <a href="http://www.vikings.com/media-vault/videos/Sendejo-Leaps-For-A-Must-See-Interception/17dea72d-8242-4e3b-9552-d855774a9d8a" type="external">leaping grab by safety Andrew Sendejo</a> , the other off a tip by Griffen that landed in Anthony Barr’s arms at the Minnesota 10-yard line midway through the third quarter.</p>
<p>FIRST-HALF FORCE</p>
<p>The Vikings came roaring out of their first-round bye, forcing punts by the Saints on their first three possessions and moving 55 yards in eight plays for a touchdown run by Jerick McKinnon on their first drive. Aided by two pass interference calls on Ken Crawley for 54 yards, the Vikings reached the 1-yard line before settling for a short field goal on the next possession. They pushed the lead to 17-0 early in the second quarter when Latavius Murray plowed in from the 1-yard line.</p>
<p>“The Vikings had a phenomenal game plan,” Saints defensive end Cameron Jordan said.</p>
<p>The only other time the Saints went scoreless in the first half of a postseason game was five years ago. They fell behind 16-0 at Seattle in the divisional round and lost 23-15 to the eventual Super Bowl champions.</p>
<p>SENDEJO DOWN</p>
<p>The first touchdown to Thomas came one play after he leveled Sendejo with a jarring blindside block, sending Sendejo to the sideline for concussion evaluation and reigniting the crowd when the flag that was initially thrown was waved off.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Saints: head home with a 1-5 record on the road in the playoffs under Payton, with a promising group of young players but some uncertainty around how much longer Brees, who will turn 39 on Monday, will stick around.</p>
<p>“I’m more toward the end of my career than I am at the beginning, I know that,” Brees said. “That’s all I’ll divulge.”</p>
<p>Vikings: move on to Philadelphia for the 10th championship game appearance in franchise history, the fifth in the last 30 years. They won the first four, losing in the Super Bowl each time.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">http://www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
<p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — As Case Keenum convened the Minnesota huddle with 10 seconds left, the situation staring down the Vikings was as simple as it was daunting.</p>
<p>With the go-ahead field goal by the New Orleans Saints that silenced this deafening stadium still fresh in the air, the Vikings were well beyond any moment of anxiety. All that was left for Keenum to do on that last snap was to throw the ball up like he used to do in his Texas backyards and hope for the best.</p>
<p>Keenum completed his last-ditch heave near the sideline Sunday on the game’s final play to Stefon Diggs, <a href="http://www.vikings.com/media-vault/videos/Minneapolis-Miracle-Keenum-To-Diggs-For-The-Win/899f7d74-51b0-43f8-a5ea-695e884af19d" type="external">who slithered away from the Saints for a 61-yard touchdown</a> to give the Vikings <a href="http://www.vikings.com/media-vault/videos/Full-Highlights-Vikings-29-Saints-24/1713011c-87ac-4fb8-b1a5-27bee99482c3" type="external">a 29-24 victory</a> and a spot in the NFC championship game at Philadelphia.</p>
<p>“At that point, I’m just a kid throwing a football to another big kid,” Keenum said with a smile, “and he just runs and scores.”</p>
<p>One more win, against the Eagles, and the Vikings will become the first team to play in a Super Bowl on their home turf. Instead of the usual win-or-go-home stakes, they’re in a win-and-go-home situation.</p>
<p>“It never ends that way,” Diggs said. “Usually, it’s reality. It’s life. So things go and you walk home and worry it about tomorrow.”</p>
<p>Instead, Drew Brees and the Saints were the ones trudging off the field in defeat.</p>
<p>“We’re still a bit shell-shocked after what happened there at the end,” said Brees, who steered the Saints in position for Wil Lutz’s 43-yard kick with 25 seconds remaining that punctuating a forceful rally from a 17-point deficit that stood until 1:16 was left in the third quarter.</p>
<p>The field goal was set up by a fourth-and-10 completion by Brees to Willie Snead for 13 yards to the Minnesota 33 with 40 seconds left. Brees connected with Michael Thomas for two of his three touchdown passes in a span of 3:09 that spilled into the fourth quarter. The second score was set up at the Minnesota 40 by an interception by Marcus Williams, when an off-balance throw into traffic by Keenum served as his one costly moment of recklessness, a “bonehead play,” as he put it.</p>
<p>Keenum settled back in. He guided the Vikings to two more field goals by Kai Forbath, including a 53-yarder with 1:29 left that was his third of the game against his former team and gave them their lead back after a blocked punt by George Johnson had set up the Saints for a touchdown pass by Brees to Alvin Kamara.</p>
<p>Then came the play that put Keenum and Diggs in permanent rotation on the NFL’s all-time highlight reels.</p>
<p>“We knew there was still a possibility, still some hope,” Keenum said.</p>
<p>This wasn’t quite Franco Harris and the Immaculate Reception for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1972 playoffs, but these Vikings are on some kind of special path after turning to Keenum in the second game of the season after original starter Sam Bradford was sidelined by a knee injury.</p>
<p>The Vikings were out of timeouts and nearly out of options when Keenum dropped back from his 39 and threw high into a crowd. Diggs jumped in front of Williams, who rolled awkwardly underneath Diggs during an ill-fated attempt at making a low tackle.</p>
<p>Devastatingly for the Saints, nobody was behind him in the secondary, as Diggs made sure to note right before he made the break on his route during the play the Vikings, believe it or not, call “Seven Heaven.”</p>
<p>Diggs kept his balance as he landed, kept his feet in bounds and kept on running untouched into the end zone as the crowd at U.S. Bank Stadium erupted with euphoria. Keenum raced around the field, looking for anyone to hug.</p>
<p>“I’m shocked. I don’t know what else to say. This is the first time ever I’m out of words,” Vikings defensive end Everson Griffen said.</p>
<p>Keenum, the undrafted and undersized all-time leading passer in NCAA history who was making his first career playoff start and has long looked up to Brees, was having a hard time finding the words to describe the experience. He finished with 318 yards, going 25 for 40, with Diggs catching 137 yards on six catches.</p>
<p>“A heck of a game, wasn’t it?” head coach Mike Zimmer said. “And the good guys won.”</p>
<p>Diggs was still in full uniform when he took the podium for his postgame interview, the ball from the winning catch resting safely in front of him on the lectern.</p>
<p>“It’s plays like this that you dream about your whole life,” he said, “and it finally happens.”</p>
<p>PICKED OFF</p>
<p>Brees saw his 13th career postseason game end in a crushing final moment, his 25-for-40 performance for 294 yards tainted a bit by two interceptions before halftime. One came on a <a href="http://www.vikings.com/media-vault/videos/Sendejo-Leaps-For-A-Must-See-Interception/17dea72d-8242-4e3b-9552-d855774a9d8a" type="external">leaping grab by safety Andrew Sendejo</a> , the other off a tip by Griffen that landed in Anthony Barr’s arms at the Minnesota 10-yard line midway through the third quarter.</p>
<p>FIRST-HALF FORCE</p>
<p>The Vikings came roaring out of their first-round bye, forcing punts by the Saints on their first three possessions and moving 55 yards in eight plays for a touchdown run by Jerick McKinnon on their first drive. Aided by two pass interference calls on Ken Crawley for 54 yards, the Vikings reached the 1-yard line before settling for a short field goal on the next possession. They pushed the lead to 17-0 early in the second quarter when Latavius Murray plowed in from the 1-yard line.</p>
<p>“The Vikings had a phenomenal game plan,” Saints defensive end Cameron Jordan said.</p>
<p>The only other time the Saints went scoreless in the first half of a postseason game was five years ago. They fell behind 16-0 at Seattle in the divisional round and lost 23-15 to the eventual Super Bowl champions.</p>
<p>SENDEJO DOWN</p>
<p>The first touchdown to Thomas came one play after he leveled Sendejo with a jarring blindside block, sending Sendejo to the sideline for concussion evaluation and reigniting the crowd when the flag that was initially thrown was waved off.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Saints: head home with a 1-5 record on the road in the playoffs under Payton, with a promising group of young players but some uncertainty around how much longer Brees, who will turn 39 on Monday, will stick around.</p>
<p>“I’m more toward the end of my career than I am at the beginning, I know that,” Brees said. “That’s all I’ll divulge.”</p>
<p>Vikings: move on to Philadelphia for the 10th championship game appearance in franchise history, the fifth in the last 30 years. They won the first four, losing in the Super Bowl each time.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">http://www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p> | Stunner: Keenum-Diggs TD sends Vikings past Saints 29-24 | false | https://apnews.com/83df8b9249af4c9890d18f4ead6ba0b8 | 2018-01-15 | 2 |
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<p>Sushi chef Tee puts a sauce on the Santa Roll at Sushi King. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Miniature empires in the restaurant world are not a bad thing at all. It’s one case when one is talking about a national corporate chain with little to no monies flowing back into the community; it’s quite another situation when the empire is just four locations spread out across the county.</p>
<p>So it is for Kathy Punya and her five Sushi King locations: Downtown, Westside, two in Rio Rancho, and the Northeast Heights on Wyoming – the latter our focus today. The Paseo del Norte corridor, replete with chains, seemed a perfect place for a bit of Japan funneled through the Land of Enchantment.</p>
<p>Upon walking in the door you might pick up the faint aroma of old fryer oil – luckily this fades into a forgotten haze once your order is placed and you begin to feel the rumbles of hunger. You can take the edge off with an appetizer or two but when I’m in that kind of mood at a sushi place, I like to order a simple roll to give the chefs a quick chance to show me what they can do with rice.</p>
<p>“Simple” does not mean any roll that didn’t go through the deep-fryer, instead it means something like a Cucumber or Pickle Roll ($4.50), where the flavors are clean and the portion downright dainty. Here, the rice is perfectly seasoned, a good sign for future roll orders.</p>
<p>Keep the momentum going with a few pieces of nigiri sushi (raw fish on top of a little ball of rice), like Hamachi ($6.25) or Salmon ($5.25), and then move on to the heavy hitters with more complex flavor combinations.</p>
<p>Deep-frying a sushi roll is something I might never understand – I’m not a fan of chimichangas, either, now that I think about it – for there are wonderful combinations to be found in the rest of the roll menu.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>My recent favorite is the Sushi King Roll ($10.50), adorned with salmon, tuna, snapper and fish eggs and only minimally garnished with a spicy mayo sauce. I’d order this again and again.</p>
<p>Fans of heat should investigate the Crazy Roll ($12.95) with spicy tuna inside and spicy yellowtail on top, drizzled with Sriracha sauce.</p>
<p>A few diners might still be having growl-y pangs, and those who don’t eat sushi are probably starving by now. Meet that hunger head on with a bowl of Beef Sukiyaki ($9.95).</p>
<p>It’s Japanese hot pot, a warm broth crammed with noodles, vegetables, mushrooms and beef. Like Vietnamese pho, it’s rare to finish a bowl in one sitting past the age of 22. That said, this is a nicely mild sukiyaki, and perfect for those days when it seems cold but the sun is still shining through scattered clouds.</p>
<p /> | Sushi is king: Local chain brings a slice of Japan to the metro area | false | https://abqjournal.com/505731/albuquerque-dining-60.html | 2 |
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<p>Planned Parenthood, the world's leader in baby butchery was caught repeating false, fraudulent, and ineligible claims for reimbursement to the state's Department of Social and Health Services, a lawsuit claims. Steven H. Aden, of the Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel stood before the U.S. Court of Appeals on behalf of Jonathan Bloedow.</p>
<p>Bloedow, a Washington taxpayer alleged Planned Parenthood has filed at least 25,000 erroneous claims with HRSA for reimbursements that surpass the amount allowed for oral contraceptive pills. He also claims at least another 25,000 was filed for reimbursements in excess of the amount allowed for Plan B pills under the federal government's 340B drug reimbursement program.</p>
<p>Aden stated, "The taxpayer dollars of Americans should be used responsibly and for the common good, not funneled to groups like Planned Parenthood that abuse the public's trust. Planned Parenthood's financial bottom line doesn't trump compliance with the law. We are asking the court to hold them accountable."</p>
<p>The Alliance Defending Freedom released a <a href="http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/9757" type="external">report to Congress</a> which identified more than $129.7 million in waste, abuse, and fraud committed by Planned Parenthood. Michael J. Norton, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel, former U.S. Attorney says:</p>
<p>"Americans deserve to know, especially in economic times like these, if their hard-earned tax money is being funneled to groups that are misusing it; compliance with the law should not be sacrificed for the sake of Planned Parenthood's bottom line. They have taken advantage of the American taxpayer for too long."</p>
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<p>Planned Parenthood receives hundreds of millions of our tax dollars in funding, yet have been caught red handed (not just for murdering innocent babies) multiple times with their unethical means of operations. It's time for the federal government to acknowledge the majority of taxpayers do not want their money given to such a shady and evil organization.</p>
<p>If you've wondered how a non-profit company such as this can generate high income, watch the video below as Sue Thayer, a former Planned Parenthood Center director, addresses the matter.</p>
<p>H/T <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2016/06/08/planned-parenthood-filed-25000-false-claims-totaling-377-million-in-medicaid-fraud-lawsuit-says/" type="external">Life News&#160;</a></p>
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<p /> | Planned Parenthood Back In Court, Here's How Many MILLIONS They Accrued in Medicaid Fraud | true | http://fury.news/2016/06/planned-parenthood-back-in-court-allegedly-accrued-377-million-in-medicaid-fraud/ | 2016-06-10 | 0 |
<p>Baptist News Global provides a free listing of ministry-related jobs for Baptist churches, theological institutions and organizations across the United States. Each posting is for 30 days and is limited to 150 words. Businesses may purchase a post in the “And More” section for $1.20 per word (minimum of $50 for 30 days). To submit a ministry-related job or inquire about other advertising options on this page, contact Barbara Francis at 336-717-1135, ext. 8 or <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>.</p>
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<p>FULL-TIME CHILDREN AND FAMILIES PASTORAL RESIDENCY. First Baptist Church, Colorado Springs, CO. The Pastoral Resident of First Baptist Church, a seminary graduate, will function as an associate pastor with special responsibility for children and families ministries. The Church will provide the Resident with a wide range of pastoral opportunities, under the guidance and supervision of the Senior Pastor. These opportunities include caring for our church family (with emphasis on children and families), preparing and teaching spiritual formation series, preaching and leading in worship, and developing lay leadership. Interested applicants can feel free to contact the Pastor for more information and for a more detailed job description. <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 06.12.17)</p>
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<p>PASTOR.&#160; Primera Iglesia Bautista Hispana de Deltona, FL is seeking a full time Pastor for its multi-generational church.&#160; PIBD is an exciting church located in one of the fastest growing cities in Florida.&#160; We average 160-200 church attendees.&#160; We also have a Baptist Academy where we provide services from nursery to VPK.&#160; The church is looking for a committed follower of Jesus Christ with a gift for preaching, teaching and a heart to bring people to the gospel.&#160;&#160; The individual should have a Theological or Seminary education.&#160; PIBD is associated with ABC &amp; CBF.&#160; Please submit all inquiries, cover letter, resume, photo and recommendations to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 07.11.17)</p>
<p>PASTOR. Primera Iglesia Bautista Hispana de Deltona, FL está buscando un pastor a tiempo completo para su iglesia multi-generacional. PIBD es una motivada iglesia ubicada en una de las ciudades de más rápido crecimiento en la Florida. Promedio de 160-200 asistentes a la iglesia. También tenemos una Academia Bautista donde ofrecemos servicios de guardería a VPK. La iglesia está buscando un seguidor comprometido de Jesucristo con un don para la predicación, la enseñanza y un corazón para alcanzar almas para Cristo. La persona debe tener una educación Teológica o Seminario. PIBD es asociada con ABC y CBF. Por favor, envíe todas las preguntas, carta de presentación, currículum, foto y recomendaciones a <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.&#160;(Posted 07.11.17)</p>
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<p>MINISTER/DIRECTOR OF YOUTH/CHILDREN’S MINISTRIES.&#160; Madison Baptist Church in Madison, GA, has an immediate opening to call a Minister/Director of Youth and Children’s Ministries. Our church is seeking a committed Christian who is enthusiastic, personable, motivated, and compassionate. Madison is located 60 miles east of Atlanta and 25 miles south of Athens. MBC is a multi-staffed church that values ministry to youth and children. We are a dually-aligned CBF/SBC church with average weekly worship attendance of 200. Minimum requirements for the position include a Bachelor’s degree; church youth/children leadership experience is preferred. Resume and cover letter should be submitted to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a> or MBC Search Committee, 328 South Main Street, Madison, GA 30650. If you need further information, please contact us at the above email address. (Posted 07.20.17)</p>
<p>CBFGA EXECUTIVE COORDINATOR.&#160; The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Georgia seeks an executive coordinator who demonstrates spiritual maturity and giftedness in developing vision for the organization’s missional focus; cultivating interpersonal relationships; exhibiting administrative, leadership and communication skills; and understanding organizational relationships in our context. Preferred qualifications include theological education (M.Div. degree or equivalent), ministerial experience (5 years minimum), and a commitment to historic Baptist principles. Please send résumés to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a> &#160;by Sept. 1. (07.17.17)</p>
<p>ASSOCIATE PASTOR/YOUTH MINISTER. First Baptist Church of Eatonton, GA, is a moderate congregation affiliated with CBF.&#160; We are searching for an Associate Pastor/Youth Minister with strong people skills and management of ministry areas. This individual must work well as a team player and focus on the entire congregation.&#160; This position is of great importance and it is our hope that the individual will help carry us forward into our next decade of service. Eatonton is a small town in central Georgia in the middle of lake country.&#160; Our community is the anchor for two recreational lakes, Lake Sinclair and Lake Oconee.&#160; Our church has a deep historical heritage and will be celebrating our 200th anniversary in 2018. Direct questions to FBC at 706-485-3331. Submit resumes to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. &#160; (Posted 07.12.17)</p>
<p>COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST.&#160; The Alliance of Baptists is seeking a mature, Christ-centered individual to serve as Communications Specialist providing vision and coordination for the Alliance’s efforts in print, personal and digital communications. The approximately 32 hour per week position is open to receiving applications from individuals seeking to work virtually and collaboratively, who have strong organizational skills and are highly motivated to pursue God’s justice-love. Interested applicants apply by submitting a resumé with references to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. Application deadline is August 4, 2017. We welcome inquiries and applications from all interested, qualified parties. Consistent with commitments in our mission to pursue justice with and for those who are oppressed, honor wisdom and lifelong learning, and to hold ourselves accountable for equity, collegiality, and diversity, we encourage people of color, LGBTQ persons and women to apply. (Posted 07.05.17)</p>
<p>ASSOCIATE PASTOR.&#160; First Baptist Church of Griffin, GA, a moderate congregation affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, is seeking an Associate Pastor to join our ministry staff.&#160; He or she needs to have strong people, preaching, and management skills.&#160; This person must work well as a team with other ministers and focus upon the entire congregation.&#160; However, he/she will lead and preach weekly in the Connexion worship ministry, our contemporary service which meets at the same time as our traditional service.&#160; This candidate will at times throughout the church year also preach in the traditional service. Preference will be given to candidates with a M.Div. degree from an accredited seminary and a minimum of four years of church ministry/preaching experience.&#160; Resumes and cover letters will be received at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a> until September 15. (Posted 06.2.9.17)</p>
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<p>COORDINATOR.&#160;Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Kentucky seeks a full-time Coordinator to lead and guide in the development of strategies for expanding the scope and influence of the organization.&#160; The Coordinator shall represent CBFKY to the community, churches, individuals, the global Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and other organizations.&#160;&#160;All applications must include education and employment histories.&#160; Current involvement with CBF life as well as significant leadership and supervisory experience within the local church, non-profit world, and/or higher education are preferred. If you are interested in the position or if you would like to submit a name for consideration, please send a resume and letter of interest to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a> by August 1, 2017. (Posted 06.20.17)</p>
<p>INTERIM PASTOR.&#160; First Congregational Methodist Church, Louisville, Ky., is seeking an interim pastor. FCMC is a Congregational Methodist Church with an average attendance of 50-65.&#160; The church has respectable facilities and room to expand; great location, and a desire for biblical spiritual growth. The Interim Pastor will lead the congregation, organizations, and the ministry staff to perform their tasks.&#160; He/she will work with the ministry staff to (1) lead the church in performing its tasks and (2) to lead the church to engage in a fellowship of worship, witness, education, and ministry among members and other persons in the community. The Interim Pastor will shepherd and guide the spiritual needs of the church. A bachelor degree is preferred.&#160; Please send letter of interest, resume, and references, CD or DVD (if available) to:&#160; First Congregational Methodist Church, Pastoral Selection Committee, c/o Ms. Marsha Anderson, 3810 Garland Avenue, Louisville, KY 40211. (Posted 05.23.17)</p>
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<p>SENIOR PASTOR.&#160; Grace Baptist Church, an IFB KJV church in Zachary, La., is seeking a qualified and God-called individual for the position of Senior Pastor. Grace is a church of approx. 75 members, and ministries include a Christian school (ACE) and others. Our music style is traditional and conservative. The successful applicant will have formal Bible training, significant experience as an associate or pastor or associate and a burden for Christian education. Interested applicants should submit their resumes to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 05.22.17)</p>
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<p>FULL-TIME MINISTER OF YOUTH AND OUTREACH. Bethany Baptist Church, Ellicott City, MD, is seeking a full-time Minister of Youth and Outreach&#160; who is responsible for creating a long-term vision and its implementation for the overall youth ministry of the church, including grades six through twelve; promoting evangelism, discipleship training, and social ministries in the context of a multicultural church and community in the Baltimore-Washington DC corridor. He/she is responsible for developing and implementing an outreach ministry of the church to the community while working alongside other full-time staff in the successful growth of the church; and responsible for all aspects of connecting the church to the community and helping new people to assimilate into the congregation from the first-time visit through baptism and initial and continuing involvement. Send resumes to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 07.10.17)</p>
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<p>PASTOR.&#160; The First Baptist Church of Brockport, located in the historic village of Brockport, NY, which is home to SUNY Brockport and situated on the Erie Canal, is seeking an experienced pastor who demonstrates a personal and theological commitment to American Baptist principles and practices. Applicants should possess visionary leadership and a willingness to partner with us as we move into the future of our church. We are a multi-generational congregation that is welcoming and affirming with a strong commitment to mission and outreach. We are a financially stable church with a strong endowment. Interested candidates should contact: Rev. Alan G Newton, Executive Minister ABC Rochester/Genesee Region, 1101 Clover Street, Rochester NY 14610, (585) 473-3200, (585) 259-2426 (Cell), Fax (585) 473-5929, <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 07.10.17)</p>
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<p>MUSIC MINISTER.&#160; Jersey Baptist Church, Lexington, NC, &#160;seeks part-time Music Minister to lead music for contemporary and traditional worship services. Duties include initiating, planning and coordinating music ministry; collaborating with the Pastor and Music/Worship Committee. Ability to exhibit and promote mature Christian values, and discipleship is required. Submit resume to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 07.20.17)</p>
<p>PART-TIME MUSIC MINISTRY DIRECTOR.&#160;&#160;This congregation of 300-400 is seeking a minister to join in its mission to be a harbor of God’s love and a beacon of Christ’s hope. The church’s music ministry is an integral part of the vision and mission. The Music Ministry Director will be responsible for the overall leadership and direction of the music ministries and should have bachelors/masters accomplishments in music performance and/or directing; be proficient in keyboard, voice, and directing; and possess the ability to effectively teach music to all types of choirs and students on a broad spectrum of ages, gifts, abilities, and experience. Interested applicants should submit a cover letter and resume to: First Baptist Church Attn: Music Ministry Director Search Committee P.O. Box 180 West Jefferson, NC 28694 (Telephone: 336-846-5141) OR&#160; <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>&#160;&#160;(Telephone: 336-877-6996). (Posted 07.11.17)</p>
<p>MINISTER TO CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES.&#160;Pritchard Memorial Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC, is seeking a full time Minister to Children and Their Families. This person will also have oversight of the Child Development Center. Please send resumes to Pritchard Memorial Baptist Church, 1117 South Boulevard, Charlotte, NC&#160; 28203 (ATTN: Search Committee) or email to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 07.10.17)</p>
<p>MINISTER OF MUSIC AND FAMILIES. Godwin Heights Baptist Church, Lumberton, NC, is prayerfully searching for a minister for a newly formed full-time position of Minister of Music and Families. GHBC averages about 110 in Sunday School and 130 in morning worship which is tradition/liturgical in style. The successful candidate will have a minimum of a Bachelors Degree in Music with a Masters or higher preferred. S/he will plan and lead all other music related activities including a graded choir program and ensembles. The Minister will also provide leadership and oversight for a ministry to children and families. Interested candidates may submit a cover letter and resume to Rev. Dave Hawes, Pastor, at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a> or via mail to Godwin Heights Baptist Church,&#160; 704 Godwin Avenue, Lumberton, NC 28358. Resumes will be accepted through August 1. (Posted 06.21.17)</p>
<p>MUSIC MINISTER. Jersey Baptist Church, Lexington, NC, is calling a part-time (20hr/wk) Music Minister. The vision for this ministry position is to provide leadership within all aspects of the church’s ministry specifically focusing on music. The Music Minister will work collaboratively to meet ministry goals and objectives with the Pastor and other church leaders or ministers. The music minister will be responsible for coordinating and implementing the music involved with the contemporary worship service (8:30) and traditional worship service (11:00). Responsibilities also include working with the leaders of the graded choirs of Jersey Baptist Church. This position will initiate, plan and coordinate the music programs and activities in collaboration with the Pastor, and Music and Worship Committee. This position will encourage and promote Christian values, ideals and discipleship while demonstrating spiritual maturity. This position reports to the personnel committee but will receive direct coaching and mentorship from the pastor. Submit inquires and résumés to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 06.19.17)</p>
<p>DIRECTOR OF CHILDREN’S MINISTRY.&#160; Greenwood Forest Baptist Church, an inclusive community of faith in Cary, NC, is seeking a part-time (15 hrs/week) Director of Children’s Ministry. This director will provide leadership for the faith formation program for children (ages birth through 5th grade) and their families. They will work with the ministerial team to form and shape the disciples of Christ at GFBC. They will be supervised by the Associate Pastor of Worship and Faith Formation. Theological training from an accredited theological seminary preferred. Must support and endorse GFBC’s core values, which can be found on our website ( <a href="http://www.gfbccary.org/" type="external">www.gfbccary.org</a>). GFBC is affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Send resume and cover letter to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. Applicant Review will begin July 1, 2017. (06.08.17)</p>
<p>MINISTER FOR LATINO MINISTRIES.&#160; The First Baptist Church of Huntersville, NC, is seeking a part-time Minister for Latino Ministries. FBCH is a moderate Baptist congregation located in Charlotte metro near Lake Norman, with about 450 active members, approximately 50 of whom worship in our Spanish-language service. We are seeking a candidate with strong preaching, pastoral care, and leadership skills who will also work with the staff team to strengthen the connection between the Anglo and Latino communities. Candidates must be bilingual. Bachelor’s degree is required; some seminary training from a recognized college or university is preferred. A detailed church profile and job description can be found at <a href="http://www.fbc-h.org/" type="external">www.fbc-h.org</a> &#160;under the “Link ‘n Learn” tab. Résumé and cover letter may be submitted to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a> by August 31. &#160;(06.08.17)</p>
<p>MINISTRO A MEDIO TEMPO PARA LA CONGREGACIÒN LATINA.&#160; La Primera Iglesia Bautista de Huntersville, NC, está buscando un Ministro a medio tiempo para la Congregación Latina. La Primera Iglesia Bautista de Huntersville es una moderada congregación localizada en Charlotte area metropolitana cerca del Lago Norman, con cerca de 450 miembros activos,&#160; de los cuáles aproximadamente 50 quienes asisten al servicio en Español. Nosotros estamos buscando un candidato con grandes condiciones a la hora de predicar, cuidado pastoral, y un gran liderazgo,&#160; quién también trabaje con el personal de la iglesia y fortalezca la relación entre las comunidades angloamericanas y latinas. Los candidatos deberán ser bilingües. Un grado de Bachiller es requerido; algún&#160; entrenamiento de seminario de un reconocido colegio o universidad es preferible. Un detallado perfil de la iglesia y descripción del puesto puede se encontrado en la página web de nuestra iglesia&#160; <a href="http://www.fbc-h.org/" type="external">www.fbc-h.org</a>&#160;bajo el enlace “Link’n Learn” tab. Currìculum y hoja de portada puede ser enviada a&#160; <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>&#160;de 31 de agosto. &#160;(06.08.17)</p>
<p>PART-TIME CONSULTANT – LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT. Woman’s Missionary Union of North Carolina is seeking a part-time consultant for leadership development. Work location: Raleigh, NC (exceptions considered). Please send resume and cover letter to: Judy Pettigrew at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.&#160; Application deadline: July 15. For job description: <a href="http://www.wmunc.org/now-hiring" type="external">www.wmunc.org/now-hiring</a>.&#160;(06.08.17)</p>
<p>PART-TIME MINISTER OF MUSIC.&#160; Wilmar Park Baptist Church in Concord, NC is seeking a part-time worship leader.&#160; We are a traditional Southern Gospel style congregation with an established music program.&#160; We need a spiritually minded leader, called by God to provide leadership for our worship services.&#160; Please direct all inquiries and questions to David Wilson at&#160; <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 05.16.17)</p>
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<p>ASSOCIATE PASTOR OF YOUTH AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT.&#160; Spring Creek Baptist Church, Oklahoma City, Okla., is now accepting candidates for Associate Pastor of Youth and Community Engagement. This&#160;minister&#160;will focus on the particular needs of our youth and their families, using these primary relationships to serve the larger church.&#160; For more information and submitting resumes, click&#160; <a href="http://springcreekbc.com/associatepastorsearch/" type="external">here</a>. (Posted 06.15.17)</p>
<p>YOUTH/ASSOCIATE PASTOR.&#160; First Baptist Church, Spiro, OK, is seeking a youth/associate pastor. Competitive salary and housing offered. Send resume to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 06.12.17)</p>
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<p>CHORAL DIRECTOR.&#160; First Baptist Church (ABC-USA), Burlington, Vermont, is seeking a part-time choral director to conduct the 15-20 voice chancel choir on Sunday mornings and Thursday evening rehearsals.&#160; The choir sings for services beginning September through mid-June with summers off.&#160; Salary is competitive and negotiable based on experience.&#160; First Baptist Church supports an active music program including a children’s choir, instrumental ensemble, hand bells, annual guest organist recital and hosts outside musical groups.&#160; Submit resumes and inquiries to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 04.24.17)</p>
