text
stringlengths 0
127k
| title
stringlengths 0
777
| hyperpartisan
bool 2
classes | url
stringlengths 26
278
| published_at
stringlengths 0
10
| bias
int64 0
4
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
<p>Like Rushmore, Wes Anderson’s last film, his latest, called The Royal Tenenbaums, does not unfold all its riches at once. Apart from anything else, you will be too busy laughing the first time you see it to register much more than an impression of its more serious side. But you cannot be unaware that it has a more serious side, which could be said to boil down to the question Royal O’Reilly Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) puts to his adopted daughter, Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow): “Can’t somebody be a s*** their whole lives and try to repair the damage?”</p>
<p>The answer at first appears to be no, and Royal’s history of prevarication makes his purpose of amendment dubious at best. In a quirky opening section, the story of the Tenenbaum family is told in storybook fashion, with a series of tableaux vivants to illustrate the voiceover narration. The essence of it is that the three immensely talented children of Royal and his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) have been badly affected in later life by the breakup of their marriage and their father’s apparent indifference to them. We see him informing the children that he doesn’t know why Etheline is throwing him out, then adding as an afterthought that it might have something to do with the fact that “I haven’t been as faithful as I should have been.” When the kids ask if the split is their fault, he replies: “Obviously we made certain sacrifices as a result of having children, but no. Lord, no.”</p>
<p>On Royal’s departure, Etheline throws herself into cultivating the diverse talents of the three children and at first seems dazzlingly successful. She even publishes a book, called Family of Geniuses to explain how she did it. Chas (Ben Stiller) is a financial whiz-kid who gets his start breeding Dalmatian mice and makes his fortune before he is out of high school; Margot is a similarly precocious playwright whose first play was produced when she was eleven and who was hailed as a genius while still in her teens. Richie (Luke Wilson) is a world class tennis player. Royal, a lawyer, has little further to do with any of them, except to try to exploit Chas’s fortune for his own purposes, and he spends some time in jail after Chas sues him.</p>
<p>But as the film’s time-frame begins, all three kids are burnouts. Chaz’s wife has died in a plane crash and he has become morose and absurdly overprotective towards his two sons, Ari and Uzi. Margot has stopped writing on marrying a fashionable psychotherapist, Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray) and now finds herself blocked. She spends hours a day locked in the bathroom, smoking cigarettes, though neither her husband nor anyone else in the family know that she smokes. Richie exits pro tennis in spectacular fashion with a performance in the U.S. Open described by Sports Illustrated with the splash headline: “Meltdown!” The memory of their youthful promise is wiped out by “failure and disaster.”</p>
<p>Part of the reason for all the trouble is that Richie is secretly in love with Margot, with whom he ran away as a teenager and camped out in the African Antiquities section of the museum, sharing a sleeping bag. It was immediately following her marriage to Raleigh St. Clair that he had his “meltdown” on center-court. Now, Margot is also carrying on an affair with the children’s closest friend when they were growing up, the boy across the street called Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), who has become a minor celebrity, touted as “the James Joyce of the West” on the publication of his book Old Custer. He has also become a cocaine addict. Etheline, a prominent archaeologist, is proposed to by her quiet, shy, responsible accountant, Henry Sherman (Danny Glover) and has to confess that she hasn’t slept with a man in 18 years.</p>
<p>So much and such comic unhappiness is only to be expected from the extravagant nature of the central characters. This is hardly a naturalistic scenario, so it not a surprise when the action of the film finally gets underway with all three children as well as Royal moving back into their big old Victorian house on Archer street in an unnamed city. Royal has reached the end of his tether and is thrown out of his suite at the Lindbergh Hotel, where he has lived since the marriage broke up. Pretty obviously he wants to move back in because he has nowhere else to go, and because he wants to break up the romance between Etheline and Henry Sherman. Suddenly, when all his other plans for his life have failed, he decides that it is time to try to reclaim the life, and the family, he abandoned. He persuades Etheline to allow him back into the house by telling her that he is dying of stomach cancer and has only six weeks to live.</p>
<p>The circumstances of his moving back are, of course, unpropitious in the extreme, and his question to Margot about trying to “make it up” to her and the other children, as well as to Etheline, seems as cynical and calculated as everything else he does. But gradually, as so often happens in life, his playing the part of the penitent and returned prodigal turns into the reality of his life. He really does want to make it up to everybody, and in the end he does so. Even to Etheline. Even to Chas, who remains the most implacably hostile of the children and whose unresolved grief for his dead wife, Rachel, in any case prevents him from forming any other human attachments. When Chas refuses to allow Ari and Uzi to meet their grandfather. Royal sees the children on the sly and introduces them to risks — including driving go-carts, riding horses, hitching a ride on the back of a garbage truck and shoplifting — that would make their father’s hair turn white. Naturally, the boys adore the old man.</p>
<p>In the end, no one quite gets his broken-down life back, however. That would be much less believable believable than the extravagant sufferings and even more extravagant personalities of the Tenenbaums. But when, near the end, a coked up Eli smashes his sports car into the Tenenbaums’ house on the day of Etheline’s wedding to Henry Sherman and Ari and Uzi are saved from certain death by their grandfather, Chas finally melts, turning to his father and saying: “I’ve had a rough year, dad.”</p>
<p>“I know you have, Chazee,” says his father tenderly, and perhaps for the first time in his life he really has experienced someone else’s pain. It is a moment of redemption that is enhanced, I think, by all the seemingly irrelevant craziness going on around him. This glimpse of moral clarity must eventually also have its redemptive function in the lives of the children and of Etheline, but for the moment it is important for the Tenenbaums to remain as charmingly dysfunctional as they have always been.</p> | Royal Tenenbaums, The | false | https://eppc.org/publications/royal-tenenbaums-the/ | 1 |
|
<p>Carly Milne has had a diverse career, with stints as a journalist, a copywriter and a publicist in the porn business. A couple of years ago, she struck up a conversation with a prominent TV producer and pitched a show based on her porn experiences.</p>
<p>At first, he seemed interested in helping her develop the idea. But soon he began to make sexual advances. “The first warning bell was when he said, ‘You make me laugh and I find that really sexy,’” she says.</p>
<p>Later, he sent her Twitter direct messages in which he suggested that he had just masturbated to her picture. “This is what happens when locked alone in a hotel room,” the text began.</p>
<p>She cut off the conversation after that, and decided to pitch a manager known for selling spec scripts. He, too, seemed receptive at first, but soon began asking about her sex life. “Were you in any porn!? Be honest! Haha sleep with porn stars!?” he wrote in one DM. “I can only imagine your sexual escapades … You need to do selfies.”</p>
<p>Milne dropped him, too, and decided to shelve the project. “I’m not going to escape this,” she says. “This is everywhere. I don’t want to have to battle this crap to be able to do what I want to do.”</p>
<p>For every man who has lost his career in a harassment scandal in the past two months, there are countless women like Milne. In story after story, they are quoted saying they left the business after experiencing harassment or abuse. Out of sight and out of mind, they represent a hidden cost of a culture of misogyny — careers that never happened, shows that didn’t get made.</p>
<p>The business is difficult for everybody. But for many young women, there’s a hidden tax young men starting out don’t pay.</p>
<p>To investigate harassment stories, reporters have to track down former assistants and office managers, now scattered around the country and working in other industries. One of them, now living in another state, told Variety about a harassment case and suggested looking up another assistant from that time — a young man who worked alongside her. He’s now a top executive at a minor studio, and had no memory of any misconduct.</p>