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<p>PART-TIME MINISTER/DIRECTOR OF YOUTH MINISTRIES. Westwood Baptist Church in Springfield, VA, is looking for a part-time Minister/Director of Youth Ministries. She/he would be responsible to provide pastoral care to youth in grades 7-12, their parents, and those who work in any facet of ministry with this age group. This position provides leadership and oversight in all aspects of planning, promoting, and implementing a ministry that guides youth in their growth and development as followers of Jesus Christ, and promotes fellowship among youth and their families within the larger congregation of Westwood Baptist Church. Click <a href="http://www.westwood-baptist.org/welcome/job-opening/" type="external">here</a> for a full position description and application instructions. (Posted 07.05.17)</p>
<p>FULL-TIME PASTOR. Central Baptist Church, Dinwiddie County, VA,&#160; is seeking a full-time pastor. Our church is affiliated with the Baptist General Association of Virginia.&#160; The primary job of the pastor will be to preach the word of God. The pastor will also minister to the congregation and continue to guide the church in missions and community outreach programs. We are a growing church filled with Christians who possess a variety of gifts and interests. The pastor should be able to bridge all age groups. A more complete job description can be found at&#160; <a href="http://www.centralbaptist1873.org/" type="external">www.centralbaptist1873.org</a>. Resume can be sent to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 07.05.17)</p>
<p>INTERIM STUDENT PASTOR.&#160; Bon Air Baptist Church in Richmond, VA, seeks to fill a full-time interim position to lead Student Ministry at its Buford Road Campus. Starts August 1, 2017. Click&#160;here&#160;for more information. Church Website:&#160; <a href="http://www.bonairbaptist.org/" type="external">www.bonairbaptist.org</a>. (Posted 06.21.17)</p>
<p>FULL-TIME SENIOR PASTOR. Clover Bottom Baptist Church, Nathalie, VA, is looking for a full-time pastor . Clover Bottom Baptist is a rural country church located in Halifax County Va. We are in the Dan River Baptist Association and the Baptist General Association of Virginia. Send resumes to&#160; <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 06.14.17)</p>
<p>SENIOR PASTOR.&#160; Walnut Grove Baptist Church in Mechanicsville, Va., is seeking a Senior Pastor. We are seeking an energetic shepherd with strong pastoral skills, flexibility in leading various worship styles and an effective communicator. Specific skills in expanding the scope of our mission programs and directing the continued growth of our&#160;Sunday&#160;school, Youth, Children, and Music Ministries. Proven ability to develop, train, and work with Church Staff and lay leadership. 5 years of experience and a minimum of a Master’s Degree from an accredited Seminary, Divinity School or College or the equivalent experience is preferred. Please send resume, references and any electronic media to Pastor Search Committee, 7001 Cornfield Lane, Mechanicsville, VA 23111 or via email to&#160; <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>&#160;by7/31/2017. (Posted 06.13.17)</p>
<p>FULL-TIME ASSOCIATE PASTOR.&#160; The Tabernacle Baptist Church in Richmond, VA, is searching for a full-time Associate Pastor.&#160; The church desires a dynamic, Christ-centered individual to equip our community with a more effective framework and systems both for and within our ministries. The ideal candidate will have a passion for both people and process, an ability to thrive in a team environment, and expertise in building teams.&#160; This pastoral ministry architect/administrator will guide the identification of gifted laity and, with them, create and implement a church wide, intergenerational structure that will better equip, communicate, and mobilize our efforts to support and extend ongoing and new ministries.&#160; A full position description can be found at <a href="http://www.tbcrichmond.org/" type="external">www.tbcrichmond.org</a>.&#160; Candidates should respond by email only to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a> with their expression of interest and resume no later than July 15, 2017. No phone calls please. (Posted 06.12.17)</p>
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<p>ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS.&#160; The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, an education and advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., is seeking an Associate Director of Communications to expand the base of support for religious liberty, implementing the BJC’s strategic communications program to convey the importance of religious liberty for all people and the separation of church and state. To apply, send the following to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>: Resume, cover letter, and three samples of work. More details are available <a href="https://www.idealist.org/en/nonprofit-job/6b37dbc721a84325b178061de0d113fa-associate-director-of-communications-baptist-joint-committee-for-religious-liberty-washington" type="external">here</a>. (Posted 05.23.17)</p>
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<p>SENIOR PASTOR.&#160; Bellepoint Baptist Church in Hinton, WV, is seeking a senior pastor. Located in the southern part of the beautiful state of WV this Independent, KJV church offers the opportunity for a pastor of any age. We are a conservative traditional church. Please contact at email address <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. (Posted 06.27.17)</p>
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<p>Jan. 20 (UPI) — The Chinese Ministry of Defense said the United States violated their nation’s sovereignty when the USS Hopper reportedly maneuvered near a Chinese island in the South China Sea this week.</p>
<p><a href="http://eng.mod.gov.cn/news/2018-01/20/content_4802836.htm" type="external">While speaking Saturday</a>, ministry spokesman Wu Qian warned the U.S. against causing “trouble out of nothing.” Wu said a Chinese missile destroyer had to drive off the USS Hopper, a U.S. guided missile destroyer, after the ship ventured near Huangyan Island, which is near the western coast of the Philippines.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2129805/china-warns-us-destroyer-near-south-china-seas" type="external">The South China Morning Post reported</a> another ministry spokesman said the Hopper was within 12 nautical miles of the island on Wednesday.</p>
<p>“China is strongly dissatisfied with the [U.S. action] and will take necessary measures to firmly safeguard its sovereignty,” the second spokesman, Lu Kang, said.</p>
<p>A Southeast Asia affairs specialist at the Chinese Academy of Social Science told the Post that the encounter this week would mark the closest a U.S. destroyer has ever sailed to Chinese-claimed islands in the South China Sea.</p>
<p>“The South China Sea will be the ground on which the two powers will wrestle for military power,” Zhang Jie said. “It has become a long-term conflict.”</p>
<p>This week, the U.S. Defense Department issued a <a href="https://www.upi.com/Pentagon-US-military-advantage-over-Russia-China-eroding/8241516378902/" type="external">new National Defense Strategy</a>, which maintained that the U.S. military advantage over China is “eroding.”</p> | China rebukes U.S. military for alleged close encounter in South China Sea | false | https://newsline.com/china-rebukes-u-s-military-for-alleged-close-encounter-in-south-china-sea/ | 2018-01-20 | 1 |
<p><a href="//videos/37/59648" type="external" /></p>
<p>RUSH: I gotta get a call here first because this is something that I saw while I was out that I had <a href="" type="internal">near the top of the Stack today</a>. So we’re gonna go to Raleigh. Paul, glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.</p>
<p>CALLER: Hi, Rush. I’m glad you’re back and doing good.</p>
<p>RUSH: Thank you.</p>
<p>CALLER: My question for you is, does your percentage of being right go up when you call Meet the Press, Meet the Depressed, with the news out of NBC and the psychologist checking out David Gregory.</p>
<p>RUSH: You know, is this not the most amazing story? I mean, I’ve got a Stack here today that I could call everything in it, is it not the most amazing thing you’ve ever heard? There’s four or five of ’em in the Stack. I don’t know which one’s more amazing than the other. My accuracy rating ought to go up, you’re absolutely right. I’ve been calling the show Meet the Depressed for years. Paul, what have you heard about this? I’m gonna be up to speed with the latest ’cause you’ve been out there consuming the news on it. What’s the latest you’ve heard on this? What do you think you know about this story?</p>
<p>CALLER: I don’t know how accurate I have it, but NBC hired a psychologist to check out David Gregory and his family and friends.</p>
<p>RUSH: Yeah, but why?</p>
<p>CALLER: Because of the ratings.</p>
<p>RUSH: Yeah. That’s right. Folks, in the old days you know what would have happened? He’d get fired. If your ratings went in the tank you would get fired. It happened to me seven or eight times. It is absolutely true. “NBCÂ’s ‘Meet the Press’ has fallen to such ratings lows that network brass ordered psychological research of the host David Gregory and his family, in a bid to make him more likable.” It’s unheard of! You either are or you aren’t in this business. Psychological research for the host and his family in a bid to make him more likable. Why did he get the gig in the first place?</p>
<p>“Friends of Gregory and even his wife were interviewed by a psychologist commissioned by NBC to find out how the host of the flagship Sunday morning show might relate to audiences better.”</p>
<p>Hey, this is so simple. It’s not Gregory; it’s liberalism. If you get somebody to host the program that knows there is a Missouri and a Nebraska and a Texas and doesn’t think you need a visa to get into ’em, you’ve got half the problem solved. Find out how they might relate to audiences better. I don’t have that problem. I haven’t needed any psychological analysis here.</p>
<p>“The Washington Post reported, ‘Last year, the network undertook an unusual assessment of the 43-year-old journalist, commissioning a psychological consultant to interview his friends and even his wife.’</p>
<p>‘The idea, according to a network spokeswoman, Meghan Pianta, was “to get perspective and insight from people who know him best.” But the research project struck some at NBC as odd, given that Gregory has been employed there for nearly 20 years.'”</p>
<p>Exactly right. What do they not know about the guy?</p>
<p>“The days of ‘Meet the Press’ ruling Sunday mornings seem a long time ago — now it is in third place. During the first three months of this year, the NBC program finished behind rivals ‘Face the Nation’ on CBS and ‘This Week With George Stephanopoulos’ on ABC. In the final quarter of last year, viewing of ‘MTP’ among people ages 25 to 54, the preferred group for TV news advertisers, fell to its lowest level ever. ‘I get it,’ Gregory told the Washington Post, ‘Do I want to be number one in the ratings? Every week I want to be number one, and we fight like hell to get there. And itÂ’s tough right now. ItÂ’s a fight.’</p>
<p>“He adds, ‘IÂ’m not just trying to sell you — well, I am trying to sell you — but IÂ’m not going to B.S. you, either. Yeah, itÂ’s hard. I see what our challenges are. But weÂ’re going to fix our problems.'”</p>
<p>Look. This is not hard. If you view half the country with disdain, if you view the way over half the country thinks with derision, you are going to produce a program that reflects that. Now, who in the world wants to watch a program where what they think and what they believe and what they cherish and what they hold dear is gonna be laughed at, mocked, and made fun of every Sunday? Meet the Press long ago ceased being a news program. When Tim Russert passed away and passed the torch, it ceased being a news program. It became an agenda arm of the Democrat Party. The old audience of Meet the Depressed didn’t view it that way. This really is a mind-boggling thing. Why wouldn’t you fire the guy and go hire somebody the audience likes?</p>
<p>If you don’t want to fire him because that would look bad for the news and look bad for liberalism, just like firing Dan Rather would, reassign him to something. You know, put him somewhere where the audience likes him. Give him the Moscow bureau assignment or whatever. Send him over to North Korea, let him shine some light there. He could relate to people there, I guess. Send him to Beijing. I don’t know. Maybe Havana, try to open a new pathway. But this is just mind-boggling. (laughing) Are they telling us that there’s nobody that’s better psychologically prepared at NBC to host this show?</p>
<p>Hell, I could do it. I could bring the ratings of this show back to where they were inside of a month, with no guests! Inside of a week, with no guests! That’s the problem. They’d make me do guests. I mean, it’s Meet the Press. That reminds me. I may have mentioned this to you people once. Back in Sacramento, oh-ho, what a story this is. I swear to you it’s the truth. I’m standing across the glass from a guy who knows the guy who did this and could attest to it if it ever came to that. The manager of the station came to me one day and said, “You know what? You seem out of sorts. You just don’t seem happy. You seem sort of down in the dumps. Are you feeling a little bit depressed?”</p>
<p>I thought the guy was being compassionate and supportive. I said, “Well, no, I’m just adjusting to the move.”</p>
<p>“I got an idea for you. There’s a great rehab place over in the Bay Area. I want to send you there. I want to send you there for two or three weeks and let ’em give you a psychological work-over and you come out. I think I could sell ’em some spots and you could endorse the thing.”</p>
<p>I said, “You want to send me to a mental rehab joint for the sole purposes of me admitting I’m depressed so that when I come out I can tell this audience what a great bunch of people at this clinic are who got me un-depressed?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you seem a little down.”</p>
<p>Honest. That’s the closest anything like this has ever happened to me. I refused to do it when I realized what was going on. The guy actually tried — you should have seen this. He actually came to me as one of the most caring, “You know, you really seem down in the dumps. I love you, man. I mean, you have every reason in the world to be happy.” And the reason was that I had established at that time this ability. Anyway, that’s the closest I’ve come to anything like this. But I saw this story, I still can’t get over it. This story tells me how much, not just broadcasting, but how much our culture is changing than any other story I’ve seen. It’s hard for me to comprehend this. And Gregory seems unfazed. I would be so profoundly embarrassed. I’d go hide in a hole. I would be doing anything I could.</p>
<p>BREAK TRANSCRIPT</p>
<p>RUSH: Maybe they could send David Gregory over to MSNBC and send Al Sharpton over to moderate Meet the Press. Who knows. Shake things up.</p>
<p>BREAK TRANSCRIPT</p>
<p>RUSH: I don’t want to make a big deal. I just can’t understand, you’ve got a host that nobody wants to watch and you get a psychiatrist, psychologist to go talk to him and his wife and his friends to figure out how to make him more likable? In the old days you’d just replace him and reassign him. “Maybe it’s a new world, Mr. Limbaugh, and they just don’t fire people anymore.” Well, I know that’s not true. People get fired left and right. It’s different, and it may be nobody wants to admit that anybody made a wrong decision putting the guy in there, but I have never heard of anything like this.</p>
<p>It may have gone on before and nobody ever knew about it, but I think NBC ought to be doing psychological tests on their executives, if they really want to get to the root of what’s wrong, because it isn’t David Gregory. I mean, what in the world, what kind of psychological mess explains MSNBC, and NBC News overall.</p>
<p>From the Washington Post story on this. “Despite the failing ratings, Gregory renewed his contract in 2013 and network executives said as recently as March that they are committed to improving the show with him as host.” That’s just insane. You got all this evidence that it isn’t working, and you re-up. It’s a different world out there.</p> | Meet the Depressed — Literally | true | http://rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/04/24/meet_the_depressed_literally | 2014-04-24 | 0 |
<p />
<p>I&#160;have been nominated several times for this award and never won, Its OK, I&#160;guess.</p>
<p>Some of the things I&#160;have done..</p>
<p>*&#160; I am the Chairman of the yearly Mayors Prayer Breakfast. Terrible! *&#160; I&#160;ran 4 times for School Board before getting Elected. *&#160; I started a Christian Business Men’s group to help the community. *&#160; I&#160;was outspoken in the past about concern with the way taxpayer money had been spent. *&#160; I&#160;have created buzz for calling members of my own party out to be more accountable! *&#160; among other things..</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>HMMM, maybe I do want this award…</p> | I’ve been Nominated! | true | http://therealside.com/blog/Ive-been-Nominated | 2011-03-13 | 0 |
<p />
<p>Defense contractors rallied on the morning after Donald Trump became president-elect, a development that should bode well for the companies that supply the U.S. military with weaponry and technology.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), the Pentagon’s largest contractor, jumped as much as 7.6% after the opening bell Wednesday. The stock was trading 4.7% higher at $250.38 later in the morning. Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC) was up 4.9%, General Dynamics (NYSE:GD) climbed 4.1% and Raytheon (NYSE:RTN) led the way with a 6.3% gain.</p>
<p>Shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries (NYSE:HII) also posted big gains, trading 6.4% higher. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has promised to expand the Navy’s fleet.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Analysts believe a Trump presidency will be a boon to most military firms</a>. A Trump victory, combined with GOP control of the House and Senate, increases the odds that Washington will reverse military budget cuts, which were mandated under sequestration in 2013. Trump said during his campaign that he would ask Congress to do exactly that.</p>
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<p>Trump proposed a plan to expand the military by bringing the Army back to 540,000 active troops and building an Air Force of at least 1,200 aircraft, among other measures. Also under the Trump administration, the U.S. military could take a more active role in fighting ISIS.</p>
<p>As such, the defense contractors that performed the best Wednesday were makers of traditional firepower, including fighter jets, missiles and tanks.</p>
<p>The rally also lifted security consultant Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE:BAH), whose shares received a 3.2% boost. IT and intelligence contractor CACI International (NYSE:CACI) gained 3.5%.</p> | Trump Victory Propels Military Stocks | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/09/trump-victory-propels-military-stocks.html | 2016-11-09 | 0 |
<p>Amazon.com Inc. said Thursday it plans to open a second headquarters in North America to house up to 50,000 employees, signaling the company has no plans to slow down its torrid growth in hiring in recent years.</p>
<p>The Seattle-based company is seeking proposals by Oct. 19 for a location for the structure, which the company said could cost as much as $5 billion to build and operate. Amazon plans to choose a location next year.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Employees working in the new headquarters would be largely new. The jobs would be in addition to the 100,000 full-time positions Amazon announced earlier this year for creation through mid-2018, most of which are in the company's warehouses.</p>
<p>The second location will "be a full equal to our Seattle headquarters," Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said in prepared remarks. It "will bring billions of dollars in upfront and ongoing investments, and tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. We're excited to find a second home."</p>
<p>Over the past two decades, Amazon has grown from an online bookseller founded in Mr. Bezos' garage to a sprawling tech giant. It now has a Hollywood studio, a booming device business including its artificial intelligence assistant Alexa, and a profit-driving cloud-services business.</p>
<p>To keep up with the expansion, the number of employees at Amazon's Seattle headquarters has grown rapidly over the past decade from a few thousand to more than 40,000. But Amazon recently has faced both space and hiring constraints as a result, according to people familiar with the company's thinking.</p>
<p>Amazon has struggled to attract and retain enough engineers to keep pace with the company's growth, the people said. It competes for talent in the region with Microsoft Corp., and is about 800 miles north of the heart of the tech world in California's Silicon Valley.</p>
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<p>It is unlikely Amazon would choose a location in an area like Silicon Valley, where it would face fierce competition for engineers from companies including Alphabet Inc. and Apple Inc.</p>
<p>Other tech giants have caused recent frenzies over new locations. Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk in June hinted the electric car maker would build a new factory, while Foxconn Technology Group said in July it would be building a $10 billion factory in Wisconsin.</p>
<p>Amazon itself has announced many new warehouses, most recently in New York, and in August held a job fair to hire 50,000 people.</p>
<p>Amazon currently employs more than 200,000 people in the U.S., with about 130,000 in the company's warehouses. It already has regional offices sprinkled throughout the U.S., including in Austin, Texas; Northern Virginia; Detroit and Los Angeles. The new headquarters will be in addition to those locations.</p>
<p>In soliciting bids for the project, which Amazon calls HQ2, the company is prioritizing metropolitan areas with more than a million people that are within 45 minutes of an international airport and near a strong university system.</p>
<p>Incentives from state and local governments will be "significant factors" in its decision, Amazon said. The announcement is likely to set off a frenzy among states and municipalities eager to recruit the company. Amazon has received more than $1 billion in incentives since 2000 from state and local governments to help the company build its warehouses, according to Good Jobs First, a group that is critical of corporate tax credits.</p>
<p>"They're going to want a gazillion dollars in benefits," said Erik Gordon, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "It's going to be a big price tag and expectedly so, because who else can bring you tens of thousands of jobs -- good jobs -- and change the image of who you are?"</p>
<p>Amazon expects the new jobs, many which will be in software development, to have average compensation of more than $100,000. Mr. Gordon said cities outside of traditional technology hubs could use Amazon's headquarters to help quickly remake their image.</p>
<p>There are about 50 metropolitan areas in the U.S. with populations of more than one million people, according to U.S. Census estimates, and more elsewhere in North America.</p>
<p>Communities are eager to land a flagship corporate tenant because of the positive impact on the service sector -- hospitality businesses, real-estate markets and philanthropy. Amazon's existing Seattle headquarters, which opened in 2010, has brought an additional $38 billion in investments to the local economy, the company said.</p>
<p>Amazon joins companies such as General Electric Co. and Boeing Co. in drawing publicity to the early stages of its selection process. The company knows its brand is strong and that it will receive aggressive proposals, said James McGraw Jr., CEO of KMK Consulting Co., a Cincinnati-based economic-development firm. "There's no downside risk of bad PR," he said.</p>
<p>Amazon, which has long favored growth and investments over profit, has expanded rapidly with dozens of programs, including its instant-delivery service Prime Now and AmazonFresh. The company completed its acquisition of Whole Foods last week and began overhauling the grocery chain by lowering some prices and integrating Amazon services.</p>
<p>Once the second headquarters is built, Amazon senior leaders will get to choose whether they locate their teams in the Seattle headquarters, HQ2 or both, the company said.</p>
<p>Write to Laura Stevens at [email protected] and Cara Lombardo at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>September 07, 2017 12:01 ET (16:01 GMT)</p> | Amazon Opens Search for Second Headquarters City in North America -- 3rd Update | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/09/07/amazon-opens-search-for-second-headquarters-city-in-north-america-3rd-update.html | 2017-09-07 | 0 |
<p>CARSON CITY — The Nevada Senate on Monday agreed to let die five bills vetoed by Gov. Brian Sandoval in 2015.</p>
<p>No override votes were taken on the measures and they were moved to the secretary’s desk. The Senate on voice votes agreed “no further consideration” of the bills would be taken.</p>
<p>Democrats control the majority in the Senate by an 11-9-1 margin but lack the 14 votes needed to override a veto. There was no appetite in the upper chamber to take up the vetoed legislation again.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Senate Bill 99 would have revised Nevada’s sex offender registration requirements for</a> <a href="" type="internal">juveniles</a>, giving judges more discretion to decide if registration and community notification was necessary for young offenders. Sandoval vetoed it because it inadvertently also removed a provision prohibiting sex offenders from being within 500 feet of school or area frequented by children.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">The governor also vetoed bills allowing more taxicabs and</a> <a href="" type="internal">limousines</a>; limiting product liability lawsuits and punitive damages; and allowing Ely to ask voters if the city should be dissolved.</p>
<p>Sandoval also vetoed two bills that originated in the Assembly, which voted on the opening day of the 2017 session not to take action on them.</p>
<p>Contact Sandra Chereb at [email protected] or 775-461-3821. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/sandrachereb" type="external">@SandraChereb</a> on Twitter.</p> | Nevada Senate lets die 5 vetoed bills from 2015 session | false | https://reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/nevada-senate-lets-die-5-vetoed-bills-from-2015-session/ | 2017-02-13 | 1 |
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<p>The settlement was revealed in a statement released Monday by Jeremy Harrison, one of two attorneys who represented the city and its employees. Harrison further said in the statement that the city decided to settle the lawsuit to end the risks and costs of litigation, but the parties deny fault.</p>
<p>City Attorney Jay Burnham said the settlement agreement barred the parties involved in the lawsuit from saying anything beyond what is included in the statement.</p>
<p>Perez’s attorney, Rachel Berenson, did not respond to a request for comment.</p>
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<p>The settlement brings to an end the three-year-old lawsuit, first filed in district court in 2011 and later moved to federal court.</p>
<p>Perez claimed in the lawsuit that he was retaliated against by City Manager Rob Mayes and former police chiefs James Runnels and Kyle Westall after he provided a deposition in a former sergeants’ age discrimination lawsuit.</p>
<p>He said the retaliation continued after he filed a discrimination complaint against the city.</p>
<p>He also accused police officials of hampering his investigation into the death of Tamara Gallegos in 2010 and the embezzlement of more than $500,000 from the Farmington Convention and Visitors Bureau in 2012.</p>
<p>Gallegos died in March 2010, days after she volunteered to drink alcohol as part of a training exercise organized by the Farmington Police Department. Her death was investigated, but ultimately ruled a suicide.</p>
<p>Perez said in his lawsuit that police officials tasked with conducting an internal investigation into Gallegos’ death improperly interviewed witnesses and withheld documents from him.</p>
<p>Runnels told The Daily Times in September 2010 that Perez’s investigation into Gallegos’ death was “piss-poor and ineffective,” “mishandled” and that Perez was not doing his job, statements that Perez said were defamatory.</p>
<p>Debbie Dusenbery was accused in January 2012 of embezzling more than $500,000 from the Farmington Convention and Visitors Bureau while she served as the bureau’s executive director. She committed suicide shortly after the investigation began.</p>
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<p>Perez claimed in his lawsuit that Mayes publicly disclosed Dusenbery’s death during a city meeting, despite his request that Mayes not disclose the death until the body was positively identified.</p>
<p>Perez then received a written reprimand after referring press inquiries regarding the death to Mayes.</p>
<p>Perez was fired in February 2013 by the Farmington Police Department.</p>
<p>The city has maintained that Perez was fired for violating multiple department policies and reprimanded appropriately prior to his firing.</p>
<p>Steve Garrison covers crime and courts for The Daily Times. He can be reached at 505-564-4644 and [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @SteveGarrisonDT on Twitter.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>©2014 The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.)</p>
<p>Visit The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.) at <a href="http://www.daily-times.com" type="external">www.daily-times.com</a></p>
<p>Distributed by MCT Information Services</p>
<p>———-</p>
<p>Topics: t000002488,t000002458,t000190288,g000219985,g000065627,g000362661,g000066164</p> | City of Farmington settles former detective’s lawsuit | false | https://abqjournal.com/490919/city-of-farmington-settles-former-detectives-lawsuit.html | 2 |
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<p>Police made the grim discovery of the bodies of a mother and her son outside of a home in Virginia on Sunday morning.</p>
<p>Authorities found 84-year-old Viola Cox near the back steps of her home in Spotsylvania County, where she had apparently fallen down, according to <a href="http://wtvr.com/2015/02/15/mom-son-cold-weather-death/" type="external">local TV station WTVR</a>.</p>
<p>They also found the body of Douglas Cox, her 60-year-old son, on a trail that led from the home to a neighbor’s house. Police believe he had a medical issue as he was running for help, and both bodies had been out in the cold for “some time,” authorities said. Overnight temperatures in the region were bitterly cold, dipping to about 10 degrees.</p>
<p>Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office Captain Jeff Pearce called it a “tragic set of circumstances” that led to a “terrible ending,” according to the WTVR report.</p>
<p>A neighbor found thier bodies Sunday morning and notified authorities. The Medical Examiner in Richmond will perform an autopsy to figure out how exactly they both died.</p>
<p>The investigation remains ongoing.</p>
<p>Spotsylvania County is located in Northern Virginia and is considered part of the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, although it is more than 60 miles south of the city.</p>
<p /> | Son dies trying to get help for injured mom in the cold | false | http://natmonitor.com/2015/02/16/son-dies-trying-to-get-help-for-injured-mom-in-the-cold/ | 2015-02-16 | 3 |
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<p />
<p>Despite the extraordinary lapses in the Sept. 19 incident, Julia Pierson asserted: “The president is safe today.”</p>
<p>Hours later, reports emerged of yet another failure in Secret Service protocol, this time in President Barack Obama’s presence.</p>
<p>PIERSON: Promises don’t satisfy House panel (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)</p>
<p>On Sept. 16, an armed federal contractor rode on an elevator with Obama and his security detail while the president was visiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the Washington Examiner reported.</p>
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<p>The Washington Post reported similar details and added that the man had three convictions for assault and battery. The office of Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, who has helped lead Congress’ investigation, said a whistleblower had provided him the same details.</p>
<p>The gun was discovered only because the contractor was questioned after he persisted in taking video of Obama on the elevator, the reports said. The contractor was immediately fired by his employers.</p>
<p>A Secret Service official confirmed the incident reported by the newspapers but declined to comment further, citing an ongoing investigation of the event.</p>
<p>Was Obama informed? It was unclear. But Pierson, under questioning at the hearing, said that she is the one who briefs Obama on threats to his personal security and that she had briefed him only once this year, “for the Sept. 19 incident.”</p>
<p>At the Capitol, Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike expressed the view that the Sept. 19 breach of White House security had blemished the storied agency, and several pressed for an independent inquiry into what went wrong. They were not assuaged by Pierson’s vow that “I’ll make sure that it does not happen again” or by the agency’s own investigation.</p>
<p>“I wish to God you protected the White House like you protected your reputation here today,” Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch told Pierson at a public hearing that was followed by a classified, closed-door briefing.</p>
<p>Calm but defensive in testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Pierson disclosed that shortly before the intruder jumped the fence at least two of her uniformed officers recognized him from an earlier troubling encounter but did not approach him or report his presence to superiors.</p>
<p>On Aug. 25, Army veteran Omar J. Gonzalez was stopped while carrying a small hatchet near the fence south of the White House, Pierson said. Weeks later, the same officers observed him “for some time” on the Pennsylvania Avenue north side but never intervened.</p>
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<p>Gonzalez later went over the fence, sprinted to the unlocked front door and ran through half the first floor of the White House before being tackled.</p>
<p>Gonzalez was indicted Tuesday on a federal charge of entering a restricted building while carrying a deadly weapon.</p>
<p>At the House hearing, Pierson said she did not know why Gonzalez was not intercepted earlier.</p>
<p>“Personnel actions will be taken” once the agency’s review is complete, she said, in what appeared to be a euphemism for possible discipline or terminations. Lawmakers stopped short of calling on her to resign.</p>
<p>Chaffetz said he was not there “yet.”</p>
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<p /> | House panel grills Secret Service chief over intrusion | false | https://abqjournal.com/471322/house-panel-grills-secret-service-chief-over-intrusion.html | 2 |
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<p>Published time: 8 Oct, 2017 19:39</p>
<p>The Iranian judiciary has confirmed a five-year prison sentence for a Canadian-Iranian member of its nuclear negotiation team “convicted on charges of spying for two [unspecified] foreign intelligence services.”</p>
<p>“Mr Abdolrasoul Dorri Esfahani… was among some who were accused of spying and providing information for foreigners and had links with two espionage services,” judiciary spokesman Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie told reporters, AFP reported. Ejeie did not mention any secondary nationality in his statements.</p>
<p>Esfahyani faced multiple allegations of spying, allegedly on behalf of the British government, which were publicly denied by Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi in October 2016, AFP said.</p>
<p>However, the investigation appears to have remained open, culminating in Esfahani’s initial conviction in May and his final conviction this week following an appeal, the Iranian <a href="https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2017/10/08/1539901/judiciary-spokesman-confirms-5-year-jail-term-for-ex-iranian-nuclear-negotiator" type="external">Tasnim News Agency</a> reports.</p>
<p>“The court sentenced him to five years in prison and the verdict is final,” Ejeie said.</p>
<p>Esfahani has a background in finance and oversaw the implementation of the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in 2015.</p>
<p>The so-called P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Russia, China, France, the US, the UK as well as Germany) talks were conducted over a period of 22 months before a deal was signed in July 2015.</p>
<p>“He also has a financial corruption case for which bail has been issued but no indictment has been issued yet,” Ejeie added.</p>
<p>Iran does not recognize dual nationality, which precludes diplomatic protection or consular visits from outside nations. The case highlights the Iranian authorities’ skepticism and mistrust of improved ties with the West.</p>
<p>There has been a wider crackdown on “Western infiltration” following the nuclear deal, with security services arresting several businessmen with dual citizenship as a multitude of foreign delegations and investors have flooded into the country since the deal was signed, Reuters reports.</p> | Iran jails ex-nuclear deal negotiator for 5yrs on spying charges | false | https://newsline.com/iran-jails-ex-nuclear-deal-negotiator-for-5yrs-on-spying-charges/ | 2017-10-08 | 1 |
<p>China is home to more offices of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers leak, than any other country in the world.</p>
<p>And <a href="" type="internal">the Panama Papers</a> have linked offshore shell companies to many of China's top leaders, including relatives of Chinese President Xi Jinping.</p>
<p>But if you were to search "Panama" on the web today in China, you'd probably get a message showing "no relevant results."</p>
<p>Censorship in China is nothing new and the revelations that members of China's top leadership operate offshore shell corporations isn’t that surprising, according to Sarah Cook,&#160;director of the China Media Bulletin at Freedom House.</p>
<p>What was striking for Cook was&#160;that not only is Xi implicated, but so are many current and former members of the Politburo Standing Committee of China's Communist Party.</p>
<p>“It’s not only people who might be considered Xi’s allies, but it’s also several people who might think,&#160;in terms of factional infighting, as being his rivals,” Cook says.&#160;“So it creates a situation where you actually have quite a spectrum&#160;of people within the Communist Party, the higher echelons of the party, being implicated in this.</p>
<p>"And in a lot of ways, that’s much more dangerous for them and much more sensitive for the party than if it was just a single official, even if that official were Xi Jinping.”</p>
<p>Cook says the Panama Papers confirm the suspicions many people in China already have.</p>
<p>“Not only that there might be corruption ...&#160;but also just that these [people] are super, super rich,” Cook says.&#160;“Having these types of accounts and shell companies ... it’s something that the super, super rich do.”</p>
<p>According to Cook, that doesn’t sit well with ordinary people who are working day in and day out to try to earn some money, or the lower echelons of the Communist Party — many of whom have been hit very hard by President Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.</p>
<p>However, many ordinary Chinese people may never learn the revelations contained in the Panama Papers, because Chinese censors are working overtime to block all information about the leak.</p>
<p>In fact, Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, did report on <a href="" type="internal">the resignation of Iceland's prime minister</a>, but failed to mention anything about the reason he resigned.&#160;But Cook says the bigger censorship battle is not with the Chinese press, but in the social media sphere.</p>
<p>“It’s really this cat-and-mouse game where people are trying to share the information and particularly screenshots," she says.&#160;"So it’s not just necessarily somebody putting in a quick snippet of, ‘Oh, there’s this Panama Papers and Xi Jinping is implicated.’ A lot of the times what people will do is take a quick screenshot or a photo of a news story from a Hong Kong Paper, something translated into Chinese and post that image.”</p>
<p>Cook says sharing screenshots makes it harder for sensors to pick up on keywords related to the leak.</p>
<p>Overall, Cook says,&#160;this leak exposes something about the fear and insecurity that China’s wealthiest and topmost leaders feel about the future of their country.</p>
<p>“They want to hedge their bets and so they don’t want to keep their money within China," she says. "They want to be in a situation where if they need to escape they can."</p> | Censors in China: 'What Panama Papers?' | false | https://pri.org/stories/2016-04-07/censors-china-what-panama-papers | 2016-04-07 | 3 |
<p />
<p>From: <a href="http://americannews.com/obama-rushed-to-the-hospital-for-acid-reflux-2/" type="external">American News</a></p>
<p>The status of President Obama's health has been in question for some time now. Now, doctors from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland have determined that Obama is suffering from acid reflux.</p>
<p>The results came after Obama underwent a CT scan for a chronic sore throat. Obama was at the hospital for around half an hour before he was released. Doctors conducted a fiber optic exam by an ear, nose and throat specialist from Fort Belvoir Medical Center in Northern Virginia. He was supervised by Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, Obama's own physician.</p>
<p>Jackson determined that the exam revealed "soft tissue swelling" and that "further evaluation with a routine CT scan was prudent."</p>
<p>"The president's symptoms are consistent with soft tissue inflammation related to acid reflux and will be treated accordingly," Jackson told reporters. Experts have determined that acid reflux is most typically caused by stress, aggravation, and a poor diet.</p>
<p>So why did Obama decided to Josh to the golf course? We're guessing it had something to do with poor weather on the golf course, but White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest claimed that the test is "a matter of convenience for the president, not a matter of urgency."</p>
<p>0 comments</p> | President Obama Rushed To The Hospital For Acid Reflux | true | http://freedomsfinalstand.com/president-obama-rushed-to-the-hospital-for-acid-reflux/ | 0 |
|
<p>Lavabit, the secure email service said to have been used by former National Security Agency contractor and leaker Edward Snowden,&#160; <a href="http://qz.com/113556/secure-email-service-used-by-edward-snowden-shuts-down-under-pressure/" type="external">has shut down</a>&#160;over privacy concerns.</p>
<p>"I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit," the owner of the Texas-based company, Ladar Levison, <a href="http://lavabit.com/" type="external">posted on its website</a>&#160;Thursday.</p>
<p>"I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23627656" type="external">According to the BBC</a>, Levison is thought to have sought to block United States officials from accessing his customers' data.&#160;</p>
<p>At least one other company, <a href="http://silentcircle.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/to-our-customers/" type="external">Silent Circle</a>, decided to withdraw its secure email service in the wake of Lavabit's announcement, saying it saw "the writing on the wall."</p>
<p>Both companies <a href="http://qz.com/113556/secure-email-service-used-by-edward-snowden-shuts-down-under-pressure/" type="external" /> <a href="http://boingboing.net/2013/08/08/lavabit-email-service-snowden.html" type="external">claim to provide better privacy and security</a> for their users than mainstream email services. Lavabit reportedly <a href="http://qz.com/113556/secure-email-service-used-by-edward-snowden-shuts-down-under-pressure/" type="external">encrypts emails</a> so they can be read only by the sender and the recipient.</p>
<p>Silent Circle, however, admitted that no online email service could be entirely private. "Email as we know it [...] cannot be secure," co-founder John Callas wrote in <a href="http://silentcircle.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/to-our-customers/" type="external">a blog post</a> announcing the withdrawal of its Silent Mail service.</p>
<p>He said that the company would rather shut down the service preemptively than run the risk of allowing its users' data to be compromised.</p>
<p>"We see the writing the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now. We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now," Callas wrote.</p>
<p>As GlobalPost <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/russia/130712/edward-snowden-meeting-moscow-airport" type="external">reported</a> at the time, Snowden was revealed to have a Lavabit email account by <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/russia/130712/edward-snowden-meeting-moscow-airport" type="external">Human Rights Watch's</a> <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/russia/130712/edward-snowden-meeting-moscow-airport" type="external">Tanya</a> <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/russia/130712/edward-snowden-meeting-moscow-airport" type="external">Lokshina</a> at a press conference in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport back in July, while the fugutive whistleblower was stuck in diplomatic limbo.</p>
<p>In an unusually candid statement, Levison <a href="http://lavabit.com/" type="external">wrote</a>:</p>
<p>"This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States."</p>
<p>Levison is appealing his case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, hoping "a favorable decision" will allow him to resurrect Lavabit.</p>
<p>If not, the US government's surveillance programs could prove damaging for similar services, and the US technology sector as a whole, according to the&#160;director of civil liberties at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, Jennifer Granick.</p>
<p>"The fact that neither Americans nor foreigners trust the US government and its NSA anymore puts the US communications companies at a severe competitive disadvantage," Granick wrote on <a href="http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/08/give-me-complicity-or-give-me-death-lavabit-chooses-death" type="external">the center's blog</a>. "The US government, in its rush to spy on everybody, may end up killing our most productive industry.</p>
<p>"Lavabit may just be the canary in the coal mine."</p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/german-companies-automatically-encrypt-emails" type="external">two large German internet service providers announced</a> on Friday that they would begin encrypting customers' emails by default.</p>
<p>When initially implemented, the encryption of Deutsche Telekom AG and United Internet AG emails will only be secure between customers of T-Online, GMX and WEB.DE.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/russia/130808/us-russia-ties-obama-cancels-putin-summit" type="external">New low in US-Russia ties after Obama cancels Moscow summit</a></p> | Lavabit, secure email service used by Edward Snowden, shuts down | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-08-08/lavabit-secure-email-service-used-edward-snowden-shuts-down | 2013-08-08 | 3 |
<p><a href="" type="external" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/10/06/ed-klein-obama-well-aware-hillary-clintons-health-issues-he-has-mole-manchurian-candidate-tim-kaine/" type="external" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/10/06/ed-klein-obama-well-aware-hillary-clintons-health-issues-he-has-mole-manchurian-candidate-tim-kaine/" type="external">Ed Klein: Obama Has a "Mole, a Manchurian Candidate" in Tim Kaine</a></p>
<p>Ed Klein discussed his new book Guilty as Sin: Uncovering New Evidence of Corruption and How Hillary Clinton and the Democrats Derailed the FBI Investigation. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/330201017032791/posts/1268499369869613" type="external">Source</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">The queen of conservative talk radio, Laura Ingraham, is eyeing a Senate run in ...</a>January 16, 2017In "Conservative Blogs"</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization would add the U.S. to ...</a>February 25, 2017In "News"</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Obama Miami Protest Oct. 26</a>October 22, 2009In "Conservative Blogs"</p> | Ed Klein: Obama Has a 'Mole, a Manchurian Candidate' in Tim Kaine | true | http://libertyfederation.org/ed-klein-obama-has-a-mole-a-manchurian-candidate-in-tim-kaine/ | 2016-10-07 | 0 |
<p>In late July, students and teachers from a small, military high school bivouacked at a Lutheran camp just outside Rockford.</p>
<p>Teachers spent much of their time planning curriculum for the Junior ROTC and community service school, while students learned team-building and problem-solving skills. But on the last day, both groups got together to hash out basics: A school name, a mascot, colors and uniforms.</p>
<p>The group quickly agreed on the mascot, a phoenix, which inspired the school name, Phoenix Academy, and school colors of red and silver. But uniforms became a point of contention, and students, who originally favored wearing uniforms every day, began to balk as the daily dress code took shape. (Junior ROTC cadets wear full-dress uniforms once a week.)</p>
<p>Rising senior Melvin Miranda persuaded his colleagues that uniforms would distinguish Phoenix Academy students from others at Orr High School, where Phoenix is housed. His argument was succinct: “Let Orr do their thing and let us do our thing.”</p>
<p>Since it was created in April, Phoenix has struggled to set itself apart. One of five new, small high schools created under the Chicago High School Redesign Initiative, Phoenix is part of the first phase of a citywide effort to subdivide large, poorly performing high schools such as Orr into smaller, potentially more successful units.</p>
<p>Each small school is intended to function autonomously, with its own principal or lead teacher, staff and students. Ideally, small school educators will set their own course. Most of the new schools got off to a good start when they selected leaders last spring. (See story.)</p>
<p>But months of wrangling among Orr’s teachers, administrators and local school council wound up in a stalemate, and Chicago Public Schools officials had to step in to settle the dispute.</p>
<p>Joy-Constance Stratton, previously an assistant principal at an all-boys Catholic high school, was named principal of Phoenix on July 1, and by mid-August, Orr Principal Leon Hudnall was replaced.</p>
<p>“We didn’t want to get into selecting the principal— that’s for schools to do,” says Pat Ford, director of the Redesign Initiative. “But this particular school had some issues.”</p>
<p>Early flashpoint</p>
<p>Choosing a principal for Orr’s first small school was a flashpoint from the start.</p>
<p>Last December, the Virginia-based George C. Marshall Foundation approached Hudnall and other Orr staffers with an idea: Convert Orr’s Junior ROTC program into an independent small school focused on leadership, character development and community service.</p>
<p>Orr bought the idea and together they pitched it to the Redesign Initiative, a coalition of local funders who, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, donated $18.2 million to support a project to break up troubled high schools into smaller, more personal learning communities. The new Junior ROTC school would begin that process at Orr.</p>
<p>The initial proposal called for a principal, rather than a lead teacher, to run the small school, but it gave Hudnall the final say over principal selection.</p>
<p>That caveat was a sticking point for funders and CPS officials who were charged with approving small school proposals, says Jeanne Nowaczewski, who oversees small schools for CPS. “There would have to be a more inclusive process which gave weight to the teachers involved.”</p>
<p>A more inclusive process was created and implemented once the proposal was approved in April. A search committee comprised of Hudnall, Assistant Principal Mose Vines, two teachers and a Junior ROTC instructor was formed. But it quickly became apparent that this process merely paid lip service to teacher input.</p>
<p>“The positions weren’t advertised—it was just through word of mouth,” says Orr Assistant Principal Hilda Moore, who applied for the job.</p>
<p>Candidates were narrowed down to two finalists: Moore and Katherine Harris, a principal-in-training in the first class of New Leaders for New Schools, an alternative certification program for principals.</p>
<p>Phoenix teachers backed Harris; Orr administrators favored Moore. Questions were raised about Harris’s principal credentials, which were pending but not yet in hand. “The model we chose was to have a principal,” says Hudnall. “It was agreed upon that the candidate should have a type 75 [state certificate].”</p>
<p>At this point, Orr’s local school council demanded a say in the proceedings. “We were concerned that the council was being left out because we were on intervention,” says teacher representative Richard Watson. “We should have had at least an advisory role in the process.”</p>
<p>Round two</p>
<p>Although the committee voted, it rescinded the ballot and reopened the search. In May, the search committee was reconvened, and this time it included LSC members and other community residents.</p>
<p>Harris remained a candidate but soon accepted an offer to develop a high school for Ariel Community Academy. Moore withdrew her application. “I didn’t want any controversy,” she says. “I don’t think I really wanted it.”</p>
<p>The new committee winnowed the field to three candidates: Stratton, Dunbar High Assistant Principal Solomon Humphries and a third prospect.</p>
<p>Each spoke at a candidate forum and fielded questions from Orr administrators, LSC members and prospective small school teachers. Afterward, LSC members and Orr administrators backed Humphries. Teachers, however, wanted another chance to interact with the candidates, and a second meeting was scheduled.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a backlash was building. LSC teacher rep Watson says he feared the Marshall Foundation, through its representative, Michael Farley, was trying to control the process. “My thing was not anti-teacher,” Watson says. “I didn’t want Mr. Farley picking the principal based on his program.”</p>
<p>Small school teachers say Farley was in their corner. “The rumor was Mike Farley was going to take over and it was going to be his school,” says Phoenix Academy teacher Rita Greene. “We got that rumor straightened out.”</p>
<p>After a second meeting with the candidates, the teachers favored Stratton.</p>
<p>At this point, central office had to intervene to resolve the impasse. Nowaczewski and Edward Klunk, deputy high school development officer, talked with both sides. “We made many investigations,” says Nowaczewski. “It was our determination that the real choice of the staff of this school was Joy Stratton.”</p>
<p>“The teachers have made their choice,” sniffed Hudnall shortly before he abruptly returned to Morse Elementary as principal.</p>
<p>Hudnall was assigned to Orr when it was placed on intervention two years ago. He and Larry Thomas, the intervention principal at South Shore High School, both returned to their old schools over the summer, following tensions over the autonomy of small schools in their buildings.</p>
<p>Hudnall and Thomas were good at the kind of leadership needed at intervention schools, says John Ayers, executive director of Leadership for Quality Education. “Now the world has changed,” he explains. “Most principals expect to run their show. Under the [Redesign Initiative], it’s a more distributed leadership model.”</p>
<p>“Making decision by consensus requires negotiation,” Ford says. “That’s ultimately what happened, but in the future, we’d like schools to have the tools to work that out, if possible.”</p>
<p>Such struggles over autonomy are to be expected as high schools change entrenched mindsets, Ford explains. “This is new,” she says. “We’re all going through it for the first time. Breaking old habits is not an easy thing.”</p>
<p>New habits</p>
<p>So far, Phoenix teachers say they are satisfied with their choice for principal. Stratton, who was responsible for curriculum development at Marist High in Mount Greenwood, earned her principal credentials in Massachusetts and studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.</p>
<p>At camp this summer, teachers learned that their input counts in charting a course for Phoenix, says Greene. “You actually felt part of a team that was going to get the job done,” she says. “An opportunity opened up for our voices to be heard. Our principal wouldn’t do anything without us.”</p>
<p>Along with students who participated in the two-week retreat, Phoenix educators began creating new customs. They ate meals together, family style at round tables. Helpers set the tables, brought seconds and cleared dishes. It was a custom both students and staff plan to replicate for the rest of the academic year in the school cafeteria.</p>
<p>“That was ideal,” says Greene. “We’re trying to get a more close-knit community. The kids really wanted to bring that back into school.”</p> | New small school at Orr High tests limits of autonomy | false | http://chicagoreporter.com/new-small-school-orr-high-tests-limits-autonomy/ | 2005-07-28 | 3 |
<p><a href="http://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2016/12/2/cnn-crew-jokes-about-donald-trumps-plane-crashing" type="external">FTVLive</a> has obtained a video in which CNN's Suzanne Malveaux, her crew, and producers are prepping for a news broadcast covering President-elect Donald Trump's Carrier press conference.</p>
<p>In the video, one of Malveaux's producers jokes about Trump's plane crashing:</p>
<p>PRODUCER: "So, landing any minute."</p>
<p>MALVEAUX: "Good."</p>
<p>PRODUCER: "If I do this, it means he's landed. [laughter]."</p>
<p>MALVEAUX: "Okay."</p>
<p>PRODUCER: "That means his plane crashed. No, I'm kidding."</p>
<p>A male member of the team chimes in: "[inaudible] like that. Nobody needs [inaudible] killed, just injured."</p>
<p />
<p>After the video went public, CNN issued an apology, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-employee-joke-trump-plane-crash-2016-12" type="external">stating</a>:</p>
<p>"An unfortunate and inappropriate remark was made by one of our producers off camera yesterday. We have apologized to the Trump transition team, and the producer has been disciplined."</p>
<p>One has to wonder if CNN producers would ever joke about President Obama's plane crashing. As expected, many conservatives expressed outrage on Twitter:</p>
<p>I'm not surprised, after all it is <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN" type="external">@CNN</a>... Despicable. <a href="https://t.co/N7RTsJypBI" type="external">https://t.co/N7RTsJypBI</a></p>
<p>CNN wished death on pilots, flight attendants, and other airline workers. You are trash <a href="https://twitter.com/jaketapper" type="external">@jaketapper</a>. <a href="https://t.co/sW3SMXi6k5" type="external">https://t.co/sW3SMXi6k5</a></p>
<p>SERIOUSLY? CNN Crew Jokes About Trump Plane Crashing As Malveaux Laughs <a href="https://t.co/CwZT9Djofw" type="external">https://t.co/CwZT9Djofw</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrumpTrain?src=hash" type="external">#TrumpTrain</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrumpTransition?src=hash" type="external">#TrumpTransition</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PresidentElect?src=hash" type="external">#PresidentElect</a></p>
<p>Without question, the remark was unprofessional. However, it's important to note two things.</p>
<p>First, this was not meant to be broadcast. It was a macabre joke, the context of which isn't fully known, that was caught on a hot mic prior to a live transmission. Second, we've all told macabre jokes. To spin this into a category five controversy hurricane is a disservice to actual controversy.</p>
<p>This is a quintessential example of overreaction blunting the senses. Treating every gaffe with the same level of outrage has a dulling effect. After a period of time in which everything is the worst thing, it becomes difficult to discern what's really important.</p>
<p>This isn't important, and should not be covered on the same level as the civil war in Syria, Trump's crony capitalist deal with Carrier, judicial nominations, or other issues of true significance.</p> | CNN Producer Jokes About Trump's Plane Crashing | true | https://dailywire.com/news/11287/cnn-producer-jokes-about-trumps-plane-crashing-frank-camp | 2016-12-02 | 0 |
<p>Today, millions of Americas who were going to lose their health care under the GOP’s disastrous Obamacare replacement plan are celebrating over the knowledge that the health care bill died in the Senate last night.</p>
<p>While Republicans are in mourning once again over their much resisted health care plan, one man refuses to accept reality and continues to push for it. Early this morning, Donald Trump got back on Twitter to point fingers and show just how delusional he is. Trump tweeted:</p>
<p>“We were let down by all the Democrats and a few Republicans. Most Republicans were loyal, terrific and worked really hard. We will return!”</p>
<p>“As I have always said, let Obamacare fail and then come together and do a great health care plan. Stay tuned!”</p>
<p>&#160;The way Trump is willing to blast Republicans who oppose him is insane. Last night Senators Mike Lee and Jerry Moran rejected the bill, which prevented the bill from passing. The rest of America is secretly praising these two Senators for actually having a conscience.</p>
<p>Trump’s tweet about Obamacare failing is also hilarious, considering that Trump and the GOP’s horrible replacement has made the Affordable Care Act more popular than it’s ever been!</p>
<p>A little over an hour later, Trump decided he had more to say. Completely admitting that the Republicans are losing on legislation, Trump said:</p>
<p>“With only a very small majority, the Republicans in the House and Senate need more victories next year since Dems totally obstruct, no votes!”</p>
<p />
<p>Keep an eye on Trump’s Twitter account today, because we have a feeling he’s going to be melting down all day long. Seriously, how many more times will Trump and the Republican Party try to pass their health care bill before they accept that Obamacare is here to stay? It’s getting really, really embarrassing for them!</p>
<p>Featured image via Pool / Getty Images</p> | Trump Has INSANE Online Meltdown After GOP Health Care Bill Crashes And Burns (TWEETS) | true | http://bluetribune.com/2017/07/18/trump-has-insane-online-meltdown-after-gop-health-care-bill-crashes-and-burns-tweets/ | 2017-07-18 | 4 |
<p>(Reuters) – Frenchman Gael Monfils outclassed Russian youngster Andrey Rublev to win the Qatar Open and claim his seventh ATP title Saturday, having finished runner-up in Doha three times.</p>
<p>Former world number six Monfils, who last triumphed at the Citi Open in 2016, cruised to a 6-2 6-3 victory in one hour after dominating from the start.</p>
<p>Monfils, who reached the final after top seed Dominic Thiem’s withdrawal on Friday, now turns his attention to the Australian Open, which begins on Jan. 15, where he will be looking to get past the fourth round for the first time.</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> | Monfils wins seventh ATP title at Qatar Open | false | https://newsline.com/monfils-wins-seventh-atp-title-at-qatar-open/ | 2018-01-06 | 1 |
<p>LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Tuesday evening’s drawing of the “2 By 2” game were:</p>
<p>Red Balls: 15-23, White Balls: 8-21</p>
<p>(Red Balls: fifteen, twenty-three; White Balls: eight, twenty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $22,000</p>
<p>¶ Top Prize $22,000.</p>
<p>LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Tuesday evening’s drawing of the “2 By 2” game were:</p>
<p>Red Balls: 15-23, White Balls: 8-21</p>
<p>(Red Balls: fifteen, twenty-three; White Balls: eight, twenty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $22,000</p>
<p>¶ Top Prize $22,000.</p> | Winning numbers drawn in ‘2 By 2’ game | false | https://apnews.com/236d84362a244bd4b26f6f560db71be1 | 2018-01-24 | 2 |
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<p>SANTA FE — The New Mexico Senate signed off on changes to its committee makeup today, which include two new committee chairs.</p>
<p>Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, is the new chairman of the Senate Conservation Committee, a post previously held by new Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe.</p>
<p>Legislators holding leadership positions are generally barred from also holding committee chairmanships.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Sen. William Soules, D-Las Cruces, will take over as chairman of the Senate Education Committee, as the panel’s previous chairman, Sen. John Sapien, D-Corrales, will slide over to a spot on the influential Senate Finance Committee.</p>
<p>The chairs of the other six Senate standing committees remain unchanged from last year. The House also reshuffled its committee structure and named new chairman yesterday. You can read more about that <a href="" type="internal">here</a>.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Two new committee chairs on tap for Senate | false | https://abqjournal.com/930432/two-new-committee-chairs-on-tap-for-senate.html | 2 |
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<p>LONDON — Arconic, the metal products maker that was once part of Alcoa Inc., said Monday it will stop selling one type of aluminum composite paneling for use on high-rise buildings after speculation that the material contributed to the spread of a deadly fire at a London apartment tower.</p>
<p>Reynobond PE, which has a polyethylene core, will no longer be sold for high-rise projects, New York-based Arconic said in a statement. The company also makes another type of panel — Reynobond FR — which is fire-resistant.</p>
<p>“We believe this is the right decision because of the inconsistency of building codes across the world and issues that have arisen in the wake of the Grenfell Tower,” Arconic said in a statement. “We will continue to fully support the authorities as they investigate this.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The company’s shares fell as much as 11 percent Monday and closed down 6 percent at $24.01 in New York following weekend news reports that Arconic sold the panels installed on Grenfell Tower knowing they would be used on a high-rise building.</p>
<p>In a statement late Monday, Arconic acknowledged it supplied Reynobond FR to a fabricator which used it as a component on Grenfell Tower’s cladding system. Other parts of the cladding, including its insulation, were supplied by others, it said.</p>
<p>It added that it sold its product with the expectation it would be used in compliance with local building codes.</p>
<p>“Our product is one component in the overall cladding system; we don’t control the overall system or its compliance,” Arconic said.</p>
<p>The company previously had warned that such panels posed a fire risk on tall buildings.</p>
<p>At least five law firms announced Monday that they were investigating claims on behalf of Arconic shareholders who have lost money on their investments since the fire.</p>
<p>London’s Metropolitan Police said Friday it was investigating what role aluminum composite panels, the insulation behind them and the installation of the overall exterior cladding system played in the June 14 Grenfell Tower fire that killed at least 79 people.</p>
<p>“Our tests will look at each aspect individually, as well as how they all worked together as part of the building’s cladding,” police said in a statement.</p>
<p>The U.K. government is scrambling to test cladding materials similar to those used at the destroyed tower, hoping to better understand fire-safety risks nationwide.</p>
<p>Arconic’s announcement came as the government announced that cladding material from 75 buildings in 26 local authorities had failed combustibility tests. Communities and Local Government Secretary Sajid Javid said samples from every building tested so far had failed.</p>
<p>“The fact that all samples so far have failed underlines the value of the testing program and the vital importance of submitting samples urgently,” Javid said. “I am concerned about the speed at which samples are being submitted.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Britain’s government says it is giving 1 million pounds ($1.27 million) to charities helping fire victims. Javid said the figure recognizes that small charities and not-for-profit organizations are making a contribution to the relief effort.</p>
<p>The funding is in addition to 5 million pounds provided for the Grenfell Tower Residents’ Discretionary Fund.</p> | Company curbs sale of panels used on burned London high-rise | false | https://abqjournal.com/1023982/company-curbs-sale-of-panels-used-on-burned-london-high-rise.html | 2017-06-26 | 2 |
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<p>DETROIT — Musician Kid Rock will kick off the opening of the new home arena for the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons with four concerts.</p>
<p>Tickets go on sale Jan. 27 for the Sept. 12-13 and Sept. 15-16 shows at the 20,000-seat Little Caesars Arena.</p>
<p>Kid Rock was born Robert Ritchie and lives in suburban Detroit. He announced the concerts Thursday from the arena which still is under construction.</p>
<p>Little Caesars Arena is schedule to open in the fall. It is part of The District Detroit, a 50-block, mixed-use development just north of downtown.</p>
<p>The arena initially was being built for the NHL’s Red Wings, but officials announced last year that the NBA’s Pistons would leave The Palace of Auburn Hills to also play home games next season in Detroit.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Kid Rock to perform 4 concerts to open new Detroit arena | false | https://abqjournal.com/931287/kid-rock-to-perform-4-concerts-to-open-new-detroit-arena.html | 2 |
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<p>On Tuesday, Oscar Pistorius' defense lawyer Barry Roux revealed Johnson's cellphone number in court. Before testifying on Wednesday, Johnson said he felt his "privacy has been compromised."</p>
<p>Johnson and his wife Michelle Burger live 193 yards from the Olympian's home.</p>
<p>Burger, a university lecturer who was the first witness in the Pistorius' murder trial, <a href="" type="internal">broke down in tears Tuesday, saying she still remembers the terrified screams</a> of a woman on the night the double-amputee athlete killed his girlfriend.</p>
<p>Roux <a href="" type="internal">cast doubt on Burger's testimony</a> and <a href="" type="internal">suggested that a scream she heard was actually Pistorius</a>.</p>
<p>The trial continues.</p>
<p /> | Oscar Pistorius Murder Trial Witness Gets Threatening Phone Call | false | http://nbcnews.com/storyline/pistorius-trial/oscar-pistorius-murder-trial-witness-gets-threatening-phone-call-n44651 | 2014-03-05 | 3 |
<p>BOSTON - As the middle class shrinks in America, it swells elsewhere. In Asia, to be exact.</p>
<p>The numbers, according to experts from the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, DC, are staggering.</p>
<p>"By 2021," write&#160;Homi Kharas and Geoffrey Gertz in a chapter of the compilation, "China's Emerging Middle Class," "there could be more than 2 billion Asians in middle-class households."</p>