<p>Much of the time, women describe experiences of subtle harassment — nothing so overt as Harvey Weinstein in a bathrobe, but smaller things that accumulate. “It’s so hard to pinpoint,” says actress Madeline Merritt. “There were a couple circumstances of producers who were older who said, ‘I could do so much for your career if you had this type of relationship with me.’ There are a lot of meetings you take at agencies or with producers you think are going to be career-oriented that then feel like a date,” she says. “And then when you follow up about career things, you don’t get a response.”</p>
<p>Actresses have plenty of stories like this, and among many there is a certain pride in having overcome them. But their pervasiveness takes a toll. “It is degrading, and it does prevent people from pursuing their ambitions,” Merritt says. “For me, there’s been years of that, and over time I put myself out there less and less.”</p>
<p>After the 2016 presidential election, she decided to put most of her efforts into activism, and has stepped back from acting.</p>
<p>“That behavior is so commonplace,” she says. “It’s encouraged by the industry. That’s the way men stay men in the industry.”</p>
<p>A former assistant at ICM tells Variety she heard plenty of stories about sexual harassment during her time there, though she never experienced it. What she did encounter was a culture straight out of “Entourage,” with bullying and yelling and a glass ceiling for the female employees in her department. “All the women I worked with who were assistants were very smart and intelligent and came from great schools,” she says. “And there was no way to get promoted.”</p>
<p>She wanted to become an agent but didn’t see a path for herself there. After losing weight due to anxiety, she decided to leave the business. Now she lives in another state, where she works as a marketing director.</p>
<p>“I’m much happier now,” she says. “I look back on it, and it was part of my life story and I am who I am because of the years I spent there. But I felt like I wasted my time. I had a lot to offer, and it just didn’t equate to what I thought it would. “I don’t miss it.”</p> | For Some Women, Hollywood’s Culture of Inequality Is Too Much to Bear | false | https://newsline.com/for-some-women-hollywoods-culture-of-inequality-is-too-much-to-bear/ | 2017-12-13 | 1 |
<p>Out on the campaign trail, John McCain has been criticizing Barack Obama for proposing cuts in defense spending. But his criticism relies on a potentially misleading quote. And we found that McCain is dinging Obama for reducing spending on a program that McCain plans to eliminate entirely.</p>
<p><a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/08/mccain-attacks-obama-on-military-spending/" type="external">CNN</a> and <a href="http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/08/1362730.aspx" type="external">MSNBC</a> both report that McCain told supporters in Lee’s Summit, Mo., that:</p>
<p>McCain, Sept. 8: …during the primary he told a liberal advocacy group that he’d cut defense spending by tens of billions of dollars. He promised them he would, quote, “slow our development of future combat systems.”</p>
<p>McCain is referring to a message Obama recorded for <a href="http://www.caucus4priorities.org/" type="external">Caucus4Priorities</a>, a liberal group that advocates for lower defense spending. Here’s the full 1:35 message:</p>
<p>&lt;iframe type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/7o84PE871BE"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</p>
<p>Cutting future combat systems? That does indeed sound alarming. But that’s mostly because it’s impossible to hear anyone speak a capital letter.</p>
<p>In an e-mail sent to reporters, the Obama campaign says that Sen. Obama was referring to Future Combat Systems (or FCS). FCS is an ambitious new, integrated computer and weapons system which would require an estimated 63.8 million lines of computer code, the complete replacement of the Army’s inventory of heavy tanks, light armor, and armored personnel carriers along with the development of entirely new unmanned drones. Army officials told <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2007/12/06/ST2007120602927.html" type="external">The Washington Post</a> last year that the $200 billion price tag makes the FCS “the most expensive Army weapons program ever.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, at the moment, FCS is more theory than reality. A 2005 Government Accountability Office report delivered a <a href="" type="internal">blistering indictment of the program</a>:</p>
<p>GAO, 2005: The FCS has demonstrated a level of knowledge far below that suggested by best practices or DOD policy. Nearly 2 years after program launch and about $4.6 billion invested to date, requirements are not firm and only 1 of over 50 technologies are mature-activities that should have been done before the start of system development and demonstration. If everything goes as planned, the program will attain the level of knowledge in 2008 that it should have had before it started in 2003. But things are not going as planned. Progress in critical areas, such as the network, software, and requirements has been slower than planned. Proceeding with such low levels of knowledge makes it likely that FCS will encounter problems late in development, when they are costly to correct. The relatively immature state of program knowledge at this point provides an insufficient basis for making a good cost estimate. Independent estimates should provide more information but are not yet completed. If the cost estimate for FCS is no more accurate than traditional estimates, the impact of cost growth could be substantial, given the program’s magnitude.</p>
<p>The Congressional Budget Office <a href="" type="internal">expressed worries</a> about the program’s costs, noting that, according to the Defense Department’s projections, FCS would account for about half of the Army’s entire procurement budget by 2015 (while the equipment that FCS would replace has never accounted for more than 20 percent). What’s more, the CBO estimates that the actual costs may be as much as twice what the Army projects.</p>
<p>In fact, Obama isn’t the only senator running for president to have doubts about Future Combat Systems. In July, McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin gave The Washington Post a copy of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/13/AR2008071301643_pf.html" type="external">McCain’s plan for balancing the budget</a>. Among the proposed spending cuts was this one: “There are lots of procurements — airborne laser, Globemaster, Future Combat System — that should be ended.”</p> | Pesky Proper Nouns | false | https://factcheck.org/2008/09/pesky-proper-nouns/ | 2008-09-10 | 2 |
<p>Union Pointe Academy in Florence, Kentucky, is among the many across the Tri-State that are closed today due to the weather, <a href="http://local12.com/news/local/local-principal-sings-his-school-closure-announcement" type="external">our affiliate WKRC reported</a>.</p>
<p>The school's principal, Chad Caddell, left a message to parents like most, but he put his to song in a Facebook message.</p>
<p>Caddell's lyrics set to Mariah Carey's "Hero" include "Play some Xbox and a smile, drink hot chocolate for a while. You can thank me really soon, here's a snow day just for you". He also jokingly asks parents to not punch him in the face.</p>
<p>He ends with a cough and asks, "Who took my hot tea!"</p>
<p>The video has been viewed thousands of times and shared hundreds of times.</p> | This principal decided to sing his school closure announcement | false | https://circa.com/story/2018/01/08/whoa/chad-caddell-union-pointe-academy-principal-sings-school-closure-announcement | 2018-01-08 | 1 |
<p>Village Voice Here's what Sydney Schanberg asked six of them via fax: "Given subsequent events and information, do you wish to retract or apologize for or amend any mistakes or statements you have made in relation to the Iraq war -- from the preparation for the war to the present?" He writes in his column: "Newsweek retracted and apologized for its recent flawed item about interrogators desecrating the Koran at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. Nothing like that ever comes from the White House or the civilian leaders of the Pentagon."</p> | Anyone think Schanberg will hear back from U.S. officials? | false | https://poynter.org/news/anyone-think-schanberg-will-hear-back-us-officials | 2005-05-31 | 2 |
<p>In capitalism, the state’s primary role is to secure the interests of private capital. The institutions of globalised capitalism – from the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO right down to the compliant bureaucracies of national states or supranational unions – facilitate private wealth accumulation that results in the forms of structural inequalities and violence (unemployment, poverty, population displacement, bad food, poor health, environmental destruction, etc) that have become ‘accepted’ as necessary (for ‘growth’) and taken for granted within mainstream media and political narratives.</p>
<p>When referring to Western countries, those narratives like to use the euphemism ‘austerity’ for deregulation, privatisation and gross inequalities and hardship, while hiding being the mantra ‘there is no alternative’. When referring to India, they use the euphemism ‘assisting development’ for corporate imperialism, while hiding behind the term ‘investing in’.</p>