<p>According to our estimates, by 2015, for the first time in 300 years, the number of Asian middle-class consumers will equal the number in Europe and North America. ... In China alone there could be more than 670 million middle-class consumers, compared with only perhaps 150 million today.</p>
<p>This is not a done deal, they say, since many things depend on as-yet-to-be developed infrastructure, education and health care.</p>
<p>But assuming these systems can rise to the occasion, China could become the world's largest middle class by 2020. Whereas today it accounts for only 4 percent of the global middle class, making it seventh on the list.</p>
<p>Already, global markets are shifting to reflect the changing dynamics of the global middle class. (Data from Kharas and Gertz's chapter.)</p>
<p>Auto sales</p>
<p>In 2000, the US accounted for 37 percent of all car sales, while China accounted for barely 1 percent. Fast forward to today, and China is the world's largest auto market. 13.6 million vehicles sold in China in 2009, well above the 10.4 million that sold in the United States.</p>
<p>Cell phone market</p>
<p>In 2008, Nokia, the largest cell phone maker in the world had net sales of $8.2 billion in China, more than three times its US revenues.</p>
<p>Shopping</p>
<p>A 2007 survey found that Chinese consumers spend 9.8 hours a week shopping, compared to 3.6 hours for the typical American.</p> | Global middle class shifts from West to East | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-09-10/global-middle-class-shifts-west-east | 2012-09-10 | 3 |
<p>ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Buffalo-Bills/" type="external">Buffalo Bills</a> had the top rushing attack in the NFL the past two seasons.</p>
<p>When the ground game stalled on Sunday, they relied on <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tyrod_Taylor/" type="external">Tyrod Taylor</a>‘s arm and Stephen Hauschka’s leg to pull out a victory.</p>
<p>Taylor completed a career-high 77 percent of his passes (20 of 26) for 213 yards and two touchdowns to lead the Bills to a 26-16 win over the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Denver_Broncos/" type="external">Denver Broncos</a> at New Era Field.</p>
<p>“He carried us today. Let’s be clear about that,” Buffalo’s star tailback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/LeSean_McCoy/" type="external">LeSean McCoy</a> said. “Tyrod responded in a major way. And hey, if we have to win like that, I’d bet my last dollar on Tyrod, and I’m a betting man.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Von-Miller/" type="external">Von Miller</a>, the Broncos’ All-Pro pass rusher, doubled down on the praise for Taylor.</p>
<p>“He’s a great quarterback,” Miller said. “He plays at a level that lifts his teammates. If they’re 80s and Tyrod gets his juice going, they’re 90s now, they’re 95s. He really knows how to boost his teammates’ talents.”</p>
<p>McCoy struggled for the second week in a row, rushing for just 21 yards on 14 carries, but was Buffalo’s leading receiver with seven catches for 48 yards. He also became the third active player with at least 9,000 rushing yards and 400 receptions in his career.</p>
<p>“Whatever it takes to win, that’s what we’ll do,” McCoy said. “I’m very confident putting the ball in (Taylor’s) hands and letting him lead us.”</p>
<p>Hauschka kicked four field goals and became the first Bills kicker to convert twice from 53 yards or further in the same game as Buffalo improved to 2-1 under new head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sean-McDermott/" type="external">Sean McDermott</a>.</p>
<p>“I like this <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a> team,” McDermott said. “These guys play together, they work hard during the week, and there’s no surprise, no mistake I should say, for the results they got. You earn it. That’s how you win in this league. You have to earn it, and those guys earned it.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Trevor-Siemian/" type="external">Trevor Siemian</a> was 24-of-40 passing for 259 yards with no touchdowns and two interceptions for the Broncos (2-1), who averaged 33 points in their first two victories. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jamaal_Charles/" type="external">Jamaal Charles</a> rushed for 56 yards and a touchdown.</p>
<p>After taking a 16-13 lead in the third quarter, the Broncos gained just 80 yards and turned the ball over three times on their final four possessions.</p>
<p>Denver’s comeback hopes ended when Siemian threw an incomplete pass on fourth down with 1:47 remaining.</p>
<p>“It was all around a bad day for us as far as critical football,” Broncos head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Vance-Joseph/" type="external">Vance Joseph</a> said.</p>
<p>Hauschka’s 53-yard field goal extended Buffalo’s lead to 23-16 after Denver failed on a fake punt from its own 31 early in the fourth quarter. Hauschka hit from 27 yards to make it a nine-point game with 3:14 left after rookie Tre’Davious White made his first career interception and the Bills ran 7:30 off the clock with a 16-play drive.</p>
<p>The Bills took possession twice inside the Denver 32 in the second half, but failed to capitalize on their first opportunity following an E.J. Gaines interception.</p>
<p>Taylor tossed a 6-yard touchdown pass to tight end Charles Clay that put the Bills up 20-16 midway through the third quarter. Taylor completed passes for 38- and 25-yard gains and McCoy broke off a 31-yard run on the four-play drive that followed a 28-yard tiebreaking field goal by <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Brandon-McManus/" type="external">Brandon McManus</a>.</p>
<p>Hauschka booted a 55-yard field goal to tie the game at 13-13 just before halftime. Hauschka also connected from 49 yards earlier in the second quarter.</p>
<p>McManus opened the scoring with a 38-yard field goal near the end of the first quarter and made a 35-yarder that put the Broncos in front 13-10 in the final minute of the first half.</p>
<p>Denver went ahead 10-7 early in the second quarter when Charles scored his first touchdown as a Bronco on a 12-yard run up the middle. Unsportsmanlike conduct penalties on Buffalo defenders <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Micah-Hyde/" type="external">Micah Hyde</a> and Jerry Hughes aided Denver on its 79-yard drive.</p>
<p>After going three-and-out on their first two possessions, the Bills drove 74 yards and took a brief 7-3 lead on <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Andre-Holmes/" type="external">Andre Holmes</a>‘ 2-yard touchdown reception that bounced off the hands of teammate Zay Jones.</p>
<p>NOTES: Denver DT Domata Peko started in his 114th straight game, extending the longest active streak of any NFL defensive tackle. … The Bills were without their two highest-paid players, DT <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Marcell-Dareus/" type="external">Marcell Dareus</a> (ankle) and LT <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cordy-Glenn/" type="external">Cordy Glenn</a> (ankle). … Broncos rookie LT <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Garett-Bolles/" type="external">Garett Bolles</a> (lower leg) started after being listed as questionable. … Temperature at kickoff (85 degrees) was the warmest for a regular-season game regular season since 2002. … Denver has led at the end of the first quarter in all three games this season.</p> | Tyrod Taylor throws two touchdowns to lead Buffalo Bills over Denver Broncos | false | https://newsline.com/tyrod-taylor-throws-two-touchdowns-to-lead-buffalo-bills-over-denver-broncos/ | 2017-09-24 | 1 |
<p>So, Hillary Clinton says she’ll keep us safe from terrorism.</p>
<p>She can’t even keep her own stage at her rallies clear from terrorism-supporters.</p>
<p>Speaking in Kissimmee, Florida, Hillary had a special guest sitting behind her: Seddique Mateen, father of Orlando jihadist Omar Mateen. He wasn’t just in the crowd. He was hand-selected to sit behind her on stage. He was sitting directly behind her, on camera, when she lamented, “I know how many people, families, loved ones, and friends are still grieving, and we will be with you as you rebuild your lives.”</p>
<p>Seddique has <a href="" type="internal">posted videos</a> to YouTube backing the Taliban and said, “God will punish those involved in homosexuality.”</p>
<p>The Clinton campaign says that they had no idea how Seddique ended up there.</p>
<p>Right.</p>
<p>Somewhere, Donald Trump must be chortling to himself as his aides try desperately to pry his cellphone from him before he ruins the news cycle with an ill-considered tweet.</p>
<p>Here are three things you need to know.</p>
<p>1. The Media Don’t Care. The media obviously don’t care. They’re pointing out that she wouldn’t want to place a terrorist behind her at a rally. It must have been a mistake! I don’t recall the media giving such wide berth to the Trump campaign when it turned out that a random California delegate was an avowed white supremacist. Then, it was considered some sort of window into the soul of the Trump campaign.</p>
<p>2. Seddique Showing Up Makes Perfect Sense. Seddique explained his Hillary support thusly: “Hillary Clinton is good for United States versus Donald Trump, who has no solutions.” Radical Muslims would tend to support Hillary Clinton, whose immigration policy puts few restrictions on importation of more radical Muslims into the United States. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s newest position on Muslim immigration would put heavy restrictions on jihadist importation. Why wouldn’t Seddique show up?</p>
<p>3. Hillary’s People Put Him Onstage Because Diversity Matters More Than Terror Support. Seddique Mateen’s appearance at a Clinton rally is a window into the soul of the Hillary campaign. There’s only one reason he ended up on stage, presumably: he looked “diverse.” And that need for “diversity” meant that the campaign didn’t bother with the most basic vetting process before slapping him on camera. Which, of course, is precisely the problem with Hillary Clinton’s anti-terrorism and immigration policies: she cares far more about what people look like entering the country – the optics of diversity – than about Americans’ safety and security.</p>
<p>Hillary’s campaign is incompetent – but it’s incompetence with a purpose. And that purpose is nefarious. Good news for her: the media will never cover it, because they’ve got to ensure that the Queen is crowned.</p> | 3 Things You Need To Know About The Orlando Jihadist Dad Showing Up At Hillary's Rally | true | https://dailywire.com/news/8212/3-things-you-need-know-about-orlando-jihadist-dad-ben-shapiro | 2016-08-09 | 0 |
<p>Gustavus Adolphus College's “Diversity Leadership Council” has admitted posting racist signs around the campus in what the council is now claiming was a "social experiment."</p>
<p>The racially offensive, brightly colored signs stated:</p>
<p>A NOTICE</p>
<p>TO ALL WHITE AMERICANS</p>
<p>IT IS YOUR CIVIC DUTY</p>
<p>TO REPORT ANY AND ALL</p>
<p>ILLEGAL ALIENS</p>
<p>TO U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT</p>
<p>THEY ARE CRIMINALS</p>
<p>AMERICA IS A WHITE NATION</p>
<p>The racist rhetoric immediately elicited a reaction from angry students and alumni who reported the signs to Gustavus Adolphus' Bias Response Team.</p>
<p>Some called the posters "disgusting," while others simply wrote, "F***. That." "One alumna even posted on Facebook that her cousin had discovered the signs at Beck Academic Hall and reported it to the school’s Bias Response Team, remarking that 'it isn't much of a surprise something like this was posted' at that particular building," <a href="http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=8965" type="external">notes</a> <a href="http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=8965" type="external" />Campus Reform. Professors should “take five minutes from tomorrow’s lesson plan to talk about how f***ed up this is with their students," added the alumna.</p>
<p>It then came to light that the posters were not put up by racists, but stupid social justice warriors attempting to spread awareness. Or something.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, Dean of Students Jones VanHecke told the outraged alumna that the posters were “part of a series of educational ‘invisible theater’ events taking place this week that have been planned by I Am We Are theater troupe, the Diversity Leadership Team, and the Bystander Intervention Committee.”</p>
<p>VanHecke thanked the alumna for her "action."</p>
<p>“I cannot thank you enough for the action that you have taken by filing a report and making sure that the incident was brought to the attention of the college,” he said. "[A] bystander demonstrates that Gustavus students care about each other and their collegiate environment and are willing to take a stand against hate and bias.”</p>
<p>When students and alumni rightfully became angered over the fake racist posters, the Diversity Leadership Council issued a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/GustavusDLC/posts/1866929290244598" type="external">statement</a> owning up to the moronic stunt:</p>
<p>We posted these signs and accompanying A-frames with bystander intervention tips in academic buildings on campus in an effort to help educate our peers and campus community about issues of bias, and the importance of being an active bystander. We want to help put an end to bias-related incidents that happen on our campus, social media, and in our communities by forcing individuals to have dialogues about forms of hate and bias. We hope that members of the campus community will reflect on today’s events and join us in ensuring that no one student or group of students are ever a victim of this form of discrimination. We ask that everyone help prevent bias on-campus by educating yourself on ways to report bias, staying informed about bias incidents that have occurred, and assisting the Bias Response Team in identifying perpetrators. This can all be accomplished by visiting the college’s Bias Response Team website. We also hope that everyone will be an active bystander and utilize the 3-Ds (Direct, Delegate, Distract) as encouraged by the Bystander Intervention Team. We understand that the language in these images may be hurtful – we apologize to those who were negatively impacted.</p>
<p>Moronic. As National Review's Katherine Timpf <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446041/college-diversity-council-admits-posting-fake-racist-flyers-campus" type="external">notes</a>, why are these SJWs creating fake problems instead of trying to solve real ones?</p>
<p>"Hey, kids? If you want to 'help put an end to bias-related incidents that happen on our campus,' how about you address those incidents instead of distracting from them by making up a fake one?" writes Timpf. "Seriously — just what is bringing awareness to a fake issue going to solve? It’s not going to help solve that issue, because — and sorry if I’m blowing your mind here — a problem has to actually exist in order for you to be able to solve it."</p>
<p>Others on campus were equally unsatisfied with the "experiment."</p>
<p>“Sometimes I walk around crowded theaters yelling ‘fire!’” one commenter wrote on social media. “I do it because I want to create awareness; thus no punishment is warranted.”</p>
<p>“You hurt a lot of people, tarnished the college’s reputation, and will be losing alumni donations. I hope it was worth it,” said an alumna, before adding that she won't be donating to the school "anytime soon."</p> | College Diversity Council: Yeah, We Posted Fake Racist Signs | true | https://dailywire.com/news/14767/college-diversity-council-yeah-we-posted-fake-amanda-prestigiacomo | 2017-03-25 | 0 |
<p />
<p>David Corn joined an <a href="http://video.msnbc.msn.com/martin-bashir/48849381/#48848738" type="external">MSNBC panel</a> moderated by host Martin Bashir to discuss the <a href="" type="internal">lies and distortions</a> in <a href="" type="internal">Paul Ryan’s Wednesday night speech</a> at the 2012 Republican national convention.</p>
<p />
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<p>David Corn is Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, <a href="" type="internal">click here</a>. He’s also on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/davidcorndc" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>
<p /> | Corn on MSNBC: Ryan Speech Stokes Passion Among GOP, Fact-Checkers | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/08/corn-msnbc-paul-ryan-convention-speech/ | 2012-08-30 | 4 |
<p>MASSACHUSETTSWorldNetDaily©&#160;2003&#160;WorldNetDaily.com</p>
<p>After reeling last year from devastating and widespread revelations of predatory homosexual priests in the Catholic Church, Massachusetts' four bishops have shaken off the dust of scandal and are now actively encouraging the state's Catholics to lobby their legislature for a constitutional amendment that would prohibit same-sex marriage, according to a Boston Globe report.</p>
<p>They are also asking Massachusetts clergymen to remind worshippers that the Catholic Church opposes homosexual marriage, and to post notices in church bulletins explaining the ins and outs of contacting legislators.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>In an e-mail reply to the Globe, Worcester's Bishop Daniel P. Reilly explained the reasoning behind their public stand now: ''The bishops have a right and a duty to remind Catholics of what it means to be a married couple, and they are reminding people that everyone has a right to let their legislators know what they believe marriage is. It is not an anti-anything statement, but a reminder that marriage holds a unique role in the history of mankind and should be respected for what it is, a union of a man and a woman who seek to live a new life focused on the best interests of that new couple and their potential family, not just each other's personal interests.''</p> | Bishops rally ministers to fight 'gay' marriage | false | https://poynter.org/news/bishops-rally-ministers-fight-gay-marriage | 2003-05-30 | 2 |
<p>Brexit, Krexit and Crexit: Britain leaves the EU, Kurdistan declares independence from Iraq, Catalonia secedes from Spain – three massive political changes either under way or put on the political agenda by recent referendums. Three very different countries, but in all cases a conviction among a significant number of voters that they would be better off on their own outside any measure of control by a supranational authority like the EU or a nation state like Iraq or Spain.</p>
<p>Referendums have a lot to answer for: no wonder divided governments, demagogues and dictators have such a fondness for them. They have the appearance of popular democracy and give the impression that important decisions are finally being made by reducing complex questions into an over-simple “yes” or “no”. They make public opinion easy to manipulate because what voters are being asked to assent to is most often wishful thinking and what they are opposing is a rag-bag of unrelated grievances. There are a great many unhappy and dissatisfied people in the three countries which have voted in referendums in the last 15 months, but no reason to suppose that their vote will make them happier or better off.</p>
<p>The lack of substance in promises of good things to come should be more obvious than it is. It is particularly obscure in Britain because the pros and cons of Brexit are debated by both sides in economic terms, or in relation to the impact on immigration. The discussion is almost entirely in the future tense, but in practice the main disasters flowing from Brexit have already occurred.</p>
<p>From the moment the polls closed on 23 June 2016, British society has been deeply divided, probably more so than at any time since the 17th-century civil war 375 years ago. “It really is like a civil war without the gunfire,” said one commentator to me last week, speaking of the depth, rancour and lasting nature of these divisions. The Government is so split that it has yet to find enough common ground to get rid of Theresa May, even though she seems to be having a rather public nervous breakdown.</p>
<p>There is another danger at work here. The Brexiteers hark back to a golden British past when Britain stood alone and was the workshop of the world aided by the virtues of free trade. But this is a misreading of British history: being on the winning side in the Napoleonic and in First and Second World Wars had less to do with economic strength and more to do with naval power and skill in making alliances. Once again, the weakening of the British state is not something which will be postponed until after some elastic transition period – but has already begun.</p>
<p>The British experience of referendums is not unique and has parallels elsewhere. Experience shows that referendums are always used by the winning side to pretend that their majority, however slim and however low the turnout, represents the undivided national will. In fact, the 52 to 48 per cent Brexit vote reflected exactly that: a country split down the middle. The turnout in the vote in Catalonia last Sunday was only 42 per cent, but the Catalan Prime Minister is expected to declare independence if he is allowed to address parliament on Tuesday.</p>
<p>As is so often in history, those who want to carry out radical or revolutionary change do not get anywhere without provoking an unreasonable and counter-productive overreaction by those who want to preserve the status quo. It should not have required much consideration for the Spanish government to realise that sending in the national police to try and fail to stop the referendum, while beating up ordinary people in front of television cameras, was the best way to win sympathy for the pro-independence side. Hailing the Catalan chief of police, Josep Lluis Trapero, before a judge in Madrid on suspicion of sedition against the state, is likewise guaranteed to do nothing but give legitimacy to those holding the referendum.</p>
<p>The self-destructive idiocy of governments when defending their own interests never ceases to amaze. Those who justify their power by maintaining law and order cannot suddenly behave like thugs without wounding their authority. I remember half a century ago – in Northern Ireland in 1968 – asking a civil rights organiser about the next steps to be taken by his movement, which was seeking equal rights for Roman Catholics in a sectarian Protestant-run state. He said that he and his colleagues had just voted at a meeting to do nothing, but instead to wait for the government to make another crass mistake such as allowing the police force to attack peaceful civil rights marchers in front of photographers and television cameras. This the government duly did.</p>
<p>The referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan on 25 September has distinct features, but also points in common with other referendums: the vote was for or against independence for the Iraqi Kurds, the poll taking place in territories disputed by the Iraqi government as well as in Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) areas. It appears to have been called by KRG President Masoud Barzani to wrap himself in the Kurdish flag and present himself as the standard bearer of Kurdish nationalism. It can be taken as a given that most Kurds want an independent state, but the question is how feasible this is.</p>
<p>The vote was useful to Barzani in giving him legitimacy, though his term in office controversially ran out in 2015. Despite the KRG’s near economic collapse, Barzani has been able to divert attention from this and present the non-binding referendum result as a panacea or cure-all for the troubles of the Kurds, many of which are the fault of the corrupt and dysfunctional KRG government.</p>
<p>There is another similarity between Brexit and Krexit: Leave politicians in the UK pretended to voters that the balance of power between the UK and 27 EU states was equal and negotiations could proceed on that basis. Mr Barzani likewise said post-referendum he would negotiate independence directly with a compliant government in Baghdad. Of course, this was fantasy: May and Barzani both have weak hands to play against much stronger opponents. Baghdad is saying that there will be no negotiations about anything until the results of the referendum are annulled, and Turkey and Iran are in a position to squeeze the KRG into compliance.</p>
<p>Supporters of Brexit, Krexit and Crexit promise short-term dislocation in return for their countries achieving real independence and long term prosperity.</p>
<p>In fact, Britons, Kurds and Catalans are more like Edward Lear’s Jumblies, who famously went to sea in a sieve despite warnings that they would all be drowned, to which the Jumbles replied: “Our Sieve ain’t big / But we don’t care a button, we don’t care a fig / In a sieve we’ll go to sea!”</p> | Brexit, Kurdistan and Catalonia: Why Such Referendums are Doomed to Fail | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/10/09/brexit-kurdistan-and-catalonia-why-such-referendums-are-doomed-to-fail/ | 2017-10-09 | 4 |
<p>Chris Ivy, director of sports at Heritage Auctions, discusses historical baseball memorabilia, including a Jackie Robinson rookie jersey from 1947 that could sell for over $3 million.</p>
<p>A rare jersey from Jackie Robinson’s 1947 rookie season with the Brooklyn Dodgers is on the auction block.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The jersey is the only Jackie Robinson game-worn rookie jersey in existence, Chris Ivy, director of sports at Heritage Auctions, the company offering the item, told FOX Business.</p>
<p>It has been certified as authentic by Mears, a top memorabilia authentication company, along with a photo of Robinson, who was the first black Major League Baseball player, wearing the jersey.</p>
<p>“It’s photo matched Sept. 23, 1947. It’s actually Jackie Robinson Day. It’s the day after the Dodgers had just clinched the pennant. They were celebrating Jackie and they actually presented him with this Cadillac,” Ivy told Stuart Varney on “Varney &amp; Co.”, while referring to the photo.</p>
<p>It will also come with a letter from his widow, Rachel, which talks about how Robinson brought the jersey home after the World Series.</p>
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<p>“The only reason we have it today is because Jackie brought it home as a memento to keep personally,” he said.</p>
<p>While it’s hard to say exactly how much the jersey will be sold for, Ivy estimates the hall of famer’s jersey could fetch more than $3 million.</p> | Jackie Robinson’s only game-worn rookie jersey up for auction | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/31/jackie-robinson-s-only-game-worn-rookie-jersey-up-for-auction.html | 2017-10-31 | 0 |
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<p>It's been a busy 2016 for Nokia with the assimilation of its former rival Alcatel-Lucentand an Internet of Things (IoT) deal with one of Russia's leading telecoms, to name but a couple of recent events. But the news that really caught investors' attention was Nokia's decision to reenter the world of mobile devices.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>In the second quarter of 2010, Nokia was on top of the global mobile-phone sales heap, well ahead of "upstarts" including the iEverything maker and every other manufacturer. But as consumers ditched their old-school mobile phones for smartphones, Nokia took a beating which resulted in the now infamous $7.9 billion sale of its phone business to strategic partner Microsoft .</p>
<p>The deal with Microsoft was the end of the Nokia phone story, until CEO Rajeev Suri's announcement that it's back in the mobile mix, albeit in a different -- and better -- way than before.</p>
<p>Image source: <a type="external" href="">Nokia</a>.</p>
<p>Nokia's latest foray into mobile devices began with the recent formation of Finland-based HMD Global, which has been granted an "exclusive global license to create Nokia-branded mobile phones and tablets for the next ten years." In return for the use of the Nokia brand and intellectual property from its industry-leading patent portfolio, HMD will make royalty payments for each device sold.</p>
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<p>Microsoft once again enters the Nokia mobile picture. Microsoft has agreed to sell what remains of its feature-phone unit to FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Foxconn , for $350 million. In return, Foxconn acquires Microsoft'smanufacturing, some design rights, and the software king's extensive distribution and sales networks.</p>
<p>In conjunction with the Microsoft sale, HMD and Nokia Technologies have inked a deal with Foxconn -- financial terms weren't disclosed -- to collaborate on the "building of a global business" utilizing assets from its $350 million acquisition.</p>
<p>When rumors began swirling last year that Suri was planning a return to mobile, there was a collective groan from many Nokia investors and pundits. After years of losing both market share and money, the notion of Nokia making the same mistake again was a head-scratcher.</p>
<p>However, the arrangement that Nokia has put together with the parties involved -- including Microsoft divesting itself from the mobile-phone market -- is ideal. With low- and mid-tier feature phones, targeting one of the few regions that still offers some growth potential -- emerging markets -- is a solid plan, though one reason some of the big mobile-device hitters have avoided emerging markets is the razor-thin margins of lower-end units.</p>
<p>But outsourcing the manufacturing of feature phones and tablets that bear the Nokia name, a still-popular global brand, gives Nokia a revenue opportunity without the risk associated with building the devices. And let's not forget further monetizing Nokia's valuable patents. One estimate suggests Nokia's patent portfolio is worth between $4.48 billion and$11.2 billion. And with the assimilation of Alcatel-Lucent with its own laundry list of patents, Nokia's intellectual property is likely on the high end of industry valuations.</p>
<p>The opportunity to offer emerging markets low-cost mobile devices without the manufacturing hurdles is an arrangement that can only help Nokia. And additional sales from its non-networking technologies unit will be ancillary revenue that can only help boost Nokia's topline. That said, the arrangement with HMD and Foxconn won't miraculously change Nokia's reliance on connecting the world via its suite of networking solutions.</p>
<p>Of Nokia's $6.28 billion in total revenue in the first quarter of 2016, nearly 93% was derived from its networking division, with the balance split between technologies and other sales. But any step to further diversify revenue sources is a step in the right direction, especially with so little downside. Priced at just 15 times future earnings and sporting a 5.75% dividend yield, Nokia's stock may now get the shot in the arm it needs from mobile.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/24/nokia-corps-return-to-mobile-is-spot-on.aspx" type="external">Nokia Corp.'s Return to Mobile Is Spot-On Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/timbrugger/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Tim Brugger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Microsoft. 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> | Nokia Corp.'s Return to Mobile Is Spot-On | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/05/24/nokia-corp-return-to-mobile-is-spot-on.html | 2016-05-24 | 0 |
<p>Continuing on his book tour around the state of Florida, former Republican-turned-Independent-turned Democrat Charlie Crist, returned to the Democrat stronghold of Broward County, in hopes to sell and sign more of his newly released book,” The Party’s Over,” in addition to rallying up more support for his 2014 gubernatorial campaign.</p>
<p>Crist said that it was “wonderful” to be back in Broward County, and his wife Carol, who is attached to Crist’s hip on the book tour, told several well-wishers,” we love Broward county, you are going to get sick of us.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Crist was obviously implying that the couple would be spending a lot more time in this donor and voter rich county of the state.</p>
<p>But while all went smoothly and according to plan, as far as the book signing went, protesters camped outside of the Fort Lauderdale Barnes &amp; Noble made their way into the political gutter by yelling out disgusting and outrageous attacks against Crist.</p>
<p>The group of about twenty, some being associated with the Fort Lauderdale Tea Party, which still camps out on a busy street intersection every Saturday, looking more like homeless Occupy Wall Street protesters than anything else, decided that it was ‘OK’ to yell out, “Charlie, you look like an AIDS victim.”</p>
<p>Yes, among other dumb and insulting things they said, this vile statement was directed towards Crist three times as he exited the bookstore.</p>
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<p>We all disagree with Charlie Crist’s politics. Because Americans have a First Amendment right to do so, some of us use a pen and a keyboard to raise awareness to Crist historic policy flip-flops, while others will prefer to hold up signs on a street corner and protest their disappointment and disagreement with Charlie.</p>
<p>But to yell out offensive remarks like this has no place in politics, let alone society.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, because AIDS patients tend to loose significant amounts of weight in the later stage of the disease, I will assume that this remark towards Crist was made to describe his noticeably thin physique.</p>
<p>This particular group, the Fort Lauderdale Tea Party, which does not represent the overwhelming majority of Americans involved in the Tea Party movement, is notorious for making these kind of insensitive, and in some cases racist comments.</p>
<p>Let me be clear. Not all of the group’s members are this ignorant, but unfortunately, a good number of them are.</p> | Book Signing Protesters: “Charlie,You Look Like An AIDS Victim” | true | http://shark-tank.com/2014/02/21/book-signing-protesters-charlieyou-look-like-an-aids-victim/ | 0 |
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<p>FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — The Latest on Arizona weather (all times local):</p>
<p>4:21 p.m.</p>
<p>The Arizona Department of Public Safety is advising drivers to put off any trips to northern Arizona on Friday as a major snowstorm is hitting the area.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Spokesman Bart Graves said the department is discouraging drivers from heading north because conditions will be extremely dangerous.</p>
<p>The Flagstaff area is being plummeted with snow.</p>
<p>According to the weather service, 12 to 18 inches of snowfall are expected in Flagstaff from Friday afternoon and into Saturday.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>1:56 p.m.</p>
<p>The National Forest Service has closed all roads that lead to the Four Peaks and Mount Ord recreation areas in the Tonto National Forest northeast of Phoenix.</p>
<p>The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office says the closure is due to the snow and bad conditions.</p>
<p>The northern Arizona area is seeing large snowfall amounts. The National Weather Service says Flagstaff will be about 12 to 18 inches of snow.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>10:35 a. m.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service says heavy snowfall will create extremely hazardous conditions on Interstate 17 and 40 in northern Arizona Friday afternoon and into Saturday.</p>
<p>The weather service says those conditions will include heavy snow and wind that will reduce visibility and that travel delays are likely.</p>
<p>According to the weather service, 12 to 18 inches of snowfall are expected in Flagstaff from Friday afternoon and into Saturday.</p>
<p>Other expected snowfall amounts include 13 to 14 inches in Munds Park along I-17 south of Flagstaff and 12 to 18 inches at Williams along I-40 west of Flagstaff.</p>
<p>10:25 a.m.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service says heavy snowfall will create extremely hazardous conditions on Interstate 17 in northern Arizona Friday afternoon and into Saturday.</p>
<p>The weather service says those conditions will include heavy snow and wind that will reduce visibility and that travel delays are likely.</p>
<p>According to the weather service, 12 to 18 inches of snowfall are expected in Flagstaff from Friday afternoon and into Saturday, with 13 to 14 inches expected in Munds Park about 20 miles south of Flagstaff.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:15 a.m.</p>
<p>The Arizona Department of Public Safety says Interstates 17 and 40 — the busiest highways in northern Arizona — are open and clear midday Friday after significant snowfall during the start of a series of storms that will move across the region.</p>
<p>DPS says officers responded to 17 vehicle slide-offs overnight.</p>
<p>Snowfall is expected to pick up again late Friday and winter storm warnings remain in effect for elevations above 5,500 feet until noon Saturday in Flagstaff and until Saturday evening in communities in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service reports 8 to 10 inches of snow in the Flagstaff area as of late Friday morning. Higher snowfall amounts include 21 inches at the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort in mountains above Flagstaff and 13 inches in Williams.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>7:40 a.m.</p>
<p>The first of three storms expected to parade across Arizona by early next week is dropping snow that resulted in a few school closures in the high country Friday.</p>
<p>Winter storm warnings are in effect for high elevations in northern, eastern and southern Arizona as authorities suggest limiting travel in the high country and urge travelers to be prepared for hazardous conditions such as blowing and drifting snow.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service says snow showers are expected to increase Friday with widespread to heavy snowfall spreading west to east Friday night and overnight.</p>
<p>Flagstaff by mid-morning Friday had 8 inches of snow. Rain showers are common in lower elevations.</p>
<p>Public schools are closed in Flagstaff and in eastern Arizona’s Blue Ridge Unified School District in Navajo County.</p> | DPS: Don’t head to northern Arizona today | false | https://abqjournal.com/932429/the-latest-storm-expected-to-make-travel-on-i-17-hazardous.html | 2017-01-20 | 2 |
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<p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/27/gonzales/index.html" type="external">CNN</a>:</p>
<p>Embattled U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation Monday in a brief statement at the Justice Department.</p>
<p>“Yesterday I met with President Bush and informed him of my decision to conclude my government services as Attorney General of the United States effective September 17.”</p>
<p>He did not take questions from reporters.</p>
<p>Bush will likely nominate Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to the position, senior administration officials said.</p>
<p>Chertoff has headed Homeland Security since 2005. He served as a federal appellate court judge, a federal prosecutor and as special counsel for a Senate committee investigating President Clinton’s involvement in the Whitewater land development.</p>
<p>Solicitor General Paul Clement will serve as acting attorney general, the White House press office said.</p>
<p>President Bush is expected to make a statement about Gonzales at 11:50 a.m. from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he has been vacationing, but will not announce a replacement, two senior administration officials said.</p>
<p>More <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/27/gonzales/index.html" type="external">here</a> and <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0807/5524.html" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p>Late Update: Hold off on the Chertoff speculation, CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux now told.</p>
<p /> | Gonzales’ Resignation Statement, Clement Acting AG, Chertoff AG Likely Nominee | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/gonzales-resignation-statement-clement-acting-ag-chertoff-ag-likely-nominee/ | 2007-08-27 | 4 |
<p>TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) - Western Illinois head coach Charlie Fisher joined new Arizona State coach Herm Edwards' staff Thursday as wide receivers coach.</p>
<p>Fisher took the position left vacant when Rob Likens was promoted to offensive coordinator.</p>
<p>Fisher was 8-4 this past season at Western Illinois, leading the Leathernecks advanced to the first round of the FCS playoffs. He was 14-9 in two seasons at the school.</p>
<p>TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) - Western Illinois head coach Charlie Fisher joined new Arizona State coach Herm Edwards' staff Thursday as wide receivers coach.</p>
<p>Fisher took the position left vacant when Rob Likens was promoted to offensive coordinator.</p>
<p>Fisher was 8-4 this past season at Western Illinois, leading the Leathernecks advanced to the first round of the FCS playoffs. He was 14-9 in two seasons at the school.</p> | Arizona State adds Charlie Fisher as wide receivers coach | false | https://apnews.com/4e38f48a13a0447fa657093fbf0ce336 | 2018-01-05 | 2 |
<p>An older Dustin Hoffman interview making the rounds online shows the actor tearing up over his regret at not having known more “interesting women” because they did not “fulfill, physically, the demands that we’re brought up to think [they] have to have in order for us to ask them out.”</p>
<p>Hoffman was talking about preparing for his role in the 1982 comedy “Tootsie,” directed by Sydney Pollack.</p>
<p>The Academy Award-winning actor’s vulnerable confession reveals the profound personal and social loss both men and women suffer at being “brainwashed,” as he says, into valuing image and appearance over substance and quality of character in themselves and others. For this experience, Hoffman says, the film was not a comedy for him.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>afi:</p> | 'I Think I'm an Interesting Woman' | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/i-think-im-an-interesting-woman/ | 2013-07-10 | 4 |
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<p>Last week thousands of progressives (including a few from Mother Jones) converged on Washington D.C. for three days of strategizing, networking, motivating, and in some cases (possibly involving representatives from Mother Jones) drinking. This was the Take Back America conference, devised and laid on by the Campaign for America’s Future and the Institute for America’s Future (we liberals are forward-looking, you can’t deny it!) and dedicated to the proposition that progressives can and must get their act together already! If you missed the event, don’t worry — as of today you can check out the major speeches, behind-the-scenes footage, and radio interviews <a href="http://www.ourfuture.org/projects/national_conference/2005/index.cfm" type="external">online.</a> Go see — and let’s make sure that what happens in Washington doesn’t stay in Washington.</p>
<p /> | Play Back America | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2005/06/play-back-america/ | 2005-06-09 | 4 |
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<p>PEORIA, Ariz. — The funeral procession for a retired Phoenix Fire Department captain resulted in closures of sections of two Phoenix-area freeways and various ramps.</p>
<p>Eastbound Loop 101 was closed between 75th Avenue and Interstate 17 and southound I-17 was closed between Loop 101 and McDowell Road for Tuesday afternoon’s funeral procession for Crystal Rezzonico.</p>
<p>Fire Department officials say the 56-year-old Rezzonico died Feb. 17 from injuries she suffered in an August 2009 on-duty wreck. Her injuries included a cracked skull that led to multiple brain surgeries.</p>
<p>Rezzonico returned to duty about a year after the accident. She retired in December 2014 after a 23-year career.</p>
<p>The funeral procession began following a service at Christ’s Church of the Valley in Peoria and ended at Greenwood Memory Lawn Cemetery in Phoenix.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Funeral procession for retired fire captain closes freeways | false | https://abqjournal.com/958783/funeral-procession-for-retired-fire-captain-to-shut-freeways.html | 2017-02-28 | 2 |
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<p>LONDON — The European Union said Thursday it’s preparing new regulations that could force a key financial market — and potentially thousands of jobs — to move away from London once Britain leaves the bloc.</p>
<p>The EU’s executive Commission said it will present next month new rules on the oversight of this market, the so-called clearing of euro-denominated trades.</p>
<p>In financial markets, clearing is the business of acting as an intermediary in a trade to reduce the risks from defaults by ensuring funds are delivered to the seller. Some 75 percent of euro-denominated interest rate derivatives are cleared in the U.K. — and tens of thousands of jobs depend on the business.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Some European authorities want this euro clearing business to be located in a country in the EU, as the bloc is tightening its oversight of banks and financial services in the wake of the financial crisis.</p>
<p>When asked Thursday whether clearing houses would be forced to leave the U.K. if they wanted to continue handling euro-denominated trades, Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said the EU was “looking at this issue.”</p>
<p>“Of course, in a context of Brexit we see that the situation is changing,” Dombrovskis told reporters in Brussels. “The bulk of EU denominated derivatives are cleared in the U.K., and therefore we need to assess what implications it has for financial stability.”</p>
<p>While the Commission did not specify what the new rules would be, it expressed concern that after Brexit a “substantial volume” of euro-denominated transactions would be cleared outside the EU, meaning they would not be subject to the bloc’s regulations and supervision.</p>
<p>The Commission said it wants to ensure clearing houses are subject to the “safeguards provided by the EU legal framework” in areas where they play a key role in the stability of financial markets and monetary policy.</p>
<p>The statement comes as the EU and Britain begin two years of complex negotiations over the separation of two economies that have been intertwined for more than 40 years. A German newspaper reported Sunday that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Britain Prime Minister Theresa May was in a “different galaxy” in her expectations for Brexit. May yesterday accused EU officials of making “threats” to influence next month’s general election in Britain.</p>
<p>Treasury chief Phillip Hammond said Britain would consider any proposed clearing regulations but that the EU must be careful not to disrupt growth and investment in the U.K. and Europe.</p>
<p>“London is the world’s No. 1 financial center, with high standards of financial supervision, including longstanding cooperation with EU institutions,” Hammond said. “This benefits the entire continent. We trust everyone in the negotiations will see the value in not undermining that.”</p>
<p>TheCityUK, which lobbies on behalf of Britain’s financial services industry, was more blunt.</p>
<p>“A forced re-location of euro-clearing would lead to disruption, uncertainty and fragmentation of the market,” Chief Executive Miles Celic said in a statement. “A potentially less liquid, and less competitive EU market would result in higher costs for European savers and investors. This would ultimately be detrimental to people and businesses in Britain and in Europe. This is in no one’s interest and is entirely avoidable.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.</p> | EU eyes rules that could move thousands of jobs from London | false | https://abqjournal.com/998486/eu-eying-rules-that-could-move-thousands-of-jobs-from-london.html | 2017-05-04 | 2 |
<p>In <a href="" type="internal">exposing</a> the identity of a highly secretive man persuasively argued to be the inventor of Bitcoin earlier this week, Newsweek’s deciders also reported that he likely has the equivalent of $400 million in the currency stashed away somewhere. Then they told everyone how to find him.</p>
<p>It’s a question of morality, and perhaps naiveté.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/newsweeks-statement-bitcoin-story-231242" type="external">statement</a> defending themselves against furious reactions to the story across the Web, the magazine’s staff wrote that they “recognized a public interest in establishing some core facts about Bitcoin and better informing those who might invest money in it.” All good. The currency is indeed volatile. There are <a href="" type="internal">sound reasons</a> to be wary of its limitations and ultimate purpose, and the availability of new insight into the personality that created it stands to improve our understanding of its meaning.</p>
<p>But the writers concluded by encouraging readers of the article “to be respectful of the privacy and rights of individuals involved.” In other words, to the criminally inclined whom we just directed toward a cool half billion: Please restrain yourselves.</p>
<p />
<p>Additionally, in a <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/journalist-behind-bitcoin-story-speaks-out-231170" type="external">video interview</a> posted the day after her story was published, journalist Leah McGrath Goodman absurdly spoke of her hope that the man she helped expose is able to live “a quiet and peaceful life.”</p>
<p>Goodman and her editors deserve applause for shedding light on the origins of a phenomenon with broad societal implications. But they did it in a way that made the life of a private citizen considerably more dangerous, and so far they refuse to admit it.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p> | Newsweek's Bitcoin Hypocrisy | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/newsweeks-bitcoin-hypocrisy/ | 2014-03-08 | 4 |
<p>PRAGUE, Czech Republic (ABP) — European Baptist leaders gathered in Prague, Czech Republic, Oct. 1-2 to discuss the future of the cash-strapped International Baptist Theological Seminary.</p>
<p>The seminary is owned and operated by 51 Baptist unions and conventions that make up the European Baptist Federation — one of Virginia Baptists' mission partners.&#160;The school has been <a href="http://www.ibts.us/Newsletters/Vision%20Dec.%202008.pdf" type="external">hit</a> hard by a weak dollar diminishing the value of gifts from the United States, rising maintenance and energy costs and a global banking crisis that has eroded endowment funds.</p>
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<p>Leaders said finances could force IBTS to sell all or part of its campus in Prague, where it relocated from Ruschlikon, Switzerland, in 1995. The first preference is to remain on the current campus, a 19th-century estate renovated in the 1990s with the labor of hundreds of mission volunteers from the United States. But leaders said that will require significant cost cutting and increasing income, possibly requiring the appointment of a development officer.</p>
<p>If leaders determine the school must move, options are to either seek a more affordable site in Prague or relocate to another EBF partner union, possibly changing the language of instruction and accreditation.</p>
<p>Formed in 1949 to train pastors for southwest Europe, the seminary at Ruschlikon faced a financial crisis in 1991. The then-Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention ceased funding the school, claiming the teaching there was more liberal than what was being tolerated in the increasingly conservative SBC.</p>
<p>Facing rapidly increasing costs of operating in Switzerland, trustees voted to sell the campus and to move to a less-expensive location. With costs in Prague about half those in Switzerland, a sale price of more than $20 million allowed the seminary to move with only a bridge loan pending final payment on the Swiss property.</p>
<p>The relocated seminary took a new name, International Baptist Theological Seminary, along with a new vision. During the days of the Iron Curtain, Baptists in much of Europe were cut off from the rest of the world and denied opportunities for higher education. A new political climate allowed seminaries and Bible schools to reopen, but without a clear understanding of how they would be accredited and recognized as official Baptist institutions.</p>
<p>Long having had a smattering of Baptist students from Eastern Europe and now geographically located at the midpoint between Baptists in Eastern and Western Europe, IBTS in 1997 began focusing efforts on graduate studies and recruiting top graduates from unions and seminaries across Europe and the Middle East. The seminary awarded its first doctorates in 2007 and celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2008-2009.</p>
<p>The SBC defunding of Ruschlikon drew outrage from moderate Southern Baptists, prompting many churches at the time to redirect their mission gifts to the newly formed Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Many SBC missionaries assigned to Europe switched to the CBF's new global-missions enterprise. Today IBTS is one of 15 seminaries, theology schools and Baptist-studies programs identified as ministry partners of the Atlanta-based CBF.</p>
<p>EBF representatives overwhelmingly affirmed the need for IBTS to continue but said serious issues remain about reducing costs and increasing income.</p>
<p>About 1,200 men and women — most from the United States and many from North Carolina — came to Prague at their own expense to repair dilapidated buildings on the seminary's new campus in 1994 and 1995.</p>
<p>Now, officials say, the <a href="http://www.ibts.us/Newsletters/June%202008%20Vision.pdf" type="external">cost</a> of looking after historic buildings dating to the early 19th century is starting to take its toll. Twelve years after renovation, the seminary now has capital needs to replace worn-out equipment. Utility costs have risen astronomically.</p>
<p>The Czech crown, meanwhile, is a currency of speculation and therefore very strong against the Euro and dollar, dramatically affecting the value of donations from Western Europe and the United States. A recent newsletter <a href="http://www.ibts.us/Newsletters/Vision%20Dec.%202008.pdf" type="external">described</a> the combination as "really quite critical."</p>
<p>The seminary houses one of the largest English-language theological <a href="http://www.ibts.eu/library" type="external">libraries</a> on the continent of Europe, with about 69,000 volumes. In 2008 IBTS was host to the annual gathering of the Baptist World Alliance.</p>
<p>A fund-raising campaign during the seminary's Diamond Jubilee in the 2008-2009 academic year raised the equivalent of about $75,000 in U.S. currency.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Bob Allen</a> is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.</p> | European Baptist leaders ponder future of international seminary | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/europeanbaptistleadersponderfutureofinternationalseminary/ | 3 |
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<p>The 27-page draft - two pages shorter than a previous version - included a long-term goal of keeping global warming "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F), while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C.</p>
<p>The draft also said governments would aim to peak the emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases "as soon as possible." That was weaker language than in previous drafts that included more specific timeframes.</p>
<p>The issue appeared far from settled, however, with one negotiator from a developed country saying his delegation would "push back" on the long-term goal.</p>
<p>Fabius, who is leading the talks, told negotiators to review the draft and come back in two hours to continue the talks. The Paris conference was scheduled to end today, but the annual U.N. talks rarely finish on time.</p>
<p>"I think, I hope that by the end of this night we'll have a draft of the final text," Fabius said. "We are much closer."</p>
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<p>Diplomats from 196 governments are trying to forge a global pact in Paris to slow global warming by collectively slashing emissions, mostly from the burning of oil, coal and gas for energy.</p>
<p>The biggest challenge is to define the responsibilities of wealthy nations, which have polluted the most historically, and developing economies including China and India where emissions are growing the fastest.</p>
<p>The text still contained competing options on the key issue of transparency - making sure countries follow through on their emissions targets and included an option asking for different rules for rich and poor countries, which is unacceptable to the former.</p>
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<p /> | New climate deal draft not as strong | false | https://abqjournal.com/689609/new-climate-deal-draft-not-as-strong.html | 2 |
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<p />
<p>The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce is playing dirty with health care reform. It’s pressuring its homestate Democratic senators, Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, to block health care legislation unless the Obama administration ends what the Chamber calls a “war on coal.”</p>
<p>The Obama administration and Congress have waged “a growing campaign against the mining and use of coal,” said West Virginia Chamber President Steve Roberts <a href="http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2009/11/20/wva-chamber-block-health-care-reform-to-help-coal/" type="external">in a press release</a>. He cited both the administration’s efforts to cut carbon emissions via climate legislation, as well as its tougher <a href="http://washingtonindependent.com/58689/epa-puts-brakes-on-surface-mining-in-appalachia" type="external">enforcement of environmental standards</a> for mining practices. “This needs to end before irreparable damage sets in,” Roberts threatened. “It seems counterintuitive to ask taxpayers in this country to pour money and take on a trillion dollars in future debt to expand health care coverage and benefits while at the same time the Obama administration and Congress are working to destroy jobs, eliminate good health care benefits and hurt people’s well-being.”</p>
<p>Coal, however, does not “improve the health and well-being” of either miners or local residents. Coal mining, combustion, and disposal can cause serious health problems, including black lung, asthma, and mercury pollution, to name a few. And the number of coal-related jobs is on the decline in West Virginia and the rest of the country, in part because coal has laid off workers after mechanizing much of its operations. There are fewer than half as many jobs in the coal sector now as there were in the early ’80s, according to the Energy Information Administration. There are now <a href="http://greenwombat.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/01/28/wind-jobs-outstrip-the-coal-industry/" type="external">more jobs in the wind industry</a> than in mining.</p>
<p>A third of non-elderly West Virginians were <a href="http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/newsroom/press-releases/2009-press-releases/new-report-finds-497000-west.html" type="external">uninsured</a> at some point in 2007-2008—most of them for six months or more. Yet the state’s Chamber wants its congressional delegation to block legislation that would provide those residents with access to health care.&#160;“Votes to advance national health care reform are at razor-thin margins in both houses of Congress,” Roberts concludes. “West Virginia’s congressional delegation needs to use this time—and their clout and seniority—to get this anti-coal situation stopped.”</p>
<p /> | West Va. Chamber of Commerce Plays Dirty With Health Care Reform | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/11/west-virginia-chamber-and-war-coal/ | 2009-11-20 | 4 |
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<p>NEW YORK — The latest on developments in financial markets (All times local):</p>
<p>4:00 p.m.</p>
<p>Stocks are closing slightly lower on Wall Street, led by declines in health care companies.</p>
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<p>The modest declines Wednesday kept the Dow Jones industrial average slightly below the 20,000 mark. Merck and Pfizer had the biggest losses in the Dow.</p>
<p>FedEx fell 3 percent after reporting earnings that fell short of Wall Street’s forecast as expenses rose.</p>
<p>Energy companies rose. Halliburton gained 3 percent.</p>
<p>The price of natural gas jumped 9 percent on expectations that colder weather will lead to more demand for home heating.</p>
<p>The Dow slipped 32 points, or 0.2 percent, to 19,941.</p>
<p>The Standard &amp; Poor’s 500 index lost 5 points, or 0.3 percent, at 2,265. The Nasdaq composite fell 12 points, or 0.2 percent, to 5,471.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>11:45 a.m.</p>
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<p>Stocks are moving slightly lower as the Dow Jones industrial average remains just short of the 20,000-point mark.</p>
<p>Bank stocks fell more than the rest of the market Wednesday. Goldman Sachs fell 1 percent.</p>
<p>Energy companies rose. Chevron gained 1 percent.</p>
<p>FedEx’s fell 2.5 percent after reporting earnings that fell fell short of Wall Street’s forecast as expenses rose.</p>
<p>The Dow slipped 19 points, or 0.1 percent, to 19,955. It closed at a record high of 19,974 on Tuesday.</p>
<p>The Standard &amp; Poor’s 500 index was down 2 points, or 0.1 percent, at 2,268. The Nasdaq composite fell 10 points, or 0.2 percent, to 5,472.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>9:35 a.m.</p>
<p>Stocks are opening slightly lower as the Dow Jones industrial average remains just short of the 20,000-point mark.</p>
<p>Bank stocks are taking some of the largest losses Wednesday morning. Financial firm Northern Trust lost 1 percent.</p>
<p>Energy companies rose as the price of oil inched up 0.3 percent. EQT Corp. jumped 2.2 percent.</p>
<p>Athletic apparel maker Nike is up 1.5 percent after its second-quarter profit and sales topped analyst estimates.</p>
<p>Shipping company FedEx’s earnings fell short of Wall Street forecast as its expenses rose. Its stock is down 1.9 percent.</p>
<p>The Dow average slipped 9 points to 19,965. It closed at a record high of 19,974 on Tuesday.</p>
<p>The Standard &amp; Poor’s 500 index was down 2 points at 2,268. The Nasdaq composite fell 6 points to 5,476.</p> | Markets Right Now: Health care stocks lead US indexes lower | false | https://abqjournal.com/913282/markets-right-now-stock-indexes-edge-lower-in-early-trade.html | 2016-12-21 | 2 |
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<p />
<p>Martinez is one of eight candidates who garnered enough votes in the tribal primary election earlier this month to run in the general election for a new term in one of the four seats up for election on the council.</p>
<p>But in a letter issued Oct. 7, President Danny Breuninger Sr. wrote that Martinez was suspended by a unanimous vote of the council, with one member abstaining.</p>
<p>“The council felt that allegations regarding financial improprieties and misuse of tribal property were serious enough that further investigation is warranted,” Breuninger wrote.</p>
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<p>The president stated that Martinez admitted to the council on Oct. 6, that he received reimbursement for three days of travel when he only attended one day of a conference in Denver.</p>
<p>“He also used the tribal plane without proper authorization,” Breuninger wrote.</p>
<p>The council is looking into other improprieties that involve Martinez receiving meeting stipends for which he was not entitled, double reimbursements from multiple sources for meetings and other travel-related “misconduct that reflect on the dignity and integrity of the tribal government.”</p>
<p>Breuninger reminded tribal members in the letter circulated to them early in the week that the council is dealing with allegations only, “and that nothing has been proven to date.”</p>
<p>“Depending on what is uncovered during the investigation, Mr. Martinez will be afforded a hearing and all due process,” the president wrote. He added that because of “prior misconduct” involving abuse of office by Martinez, that resulted in a censure by the council, members determined Martinez should be suspended during the current investigation.</p>
<p>Breuninger was referring to an investigation in 2015, when Martinez was accused of promising another tribal member two acres of land elsewhere if she would give up her assignment next to him and allegations he used his influence as a council member to make the exchange happen. The council split 3-3 on a vote to remove Martinez form his seat, with one member abstaining. Sanctions were imposed on Martinez by resolution that included removing him from a subcommittee and denying him eligibility for any committee chairmanship for the remainder of his term on the council.</p>
<p>“This is something that (neither) the tribal council (nor) I want to do,” but their oath of office demands they protect tribal members’ money and property, Breuninger wrote of the new investigation and suspension.</p>
<p>Martinez could not be reached for comment.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>©2016 the Ruidoso News (Ruidoso, N.M.)</p>
<p>Visit the Ruidoso News (Ruidoso, N.M.) at <a href="http://www.ruidosonews.com" type="external">www.ruidosonews.com</a></p>
<p>Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.</p>
<p>_____</p> | Mescalero tribal council member’s actions investigated | false | https://abqjournal.com/867412/mescalero-tribal-council-members-actions-investigated.html | 2 |
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<p>Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who's previously <a href="" type="internal">made clear that he doesn't believe</a> immigrants from the Middle East want to assimilate into American culture, wants Muslims who come to the U.S. to reject Sharia law. King made the comments when TPM asked him on Wednesday whether he supported Trump's proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S.</p>
<p>King said he wasn't confident any immigrants from the Middle East would do so, citing what he said was the failure of the only two Muslim members of Congress to renounce Sharia.</p>
<p />
<p>"Sharia law is incompatible with the United States Constitution and so if they want to demonstrate that they are open to being Americanized, the first thing they should do is renounce Sharia law," King told TPM. "You won't get Keith Ellison or Andre Carson in this Congress to renounce Sharia law, let alone somebody that's just come out of the Middle East that is someone who has been steeped in Islam for a lifetime."</p>
<p>As that interview ended, TPM also had a chance to talk with Ellison, who was walking by and shook hands with King. When asked to respond to King's comment, Ellison said it was "an incredibly ignorant statement."</p>
<p>"And when I say ignorant I don't mean it as an insult, I mean it as it is incredibly uninformed," Ellison said. "That is all I can really say."</p>
<p>King did not fully embrace Trump's widely-condemned plan, telling TPM: "I wouldn't be willing to adopt that specific policy, but I am willing to debate the merits of it, and I think we should."</p>
<p>"What we should do is we should be profiling people who are getting on airplanes and we should be profiling people that are coming into America and those coming into America should meet a profile where they are the most likely to be able to contribute to our society and our economy and assimilate into the American civilization, and I have said publicly that Muslims do not do that in significant numbers," he added.</p>
<p>He also credited the read estate mogul with starting a debate about Muslims in America, arguing that political correctness in the country was "debilitating and almost suicidal."</p>
<p>"I am not announcing that I agree with him, but I do say that I thank him for opening up the topic and opening up it nice and wide so we can have a real debate about this," King said.</p> | Steve King: Even Muslims In Congress Won't Renounce Sharia Law | true | http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/steve-king-muslims-congress-sharia-law | 4 |
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<p>A female suicide bomber tried to blow up Qazi Hussain Ahmad, a prominent politician in Pakistan who used to head the country's main Islamist party,&#160; <a href="http://zeenews.india.com/news/south-asia/female-suicide-bomber-targets-top-pakistani-politician_811637.html" type="external">Zeenews reported</a>. Ahmad escaped unhurt but three of his aides were wounded in the attack.&#160;</p>
<p>Despite his narrow escape,&#160;"he remained safe in the explosion," an official <a href="http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/2012/11/19/182-Former-JI-chief-escapes-suicide-attack-in-Pakistan-.html" type="external">told ANI</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business/120601/when-the-brics-crumble" type="external">When the BRICs Crumble</a></p>
<p>The bomber was wearing a burqa that hid explosives strapped to her body. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but Pakistani Taliban chief&#160;Hakimullah Mehsud recently spoke out against Ahmad, accusing him of supporting Pakistan's current rulers, <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/female-bomber-attacks-major-pakistani-politician-073819209.html" type="external">the Associated Press reported</a>.&#160;</p> | Female suicide bomber targets Islamist politician in Pakistan | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-11-19/female-suicide-bomber-targets-islamist-politician-pakistan | 2012-11-19 | 3 |
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<p />
<p>Even if you don’t know the name Herb Goldman, you’ve likely seen his work.</p>
<p>The sculptor, who lived in Albuquerque for 20 years, left his fingerprints all over the city and state. He died last month at age of 90 in Dallas.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Although many do not still exist, his contributions to public art here include a water fountain sculpture at UNM’s School of Education, a bronze matador at Sandia High School, a steel raven at Rio Grande High School, an ele phant enclosure and seal exhibit at the zoo, and exterior pieces at the Wilshire Shopping Center in Roswell.</p>
<p>“ We s t i l l feel his impact around Albu querque very much even though he hasn’t been in Albuquerque in recent years,” said Frank McCulloch, an Albuquerque painter and long-time friend of Goldman’s.</p>
<p>Goldman began making animals and other small figures out of clay when he was 8 years old in Detroit. Armed with samples of his sculptures and a box of Hungarian pastries, his mother marched into to the art museum in Detroit in order to find a mentor for Goldman. She persuaded well-known sculptor Samuel Cashwan to take him on as a student at around age 12.</p>
<p>Goldman said he knew from the moment he entered Cashwan’s studio that he wanted to spend his life sculpting.</p>
<p>“I went on as most sculptors do in their lifetimes, challenged by what you can do when you’re given a malleable object, such as a block of stone, a tree trunk or huge mass of malleable clay,” Goldman said in a short documentary film about his life, which was completed before he died. “That, to me, has a never-ending potential for being answered.”</p>
<p>Goldman served on the battleship U.S.S. South Dakota during World War II, earning the Air Medal for meritorious achievement in May 1945, before choosing to attend UNM on the G.I. Bill.</p>
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<p>He earned a degree in fine arts, not because he particularly wanted a college degree, but because he was concerned about earning a living as an artist, he later admitted.</p>
<p>Goldman was part of a vibrant group of artists living in Albuquerque in the 1950s and ’60s. He was a founding member of the short-lived Albuquerque Museum of Modern Art, teaching classes there and using space for his studio. They were always on the verge of not having enough money for utilities or rent or both, he recalled, and it folded in 1956.</p>