<p>Each year, in August, India commemorates the&#160;anniversary of independence from&#160;Britain. In the 1990s, however, the IMF and World Bank wanted India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture. In return for up to&#160; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/1999/jun/19/food.food?CMP=share_btn_tw" type="external">£90 billion in loans</a>, India was instructed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies and run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops to earn foreign exchange.</p>
<p>According to the World Bank’s lending report, India has easily been the&#160; <a href="" type="internal">largest recipient</a>&#160;of its loans in the history of the institution, and these conditions form part of the broader World Bank-backed development plan for India that involves the mass displacement of people in order to restructure India for the benefit of powerful corporations.</p>
<p>When a creditor demands changes are made to an economy in this way – changes that will ultimately radically alter the social fabric of a country – it leads many to question just how much ‘independence’ remains.</p>
<p>In June, the&#160; <a href="" type="internal">National Alliance of People’s Movements stated</a>&#160;that the real impacts of this “dangerous financial institution” – the World Bank – works only to increase the profitability of its shareholders and further the cause of powerful capital.</p>
<p>Hostage to neoliberal capitalism</p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of farmers in India have taken their lives since 1997 and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming&#160; <a href="http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-evidence-of-suicide-epidemic-among-indias-marginalised-farmers" type="external">as a result of</a>&#160;debt, a shift to (GM) cash crops and economic liberalisation.&#160;Facilitated by the WTO and the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, there is a&#160;deliberate strategy&#160;to make agriculture financially non-viable for India’s small farms, to get most farmers out of farming and to impose the World Bank sanctioned model of agriculture.&#160;The aim is to replace current structures with a system of industrial (GM) agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness, food processing and retail concerns.</p>
<p>If you want to see the kinds of eventual impact this could have, look no further than what has happened in Mexico on the back of NAFTA, in terms of rising&#160; <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/fast-food-nations-selling-out-to-junk-food-illness-and-food-insecurity/5434888" type="external">food insecurity, bad health and poisoned agriculture</a>&#160;(not to mention&#160;a devastated economy with former workers driven into&#160; <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/imperialism-bankers-drug-wars-and-genocide/24856" type="external">the arms of drug cartels</a>&#160;to make a living).</p>
<p>The opening up of India to foreign capital is supported by rhetoric about increasing agricultural efficiency, creating jobs and boosting GDP growth. This jargon is used to try to convince the public that an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a relative few – via, for instance, deregulations, privatisations and lower labour and environmental protection standards – is for their own benefit because it is good for ‘growth’.</p>
<p>We can already see the outcome of these policies across the world: the increasing power of unaccountable financial institutions, record profits and massive increases in wealth for elite interests and, for the rest, disempowerment, mass surveillance, austerity, job losses, the erosion of rights, weak unions, cuts to public services, environmental degradation, spiraling national debt and opaque, corrupt trade deals, such as TTIP, CETA,&#160; <a href="http://www.deccanherald.com/content/561863/rcep-meet-focus-investor-state.html" type="external">RCEP</a>&#160;(affecting India) and TPA.</p>
<p>PM Modi recently stated that India is now one of the most business friendly countries in the world. The code for being ‘business friendly’ translates into a willingness by the government to facilitate much of the above, while reducing taxes and tariffs and allowing the acquisition of public assets via privatisation as well as instituting policy frameworks that work to the advantage of foreign corporations.</p>
<p>When the World Bank rates countries on their level of ‘Ease of Doing Business’, it means national states facilitating policies that force working people to take part in a&#160;race to the bottom&#160;based on&#160;free market fundamentalism. The more ‘compliant’ national governments make their populations and regulations, the more ‘business friendly’ a country is.</p>
<p>In the realm of agriculture, the World Bank’s ‘ <a href="" type="internal">Enabling the Business of Agriculture</a>’ entails opening up markets to Western agribusiness and their fertilisers, pesticides, weedicides and patented seeds.</p>
<p>Rather than improve poor management, inept bureaucracies and deficiencies in food logistics, the mantra is to let ‘the market’ intervene: a euphemism for letting powerful corporations take control; the very transnational corporations that receive massive taxpayer subsidies, manipulate markets, write trade agreements and institute a regime of intellectual property rights thereby indicating that the ‘free’ market only exists in the warped delusions of those who churn out clichés about letting the market decide.</p>
<p>According to the neoliberal ideologues, foreign investment is good for jobs and good for business. But just how many actually get created is another matter, as is the amount of jobs destroyed in the first place to pave the way for the entry of foreign corporations.</p>
<p>For example, Cargill sets up a food or seed processing plant that employs a few hundred people, but what about the&#160; <a href="" type="internal">agricultural jobs</a>&#160;that were deliberately eradicated in the first place or the&#160; <a href="http://seedfreedom.info/satyagraha-for-gandhis-ghani/" type="external">village-level processors</a>&#160;who were cynically put out of business so Cargill could gain a financially lucrative foothold?</p>
<p>The process resembles what Michel Chossudovsky notes in his 1997 book about the ‘structural adjustment’ of African countries. In ‘The Globalization of Poverty’, he says that economies are:</p>
<p>“opened up through the concurrent displacement of a pre-existing productive system. Small and medium-sized enterprises are pushed into bankruptcy or obliged to produce for a global distributor, state enterprises are privatised or closed down, independent agricultural producers are impoverished.” (p.16)</p>
<p>If people are inclined to think farmers would be better off as foreign firms enter the supply chain, we need only&#160; <a href="" type="internal">look at the plight</a>&#160;of farmers in India who were tied into contracts with Pepsico. Farmers were pushed into debt, reliance on one company and were paid a pittance</p>
<p>India is looking to US corporations to ‘develop’ its food and agriculture sector with foreign investment in retail, cold storage and various other infrastructure. Looking at what this could mean for India, food policy analyst Devinder Sharma&#160; <a href="" type="internal">describes</a>&#160;how the industrialised US system of food and agriculture relies on massive taxpayer subsidies and has destroyed many farmers’ livelihoods.</p>
<p>The fact that US agriculture now employs a tiny fraction of the population serves as a stark reminder for what is in store for Indian farmers.&#160;Sharma notes that agribusiness companies (whose business model in the US is based on&#160; <a href="" type="internal">overproduction and taxpayer subsidies</a>) rake in huge profits, while depressed farmer incomes, poverty and higher retail prices become the norm.</p>
<p>The long-term plan is for an overwhelmingly urbanised India with a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and Wal-Mart-type supermarkets that offer a largely monoculture diet of highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food based on crops soaked with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security (Bhaskar Save’s&#160; <a href="" type="internal">analysis</a>&#160;of what the Green Revolution did for India makes for interesting reading).</p>
<p>The&#160; <a href="http://www.theecologist.org/essays/2987346/resisting_the_corporate_stranglehold_on_food_and_farming_is_agroecology_enough.html" type="external">alternative</a>&#160;would be to protect indigenous agriculture from rigged global trade and trade deals and&#160; <a href="" type="internal">corrupt markets</a>&#160;and to implement a shift to sustainable, localised agriculture which grows a diverse range of crops and offers a healthy diet to the public (alongside appropriate price and/or income&#160; <a href="" type="internal">support</a>&#160;and&#160; <a href="http://indiatogether.org/mandi-op-ed" type="external">infrastructure</a>).</p>
<p>Instead, we see the push for bogus ‘solutions’ like GMOs and an adherence to&#160;neoliberal ideology&#160;that ultimately privileges profit and control of the food supply by powerful private interests, which have no concern whatsoever for the health of the public: for example, see&#160; <a href="http://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/a_spoonful_of_sugar_final.pdf" type="external">this new report</a>&#160;on how the food lobby destroys heath in the EU&#160;and&#160; <a href="" type="internal">this</a>&#160;on how taxes in the US ultimately promote obesity and disease by supporting the health damaging practices of the food industry.</p>