<p>He began working with architects to create sculptures for public spaces, inspired by the mountains, adobe-style architecture, and Native American ruins, he said.</p>
<p>“The fact that I spent my first, most creative years in the New Mexico setting, I was influenced by the nature of what I saw around me,” he said in the film, “Herb Goldman: A Lifetime of Limited Possibilities.”</p>
<p>His collection includes more than 100 major public and private commissions in New Mexico, Michigan, Texas, California, Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado and Africa.</p>
<p>Perhaps his magnum opus was “Henge,” a sculpture commissioned by Roswell art patron Donald Anderson, and reminiscent of Stonehenge. The structure, made of concrete and grass planted, sculpted earth, is on Anderson’s private land but can be seen rising three stories up from the earth.</p>
<p>“He wanted to do big things,” Anderson said of Goldman in the film. “It’s kind of unusual to find someone who can think on the scale of the Henge.”</p>
<p>Goldman created other large, functional pieces in other locales. Two of the largest were visual screens for oil islands off the coast of Long Beach, Calif., and forms around a swimming pool for a hotel in the Ivory Coast.</p>
<p>His daughter, Lisa, said he approached “sculpting and life with that uncensored creativity and the joy of a child.”</p>
<p>A celebration of his life and work is scheduled for May 9, 2013, at the South Broadway Cultural Center. He is survived by his ex-wife Allene Goldman; his children, Lisa, Rayna, Suzanne, Emily and Justin; three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.</p> | Goldman: Sculptor’s Presence Is Felt Throughout the City, State | false | https://abqjournal.com/141555/goldman-sculptors-presence-is-felt-throughout-the-city-state.html | 2012-10-26 | 2 |
<p>SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Ashley Wagner called out judges at the U.S. figure skating championships Friday night for her scores in the free skate, which put in jeopardy her chances of returning to the Olympics.</p>
<p>Wagner scored a 130.85 in her strongest event for 196.19, with Karen Chen beating her out for third with a 198.59.</p>
<p>"I'm furious, I am absolutely furious," Wagner said. "I know when I go and I lay it down and I absolutely left one jump on the table, but for me to put out two programs that I did at this competition as solid as I skated and to get those scores, I am furious, and I think deservedly so. I am a performer and that second mark is just not there. I am absolutely OK with them being strict on my rotations. That's what I think that U.S. Figure Skating should demand of their judges but it needs to be across the board. I don't necessarily feel like it's been that way at this event, so we'll see how things pan out."</p>
<p>The 26-year-old three-time national champion and Sochi team bronze medalist missed the podium, placing fourth. She seemed unconcerned that her public criticism after she finished could affect how the selection committee decides on the three women chosen for the Pyeongchang Games. The committee was set to begin deliberating late Friday night, then notify the three women, with an announcement set for early Saturday.</p>
<p>"I honestly think that at the end of the day, this is how I feel, and I feel like I need to stick up for myself, and I think that I delivered when I really needed to," Wagner said. "I think all these girls delivered when they needed to, but I want to be on that Olympic team and I'm really mad that I'm in this position again."</p>
<p>Asked whether she believes she should be selected to the Olympic team, Wagner emphatically said, "Yes, I do."</p>
<p>Four years ago, Wagner needed a waiver to make the Sochi Games. She placed seventh and contributed to a bronze medal in the new team event.</p>
<p>Wagner hit all of her early jumps but made a couple of mistakes in the second half of her "La La Land" routine she said was absolutely the right choice despite skating it for only a month.</p>
<p />
<p>When she finished, Wagner lifted her hands to cover her face in joy and relief, then beamed and took her bow. She shook her head as the crowd gave her a standing ovation.</p>
<p>"Even though I'm mad about my score, that program was such an experience for me," Wagner said. "I skated with heart. I took a program that's a month old and I delivered something that was solid and something I'm proud of. It definitely could use a little bit more leg work but that's because it's a month old, and I made the right call and I have no doubts in my mind that 'La La Land' was the program that was going to get me where I want to be."</p>
<p>When asked whether the top three finishers at nationals should automatically make the Olympic team, newly crowned champion Bradie Tennell stayed out of any potential controversy.</p>
<p>"I trust the governing body to make those decisions," she said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP Olympic coverage: https://wintergames.ap.org</p>
<p>SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Ashley Wagner called out judges at the U.S. figure skating championships Friday night for her scores in the free skate, which put in jeopardy her chances of returning to the Olympics.</p>
<p>Wagner scored a 130.85 in her strongest event for 196.19, with Karen Chen beating her out for third with a 198.59.</p>
<p>"I'm furious, I am absolutely furious," Wagner said. "I know when I go and I lay it down and I absolutely left one jump on the table, but for me to put out two programs that I did at this competition as solid as I skated and to get those scores, I am furious, and I think deservedly so. I am a performer and that second mark is just not there. I am absolutely OK with them being strict on my rotations. That's what I think that U.S. Figure Skating should demand of their judges but it needs to be across the board. I don't necessarily feel like it's been that way at this event, so we'll see how things pan out."</p>
<p>The 26-year-old three-time national champion and Sochi team bronze medalist missed the podium, placing fourth. She seemed unconcerned that her public criticism after she finished could affect how the selection committee decides on the three women chosen for the Pyeongchang Games. The committee was set to begin deliberating late Friday night, then notify the three women, with an announcement set for early Saturday.</p>
<p>"I honestly think that at the end of the day, this is how I feel, and I feel like I need to stick up for myself, and I think that I delivered when I really needed to," Wagner said. "I think all these girls delivered when they needed to, but I want to be on that Olympic team and I'm really mad that I'm in this position again."</p>
<p>Asked whether she believes she should be selected to the Olympic team, Wagner emphatically said, "Yes, I do."</p>
<p>Four years ago, Wagner needed a waiver to make the Sochi Games. She placed seventh and contributed to a bronze medal in the new team event.</p>
<p>Wagner hit all of her early jumps but made a couple of mistakes in the second half of her "La La Land" routine she said was absolutely the right choice despite skating it for only a month.</p>
<p />
<p>When she finished, Wagner lifted her hands to cover her face in joy and relief, then beamed and took her bow. She shook her head as the crowd gave her a standing ovation.</p>
<p>"Even though I'm mad about my score, that program was such an experience for me," Wagner said. "I skated with heart. I took a program that's a month old and I delivered something that was solid and something I'm proud of. It definitely could use a little bit more leg work but that's because it's a month old, and I made the right call and I have no doubts in my mind that 'La La Land' was the program that was going to get me where I want to be."</p>
<p>When asked whether the top three finishers at nationals should automatically make the Olympic team, newly crowned champion Bradie Tennell stayed out of any potential controversy.</p>
<p>"I trust the governing body to make those decisions," she said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP Olympic coverage: https://wintergames.ap.org</p> | Ashley Wagner 'furious' after fourth place in free skate | false | https://apnews.com/amp/3c044b7975ee4e7ca594c825c671a319 | 2018-01-06 | 2 |
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<p>ASPEN, Colo. — Volunteers haven’t given up the search for a New Mexico man who failed to return from climbing mountains in the Aspen area last fall.</p>
<p>Members of Mountain Rescue Aspen looked for 49-year-old David Cook of Albuquerque from the air on Thursday around Maroon Bells and Pyramid Peak but didn’t find any sign of him.</p>
<p>The Aspen Times reports it was the first in a series of aerial searches planned for the area. The next is scheduled later this month.</p>
<p>Searchers spent eight days searching for Cook in late September. He set out Sept. 19 and was last seen by a U.S. Forest Service employee the following day near Maroon Lake.</p>
<p>Maps found in Cook’s car show possible routes he may have taken up the peaks.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Aspen Times, <a href="http://www.aspentimes.com/" type="external">http://www.aspentimes.com/</a></p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Search resumes for missing New Mexico climber near Aspen | false | https://abqjournal.com/1029750/search-resumes-for-missing-new-mexico-climber-near-aspen.html | 2 |
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<p />
<p>The tech world never pauses to wait for investors to catch up. If you miss a trend, you can miss it big. The only consolation is that another one will likely take its place not too long after.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>For investors looking to cash in on the next big thing, virtual reality (VR) and the Internet of Things (IoT) may be of particular interest. Both markets are seeing massive technology adoption by companies and both are still in their nascent stages.</p>
<p>Below are some stats laying out the opportunity for tech trends and howFacebook(NASDAQ: FB),NVIDIA(NASDAQ: NVDA),Sony(NYSE: SNE),InvenSense(NYSE: INVN)andGeneral Electric(NYSE: GE)are making long-term plays in the respective spaces.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Virtual reality is getting a lot of attention lately, mostly because some of the world's most influential technology companies are <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/24/virtual-reality-companies-best-and-worst-investmen.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">making big investments Opens a New Window.</a> in the space (more on that later).</p>
<p>Researchers at KZero estimate that by 2018 there will be more than 170 million active VR users worldwide, and TrendForce expects the overall virtual reality market to grow to $70 billion by 2020, up from just $6.7 billion right now.</p>
<p>Here's what VR user growth looks like over the next few years:</p>
<p>Image source: <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/426469/active-virtual-reality-users-worldwide/" type="external">Statista Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Sony, Facebook, and NVIDIA are all taking big steps in order to tap into this market. Facebook, you may remember, bought the VR company, Oculus, last year for $2 billion. And that purchasehas become an inflection point for the rest of the VR world.</p>
<p>Re/code wrote <a href="http://www.recode.net/2016/3/24/11587234/two-years-later-facebooks-oculus-acquisition-has-changed-virtual" type="external">earlier this year Opens a New Window.</a>, "Since that deal was announced, the number of venture capital deals and total dollars invested in VR and augmented reality have both tripled, according to CB Insights."</p>
<p>Oculus just released its Rift VR headset that sells for $599, which puts the device near the top of the high-end VR market. That means it'll only have limited appeal for consumers right now, butFacebook is taking the long view on this one. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last year, "It's important also to recognize that this is going to grow slowly, like computers and mobile phones when they first arrived."</p>
<p>Facebook isn't alone in pursuing VR. Sony just released its VR headset, but at $399 it's much cheaper than the Oculus Rift. The company is hitting the lower end of the high-end market at that price and could succeed in convincing its estimated 53 million (by the end of this year) PlayStation 4 console users to buy the headset.</p>
<p>IHS Technology estimated earlier this month that Sony's VR headset will sell 1.4 million units this year (remember, that's just a little over two months worth of sales), which would outpace sales of the HTC Vive headset and the Oculus Rift combined.</p>
<p>Sony has already partnered with 230 developersto help create VR games for its console and says that VR is a <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/25/sonys-taking-yet-another-step-into-virtual-reality.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">major area of growth Opens a New Window.</a> for the company's future.</p>
<p>And last but not least, NVIDIA is emerging as a major player in the VR space, mainly because of its dominant position in the graphics processing unit (GPU) market. The company currently holds about 70% of the discrete desktop GPU market share, easily outpacing its rival, AMD.</p>
<p>Data source: Jon Peddie Research.</p>
<p>NVIDIA released <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/19/heres-how-nvidia-is-preparing-for-the-next-generat.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">three new graphics cards Opens a New Window.</a> specifically for VR-ready notebooks over the summer and even created its own virtual reality game to show off how well its graphics cards can handle the technology. NVIDIA is likely poised for more growth for its GPUs and graphics cards as more PC companies and other tech companies develop new hardware and software to meet rising consumer demand.</p>
<p>The Internet of Things is, essentially, the connection of formerly unconnected things to the Internet so that processes can be automated and data collected (you can read an <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/13/what-is-the-internet-of-things.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">IoT primer here Opens a New Window.</a>). Smartwatches are the simplest IoT example, as they take an old technology (watches) and add sensors like GPS, motion-tracking, microphones, etc.</p>
<p>Cisco predicts that by 2020 there will be 50 billion IoT devices, up from about 23 billion last year. Take a look:</p>
<p>Source: Statista.</p>
<p>And all of those devices are going to create a massive market size. Cisco estimates that the overall IoT will be worth $19 trillion by 2025.</p>
<p>With so many devices coming online there are plenty of companies that are looking to capitalize on the IoT. But let's narrow it down to just two, very different companies and how they could benefit.</p>
<p>General Electric may not be the first company you think of to benefit from a major tech trend, but GE has been on the <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/19/2-things-ive-gotten-wrong-about-the-internet-of-th.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">forefront of the IoT Opens a New Window.</a> for years. The company makes its industrial equipment more efficient with a range of sensors and its own proprietary analytics software, called Predix.</p>
<p>GE's data-driven analytics software is already being used by large companies to do things like manage airline fuel usage, which is helping AirAsia save $30 million to $50 million in costs over a five-year period.</p>
<p>GE's software business brought in $6 billion in revenue last year, and the company says that could hit $10 billion by 2020. GE is using it's experience in the industrial sector to transform parts of its business into an analytical software business, and virtually no other company is doing it to the same scale as GE. CEO Jeffrey Immelt said last year that GE is on its way to becoming a "top 10 software company."</p>
<p>On a much smaller scale, InvenSense is trying to capitalize on its strong position in gyroscope motion sensors (which can be found in Apple's iPhones) by <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/18/heres-what-it-might-take-for-an-invensense-turnaro.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">implementing them into IoT devices Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>The company has relied on the mobile market for most of its revenue, but in fiscal year 2016 it doubled its IoT and Other revenue segment by getting its sensors in more wearables, smart homes, and connected automobiles. The IoT and Other segment now consistently represents 25% or more of the company's total revenue.</p>
<p>What's interesting for InvenSense is that the company is looking to <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/17/2-potentially-huge-markets-for-invensense-inc.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">the IoT andvirtual reality Opens a New Window.</a> for more sales growth. On the company's Q1 2017 earnings call in July, CEO Behrooz Abdi said, "In the gaming and virtual reality segments, or VR, we have extended our market share with our latest 6-axis motion sensor, and are currently ramping with a game controller at a tier-1 gaming OEM."</p>
<p>At an estimated $19 trillion by 2025, it's clear that the IoT market is much, much larger than for VR. But when it comes to the better investment, I think virtual reality may have the upper hand.</p>
<p>Both IoT and VR are still a bit of a gamble right now, but companies investing in VR should see tangible results very soon (i.e. Sony's headset sales and NVIDIA's GPU sales). To be sure, IoT companies will have measurable results as well, but much of the IoT's focus is in creating efficiencies for the enterprise market, not selling software and devices. That can make companies investments in IoT a bit more vague for investors, and harder to quantify.</p>
<p>Additionally, Facebook's purchase of Oculus jump-started many tech companies in to focusing lots of their attention and investments on VR. Every company from Alphabet to AMD is betting on VR right now, and that type of industrywide focus is likely to produce some good results for investors in both the short and long term.</p>
<p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2668&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFNewsie/info.aspx" type="external">Chris Neiger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), Apple, Facebook, InvenSense, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool owns shares of General Electric and has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Cisco Systems. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Virtual Reality vs. the Internet of Things: Which Tech Trend Has More Opportunity? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/10/25/virtual-reality-vs-internet-things-which-tech-trend-has-more-opportunity.html | 2016-10-25 | 0 |
<p>There really are "Two Americas," as the saying goes—and that's no accident.</p>
<p>Last week, my local twittersphere momentarily erupted with allegations that Denver’s public school superintendent, Tom Boasberg, is sending his kids to a private school that eschews high-stakes testing. Boasberg, an icon of the national movement pushing high-stakes testing and undermining traditional public education, eventually defended himself by insisting that his kids attended that special school only during pre-school and that they now attend a public school. Yet his spokesman admitted that the school is not in Denver but in Boulder, Colo., one of America’s wealthiest enclaves.</p>
<p>Boasberg, you see, refuses to live in the district that he governs. Though having no background in education administration, this longtime telecom executive used his connections to get appointed Denver superintendent, and he now acts like a king. From the confines of his distant castle in Boulder, he issues edicts to his low-income fiefdom–decrees demonizing teachers’ unions, shutting down neighborhood schools over community objections and promoting privately administered charter schools. Meanwhile, he makes sure his own royal family is insulated in a wealthy district that doesn’t experience his destructive policies.</p>
<p>No doubt this is but a microcosmic story in a country whose patrician overlords are regularly conjuring the feudalism of Europe circa the Middle Ages. Today, our mayors deploy police against homeless people and protestors; our governors demand crushing budget cuts from the confines of their taxpayer-funded mansions; our Congress exempts itself from insider-trading laws and provides itself health care benefits denied to others; and our nation’s capital has become one of the world’s wealthiest cities, despite the recession.</p>
<p>Taken together, we see that there really are “Two Americas,” as the saying goes–and that’s no accident. It’s the result of a permanent elite that is removing itself from the rest of the nation. Nowhere is this more obvious than in education–a realm in which this elite physically separates itself from us mere serfs. As the head of one of the country’s largest urban school districts, Boasberg is a perfect example of this–but he is only one example.</p>
<p>The Washington Post, for instance, notes that it has become an unquestioned “tradition among Washington’s power elite”–read: elected officials–to send their kids to the ultra-expensive private school Sidwell Friends. At the same time, many of these officials have backed budget policies that weaken public education.</p>
<p>Outside of Washington, it’s often same story; as just two recent examples, both New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have championed massive cuts to public education while sending their kids to private school.</p>
<p>In many cases, these aristocrats aren’t even required to publicly explain themselves. (Boasberg, for example, is never hounded by local media about why he refuses to live in Denver.) Worse, on the rare occasions that questions are posed, privacy is the oft-used excuse to not answer, whether it’s Obama defenders dismissing queries about their Sidwell decision, Christie telling a voter his school choices are “none of your business” or Emanuel storming out of a television interview and then citing his “private life” when asked about the issue.</p>
<p>This might be a convincing argument about ordinary citizens’ personal education choices, but it’s an insult coming from public officials. When they remove themselves and their families from a community–but still retain power over that community–they end up acting as foreign occupiers, subjecting us to policies they would never subject their own kin to.</p>
<p>Pretending this is acceptable or just a “private” decision, then, is to tolerate ancient, ruling-class notions that are no longer sustainable in the 21st century. Indeed, if this nation is going to remain a modern republic, it can’t also be a medieval oligarchy–no matter how much America’s elite wants to keep governing from behind the palace walls.</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>David Sirota, an In These Times senior editor and syndicated columnist, is a staff writer at PandoDaily and a bestselling author whose book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now—Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything was released in 2011. Sirota, whose previous books include The Uprising and Hostile Takeover, co-hosts "The Rundown" on AM630 KHOW in Colorado. E-mail him at [email protected], follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.</p> | America’s Real Occupiers | true | http://inthesetimes.com/article/12533/americas_real_occupiers | 2012-01-13 | 4 |
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<p>LONDON — The World Health Organization routinely spends about $200 million a year on travel — far more than what it doles out to fight some of the biggest problems in public health including AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.</p>
<p>As the cash-strapped U.N. health agency pleads for more money to fund its responses to health crises worldwide, it has also been struggling to get its own travel costs under control. Despite introducing new rules to try to curb its expansive travel budget, senior officials have complained internally that U.N. staffers are breaking the rules by booking perks like business class airplane tickets and rooms in five-star hotels.</p>
<p>Last year, WHO spent about $71 million on AIDS and hepatitis. On malaria, it spent $61 million. And to slow tuberculosis, WHO invested $59 million. Still, some health programs do get exceptional funding — the agency spends about $450 million trying to wipe out polio every year.</p>
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<p>On a recent trip to Guinea, where WHO director-general Dr. Margaret Chan praised health workers in West Africa for triumphing over Ebola, Chan stayed in the biggest presidential suite at the Palm Camayenne hotel in Conakry. The suite has an advertised price of 900 euros ($1,008) a night. The agency said that Chan’s overnight stay in Guinea cost the same as all other WHO travelers — 212 euros — but declined to say who picked up the tab, noting only that her hotels are sometimes paid for by the host country.</p>
<p>But some say that sends the wrong message to the rest of the agency’s 7,000 staffers.</p>
<p>“We don’t trust people to do the right thing when it comes to travel,” said Nick Jeffreys, WHO’s director of finance, during an in-house seminar on accountability in September 2015 — a video of which was obtained by the AP.</p>
<p>Despite WHO’s numerous travel regulations, Jeffreys said staffers “can sometimes manipulate a little bit their travel.” He said the agency couldn’t be sure they were always booking the cheapest ticket or that the travel was even warranted.</p>
<p>“People don’t always know what the right thing to do is,” he said.</p>
<p>Ian Smith, executive director of Chan’s office, said the chair of WHO’s audit committee said the agency often did little to stop misbehavior.</p>
<p>“We, as an organization, sometimes function as if rules are there to be broken and that exceptions are the rule rather than the norm,” Smith said.</p>
<p>Earlier that year, a memorandum was sent to Chan and other top leaders with the subject, “ACTIONS TO CONTAIN TRAVEL COSTS” in all-caps. The memo reported that compliance with rules that travel be booked in advance was “very low” and also pointed out that WHO was under pressure from its member countries to save money.</p>
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<p>Travel would always be necessary, the memo said, but “as an organization we must demonstrate that we are serious about managing this appropriately.”</p>
<p>In a statement to the AP, the U.N. health agency said “the nature of WHO’s work often requires WHO staff to travel” and said costs had been reduced 14 percent last year compared to the previous year — although that year’s total was exceptionally high due to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.</p>
<p>But staffers are still openly ignoring the rules.</p>
<p>An internal analysis in March, obtained by the AP, found that only two of seven departments at WHO’s Geneva headquarters met their targets, and concluded the compliance rate for booking travel in advance was between 28 and 59 percent.</p>
<p>Since 2013, WHO has paid out $803 million for travel. WHO’s approximately $2 billion annual budget is drawn from the taxpayer-funded contributions of its 194 member countries, with the United States the largest contributor.</p>
<p>After he was elected, President Donald Trump tweeted : “The UN has such great potential,” but had become “just a club for people to get together, talk, and have a good time. So sad!”</p>
<p>Some health experts said while WHO’s travel costs look out of place when compared to some of its disease budgets, that doesn’t necessarily mean that travel expenses are inflated.</p>
<p>Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota, has frequently been flown to WHO meetings — in economy — on the agency’s dime.</p>
<p>“This may just speak to how misplaced international priorities are, that WHO is getting so little for these disease programs,” he said.</p>
<p>During the Ebola disaster in West Africa, WHO’s travel costs spiked to $234 million. Although experts say on-the-ground help was critical, some question whether the agency couldn’t have shaved costs so that more funds went to West Africa , where the three stricken countries couldn’t even afford basics like protective boots, gloves and soap for endangered medical workers or body bags for the thousands who died.</p>
<p>Dr. Bruce Aylward, who directed WHO’s outbreak response, racked up nearly $400,000 in travel expenses during the Ebola crisis, sometimes flying by helicopter to visit clinics instead of traveling by jeep over muddy roads, according to internal trip reports he filed.</p>
<p>Chan spent more than $370,000 in travel that year, as documented in a confidential 25-page analysis of WHO expenses that identified the agency’s top 50 spenders. Aylward and Chan were first and second on that list. Three sources who asked not to be identified for fear of losing their jobs told the AP that Chan often flew first class.</p>
<p>WHO said the travel policy, until February, “included the possibility for the (director-general) to fly first class.” It said Chan flew business class and requested the policy be changed to eliminate the first-class option. It also said that Chan “strictly abides” by the agency’s travel policies.</p>
<p>“There’s a huge inequality between the people at the top who are getting helicopters and business class and everyone else who just has to make do,” said Sophie Harman, an expert in global health politics at Queen Mary University in London.</p>
<p>Other international aid agencies, including Doctors Without Borders, explicitly forbid staff from traveling in business class. Even the charity’s president flies economy class, a spokeswoman said. With a staff of about 37,000 aid workers versus WHO’s 7,000 staffers, Doctors Without Borders spends about $43 million on travel a year.</p>
<p>The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would not provide its travel costs but said staffers are not allowed to fly business class unless they have a medical condition that warrants it. The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, which has about 13,000 staffers, said it spent $140 million on global travel in 2016.</p>
<p>“When you spend the kind of money WHO is spending on travel, you have to be able to justify it,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Global Health Institute at Harvard University. “I can’t think of any justification for ever flying first class.”</p>
<p>Jha warned that WHO’s travel spending could have significant consequences for fundraising. Several weeks ago, WHO asked for about $100 million to save people in Somalia from an ongoing drought. In April, it requested $126 million to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen .</p>
<p>“If WHO is not being as lean as possible, it’s going to be hard to remain credible when they make their next funding appeal,” Jha said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Maria Cheng on Twitter @mylcheng.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Have a public health tip? Send it securely to Cheng at: <a href="http://www.ap.org/tips" type="external">www.ap.org/tips</a></p> | AP Exclusive: Strapped UN health agency spends big on travel | false | https://abqjournal.com/1006630/ap-exclusive-strapped-un-health-agency-spends-big-on-travel.html | 2017-05-21 | 2 |
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<p>GENEVA — The U.N. human rights chief has denounced U.S. President Donald Trump’s “repeated attacks” on three major American news organizations, saying “demonization” of the press can endanger journalists.</p>
<p>Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein also made his first public comments decrying racist and anti-Semitic cries by far-right groups in Charlottesville, Virginia, calling the events on its streets “an abomination” and “a nightmare.”</p>
<p>He said he didn’t initially respond because there was already a “cacophony of noise” in the United States.</p>
<p>Zeid, who is a Jordanian prince, said Trump’s repeated criticism of U.S. news outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN was “an incitement for others to attack journalists.”</p>
<p>“You don’t have to stretch the imagination to see then what could happen to journalists,” he said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | UN rights chief decries Trump’s ‘demonization’ of media | false | https://abqjournal.com/1055640/un-rights-chief-decries-trumps-demonization-of-media.html | 2 |
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<p>The Mexican president <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060503/ts_nm/mexico_drugs_dc_2" type="external">will sign a bill</a> that drastically weakens penalties for possession of personal amounts of drugs like pot, coke, ecstasy and acid. But local judges can still detain or deport those found with the drugs.</p>
<p>Reuters:</p>
<p>Mexico’s president will approve a law that decriminalizes possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs to concentrate on fighting violent drug gangs, the government said on Tuesday.</p>
<p>President Vicente Fox will not oppose the bill, passed by senators last week, presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar told reporters, despite likely tensions with the United States.</p>
<p />
<p>“The president is going to sign that law. There would be no objection,” he said. “It appears to be a good law and an advance in combating narcotics trafficking.”</p>
<p><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060503/ts_nm/mexico_drugs_dc_2" type="external">Link</a></p> | Mexico's Fox Will OK Drug Decriminalization | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/mexicos-fox-will-ok-drug-decriminalization/ | 2006-05-03 | 4 |
<p>A Southern Californian woman called in a bomb threat to stop her husband getting on a flight at Los Angeles International Airport to visit a woman with whom she thought he was having an affair, the FBI reportedly said.</p>
<p>Johnna Woolfolk of Lynwood reportedly called AirTran Airways at LAX on Nov. 27 and said her husband was carrying a bomb and boarding an Atlanta-bound flight.</p>
<p>After FBI agents tracked her down, Woolfolk admitted the call was a hoax and that she had recently had marital difficulties, <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/12/woman-made-false-terrorism-threat-to-delay-husbands-flight-fbi-says.html" type="external">the LA Times reported</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>Her husband, when he was intercepted at the airport, also said he was having marital problems and his wife wanted him to stay, FBI Special Agent David Gates said, <a href="http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_19595230?IADID=Search-www.dailybreeze.com-www.dailybreeze.com" type="external">according to the Torrance Daily Breeze</a>.</p>
<p>Woolfolk was expected to plead guilty during a Jan. 9 hearing to providing false and misleading information about the LA-Atlanta flight, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/12/22/woman-charged-for-hoax-airliner-bomb-threat-aimed-at-husband/?t" type="external">The Associated Press reported</a>.</p>
<p>Defense lawyer Gordon Turner said on Thursday that Woolfolk, who is about 50, admitted in court and to the FBI that she made the call and she now realizes it was wrong...</p>
<p>Woolfolk is caring for her dying mother in the couple's Lynwood home and it has been stressful, the lawyer said, adding she also believes her husband of 30 years is having an affair and was flying to Atlanta to meet the woman.</p>
<p>Woolfolk broke down in tears after authorities replayed her conversation with the AirTran operator, Gates reportedly wrote in an affidavit. "She stated that she was not thinking, she did not want to hurt anyone and did not want to cause harm."</p>
<p>"Making a threat to an airline is a serious offense and will be prosecuted," the <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/12/woman-made-false-terrorism-threat-to-delay-husbands-flight-fbi-says.html" type="external">LA Times quoted FBI spokeswoman</a>Laura Eimiller as saying. "The response to these hoaxes is a great expense to the government."</p> | Southern California woman calls in bomb threat to stop husband seeing 'mistress' | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-12-24/southern-california-woman-calls-bomb-threat-stop-husband-seeing-mistress | 2011-12-24 | 3 |
<p>TOP STORIES</p>
<p>Wheat Futures Pop on Plains Drought</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A drought in the Great Plains sparked a rally in wheat prices Tuesday.</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Agriculture said that the condition of the hard red winter wheat crop, primarily grown in southern Plains states like Kansas, dropped sharply as farmers in the region struggle through dry conditions.</p>
<p>Drought Dampens South Africa's 2018 Corn Plantings -- Market Talk</p>
<p>1544 GMT -- South African corn farmers have slashed plantings for the 2018 season as Africa's top producer of the grain grapples with drought, says the government's Crop Estimates Committee. Plantings likely will drop 12% to 2.3 million hectares as the dry spell pressures growers in the main producing region in the country's west. Plantings for white corn--a regional staple--are down 22% while acreage for yellow corn--used mainly in animal feeds--is 4% higher on year. It is a reversal of fortunes for a country that posted a record crop of 16.7 million tons last year, more than double the 7.8 million tons produced in 2016 after rains aided a recovery from the 2015-2016 drought fueled by El Nino. ([email protected];@Nicholasbariyo)</p>
<p>STORIES OF INTEREST</p>
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<p>USDA Says 132,000 Tons of Corn Sold to Spain in 2017-18</p>
<p>WASHINGTON--Private exporters reported to the U.S. Department of Agriculture export sales of 132,000 metric tons of corn for delivery to Spain during the 2017/2018 marketing year.</p>
<p>The marketing year for corn began Sept. 1.</p>
<p>Value Meals Drive McDonald's Sales - 2nd Update</p>
<p>McDonald's Corp. gained sales again by luring core customers to its cheapest meals and drinks.</p>
<p>The burger giant attributed U.S. sales growth in the fourth quarter to a "McPick 2" meal deal and low-price beverages, as well as to higher-priced Buttermilk Crispy Tenders. The chain introduced a new nationwide value menu this month with items priced at $1, $2 and $3, hoping consumers drawn in for cheap sodas and burgers will also order more expensive items.</p>
<p>THE MARKETS</p>
<p>Live Cattle Futures Ease</p>
<p>Cattle futures were mixed Tuesday, easing off multimonth highs.</p>
<p>The futures market started the week by hitting a two-month high, after cash prices for physical cattle rose more than expected. But analysts say futures bumped up against selling pressure after falling from those highs, with chart signals suggesting to traders that prices were headed lower.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>January 30, 2018 17:52 ET (22:52 GMT)</p> | Grain Highlights: Top Stories of the Day | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/12/07/grain-highlights-top-stories-day.html | 2018-01-30 | 0 |
<p>Investing.com – Australia stocks were lower after the close on Monday, as losses in the , and sectors led shares lower.</p>
<p>At the close in Sydney, the lost 0.38%.</p>
<p>The best performers of the session on the were Vocus Group Ltd (AX:), which rose 5.26% or 0.120 points to trade at 2.400 at the close. Meanwhile, Whitehaven Coal Ltd (AX:) added 5.08% or 0.180 points to end at 3.720 and Galaxy Resources Ltd (AX:) was up 2.45% or 0.050 points to 2.090 in late trade.</p>
<p>The worst performers of the session were Sky Network Television Ltd. (AX:), which fell 6.20% or 0.155 points to trade at 2.345 at the close. Super Retail Group Ltd (AX:) declined 4.20% or 0.335 points to end at 7.645 and Nine Entertainment Co Holdings Ltd (AX:) was down 3.66% or 0.05 points to 1.31.</p>
<p>Falling stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the Sydney Stock Exchange by 664 to 526 and 366 ended unchanged.</p>
<p>Shares in Sky Network Television Ltd. (AX:) fell to all time lows; falling 6.20% or 0.155 to 2.345. Shares in Whitehaven Coal Ltd (AX:) rose to 5-year highs; up 5.08% or 0.180 to 3.720.</p>
<p>The , which measures the implied volatility of S&amp;P/ASX 200 options, was up 9.48% to 13.487.</p>
<p>Gold Futures for December delivery was up 0.86% or 11.49 to $1341.89 a troy ounce. Elsewhere in commodities trading, Crude oil for delivery in October fell 0.04% or 0.02 to hit $47.27 a barrel, while the November Brent oil contract fell 0.83% or 0.44 to trade at $52.31 a barrel.</p>
<p>AUD/USD was down 0.06% to 0.7963, while AUD/JPY fell 0.67% to 87.26.</p>
<p>The US Dollar Index Futures was down 0.30% at 92.54.</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> | Australia stocks lower at close of trade; S&P/ASX 200 down 0.38% | false | https://newsline.com/australia-stocks-lower-at-close-of-trade-spasx-200-down-0-38/ | 2017-09-04 | 1 |
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<p>Maria Ceniceros, 44, of Anthony, New Mexico, was sentenced before Chief District Judge Fernando R. Macias in 3rd Judicial District Court in Las Cruces.</p>
<p>As part of a plea agreement, Ceniceros, a former document technician for the Clerk’s Office, pleaded guilty to three counts of third- and fourth-degree forgery, three counts of identity theft and one count of fraud and conspiracy.</p>
<p>Authorities said Ceniceros used her position to access voter information, including Social Security numbers, and filed fraudulent income tax returns with the stolen identities. She and three other suspects, including her daughter and husband, were arrested in May 2015 by Doña Ana County sheriff’s detectives.</p>
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<p>Under the terms of the agreement, prosecutors dismissed 115 charges in the 123-count indictment, most of which were related to identity theft.</p>
<p>“Obviously, we take white-collar crimes very seriously,” Patrick Hayes, a spokesman for the 3rd Judicial District Attorney’s Office, said in a statement, “but we had an ethical obligation to dismiss a majority of the charges because the evidence we received did not specify or list the names of victims who allegedly had their information compromised.”</p>
<p>Ceniceros was sentenced to nine years for three third-degree felonies and two years for two fourth-degree felonies, for a total of 12 years. But Macias suspended the 12-year sentence and ordered that Ceniceros serve five years of probation.</p>
<p>Prosecutors are still trying to determine if Ceniceros will have to pay restitution.</p>
<p>“If restitution is due, primarily to the United States government or to any individual on the basis of the three checks upon which we proceeded, then it will be ordered at the state level,” Deputy District Attorney Davis Ruark said.</p>
<p>Ceniceros and a co-conspirator, Armando Gutierrez-Torres, 52, of Mexico, also faced federal charges.</p>
<p>In October 2015, they pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiracy to commit theft of government property and aggravated identity theft.</p>
<p>In accepting his plea agreement with federal prosecutors , Gutiérrez-Torres admitted that he asked Ceniceros in November 2014 for the voter identifiers of people born in 1995, which were then used to file fraudulent federal income tax returns.</p>
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<p>He also admitted that he asked Ceniceros to mail fraudulent tax returns to the IRS and cash return checks in the amount of $11,963.73. He was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison in July. After completing the prison term, he will be deported to Mexico.</p>
<p>In June, Ceniceros was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release. She was released from prison in September.</p>
<p>Also in October 2015, Ceniceros’ daughter, Denise Ceniceros, 25, pleaded no contest to one fourth-degree conspiracy charge. She received a conditional discharge instead of prison time.</p>
<p>The state cases against Gutiérrez-Torres and Ceniceros’ husband, Francisco Ceniceros, 48, are still pending, court records show.</p>
<p>Carlos Andres López can be reached 575-541-5453, [email protected] or @carlopez_los on Twitter.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>©2016 the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.)</p>
<p>Visit the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.) at <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com" type="external">www.lcsun-news.com</a></p>
<p>Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.</p>
<p>_____</p> | Ringleader in county clerk’s scam receives probation | false | https://abqjournal.com/903016/ringleader-in-county-clerks-scam-receives-probation.html | 2 |
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<p>Blingcheese.com</p>
<p />
<p>We all know how the Internet has changed the porn business. The video clips available for free to any pimply faced teen with a modem make Deep Throat look positively PG-rated. But might the Internet also change the anti-porn biz? Once the exclusive province of evangelical prudes like Phyllis Schlafly and furious feminists like Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, the evils of pornography are becoming more of a mainstream political issue—if only because most of us, at some point, have stumbled upon a site like <a href="http://www.naked.com/" type="external">www.naked.com</a> while innocently searching for a fruit juice company.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, a group of anti-porn activists and scholars arrived on Capitol Hill to brief members of Congress and their staffs and to call for <a href="http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs002/1102652988615/archive/1103469104962.html" type="external">beefed-up federal enforcement</a> of obscenity laws. They weren’t there to fret about the pornographers of old: the loveable chauvinist Hugh Hefner and his scantily clad bunnies, or even the not-so-loveable-but-occasionally-principled First Amendment crusader, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. No, they had come to alert Congress to websites like GagFactor.com, whose teasers alone are way more graphic than anything Hefner ever published, and whose content doesn’t portend a spirited First Amendment defense.</p>
<p>“The days of women wearing a coy smile and not much else are long gone,” Gail Dines explained to the congressional crowd. A women’s studies professor at Boston’s Wheelock College and author of the upcoming book Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality, Dines has perused Gag Factor, and she described some of its content to the crowd—including a video of a woman with her head in a vice during oral sex. “Porn is an industrial product,” said Dines, who has studied the industry for 20-plus years. “I cannot believe how brutal it has become so quickly.” Gag Factor and their ilk, she added, are now the main source of sex education for boys.</p>
<p>Government prosecutors, the speakers said, haven’t kept pace with the industry’s rapid expansion. (In 1988, for instance, the adult entertainment industry released 1,300 porn videos. In 2005, it released <a href="http://www.socialcostsofpornography.org/" type="external">more than 10 times</a> as many.) Indeed, Patrick Trueman, a chief obscenity prosecutor at the Department of Justice under the first President Bush, stopped short of bashing Attorney General Eric Holder for going soft on porn. But he came mighty close, suggesting that the multibillion-dollar porn industry is a low priority for the Obama administration, even though the government typically prevails when it aims to shut down porn providers. Prosecuting the biggest fish, rather than the occasional small-fry consumer, Trueman suggested, would make a huge dent in the volume of online smut.</p>
<p>Christian-right groups have been complaining about porn forever, of course, and Trueman, a lawyer with the anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund, falls within that camp. But technology has made the right’s argument far more compelling, as the Internet has brought pornography to a far bigger and more vulnerable audience than ever before. The adult entertainment industry has fought to protect its burgeoning business by invoking the Constitution and arguing that its work is an expression of free speech. Its lobbying group, in fact, is called the <a href="http://www.freespeechcoalition.com/" type="external">Free Speech Coalition</a>. And it’s true that the courts have found soft-core porn like Playboy, and the bookstores selling such wares, to be constitutionally protected. (For adults, that is. Legally, soft-core porn is labeled as harmful to minors.)</p>
<p>Courts have also struck down as unconstitutional previous attempts by Congress to curb Internet smut with restrictions like age-verification screens and bans on teaser photos. In one&#160; <a href="http://news.cnet.com/Supreme-Court-keeps-Net-porn-law-on-ice/2100-1028_3-5251475.html?tag=mncol;txt" type="external">case</a>, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested that parents need only put filters on their computers if they wanted to protect their kids—apparently unaware of data showing that many parents are also downloading porn.</p>
<p>But according to Trueman, much of the explicit material found on the Internet these days isn’t protected speech but obscenity, which is prosecutable. That means there’s likely no First Amendment protection for Gag Factor and other sites that trade in close-ups of graphic acts, lewd genital displays, sexual violence, and all the gross stuff—bestiality, incest, excretory functions—that meets the legal definition of obscenity.</p>
<p>Making the point with blurry PowerPoint skin shots was Donna Rice Hughes, an “Internet safety expert” better known as the woman photographed sitting in Gary Hart’s lap as the then-presidential candidate sailed his boat, the Monkey Business, en route to the Bahamas. Hughes has since reinvented herself as an anti-porn activist. “For 15 years, children have been spoon-fed a steady diet of pornography,” she noted.</p>
<p>Hughes wasn’t just pushing the standard hysteria. Studies, she explained, have found that more than 40 percent of kids age 10 to 17 have checked out porn online, and many are checking out child porn, too. More compelling were her slides, used to illustrate just how easy it is to find porn simply by accident: Searching a generic term like “watersports” can turn up a host of sites featuring pictures and videos of women getting peed on. Then there’s the Boys.com/Boyz.com mix-up, which sends kids looking for a primer on teen fashion (the former) to a site offering an unfiltered view of graphic anal sex (the latter). According to Hughes, research suggests that the age of first exposure to this sort of visual is 11.</p>
<p>Hughes suggested that the porn industry is intentionally designing websites to lure in young users, too, in much the same way that the tobacco industry has: with cartoons. Consider “DisneyPornLand,” a site where kids can see Disney characters having sex, and freebies—graphic teaser clips available to anyone, regardless of age.</p>
<p>She then played a short clip of interviews she has done with teenagers talking about the effect of porn on their lives and relationships. Hughes chats with “Justin, 16,” who freely admits to having a porn addiction problem. She asks whether the girls he eventually did have sex with were anything like the ones he saw in the videos. “No, ma’am. The girls in real life are nothing like in pornography,” Justin replies. “I’ve never had a girl want to do the same stuff those women did.” The bemused look on his face is worth a thousand words.</p>
<p>Several academic types spoke about how pornography affects the brain, comparing it to drug addiction and positing that one reason Internet porn has gotten so hardcore so fast is that heavy viewers get desensitized. Mary Anne Layden, codirector of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathy program at the University of Pennsylvania, described several patients whose lives were ruined by porn addictions—wherein what started off as a more benign nude-women surfing habit led them down the rabbit hole to becoming obsessed with kiddie porn, which led to jail sentences. And of course, there was the usual stuff about how porn hurts women and marriages.</p>
<p>But by far the most compelling argument came from Shelley Lubben, who during the 1990s performed under the name “Roxy” in such screen gems as The Cumm Brothers 3 and Beaver Hunt. She eventually left the business, found the Lord—Lubben showed up at the event with Bible in hand—and founded the Pink Cross Foundation, a nonprofit that offers support to adult industry workers.</p>
<p>Lubben described how her porn career left her with incurable herpes, papilloma virus, and ultimately cervical cancer. She is anemic, she added, due to hemorrhaging from reproductive injuries sustained during filming. “The last thing I want to do, people, is talk about porn,” she said, dabbing her eyes with tissues. “I have been hit, spit on, penetrated in every orifice imaginable.”</p>
<p>She also worked for a while as a prostitute: “At least with prostitution, you get a dinner sometimes.” Her story had the kid sitting next to me weeping. Beyond pimps and porn producers, Lubben spoke of an epidemic of suicides and other violent deaths of film stars, and talked forcefully about the doctors who collaborate with the industry to keep the performers “wasted” most of the time on prescription drugs. “This isn’t happening underground,” she said. “This is happening in America.”</p>
<p /> | Have the Feds Gone Soft on Porn? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/06/federal-porn-regulation-shelley-lubben/ | 2010-06-16 | 4 |
<p>Late in November a group of socialists, several of them editors of DISSENT, issued a statement concerning problems faced by the Vietnam protest movement. The signers of this statement were Michael Harrington, Bayard Rustin, Lewis Coser, Penn Kimble and Irving Howe. Parts of the statement have become dated: e. g., a section dealing with attitudes toward the draft. But the central section of the statement, dealing with the Vietnam movement, remains pertinent and appears below.</p>
<p /> | The Vietnam Protest Movement | true | https://dissentmagazine.org/article/vietnam-protest-movement | 2018-11-01 | 4 |
<p>‘Take up the White Man’s burden send forth the best ye breed […] To wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild Your new-caught, sullen peoples Half-devil and half-child.</p>
<p>— Rudyard Kipling, ‘The White Man’s Burden’, 1899.</p>
<p>‘Half-devil[s] and half-child[ren]’ – that is a description as good as any of the Sudanese as portrayed in Danish director Susanne Bier’s and her co-scriptwriter Anders Thomas Jensen’s In a Better World (2010) that picked up an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film last night. These are the only kinds of Africans we see in and around the refugee camp where works Anton (a Swedish doctor with a Danish family, played by Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt). On the one hand, the utterly dependent and passive refugees, the ‘children’ of Anton, often literally shown cowering at his feet. On the other, a guerrilla of wild-eyed psychopaths that murder and torture, including cutting up the stomachs of pregnant women, for no apparent reason at all.</p>
<p>Kipling’s poem, intended to cheer on the American colonization of the Philippines, was originally published in 1899. One year previously the British had conquered Sudan. The decisive battle took place at Omdurman. It claimed 16,000 Sudanese lives as against 48 British. According to a young Winston Churchill, who took part in the battle, the victory was then ‘disgraced by the inhuman slaughter of the wounded’. Other soldiers later testified that they were ordered to shoot and bayonet anyone left alive, prisoners or wounded. It was ‘more like a butcher’s killing house than anything else’, said one (quotes from John Newsinger, The Blood Never Dried, 2006). But this history is utterly absent from In a Better World, as is the more recent history of the role of oil companies in stoking the fires of the bloody civil war (including, for instance Lundin Oil, the former employers of Sweden’s current foreign minister, Carl Bildt). Here there is no context whatsoever, but simply an image, as absurd as any picture drawn by Kipling, of a hopeless Africa and the brave white man who does his utmost to protect and care for it. As a rather disillusioned Anton returns to Denmark the fourth stanza of Kipling’s poem comes to mind:</p>
<p>‘Take up the White Man’s burden/The savage wars of peace/Fill full the mouth of Famine/And bid the sickness cease/And when your goal is nearest/The end for others sought/Watch sloth and heathen Folly/Bring all your hopes to nought.’</p>
<p>In a Better World is the latest, but not the first, film by Bier &amp; Jensen to serve up a world of brave white men facing up to the irrational evil of the dark-skinned other. In Brothers (2004, Hollywood remake directed by Jim Sheridan in 2009) it is a Danish major, Michael, who has to confront the dark heart of the third world when he is captured by Afghani ‘taliban’. As the US, assisted by allies including both Denmark and Sweden, was rapidly dismantling international law and building its global gulag of torture chambers, Brothers showed us an Afghanistan peopled exclusively by sadistically grinning psychopaths, resembling Nazi caricatures more than human beings. It goes without saying that there were no ‘extraordinary renditions’ in this film, no civilians killed by remote-controlled high-tech NATO/UN bombs. In fact, when British soldiers eventually free Michael the film goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid showing any ‘allied’ violence against Afghanis at all.</p>
<p>In Brothers the Afghani sequence acted as a backdrop for a Danish middle class family drama that was portrayed with great sensitivity and intelligence, resulting in a disturbingly schizoid viewing experience. Similarly, In a Better World returns us to Denmark where the main storyline unfolds. But this time racism abroad gives way to ‘classism’ at home, in the shape of Lars (played by the muscular, dark-bearded Kim Bodnia), a car mechanic and trouble-maker who, without any valid reason, starts hitting Anton when their kids get into a minor tiff over the use of a swing. Lars, the only working class character in the film, goes on to become a representative of the same kind of irrational violence as the Sudanese and Afghani guerrilla fighters. Their impulsive, seemingly ‘inherent’ and therefore ‘evil’, violence stands in sharp contrast to the violent acts committed by Anton’s ten-year-old son, Elias, and his new class mate, the upper class boy Christian.</p>
<p>Elias is bullied in school and suffers from the recent separation of his parents. Christian carries a heavy burden of sorrow and anger after having witnessed his mother’s slow and painful death in cancer. Together they exact a violent revenge (including setting off a bomb) on both the school bullies and Anton’s own bully, Lars. The film’s careful motivation of the violence used by Anton and Elias (as with the, remarkably mild, violence used by Michael and the British and Danish soldiers in Afghanistan in Brothers) stands in absolute contrast to the lack of motivation for the sadistic acts committed by Sudanese, Afghanis or by Lars, the car mechanic. But there is also a rather revolting parallel between the ‘half-devil’, ‘half-child’ peoples of Sudan and Afghanistan and the actual children in Denmark. ‘Our experiment in this film is about looking at how little it really takes before a child – or an adult – thinks something is deeply unjust. It really doesn’t take much, and I find that profoundly interesting. And scary’, says Bier herself about the film. An early working title of In a Better World was ‘Civilisation’ and it is precisely the idea of a ‘civilisation’ continuously threatened by subordinate groups, demanding an ‘impossible’ justice, that Bier &amp; Jensen’s films portray. Children and savages must be taught that this is an unjust world, if need be by ‘wars of peace’. Today just like yesterday. In Omdurman in 1898.</p>
<p>Denmark, a small nation of less than six million inhabitants, has produced an impressive list of first-rate films over the last couple of decades. Unfortunately In a Better World is not one of them.</p>
<p>DANIEL LINDVALL is <a href="http://www.filmint.nu/" type="external">Film International’s</a> editor-in-chief.</p>
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<p /> | Kipling Goes to the Oscars | true | https://counterpunch.org/2011/02/28/kipling-goes-to-the-oscars/ | 2011-02-28 | 4 |
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<p>The French have begun <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/world/europe/france-islamic-state-syria.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;clickSource=story-heading&amp;module=span-abc-region&amp;region=span-abc-region&amp;WT.nav=span-abc-region" type="external">bombing the Syrian city of&#160;</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/world/europe/france-islamic-state-syria.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;clickSource=story-heading&amp;module=span-abc-region&amp;region=span-abc-region&amp;WT.nav=span-abc-region" type="external">Raqq</a>a:</p>
<p>French warplanes struck Islamic State militants in Syria on Sunday, a French government official said, two days after attackers linked to the terrorist group carried out a coordinated assault on Paris that killed 129 people.</p>
<p>Prior to the attack on Paris, France had been sparing in its strikes against targets in Syria.</p>
<p>News reports in France said the airstrikes were focused on Raqqa, the city in northern Syria that is the self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State.</p>
<p>This is unrelated but I was curious to know what life is like in a city under ISIS occupation and&#160;stumbled on <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/11/raqqa-syria-islamic-state-activists-threatened.html#ixzz3rbGydTmQ" type="external">this story from last year</a>, which has the following surreal quote:</p>
<p>Abu Ibrahim al-Raqqawi, a pseudonym for a young anti-IS activist from Raqqa, told Al-Monitor the situation was dire. He said, “People in Raqqa are outraged. There are a lot of immigrants who came and joined IS: Americans, British, Germans, Europeans in general and from around the world. They are given special treatment, pampered by the organization.”</p>
<p>He added, “They are given the best homes and cars while locals pay taxes. They took the abandoned houses — some left behind by Christians, others by Sunnis — while those in the city who own more than a house are forced to give all other houses to the immigrants.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | The French Have Begun Bombing the Capital of ISIS | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2015/11/french-have-begun-bombing-isis-capital/ | 2015-11-15 | 4 |
<p>Investors have been wondering for a few years now when Gilead Sciences&#160;(NASDAQ: GILD) would spend some of its massive cash hoard and acquire a new company, and this week, Gilead put those wonders to rest (for now) with its $11.9 billion acquisition of Kite Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: KITE).</p>
<p>Novartis&#160;(NYSE: NVS)&#160;Kymriah, a game-changing CAR-T cancer drug,&#160;won FDA approval this week, increasing the odds that&#160;Kite Pharma&#160;will score a&#160;regulatory green light for its CAR-T Axi-Cel in November. Since&#160;Gilead Sciences' acquisition of Kite Pharma is expected to close around the same time&#160;the FDA announces its Axi-Cel&#160;decision, investors are right to wonder about CAR-T's market potential and what this acquisition could mean for Gilead Sciences' investors.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>In this episode of The Motley Fool's <a href="https://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=10170d58-8e33-11e7-b073-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Industry Focus: Healthcare Opens a New Window.</a> podcast, contributor Todd Campbell is reunited with analyst Michael Douglass to&#160;break down the deal and discuss just how important this new class of cancer treatment is to Gilead Sciences shareholders.</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</p>
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<p>This video was recorded on Aug. 30, 2017.</p>
<p>Michael Douglass:&#160;Welcome to Industry Focus, the podcast that dives into a different sector of the stock market every day. It's&#160;Wednesday, August 30, and we're talking about Gilead Sciences' acquisition of&#160;Kite Pharmaceuticals. I'm your host, Michael Douglass, filling in for Kristine Harjes this week, and I'm joined in the studio,&#160;as always, by Todd Campbell. Todd, good to see you today!</p>
<p>Todd Campbell:&#160;[singing] Reunited and it feels so good! [laughs] I'm not a singer, Michael, but it's great to have you back on the show. It's going to be fun today, talking about Kite and Gil.</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Yeah, Absolutely. I'll go ahead and give our listeners a little expectation that will probably not be the only song we sing on today's episode. We'll get to that in a minute. First off, let's go to the headline. Gilead finally, finally pulled the trigger and bought somebody -- Kite Pharmaceuticals. They announced this on Monday. $180 per share in cash, that's an $11.9 billion valuation, 29% premium to the prior close. If that sounds rich to you, keep in mind that's actually fairly typical in biotech. You will often see double-digit, sometimes even more gains upon&#160;announcement of a deal closed, just because you usually have to offer a pretty significant premium to get a company to agree to be bought. If you consider, if you were a Kite shareholder or if you know a Kite shareholder, you should pat them on the back. Kite IPOed three years ago at $17 per share and is now,&#160;subject to the normal closing conditions, of course, being bought for $180 per share. That's a pretty darn good investment over three years.</p>
<p>We'll dive more into Gilead's strategy a little further in. First, let's break down the deal, what Gilead is getting here. Then, we'll turn to Gilead's overall M&amp;A strategy. Finally, we'll talk about what we think of the deal. Certainly,&#160;Todd and I are both Gilead shareholders, so is Kristine, by the way, and I'm certainly pretty excited to hear about this deal, but we'll&#160;get into that at the end.</p>
<p>Let's start by breaking down the deal and looking at Kite Pharmaceuticals' pipeline. First question, of course, that I think anyone should ask is, "What sort of cancer drugs does Kite Pharmaceuticals invest in?" The primary area that they are working is called CAR-T.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;CAR-T, Michael,&#160;is probably one of the most exciting developments in cancer research over the course of the last few years. I say "few years" because it's downright remarkable how quickly these have gone from clinical-stage, or preclinical stage, I should say, ideas, to now, as of today, commercial-stage medicines. If&#160;listeners haven't heard yet,&#160;Novartis, which also participates in the CAR-T space, just&#160;won approval today for the very first FDA-approved CAR-T medicine. That drug is called Kymriah. Basically, it speaks to the promise for this entire class of drugs. It also speaks, Michael, to the timing of Gilead Sciences. How savvy -- you announce the deal the same week that the first CAR-T ever wins approval.</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;And&#160;what's really interesting about the FDA's approval of Novartis' drug is that it came before the expected PDUFA date, which is usually the promised date that the FDA will promise to look at things by. The fact is, they came to&#160;Kymriah&#160;-- which, by the way, if you ever need to remember how to pronounce that, think Kumbaya.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;There's the second song!</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;There was the musical number I promised. You're all welcome. [laughs] But,&#160;the FDA moved on this early -- that's huge.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;Yeah, I think you're right to look at that and say, "Wow, what could that mean for Gilead Sciences now that it's bought Kite?" But, let's back up the wagon a little bit, and we'll explain a little bit more what's driving the deal and what's going on. As you alluded to earlier, one of the most anticipated news events of the year was, what will Gilead Sciences do with its absolutely mountainous and growing pile of cash? And we found out, obviously, this week that it wants to&#160;become a major player in oncology, and it's willing to do that not by buying an individual drug, but buying a platform that will allow it to develop drug after drug after drug for increasingly more indications, and that platform is CAR-T.</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;It's interesting, because if you look at Kite's pipeline, they have about a dozen drugs in&#160;phase 1 or earlier. So, that's a very expansive pipeline that should help Gilead, hopefully, get some wins over the next many several different years. That represents an enormous optionality and number of opportunities for them. As well, though,&#160;you have this lead drug, it's called Axi-Cel. The&#160;long name, trust me, you don't want to hear me try to pronounce it, because I'll just butcher it. Axi-Cel has already completed phase 3 testing and has a PDUFA date with the FDA on November 29. Now,&#160;of course, will the FDA jump the gun on that one, too? Who knows?</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;I think the chances are pretty good, Michael! Who knows, you don't know that, but think about what happened with Novartis and their drug. It went to an advisory committee or an adcom meeting, and the advisory committee voted unanimously to recommend its approval. And after that happened, the FDA told Kite, "We're not even going to bother with an adcom for you."</p>
<p>So, that could mean that Gilead Sciences has -- this deal isn't supposed to close until the fourth quarter, and depending on when this is approved, the PDUFA date for Axi-Cel is November 29, if&#160;they approve it in October, theoretically you could have the company getting bought after it's actually won approval and therefore can be commercialized. But, again, to back up for one second, probably helpful for new listeners, we've talked about CAR-T on the show in the past, to get a quick and dirty look at what CAR-T is, Michael?</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Please, go ahead.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;I thought I would go a little Harry Potter on you.</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Oh, boy.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;If I'm in an auditorium, or picture a huge room, and I'm wearing an invisibility cloak, how easy would it be for you to find me?</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Incredibly difficult.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;Yeah, very, very hard. But if I took that invisibility cloak off, how easy could you find me?</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Probably a lot easier.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;Yeah, I'd be right there. You would see me immediately. Essentially, that's what CAR-T is doing. The immune system, its job is to go out, seek out&#160;infections, seek out cancer cells, and kill them. Stop them dead in their tracks. But cancer is a tricky, tricky disease, and it knows how to evade detection. Well, what research has discovered is, if they take T-cells out of a patient's body, send them off to a separate facility where scientists can work some magic on them and reengineer them in a certain way, then send those cells back to the patient,&#160;put them inside the body, you've removed the invisibility cloak, and you've done that by telling the T-cells specifically to go after a protein called CD19 that is expressed primarily on the surface of these cancer cells. So,&#160;you've basically given them the mailing address -- go seek out and find and destroy these cancer cells.</p>