<p>Is this what Indians want to see happen in India to their food and health?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the process is already well on track as ‘Western diseases’ take hold in the country’s urban centres (see ‘ <a href="" type="internal">India: Obesity, Malnutrition and the Globalisation of Bad Food</a>’).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkptrPSckks" type="external">Devinder Sharma</a>&#160;has highlighted where Indian policy makers’ priorities lie:</p>
<p>“Agriculture has been systematically killed over the last few decades… 60 percent of the population lives in the villages or in the rural areas and is involved in agriculture, and less than two percent of the annual budget goes to agriculture… When you are not investing in agriculture… You are not wanting it to perform…”</p>
<p>Support given to agriculture is portrayed as a drain on the economy and is reduced and farmers suffer yet it still manages to deliver bumper harvests year after year. On the other hand, corporate-industrial India has failed to deliver in terms of boosting exports or creating jobs, despite the hand outs and tax exemptions given to it [see&#160; <a href="http://indiatogether.org/articles/sez-failure-implications-for-land-acquisition-and-industry-growth-economy" type="external">this</a>&#160;and&#160; <a href="http://www.im4change.org.previewdns.com/latest-news-updates/where-are-the-jobs-devinder-sharma-4674728.html" type="external">this</a>].</p>
<p>The number of jobs created in India between 2005 and 2010 was 2.7 million (the years of high GDP growth). According to&#160; <a href="" type="internal">International Business Times</a>, 15 million enter the workforce every year. And data released by the Labour Bureau shows that in 2015,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">jobless ‘growth’</a>&#160;had finally arrived in India.</p>
<p>So where are the jobs going to come from to cater for hundreds of millions of agricultural workers who are to be displaced from the land or those whose livelihoods will be destroyed as transnational corporations move in and seek to capitalise small-scale village-level industries that currently employ tens of millions?</p>
<p>Monsanto in India</p>
<p>Thanks to its political influence, Monsanto already dominates the cotton industry in&#160;India with its GMOs. It is increasingly shaping agri-policy and the knowledge paradigm by funding agricultural research in public universities and institutes. Its practices and colonisation of institutions have led to it being called the ‘ <a href="" type="internal">contemporary East India Company</a>‘, and regulatory bodies are now severely&#160; <a href="" type="internal">compromised and riddled with conflicts of interest</a>&#160;where decision-making over GMOs are concerned.</p>
<p>However, Monsanto’s enterprise in India is corrupt.&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Vandana Shiva</a>&#160;has described how on a global level the company has succeeded in imposing the false idea of ‘manufacturing’ and ‘inventing’ seeds in order to slap patents on them (in India’s case, ‘royalties’).&#160;Monsanto’s collection of royalties as ‘trait value’ or as a ‘fee for technology traits’ is an intellectual property rights category that does not exist in any legal framework. It was concocted by Monsanto lawyers to work outside of the laws of the land and is thus illegal. Shiva also notes that the introduction of GMOs without approvals, and thus Monsanto’s original entry into India, was a violation and subversion of India’s biosafety regulations.</p>
<p>In India, the Biological Diversity Act 2002 grants explicit rights to farmers over ownership of plant varieties. Even if a breeder holds a right (patent) to a variety, they cannot prevent the farmer from producing or saving the seed. It acknowledges that a breeder does not create a seed from thin air. Seeds are not ‘invented’ but have been developed by farmers over many generations. However, this does not fit the corporate business model of companies like Monsanto, where farmers are to be consumers who purchase corporate owned and controlled products (seeds and chemicals).</p>
<p>While Monsanto works on or around that particular obstacle, it is also hard at work with its propaganda campaign to convince us all that GM food is necessary to feed the world’s burgeoning population. Its claims are always hidden behind a flimsy and cynical veil of humanitarian intent (helping the poor and hungry), which is&#160; <a href="http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2858527/the_devil_in_disguise_unmasking_the_humanitarian_gmo_narrative.html" type="external">easily torn away</a>&#160;to expose the self-interest that lies beneath. The world (including India) does not need GM to feed itself. GM and these humanitarian sentiments are little more than a Trojan horse aimed at securing greater control of food and agriculture.</p>
<p>Various high-level official reports (listed in&#160; <a href="http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2987143/beware_the_gmo_trojan_horse_indian_food_and_farming_are_under_attack.html" type="external">this</a>&#160;piece) in India have advised against adopting GM food crops, and, in addition to numerous other bodies and sources (many of which are documented&#160; <a href="" type="internal">here</a>), the&#160; <a href="" type="internal">International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge and Science for Development Report&#160;</a>stated that smallholder, traditional farming (not GMOs) can deliver food security in low-income countries through sustainable agri-ecological systems. The roots of hunger and food poverty are political are related to an increasingly globalised and&#160; <a href="http://www.worldhunger.org/opinions/bello_afag/" type="external">exploitative system</a>&#160;of industrialised agriculture and food production. The companies behind the GM project are part of that system: they&#160; <a href="" type="internal">fuel it and profit from it</a>. Patents, royalties and GMOs ensure more profit and greater control over food and agriculture.</p>
<p>Agriculture and the projection of US power</p>
<p>In his book ‘ <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/seeds-of-destruction-the-hidden-agenda-of-genetic-manipulation-2/9379" type="external">Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation</a>‘, William F Engdahl describes how the oil-rich Rockefeller family&#160;set out to control and profit&#160;from global agriculture via the Green Revolution. Along with other players (eg Cargill), Rockefeller interests set out to destroy family farms in the US and the indigenous agriculture and food security of other countries. This hegemonic strategy was actively supported by their proxies in the US government&#160;and facilitated globally through ‘free’ trade agreements, the IMF, World Bank and WTO.</p>
<p>GMOs represent the ultimate stranglehold of US interests over global food via ‘terminator’ seed technology, seed patenting and intellectual property rights.</p>
<p>The&#160; <a href="" type="internal">political backing</a>&#160;for GMOs by the US State Department, the strategic position of the US GM biotech sector in international trade agreements (from TTIP to the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture) and at the WTO and the push to get GMOs into&#160;India does not bode well.</p>
<p>Given the history of the US in using agriculture as a tool to leverage global influence, in India on 15 August, we would do well to remember that patriotic sentiments have always been used by the powerful to help disguise the true nature of power.</p> | Monsanto in India: Meet the New Boss – Same as the Old Boss? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2016/08/04/monsanto-in-india-meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss/ | 2016-08-04 | 4 |
<p>COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho city has agreed to pay $80,000 after a police officer shot and killed a dog inside a parked van.</p>
<p>The Coeur d’Alene City Council on Tuesday approved the settlement with the dog’s owner, Craig Jones. Jones initially sought $350,000 in a claim filed in October.</p>
<p>“This was a regrettable event that the city has taken complete responsibility for,” Mayor Steve Widmyer said in a statement. “I want to again extend our apologies to Mr. Jones.”</p>
<p>An officer responding to a report of a suspicious van on July 9 shot through a partially opened window and killed the 2-year-old black Labrador mix named Arfee after police said the dog lunged at the officer. Jones was in a nearby coffee shop. Police in a statement later that day described the dog as a “vicious pit bull.”</p>
<p>Jones’ attorney, Adam Karp, said the settlement is the largest he’s aware of in the Pacific Northwest involving the wrongful killing of a dog by police. He said the city’s decision to settle indicated a realization by officials they faced a “sound defeat” if the case went to trial.</p>
<p>Jones was seeking damages that accounted for Arfee as well as emotional distress. At the time of the filing, Karp also said the amount included the “psychic totaling” of the vehicle as Jones would be reminded of what happened every time he got into the van.</p>
<p>A “Use of Deadly Force Review Board” and an external review committee found that Officer David Kelley violated police policy when he opened fire.</p>
<p>“The potential for injury to citizens, including a potential suspect in the vehicle, does not appear to have been factored in to the decision prior to using deadly force,” officials concluded.</p>
<p>Kelly, who has 17 years of law enforcement experience, in October had his pay reduced by $3.15 to $31.02 per hour. Police Chief Lee White has previously said that he is prohibited from talking about employee discipline.</p>
<p>COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho city has agreed to pay $80,000 after a police officer shot and killed a dog inside a parked van.</p>
<p>The Coeur d’Alene City Council on Tuesday approved the settlement with the dog’s owner, Craig Jones. Jones initially sought $350,000 in a claim filed in October.</p>
<p>“This was a regrettable event that the city has taken complete responsibility for,” Mayor Steve Widmyer said in a statement. “I want to again extend our apologies to Mr. Jones.”</p>
<p>An officer responding to a report of a suspicious van on July 9 shot through a partially opened window and killed the 2-year-old black Labrador mix named Arfee after police said the dog lunged at the officer. Jones was in a nearby coffee shop. Police in a statement later that day described the dog as a “vicious pit bull.”</p>
<p>Jones’ attorney, Adam Karp, said the settlement is the largest he’s aware of in the Pacific Northwest involving the wrongful killing of a dog by police. He said the city’s decision to settle indicated a realization by officials they faced a “sound defeat” if the case went to trial.</p>
<p>Jones was seeking damages that accounted for Arfee as well as emotional distress. At the time of the filing, Karp also said the amount included the “psychic totaling” of the vehicle as Jones would be reminded of what happened every time he got into the van.</p>
<p>A “Use of Deadly Force Review Board” and an external review committee found that Officer David Kelley violated police policy when he opened fire.</p>
<p>“The potential for injury to citizens, including a potential suspect in the vehicle, does not appear to have been factored in to the decision prior to using deadly force,” officials concluded.</p>
<p>Kelly, who has 17 years of law enforcement experience, in October had his pay reduced by $3.15 to $31.02 per hour. Police Chief Lee White has previously said that he is prohibited from talking about employee discipline.</p> | Idaho city agrees to pay $80,000 after officer kills dog | false | https://apnews.com/4174d2f27f1243cca7108cc85916da8b | 2015-03-18 | 2 |
<p>MANCHESTER, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut police say a worker who was shot inside a restaurant has died and they're still looking for two suspects in connection with the incident.</p>
<p>Manchester Police said Monday that 36-year-old Norris Jackson, of East Hartford, Connecticut, was pronounced dead at Hartford Hospital.</p>
<p>They say officers are looking for 28-year-old James Goolsby and 23-year-old Leanne Robitaille in connection with the shooting at the Bonchon Chicken restaurant on Saturday in Manchester. Both are from Manchester.</p>
<p>Police say the motive for the shooting wasn't immediately clear, but it appeared the suspects knew the victim.</p>
<p>Authorities say Goolsby and Robitaille should be considered dangerous. Anyone with information is urged to call Manchester Police.</p>
<p>An autopsy will be conducted on Jackson on Tuesday.</p>
<p>MANCHESTER, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut police say a worker who was shot inside a restaurant has died and they're still looking for two suspects in connection with the incident.</p>
<p>Manchester Police said Monday that 36-year-old Norris Jackson, of East Hartford, Connecticut, was pronounced dead at Hartford Hospital.</p>
<p>They say officers are looking for 28-year-old James Goolsby and 23-year-old Leanne Robitaille in connection with the shooting at the Bonchon Chicken restaurant on Saturday in Manchester. Both are from Manchester.</p>
<p>Police say the motive for the shooting wasn't immediately clear, but it appeared the suspects knew the victim.</p>
<p>Authorities say Goolsby and Robitaille should be considered dangerous. Anyone with information is urged to call Manchester Police.</p>
<p>An autopsy will be conducted on Jackson on Tuesday.</p> | Police: Restaurant employee shot in Connecticut has died | false | https://apnews.com/amp/8b6bab660187469d98400e5b9101d0a0 | 2018-01-01 | 2 |
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Action star Chuck Norris is fighting a huge battle away from the big screen. Along with his wife Gena, Norris is taking on medical device manufacturers and San Francisco-based McKesson <a href="http://Corp.in" type="external">Corp.in</a> a lawsuit for alleging using a chemical in the MRI imaging scans of Gena that poisoned her.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Gena says she "has been to hell and back" over the past five years after being injected with a medical dye during her series of MRI scans.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>The couple claimed that gadolinium that doctors injected into Gena intended to improve the clarity of her MRIs instead left her weak and tired. She also had to grapple with debilitating bouts of pain and a burning sensation. The action superstar's wife said it has been a rough five years for her.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>The suit the couple filed in San Francisco Superior Court also claimed that the reaction of Gena's body to the injection has dramatically changed the quality of her life.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Norris' better half said she only went for a routine MRI to check for a positive rheumatoid factor and at that she was given three MRIs in eight days. Gena said she even asked the medical staff if the use of Gadolinium was safe and "they said yes."</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>However, the effects on Gena came immediately. After the third scan, she remarkably noticed that "something was wrong." She added: "It started out with this intense burning feeling inside my body that I can't describe like someone has poured acid on your tissues."</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>The pain just got worse after that. The action hero in the movies had to rush his wife to the hospital the morning after the MRI experience. The couple ended up making five ER trips over the next few weeks and later on, had to also deal with hospitalizations.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Gena says prior to that experience she was definitely a healthy woman. She said: "I'm the lady of the Total Gym infomercials next to him. I've been fit all my life. So to have anything happen to me like this, it was a nightmare."</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Each new visit the burning was spreading for Gena.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>She warned, though, that on and off camera, they are ready to fight it out. Gena boldly declared: "They poisoned the wrong lady, when they poisoned me."</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>The couple's lawsuit is seeking more than $10 million in damages, as husband and wife had to spend millions of dollars on treatment for Gena's case.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Gadolinium is a metal found in so-called contrast agents used in many MRIs. There are studies that show it is retained by organs such as the brain, bones and skin.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Source:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/11/02/chuck-norris-claims-mri-chemical-poisoned-wife/" type="external">sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/11/02/chuck-norris-claims-mri-chemical-poisoned-wife</a></p> | Chuck Norris Says MRI Chemical Poisoned His Wife, Sues for $10 Million | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/10963-Chuck-Norris-Says-MRI-Chemical-Poisoned-His-Wife-Sues-for-10-Million | 2017-11-02 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>LOS ANGELES — Cynthia Cooper-Dyke has resigned after four years coaching basketball at her alma mater Southern California.</p>
<p>She had a 70-56 record, including 14-16 this season. Cooper-Dyke left on Friday, a day after the Trojans lost to California 71-58 in the first round of the Pac-12 Tournament in Seattle. They were 5-13 in league play, finishing tied for ninth.</p>
<p>Cooper-Dyke says in a statement that “what is best right now is that I step aside.” She gave no other explanation.</p>
<p>USC athletic director Lynn Swann also didn’t elaborate, saying only that Cooper-Dyke “is a great Trojan.”</p>
<p>Hired in 2014, Cooper-Dyke guided the Trojans to the Pac-12 Tournament title and an NCAA Tournament berth while going 22-13. Her team was 15-15 in 2015 and 19-13 last season.</p>
<p>As a player, she helped the Trojans win two NCAA championships. She went on to win an Olympic gold medal and four WNBA titles with the Houston Comets.</p>
<p>Cooper-Dyke previously coached the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and had college stints at Prairie View A&amp;M, North Carolina-Wilmington and Texas Southern.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Cynthia Cooper-Dyke resigns as USC women’s basketball coach | false | https://abqjournal.com/961725/cynthia-cooper-dyke-resigns-as-usc-womens-basketball-coach.html | 2017-03-03 | 2 |