<p>And I think that's why people are so excited about the potential behind this. You've now unleashed the power of the human body again to find and cure a disease. And it's just pretty remarkable, especially when you're talking about non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the patient study group that was evaluated that's backing up Axi-Cel. This was a very heavily pretreated group of patients with a very poor prognosis, and yet you had overall response rates above 80%,&#160;and you had complete response rates above 50%, which just absolutely trounces the historical norms for this patient population.</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Yeah. What's interesting is, when you look at&#160;Kymriah&#160;and also Axi-Cel, these are currently being pitched in different cancers. But, like we've seen with other immuno-oncology, particularly with&#160;Merck&#160;and&#160;Bristol-Myers,&#160;what&#160;you will probably see is both Novartis and Gilead, assuming approval for Gilead, taking these drugs and trying to put them in other&#160;cancer indications, eventually at a point where they start competing directly with each other. And that's where things will get interesting.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;Yeah, you talking about the investing pros and cons relating to this deal now. Gilead is spending almost $12 billion of cash on a company, what's the competitive outlook look like? How much of a&#160;first-mover advantage will they have in Axi-Cel if it wins approval?</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Sure. And certainly they'll have it in some of these advanced non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, just like Novartis now has it in certain acute lymphoblastic leukemia.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;Yeah, ALL, pediatric ALL.</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Yeah. So, the other question will be, what kind of money are these drugs expected to make? Analysts have estimated that Axi-Cel, most of the estimates I've seen are around $2 billion per year at peak annual sales. That means Gilead spent up quite a bit, and there [are] some question marks around that $2 billion number.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;Well, but, that doesn't shock me too much. We've seen some deals being done at seven, eight times projected sales, or even higher in the case of, say,&#160;Medivation&#160;and&#160;Pfizer. That was 14X Medivation's take on its drug.</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Sure. And&#160;I would say, for the drug on its own, I would think that was a little bit expensive. But when you consider the broader pipeline and the fact that Gilead clearly sees this as a long put, then I think there's a lot more opportunity here, particularly when you&#160;consider the fact that Gilead is intending to roll Kite into the existing organization as its own division. They basically intend to, at least that's what they've indicated so far, is that they&#160;basically just want to take Kite, make it a division of Gilead, and move on, just give them the tools they need to win.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;So smart. So smart, right, Michael? Because you don't want to be cutting to the bone a platform that's in its early stages. And it's so complex, CAR-T is not easy, this is not a small molecule drug. This is a complex therapy, and it costs a ton to make this therapy. There's just so many moving pieces. So, it's smart!</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Yeah. Speaking of smart, let's also talk about the timing a little bit. We've&#160;already talked about the really big stuff. They managed to do this before the FDA approved Novartis'&#160;Kymriah. But,&#160;also, let's face it, biotech M&amp;A in general has been down year over year. A lot of that is due to tax repatriation uncertainty. But, here's a number that we'll put to this. Q1 of 2016, there were 104 pharma&#160;life sciences deals. In Q1 of 2017, 82. Q2 of 2016, 96. In Q2 of 2017, 67. So, certainly, seeing some of that deal&#160;volume decline, to me, at least, indicates that there's a possibility that Gilead got a better deal than they would have otherwise, even leaving aside the fact that&#160;Kymriah&#160;was approved today.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;Yeah. What's interesting to me, there's so many different pieces to this puzzle, but I find it really interesting to me that earlier this year, Gilead hired its head of oncology,&#160;Alessandro Riva,&#160;who actually came from Novartis, and at Novartis was responsible for ushering its CAR-T program along. So, I suppose that was maybe a hint in the direction that Gilead would be heading. I don't know, they probably didn't want to wait too long, because they knew there was a good chance of likelihood of an approval. You're right, though, that they could have ended up paying much more. We don't know. But even with the amount of money that they are paying, Michael, they have so much cash left, they could go out and buy two or three other companies. I guess that's another investing takeaway, that's probably why you've seen a lot of these other clinical-stage cancer drug stocks rally after the news.</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Yeah,&#160;Juno (NASDAQ: JUNO)&#160;has been on an absolute tear,&#160;and that's the direct competitor to Kite, by the way. So, I think there's a lot to unpack, there. Let's get into their M&amp;A strategy in just a minute. First, I wanted to take a moment to talk about The Motley Fool Investment Guide. This book is the succinct summary of our investing philosophy. In&#160;my personal opinion, it should be required reading for anyone interested in long-term investing. The third edition features a big update from the second edition and a new section on options, and Tom and David's philosophy around that. Check it out at book.fool.com and pre-order your copy before it goes on sale on September 5. Again, that's book.fool.com, The&#160;Motley Fool Investment Guide. Thanks.</p>
<p>Alright, Todd, let's turn back to Gilead's overall M&amp;A strategy. This is really the first big, splashy deal they've done since the&#160;Pharmasset&#160;acquisition they did in 2011 -- which was for a similar price point, by the way, it was $11 billion, and this deal is $11.9.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;Yeah, they had good luck with it that time around. Maybe they were like, hey, $11 billion, that's a good price, let's buy that. What's interesting, Michael, this is an even more advanced drug than that one, right?</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Yes, it's completed phase 3, whereas&#160;Sofosbuvir,&#160;which was the cornerstone molecule for hepatitis C that Gilead acquired when it bought Pharmasset, was only entering phase 3.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;Yeah. And Gilead has a history of always wanting to be the dominant player in a particular indication. They've done it in HIV, where they have 80% market share. They've done it in hepatitis C, where they have 90% market share thanks to that acquisition of Pharmasset back in 2011, or whenever the heck it was. Now, with Kite, they're hoping again to have a platform that's going to allow them to dominate in an indication, and boy is it a huge indication. Oncology drug sales exceeded $100 billion globally -- $100 billion!</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Yeah. For for me, it's not likely that Gilead is going to become the dominant cancer player, or anything like that. But, it's very clear that Gilead thinks that&#160;cellular therapy, this CAR-T that we've been talking about, is really one of the big futures, if not the big future, and that they view this platform just like&#160;Sofosbuvir was with Pharmasset and hepatitis C, their cornerstone for cancer. I'll actually quote from&#160;CEO John Milligan, who said in cancer, I quote, "Cellular therapy is going to be really the cornerstone of what we're doing going forward." And that's interesting, because Gilead has been signaling for a while that they wanted to get involved in cancer. They've made some attempts at cancer drugs in the past, some of which haven't panned out that well -- Zydelig being the big example.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;I'll go on record saying that was a flop. [laughs]</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Yep.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;$35 million in sales last quarter. $120 million, some companies would like that, but for Gilead, that's a rounding error.</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Right, and that was their attempt to usher in a drug for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and it just did not do well, and that was because of a nasty side-effect profile. So, this is really their&#160;opportunity, hopefully, to build the cornerstone of a platform that can really help launch them in a big way into cancer.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;Michael, I suppose we should probably throw some caveats in here. We're&#160;excited about this deal because we know that Kite, being with both its CAR-T platform and it also has another platform that may allow it to target solid tumor cancers, which, wow, if you can develop a new platform for attacking a disease like non small-cell lung cancer, then&#160;you're talking billions and billions of dollars of sales opportunity there. At the same time, cancer drug development is incredibly hard, and there's significant risks. And we've seen already with Juno&#160;Therapeutics that these trials can get derailed quite quickly. We have patient deaths because of brain swelling in the Juno trials that caused it to get halted,&#160;and that still has the same target mechanism of action as Novartis' and Kite's drugs. You've&#160;got the risk of trial failure, you've got the risk of death as this rolls out to more patients, what side effects may pop up, we don't know. Then, you've got the trials that are probably going on, will those succeed or&#160;end up getting sidelined? So, there are some risks, here. And hopefully, hopefully for patients and investors, five years from now, we'll be looking back on this and saying, "Wow,&#160;what a phenomenal buy that was!"</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Sure. With that in mind, let's talk about what we actually think of the deal here now. Basically, do we like it as Gilead shareholders? Are we pleased, are we thrilled, are we scared, is this terrible? I'll go ahead and lead off because I'm posing the question, so it's only fair that I should eat my own cooking, here. I like the deal. I like it a lot. I do think it's a fairly expensive deal, but&#160;frankly, every time Gilead has done an acquisition, someone, a lot of people, have ended up accusing them of overpaying. And yet, it never has, it seems, just about. So, I'm a big fan of this deal. I think this gives them the platform that they need to make that longer put into CAR-T. This&#160;isn't about one drug. This is about a platform, this is about building a cornerstone set of therapies that can really enable them to carve out a big, dominant area in some of these really difficult-to-treat cancers. And, for me, I think it's going to do great things for shareholders, and I think it's going to do great things for the treatment of cancer. And, personally, that, for me, is the win-win.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;You know, Michael, I think a lot of the success or failure of this deal and whether or not I like it is going to be determined by how quickly do oncologists approach this for this tough-to-treat population? About 50% of Non-Hodgkin's patients can be cured by existing therapies. You're talking about a relatively small patient population out the gate of a few thousand people. A lot of it is going to [depend] on how it's priced. Some people say this could cost, what, $600,000?</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Which is, the price thing is actually a little bit frustrating, because Novartis is supposed to announce prices later today for Kymriah,&#160;and we just don't know right now at filming what they're going to do. Will Gilead price a little bit below that, a little bit above that, the same? We don't know, but that will at least give us a ballpark.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;Right, and how will payers view that, and when you go overseas, how will countries like England that NICE uses its&#160;metrics to try to figure out what the cost should be for medicines, how that will all shake out. There are some question marks, here, but overall, I think you summarized it very nicely. This gives them a platform that they can use to build an oncology franchise, and that's way more important than going out and buying one single drug as one company. And&#160;I think that's very important. And, you know what, yeah, it was expensive at $11.9 billion, but it's not like this is breaking the bank. The&#160;company still has $24 billion, and cash grew by $2.5 billion last quarter alone. So, there's plenty of money still kicking around to do other deals. So, I think this is a risky deal, but I think the reward justifies it, and I think it has a really good chance to be long-term positive for investors.</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;The other thing that I'll throw out there is, Gilead's management has made clear that&#160;this isn't necessarily their only deal in oncology, that they are willing to buy up additional drugs, potentially other companies, who knows. But, they're willing to invest both in external M&amp;A and also in internal R&amp;D to make sure that they retain leadership in this area. And&#160;if that means they have to buy other companies, they've signaled that they're basically willing to do that, to make sure that Kite as Gilead retains its leadership in cancer. So, that's a very good sign for future M&amp;A for&#160;Gilead shareholders. I think, as shareholders, we can be confident that a lot of that cash is going to get used in the future for maintaining that leadership. And in a lot of ways, that makes sense. More better treatments, new generations of drugs that can really help uncloak cancer and really strengthen the body's defenses are a win-win, both for shareholders and humanity.</p>
<p>Campbell:&#160;Totally agree with all of that, Michael, that sums it up really nicely!</p>
<p>Douglass:&#160;Well, thank you! By the way,&#160;I had forgotten to mention earlier, when I was talking about that M&amp;A deal volume, that was data from&#160;PWC&#160;and&#160;S&amp;P Capital IQ. So, thanks to PWC and Capital IQ. That's it for this week's Healthcare show. Questions, comments, you can always reach us at <a href="http://mailto:[email protected].%20" type="external">[email protected]. Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>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. This show is produced by Austin Morgan. For Todd Campbell, I'm Michael Douglass. Thanks for listening and Fool on!</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFEnterprise/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=10170d58-8e33-11e7-b073-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Michael Douglass Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Gilead Sciences. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFEBCapital/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=10170d58-8e33-11e7-b073-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Todd Campbell Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Gilead Sciences and Pfizer. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Gilead Sciences. The Motley Fool recommends Juno Therapeutics. 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=10170d58-8e33-11e7-b073-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Gilead Sciences Couldn't Have Timed its Splash Into CAR-T Better | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/09/05/gilead-sciences-couldnt-have-timed-its-splash-into-car-t-better.html | 2017-09-05 | 0 |
<p>I often get a preliminary glimpse of politics while at the gym. As I work out on the elliptical machine, my eyes occasionally glance up to catch CNN. I have no sound to go on, just subtitles at the bottom of the screen. And last week I saw the most bizarre tagline: “Trump calls Obama founder of ISIS (he’s not).” As much as we’ve all gotten used to Trump’s dalliances into fantasy land, this statement still joggled my mind and almost joggled me off the exercise machine. My mind started to race: Trump really said this? Yes. And CNN felt it necessary to clarify for its viewers that there’s not an ounce of sense in the claim? Yes. And of course now we know how the story ended. Trump finally clarifies, after first defending the claim as a literal statement of truth, that he was just being sarcastic.</p>
<p>Which highlights the importance of a recent article in Granta. <a href="https://granta.com/why-were-post-fact/" type="external">Peter Pomerantsev argues</a> that we live today in a post-fact world. He points not just to Trump, but also to Putin. And he’s equally bothered by the claims that were made by leaders of the Brexit initiative who argued, “Let’s give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week” and then, upon winning the campaign, “shrugged off” the statements&#160;as a “mistake.” Pomerantsev goes on to dissect numerous trends from our past to assess how we’ve gotten to this post-fact world, a state where a candidate can speak balderdash and still win the nomination for a major party in the United States.</p>
<p>Some of this has to do with new technology. The Internet—and I’d argue, before that, cable news channels like Fox and MSNBC—has segmented Americans more than ever. We trundle into whatever enclave on the Internet that helps us legitimize our preconceived notions or beliefs. Or as Pomerantsev puts it, “Social media, now the primary news source for most Americans, leads us into echo chambers of similar-minded people, feeding us only the things that make us feel better, whether they are true or not.”</p>
<p>As our social media trumpets its participatory nature, our conceptions of objectivity in reporting nosedive. We are left with a world that is hostile toward any claim of expertise and that is increasingly framed by a kind of postmodern relativism. And, Pomerantsev points out, while a focus on subjectivity and the construction of reality might have been something that left-leaning academics helped develop within the walls of the university, especially during the 1980s and 1990s, this idea that beliefs are all inherently subjective in nature has been hijacked by those in power. We now face what I have elsewhere called &#160;“postmodern conservatism,” which culminated recently in the presidency of George W. Bush. As Pomerantsev continues, “If reality is endlessly malleable, then…the Bush administration could legitimise a war based on misinformation. ‘When we act, we create our own reality’, a senior Bush advisor, thought to be Karl Rove, told the&#160;New York Times…‘and while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities.’” One is reminded here of George Orwell’s eerie portrait of the future in 1984, where the totalitarian state’s slogans directly contradict reality but serve those in power.</p>
<p>This is a disturbing diagnosis indeed. But I think Pomerantsev is a bit too grounded in slightly outdated Western European affairs—he references Berlusconi a great deal—and in Putin’s contemporary Russia and misses something uniquely American in Trumpism. So let me put on my American historian’s cap here and say that Donald Trump has a unique relationship to the world of entertainment in America, his credentials riding on his reality television stardom more than his real estate business. No doubt part of this is his essential “outsider” status. But another part is that he draws upon the deepest roots of America’s entertainment culture.</p>
<p>If you had to name the forefathers of America’s twentieth century entertainment industry, P.T. Barnum and Mark Twain might come to mind. Barnum, of course, was the developer of the modern circus. He believed Americans wanted—and his success might seem to justify this view—to be lied to, that hoaxes were a central part of being entertained. If you wanted mermaids to be real, well, then, Barnum would make sure that they were.</p>
<p>Ernest Hemingway once quipped that all modern literature begins with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And what we know about Twain was that much of his writing was developed as he traveled out west. Twain not only listened to the slaves he was raised around tell stories (which had a profound effect on him), but he also listened to those “tall tales” that animated the broader folk culture of the American west. Tall tales were always preposterous, as Bernard DeVoto once put it, every hill becomes a mountain, every fish caught becomes bigger than imaginable, and so forth. The central role of tall tales in Twain’s writing can be gleaned from the first paragraph of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn where Huckleberry mentions that you might know his character from a previous book by Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. “That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched…” This “stretch” is the basis of the tall tale, and is how Twain chose to appeal to his readers.</p>
<p>What Twain and Barnum understood is that Americans love to be entertained, and that entertainment is about pleasure, not the truth. And as Americans today grow more alienated than ever from their political system, it is no surprise that some of them have drifted toward a candidate whose roots are in the world of entertainment and who creates fiction daily on the campaign trail. It’s fun or satisfying to some people—why else would they be there?—to hear the tall tales that come out of Trump’s yammering mouth at his endless campaign stops. Trump has taught the country a lesson. And, thanks to him, we now live with the consequences of a “post-fact” world where entertainment reigns supreme and where our collective sense of truth has combusted.</p>
<p>Although it’s likely too late for this campaign, after the election, progressives must internalize the lessons of the Trump candidacy and start figuring out how they can fight this battle against a media that now equates, more than ever before, politics with pure entertainment. We also have to acknowledge how the deep cynicism that lies at the heart of Trumpism—which turns every political statement into outlandishness, belligerence, and diversion—reflects a political culture that has fallen apart. Hope against hope that it’s not too late to put it back together again.</p> | Are We Living in Post-Fact Times? | true | http://democracyjournal.org/alcove/are-we-living-in-post-fact-times/ | 2016-08-16 | 4 |
<p>Après Trump, le déluge!</p>
<p>There’s a “People’s Climate March” on DC happening today, and CNN put a reporter on a bus traveling to the March from Harlem. A protester explained that he was going to Washington because people in inner-city areas “don’t have resources to escape if we have flooding or other issues caused by climate change.”</p>
<p>Shades of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and its apocalyptic vision of a drowning NYC.</p>
<p>But not to worry. Worst comes to worst, Al Gore will be out there, plucking people off their rooftops. Al will either be in a boat, or perhaps swooping low in a jet he can afford to charter with part of the proceeds of his $500 million sale of Current TV to the fossil fuel sheikhs of Qatar.</p>
<p />
<p>KAYLEE HARTUNG: Juan Rosa, he’s wide awake. Juan, why is it important for you to be a part of today’s march?</p>
<p>PROTESTER: We’re going to Washington today because we are front-line communities, Washington Heights, Harlem, the Bronx. We are communities where people don’t have resources to escape if we have flooding or other issues caused by climate change. And we have an administration that is hostile to the science behind global warming, climate change and hostile to the regulations that were put in place to protect us from those effects. And we’re going today to send a message that we are under threat and that we need action from our policymakers and our elected officials.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | #ClimateMarch-er: City residents won’t be able “to escape” #ClimateChange flooding (VIDEO) | true | http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/04/climatemarch-er-city-residents-wont-be-able-to-escape-climatechange-flooding-video/ | 2017-04-29 | 0 |
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<p>The tribe filed a lawsuit in federal court in Las Cruces earlier this month. New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Secretary Demesia Padilla and Cibola County Treasurer Geraldine Rael are named as defendants.</p>
<p>Acoma received a notice in September that it owed more than $30,000 in back taxes on two parcels of commercial property in Cibola County. The state threatened to auction off the land if the bill wasn’t paid.</p>
<p>The tribe argues the county and state have no authority to collect taxes on the property, which was purchased in 2004. It points to a 1905 federal law, subsequent case law and previous decisions by county officials, saying the land is exempt from taxation.</p>
<p>“Defendants have continuously and repeatedly valued, assessed, taxed and enforced its taxes and therefore infringed on Acoma’s sovereignty and tribal sovereign immunity interests,” the lawsuit reads.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>State taxation and revenue officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.</p>
<p>This is not the first time Acoma has fought efforts to tax its land. In 1937, a federal court ruled that fee lands owned by Acoma are not subject to taxation by the state or any of its subdivisions and ordered county officials at that time not to put any of the property owned by the pueblo on the county tax rolls. For the next several decades, the pueblo wasn’t taxed.</p>
<p>That changed in 2005 when the Cibola County assessor asserted the office had the authority to value and tax the land. The tribe protested and a settlement was eventually reached in 2010, with $54,000 in tax payments being returned to Acoma.</p>
<p>Despite the agreement, the tribe contends in its lawsuit that it was forced to protest the valuation of its land again in 2011 and for the last three years.</p> | Acoma Pueblo takes property tax fight to federal court | false | https://abqjournal.com/872672/acoma-pueblo-takes-property-tax-fight-to-federal-court.html | 2 |
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<p>SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — The Bahamas navy says it has intercepted a boat carrying 76 Haitian migrants. It’s the second large group stopped in the past two weeks.</p>
<p>The navy said Sunday the Haitians were aboard a 40-foot (13-meter) boat stopped about 20 miles (12 kilometers) west of the Exuma islands. It says the Haitians were turned over to immigration authorities for eventual repatriation.</p>
<p>The navy recently stopped another boat carrying 87 Haitians.</p>
<p>Hundreds of Haitians each year try to reach the Bahamas in search of work, despite the island chain’s threat to deport unauthorized foreigners. The International Organization for Migration estimated in 2014 that there were nearly 70,000 Haitians in the Bahamas, 50,000 of them without residence permits.</p>
<p>SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — The Bahamas navy says it has intercepted a boat carrying 76 Haitian migrants. It’s the second large group stopped in the past two weeks.</p>
<p>The navy said Sunday the Haitians were aboard a 40-foot (13-meter) boat stopped about 20 miles (12 kilometers) west of the Exuma islands. It says the Haitians were turned over to immigration authorities for eventual repatriation.</p>
<p>The navy recently stopped another boat carrying 87 Haitians.</p>
<p>Hundreds of Haitians each year try to reach the Bahamas in search of work, despite the island chain’s threat to deport unauthorized foreigners. The International Organization for Migration estimated in 2014 that there were nearly 70,000 Haitians in the Bahamas, 50,000 of them without residence permits.</p> | Bahamas navy intercepts boat carrying 76 Haitian migrants | false | https://apnews.com/2ba92c514899478e8de9cb03636475d4 | 2017-12-31 | 2 |
<p>Katy Grimes: A <a href="http://http://www.bing.com/search?q=reuters+poll+prop+19&amp;form=QBRE&amp;qs=n&amp;sk=" type="external">new poll</a>just released shows that Proposition 19 may be just a pothead’s pipe dream, and could actually go up in smoke.</p>
<p>Instead of reaching an all time high with the proposition as supporters expected, a new <a href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N05210230.htm" type="external">Reuters/lpsos poll</a>found 53 percent of California voters are opposed to the measure.</p>
<p>And, the Christian Science Monitor reported that the “Yes on 19” campaign&#160; is <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Election-2010/From-the-Wires/2010/1006/Marijuana-legalization-Prop-19-in-California-starved-for-cash" type="external">out of money</a>.</p>
<p>With less than 50 percent support in the polls so close to close to the election, historically means that a proposition will most likely fail.</p>
<p>Democrats support the legalization of marijuana&#160;54 percent to 45 percent, but Republicans oppose it 66 percent to 30 percent. Independents are nearly evenly divided.&#160;</p>
<p>Opponents of legalization tried to nip the issue in the bud before it made it to the ballot, but were unable to weed out supporters.</p>
<p>Okay, I’ll stop. Pot jokes are best left to <a href="http://http://www.cheechandchong.com/" type="external">Cheech and Chong</a>.</p>
<p>OCT. 12, 2010</p> | Prop 19 may go up in smoke | false | https://calwatchdog.com/2010/10/12/prop-19-may-go-up-in-smoke/ | 2018-10-20 | 3 |
<p>your email</p>
<p>your name</p>
<p>recipient(s) email (comma separated)</p>
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<p>message</p>
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<p>President Obama has long been criticized for <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/national-council-of-la-raza-janet-murguia-barack-obama-deporter-in-chief-immigration-104217.html" type="external">his administration's deportation record</a>, and it's unclear how he will handle the tide of Central American children crossing the border.Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo / <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/secdef/10806650705/" type="external">Flickr</a> / Creative Commons</p>
<p>Immigration has been labeled America's most recent "crisis." As thousands of Central American children cross the border without papers, <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117412/deportations-under-obama-vs-bush-who-deported-more-immigrants" type="external">the Left has asserted that President Obama expels far too many undocumented immigrants and the Right has complained that he doesn't turn enough away</a>. The accusations from both sides of the aisle have clouded public perceptions of the administration's policies, taking attention away from what’s actually going on.</p>
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<p>So, what’s actually happening in Washington? In early July, President Obama sent Congress a proposal for <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/07/13/border-children-immigration-crisis/12594927/" type="external">$3.7 billion to help curb the border crisis</a>. The funds will go to a number of agencies, some with a focus on humanitarian relief ($1.8 billion is allocated to the&#160;Department of Health and Human Services) and some on enforcement ($1.1 billion will go to&#160;Immigration and Customs Enforcement).</p>
<p>The White House's plea to Congress is by no means perfect, but it does improve some conditions for families and minors who have been caught at the border. To no one's surprise, however, the Republican-led House of Representatives opposes it.</p>
<p>In response to Obama's bill, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) are <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/6/29/5854904/obama-child-migrants-congress-2-billion-contiguous-screening-central-america/in/5577523" type="external">proposing a bill</a> that would essentially make it easier to deport unaccompanied Central American children. Basically, the bill would ensure that minors will have a hearing in immigration court within the first seven days of being apprehended, to determine whether they have a legal claim to stay in the United States . A determination would be made within 72 hours of the hearing on whether the child is granted asylum or immediately sent home. This proposal aims to <a href="http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/" type="external">speed up a system backlogged with cases</a> by treating the minors from Central America with the same standards a 2008 law set for minors from Mexico and Canada.</p>
<p>If this bill passes, thousands of children will be asked to articulate their situations and the conditions of their home countries to strange judges. Many will be without legal representation, as there are not enough pro bono lawyers to go around.</p>
<p>However, with their Senate majority under threat in November's midterm elections, many Democrats are running for the middle and backing the bill.&#160;The Obama administration, too, has said it could support the measure.</p>
<p>Charles M. Blow may have best summed up the situation&#160;in his July 16&#160; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/tears-for-the-border-children.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&amp;rref=opinion" type="external">column</a>&#160;for the&#160;New York Times:</p>
<p>This is not the best face of a great nation. This is the underside of a great stone, which when lifted sends creepy things slithering in all directions. We are better than this. We are more compassionate than this. We are more honorable than this.</p> | Is Obama the ‘Deporter-in-Chief’? We Do the Math | true | http://inthesetimes.com/ittlist/entry/16998/obama_deporter_in_chief_a_look_at_the_numbers | 2014-07-24 | 4 |
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<p>If you take I-40 east, don't plan on exiting at Louisiana for the next 30 days.</p>
<p>The eastbound Interstate 40 off-ramp at Louisiana NE was closed at midnight so workers on the $3.7 million project can add a third left-turn lane at the intersection to help drivers access the thriving retail area north of I-40, said Bernadette Bell, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation.</p>
<p>Eastbound drivers will need to use other exits, such as San Mateo or Wyoming, to get to the popular shopping centers.</p>
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<p>"This is just a popular area," Bell said of the I-40/Louisiana area, where retail activity has expanded in recent years. "We can only hope this will help in alleviating some of the traffic."</p>
<p>Congestion on the off-ramp has increased to the extent that cars sometimes back up onto eastbound lanes of I-40, creating a hazard for interstate motorists, she said.</p>
<p>Weekday traffic counts at the off-ramp climbed 22 percent from 2013 to 2014, from 15,786 vehicles to 19,190, according to figures released by the state and the Mid-Region Council of Governments.</p>
<p>The last major construction at the exit was in 2004.</p>
<p>In addition to the extra left-turn lane, crews will make improvements to traffic signals, lighting and the roadways themselves, including replacement of concrete.</p>
<p>Work will continue around the clock during the demolition phase of the project and for 12 hours a day during the construction phase, Bell said.</p>
<p>Some good news for drivers is that the I-40 eastbound on-ramp at Louisiana reopened on Saturday.</p>
<p>Louisiana will remain open both northbound and southbound across I-40 throughout the project, although drivers can expect some lane closures.</p>
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<p /> | I-40/Louisiana off-ramp closed to add turn lane | false | https://abqjournal.com/747469/i-40-eastbound-off-ramp-at-louisiana-to-close-at-midnight.html | 2016-03-28 | 2 |
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