<p>(Reuters) - Media mogul Rupert Murdoch on Monday called on Facebook to pay “trusted” news publishers a carriage fee, similar to the model used by cable companies, amid efforts by the social media company to fight misinformation on its platform.</p> FILE PHOTO: Balloons are seen in front of a logo at Facebook's headquarters in London, Britain, December 4, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo FILE PHOTO: Rupert Murdoch reacts during a panel discussion at the B20 meeting of company CEOs in Sydney, July 17, 2014. REUTERS/Jason Reed//File Photo
<p>“Facebook and Google have popularized scurrilous news sources through algorithms that are profitable for these platforms but inherently unreliable,” Murdoch, who controls the Wall Street Journal as executive chairman of News Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NWSA.O" type="external">NWSA.O</a>), said in a statement.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NWSA.O" type="external">News Corp</a> 15.7 NWSA.O Nasdaq +0.27 (+1.75%) NWSA.O FB.O
<p>Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday his company would fight misinformation and sensationalism on its platform by using member surveys to identify “trustworthy” outlets.</p>
<p>“There has been much discussion about subscription models but I have yet to see a proposal that truly recognizes the investment in and the social value of professional journalism,” Murdoch said.</p>
<p>The quality of news on Facebook has been called into question after alleged Russian operatives and spammers spread false reports on the site, including during the 2016 U.S. election campaign.</p>
<p>Facebook and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.</p>
<p>Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>KUALA LUMPUR/LONDON (Reuters) - Malaysia’s central bank said on Thursday it was the victim of a cyber attack in which hackers sought to steal money using fraudulent wire transfers, the latest in a series of electronic heists at financial institutions around the world.</p> FILE PHOTO: A general view of the headquarters of Malaysia's central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur January 29, 2013. REUTERS/Bazuki Muhammad/File Photo
<p>While Bank Negara Malaysia said no funds were lost in the incident, which it identified on Tuesday and involved falsified wire-transfer requests over the SWIFT bank messaging network. It is the second known hack of a central bank after the 2016 theft of $81 million from Bangladesh Bank.</p>
<p>The Bangladesh heist, which also involved fraudulent SWIFT transfer requests, led financial institutions around the globe to bolster security. Authorities have yet to capture the masterminds behind that attack.</p>
<p>The renewed targeting of a central bank is likely to prompt financial institutions around the globe to review cyber defenses.</p>
<p>“You thwarted an attack but you didn’t actually catch the hackers,” said Tom Kellermann, a former member of the World Bank security team. “That adversary is still out there attempting to exploit the system.”</p>
<p>Bank Negara did not say who was behind the hack or how they accessed its SWIFT servers. The central bank, which supervises 45 commercial banks in Malaysia, said there was no disruption to other payment and settlement systems the central bank operates because of the cyber attack.</p>
<p>It did not respond to requests for more details on the falsified messages and how other banks were involved. It did say it had taken additional safeguards to protect stakeholders and was investigating the attack with help from local and international law enforcement agencies.</p>
<p>“All unauthorized transactions were stopped through prompt action in strong collaboration with SWIFT, other central banks and financial institutions,” it said in a statement disclosing the hack.</p>
<p>Malaysian police and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is conducting a probe into the Bangladesh Bank heist, could not immediately be reached for comment.</p>
<p>SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, declined comment on the incident, saying it does not comment on individual entities.</p>
<p>“We have no indication that our network and core messaging services have been compromised,” it said in an e-mailed statement.</p>
<p>It was unclear whether funds were paid out but intercepted at another bank. Previous thefts have involved stolen money being transferred to a number of banks before arriving at its final end destination.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=2845.TW" type="external">Far Eastern International Bank</a> 9.78 2845.TW Taiwan Stock Exchange +0.00 (+0.00%) 2845.TW STILL VULNERABLE
<p>Abu Hena Mohd. Razee Hassan, deputy governor of Bangladesh Bank, said the latest attack showed that the SWIFT platform remained vulnerable.</p>
<p>“After the attack on our central bank, SWIFT took several measures to protect the system globally but yet this is happening, meaning criminals have more ability and more capable weapons,” Razee Hassan told Reuters in Dhaka. “So this is the time to further improve the financial transfer system globally.”</p>
<p>In February, the Russian central bank said unknown hackers stole 339.5 million rubles ($6 million) from a Russian bank last year in an attack using the SWIFT system.</p>
<p>SWIFT has said in the past its central network has never been hacked, but terminals within some banks used to access the network have been compromised in the past couple of years.</p>
<p>Brussels-based SWIFT said late last year digital heists were becoming increasingly prominent as hackers use more sophisticated tools and techniques to launch new attacks.</p>
<p>SWIFT has declined to disclose the number of attacks or comment on the handful of cases that have become public, including attacks on Taiwan’s Far Eastern International Bank ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=2845.TW" type="external">2845.TW</a>) and Nepal’s NIC Asia Bank.</p>
<p>Reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi in Kuala Lumpur and Tom Bergin in London; Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in Dhaka and Jim Finkle in Toronto; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Atlanta is still struggling with its ability to collect online payments of bills and fees, officials said on Monday, four days after a ransomware attack snarled the computer system of Georgia’s capital city.</p>
<p>Hackers caused outages of services offered through the city’s website and broader computer system while demanding a ransom of $51,000 paid in bitcoin to unlock the system.</p>
<p>“This is much bigger than a ransomware attack, this really is an attack on our government,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told a news conference. “We are dealing with a (cyber) hostage situation.”</p>
<p>She did not say whether Atlanta would pay the ransom. Atlanta officials said they have determined the hackers’ identity but declined to elaborate. City representatives were not immediately available for further comment.</p>
<p>Bottoms said only that the hackers entered the city’s digital system remotely as opposed having had internal access.</p>
<p>Ransomware is a type of malware that infects computers or computer networks and then freezes them, with the attackers demanding a ransom in order to restore services. The initial assault often comes via a phishing link that someone within the network opens on their email.</p>
<p>As the disruption in Atlanta persists, the city is losing out financially, Bottoms told an earlier news conference on Friday. It was unclear how much it stands to lose or when the city expects to get its computer system fully operational again.</p>
<p>Reporting by Laila Kearney in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>TEMPE, Ariz. (Reuters) - The family of a woman killed by an Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] self-driving vehicle in Arizona has reached a settlement with the ride services company, ending a potential legal battle over the first fatality caused by an autonomous vehicle.</p>
<p>Cristina Perez Hesano, attorney with the firm of Bellah Perez in Glendale, Arizona, said “the matter has been resolved” between Uber and the daughter and husband of Elaine Herzberg, 49, who died after being hit by an Uber self-driving SUV in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe earlier this month.</p>
<p>The terms of the settlement were not given. The law firm representing Herzberg’s daughter and husband, whose names were not disclosed, said they would have no further comment on the matter as they considered it resolved.</p>
<p>An Uber spokeswoman declined to comment.</p> Slideshow (3 Images)
<p>The fallout from the accident could stall the development and testing of self-driving vehicles, designed to eventually perform far better than human drivers and to sharply reduce the number of motor vehicle fatalities that occur each year.</p>
<p>Uber has suspended its testing in the wake of the incident. Toyota Motor Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=7203.T" type="external">7203.T</a>) and chipmaker Nvidia Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NVDA.O" type="external">NVDA.O</a>) have also suspended self-driving car testing on public roads, as they and other companies await the results of an investigation into the Tempe incident, believed to be the first death of a pedestrian struck by a self-driving vehicle.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=7203.T" type="external">Toyota Motor Corp</a> 6842.0 7203.T Tokyo Stock Exchange -20.00 (-0.29%) 7203.T NVDA.O
<p>Uber does not use the self-driving platform architecture of Nvidia, the chipmaker’s Chief Executive Jensen Huang said on Wednesday.</p>
<p>The March 18 fatality near downtown Tempe also presents an unprecedented liability challenge because self-driving vehicles, which are still in the development stage, involve a complex system of hardware and software often made by outside suppliers.</p>
<p>Herzberg was walking her bicycle outside the crosswalk on a four-lane road when she was struck. Video footage from a dash-mounted camera inside the vehicle, released by Tempe police, showed the SUV traveling along a dark street when the headlights suddenly illuminated Herzberg in front of the SUV.</p>
<p>Other footage showed that in the seconds before the accident, the human driver who was behind the wheel was mostly looking down and not at the road.</p>
<p>Writing by Peter Henderson; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in New York; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Bernadette Baum</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - HP Inc said on Wednesday that Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Flaxman, 61, has died.</p> The Hewlett-Packard (HP) logo is seen as part of a display at the Microsoft Ignite technology conference in Chicago, Illinois, May 4, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo
<p>Flaxman served at HP for more than 36 years.</p>
<p>The company said Flaxman had passed away "peacefully with his family by his side early this morning." He is survived by his wife and three children. <a href="https://bit.ly/2E2Fmra" type="external">bit.ly/2E2Fmra</a></p>
<p>HP said it named Jos Brenkel as the interim COO.</p>
<p>Brenkel most recently served as head of global sales strategy and operations and has been with the company for more than 30 years.</p>
<p>Flaxman joined HP in 1981, working in various roles and serving as the chief financial officer for Hewlett-Packard Co’s printing and personal group before becoming COO in 2015.</p>
<p>Reporting by Manas Mishra; Additional reporting by Philip George in Bengaluru</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | Facebook should pay 'trusted' news publishers carriage fee: Murdoch Malaysian central bank says foiled attempted cyber-heist Atlanta still grappling with widespread computer hack: officials Uber reaches settlement with family of autonomous vehicle victim HP Chief Operating Officer Jon Flaxman dies | false | https://reuters.com/article/facebook-media-murdoch/update-1-facebook-should-pay-trusted-news-publishers-carriage-fee-murdoch-idUSL4N1PH4Y7 | 2018-01-22 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>BOSTON — No. 1 if by land, No. 2 if by sea?</p>
<p>Archaeologists are excavating what they believe was the site of an outhouse next door to Paul Revere’s home — and the privy, as the colonists politely called their potties, could be flush with artifacts.</p>
<p>People typically dumped trash and household goods in their outhouses. Volunteers with the City of Boston Archaeological Program already have pulled fragments of pottery, bottles and a tobacco pipe from the bricked yard of the Pierce-Hichborn House in the heart of Boston’s North End.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>So far, there’s been no sign of mummified human excrement. That would be the telltale evidence of an outhouse at the home once owned by a cousin of Revere, Boston city archaeologist Joe Bagley told The Associated Press.</p>
<p>“Paul Revere might well have come over here for dinner and used the bathroom,” Bagley said. “He had 12 kids in his own little house next door. It’s easy to imagine they didn’t stay cramped up in there all the time.”</p>
<p>On Friday, organizers said on Instagram that they were surprised to discover the outdoor toilet is only three feet deep — half what they expected — but they planned to punch through a concrete bottom apparently added around 1850 to see what might lurk beneath.</p>
<p>The house — one of the earliest remaining brick structures in Boston — was built around 1711 next to the Paul Revere House, one of the city’s most prominent historic sites and a huge tourist draw. Archaeologists timed their dig to coincide with drainage improvements being made to the property.</p>
<p>Colonial-era outhouses tend to yield surprises, said Nina Zannieri, executive director of the Paul Revere Memorial Association that owns and operates the homes.</p>
<p>“They’ve excavated other privies and they were full of stuff,” she said. “It’s always a treasure trove. For us, it’s an opportunity to get at a source of information that’s literally buried underground.”</p>
<p>Any fossilized unmentionables will be analyzed for seeds or the remains of parasites — clues that could tell scholars more about the colonists’ diet.</p>
<p>And bones left over from a 1700s supper could speak to the occupants’ financial health, Bagley said. “We’ll learn what they were eating, how much money they had, whether they bought good or cheap cuts of meat,” he said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Moses Pierce, a glass worker, was the original owner of the house. It was later bought by Nathaniel Hichborn, a boat builder and a cousin of Paul Revere, famed for his midnight ride on April 18, 1775, warning that the British were coming.</p>
<p>Revere’s backup plan — preparations to light either one or two lanterns as signals from the steeple of Boston’s Old North Church — is immortalized in a line in “Paul Revere’s Ride,” a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem: “One if by land, and two if by sea …”</p>
<p>Did one of America’s most celebrated patriots use the outhouse? The experts concede they may never know for certain.</p>
<p>“If it happened,” Zannieri said, “we hope he left a marker for us.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Bill Kole on Twitter at https://twitter.com/billkole . His work can be found at https://apnews.com/search/William%20J.%20Kole .</p> | This old outhouse: Privy tied to Paul Revere is excavated | false | https://abqjournal.com/1070707/no-2-if-by-sea-outhouse-tied-to-paul-revere-is-excavated.html | 2017-09-29 | 2 |
<p>Shares of Cisco Systems Inc. were up less than 1% Monday morning after the company said it plans to acquire Springpath Inc., a hyperconvergence startup, for $320 million in cash and equity awards. Hyperconvergence has been heating up in the tech space, as the software combines storage and computing functionality in a hybrid-cloud environment. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. made a move into the space this year, with a$650 million cash acquisition of Simplivity. Cisco said it has been working with Springpath since the beginning of 2016, when they worked to launch HyperFlex, Cisco's own hyperconvergence system. Cisco's acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of Cisco's 2018 fiscal year, which runs until Oct. 28. Shares of Cisco have lost 4.3% in the past month, while the S&amp;P 500 has lost 2%.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Cisco Plans To Acquire Hyperconvergence Startup For $320 Million | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/21/cisco-plans-to-acquire-hyperconvergence-startup-for-320-million.html | 2017-08-22 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. — Credit union warns about scam calls</p>
<p>The State Employees Credit Union has a message for any members who received an automated phone call seeking information about their credit cards: Hang up.</p>
<p>Dwayne Herrera, executive vice president of the credit union, said Thursday that members began getting the fraudulent auto-dialed calls last week. They were told their credit card has been canceled and instructed to provide their number to activate it. After being contacted by nearly a dozen members – including two who provided the information – the credit union alerted members to the scam through email, social media and its website.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We don’t reach out to members in that manner,” Herrera told the Journal. “We would never be asking for that kind of information.”</p>
<p>When a card is compromised, he said, the credit union shuts down the card, sends out a letter and issues a new card with a brand-new number. If they receive such a call, members are urged to contact the credit</p>
<p>union’s call center at 505-983-7328 or 1-800-983-7328.</p>
<p>The credit union, which has roughly 35,000 members, is based in Santa Fe and has branch offices in Albuquerque, Belen, Las Vegas, Los Lunas and Rio Rancho.</p>
<p />
<p>Mora County retains Law Center</p>
<p>The Mora County Commissioners, who became the first in the nation to adopt an ordinance banning oil and gas extraction within the county, have retained the New Mexico Environmental Law Center to represent them if any corporation or individual challenges the ordinance.</p>
<p>NMELC joins forces with five other law firms from Ohio, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Oregon, all of whom have members who have signed on to representing Mora County.</p>
<p />
<p>Dog Days concert to benefit animals</p>
<p>The Dog Days of Summer concert, which will benefit stray or abused animals at Stray Hearts in Taos, is scheduled 5-10 p.m. Aug. 10 at the KTAOS Solar Center, 9 N.M. 150 in Taos.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Live music will be performed by Fear No Art, Bone Orchard and, headlining from Austin, Alpha Rev.</p>
<p>“The shelter depends heavily on community support in order for it to operate, as the town and county only pay a fraction of operating expenses,” said “Mattress” Mary Domito, owner of Taos Lifestyle Furnishings and organizer of the benefit concert. “This year’s goal for Dog Days is to raise $25,000, which will pay for Stray Hearts’ new part time veterinarian.”</p>
<p>The evening includes a silent auction; raffle tickets with a chance to win a signed guitar and a mattress set; and an all-you-can-eat barbecue for $10 per person.</p>
<p>Tickets to the concert are $18 in advance; $22 the day of the show. They are available online at ktao.com or in person at Taos Lifestyle Furnishings, 710 Paseo del Pueblo Sur, and at KTAOS Solar Center.</p>
<p />
<p>Abused reptile sent to reserve</p>
<p>An alligator-like scaly reptile found roaming a Santa Fe neighborhood has been sent to a reserve in southern Colorado.</p>
<p>The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that city workers captured the malnourished 2-foot-long caiman a week ago after it was cornered by a dog.</p>
<p>Because its snout had started to grow around tape attached to its mouth, it appeared that it had been loose for some time.</p>
<p>The Sante Fe Animal Shelter and Humane Society sent the caiman to Colorado Gators Reptile Park in Mosca, Colo.</p>
<p>A New Mexico Department of Game and Fish official says it’s generally illegal to possess caimans and alligators in New Mexico.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for Santa Fe police says the owner could be charged with animal cruelty if identified.</p>
<p />
<p>Trek for Tassels 5K Run Saturday</p>
<p>The Municipal Recreation Complex will host the first annual Trek for Tassels 5K Run at 9 a.m. on Saturday.</p>
<p>All proceeds raised from the run will provide a scholarship to a Santa Fe high school senior who is interested in pursuing a career in health care.</p>
<p>The race is open to both adults and young people.</p>
<p>To register, contact Kara at 505-231-5374 or Nicolette at 505-670-3306. The registration fee is $10 per runner before race day and $15 on race day. For more information, visit <a href="http://www.facebook.com" type="external">www.facebook.com</a>/TrekForTassels.</p>
<p />
<p>Fire station gets solar system</p>
<p>Santa Fe County recently installed a 6.1-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system on the roof of the Tesuque Fire Station, large enough to supply all of its electric needs.</p>
<p>The $18,000 system is expected to generate electricity and eliminate such utility bills for the station over the next 25 years. The solar project was initiated by Commissioner Daniel Mayfield.</p>
<p>The project was a cooperative venture between Santa Fe County and New Energy Economy, a non-profit organization focused on clean energy. Funding came from Commission District 1 capital funds, Tesuque Volunteer Fire District state grant funds, and New Energy Economy.</p>
<p />
<p>New Foothill Trails Map available</p>
<p>A new Foothill Trails Map has been released by the City of Santa Fe.</p>
<p>The map includes the Dale Ball trails and its connecting trails, the La Tierra Trails, and the Arroyo Hondo Trails, covering over 50 miles of trails just minutes from downtown Santa Fe. The map is available at the city’s webpage, <a href="http://www.santafenm.gov" type="external">www.santafenm.gov</a>, under Hiking and Biking Trails.</p>
<p>Complimentary paper copies are available at the Santa Fe Visitor’s Center, 201 W. Marcy St. and at many local businesses. Businesses and organizations who want multiple copies for free, on-site distribution should follow the ordering instructions on the city’s webpage.</p>
<p />
<p>Couse memorial planned for Aug. 3</p>
<p>On Saturday, Aug. 3, from 11 a.m.-1 p.m., the Couse family will hold a memorial gathering for Elizabeth Couse, who died in Tucson last February.</p>
<p>The gathering will be at Casa Benavides, 137 Kit Carson Road, in Taos. Afterward, friends and acquaintances are invited across the street to the home of Elizabeth’s grandfather, E.I. Couse, which is now part of The Couse-Sharp Historic Site. They will be able to view paintings Elizabeth created during her years in Taos and to stroll in her grandmother’s garden.</p>
<p>For additional information, contact Virginia Leavitt at 575-751-0369.</p>
<p />
<p>Kindred Spirits art show on Aug. 10</p>
<p>Kindred Spirits is holding its annual Benefit Art Show on Saturday, Aug. 10, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m.</p>
<p>It will include painting, photography, jewelry, sculpture, carvings, folk art, wearable art and much more, all donated by the artists, with proceeds paying for wellness care for the sanctuary’s senior animals.</p>
<p>Kindred Spirits is located 20 minutes south of Santa Fe on N.M. 14, a half-mile south of the Lone Butte General Store.</p>
<p /> | Around Northern New Mexico | false | https://abqjournal.com/225893/around-northern-new-mexico-441.html | 2013-07-26 | 2 |
<p>White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer just gave his first press briefing in roughly two weeks, and lasted barely a half hour before storming out.</p>
<p>The briefing began with Spicer giving an 11-minute monologue about President Trump's first overseas trip, which he framed as a resounding success despite German Chancellor Angela Merkel <a href="http://www.salon.com/2017/05/29/after-trumps-disastrous-vacation-angela-merkel-warns-the-world-has-no-leader/" type="external">declaring at its conclusion</a> that the European Union would have to depend on each other - rather than the United States - for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Spicer then took questions from reporters for roughly 20 minutes, before walking out after an exchange with various reporters about what constitutes "fake news," citing a tweet from a BBC reporter over the weekend that appeared to show Trump <a href="" type="internal">not wearing his translation earpiece</a> during Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni's speech.</p>
<p>One of the questions that Spicer repeatedly dodged was about the report alleging that Trump's son-in-law and top advisor, Jared Kushner, tried to set up a communications backchannel with Russia prior to Trump's inauguration as President. In the exchange, Spicer did not deny that Kushner attempted to set up the backchannel, but blasted the report as not credible due to an anonymous source being cited. This comes despite Trump, this morning, retweeting a Fox News report defending Kushner based on an anonymous source:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Following the testy exchange with reporters, Spicer stormed out of the briefing, prompting mockery from journalists and political observers on Twitter over his sudden exit despite roughly two weeks without any press briefings and a steady stream of news. Even Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs got in on the action, poking fun at Sean Spicer's summary of Trump's international trip by comparing it to vacation photos:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Jamie Green is a contributor to the Resistance Report covering the Trump administration, and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.</p> | Sean Spicer Abruptly Ends First Presser In Weeks And It Was An Absolute Dumpster Fire | true | http://resistancereport.com/politics/spicer-absolute-dumpster-fire/ | 2017-05-30 | 4 |
<p />
<p>We’ve been wondering: In our increasingly digital world, have thank-you notes—once a post- <a href="http://www.learnvest.com/2013/05/8-biggest-job-interview-mistakes/" type="external">interview Opens a New Window.</a> mainstay—gone the way of encyclopedias and the Yellow Pages?</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>On one hand, a handwritten note may signal to your interviewer that you’re serious about the position and went the extra mile with a personal touch.</p>
<p>But what if it arrives too late—or the hiring manager finds it outdated?</p>
<p>We asked five people with serious career chops—and discovered the answer isn’t so simple: While some professions have fully transitioned into the digital realm of emailed follow-ups, handwritten notes are still alive and well in others.</p>
<p>Curious which camp your industry falls into? Here’s what recruiting, etiquette and HR professionals had to say on the matter.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Kathy Harris: “The handwritten thank-you note has gone the way of the horse and carriage.”</p>
<p>Managing Director at Harris Allied, an executive search firm specializing in the technology industry</p>
<p>If you’re interviewing for a high-paced tech job, Harris warns against sending a “throwback” card. “I’ve been working in this industry for 16 years and haven’t seen a single handwritten note,” she says. “Tech people embrace email; it’s part of the protocol. If you send a card, you risk appearing irrelevant.”</p>
<p>Plus, the snail-like pace of mail could cost you the job: “The turnaround time is quick enough that by the time you write the card, drop it in the mailbox and it arrives a few days later, the manager has likely already made a hiring decision,” Harris says.</p>
<p>But even though you can toss the notepad, don’t underestimate the importance of following up. According to Harris, if a hiring decision comes down to two equal candidates, a strong thank-you email can be the tipping point. “A well-written and thoughtful email demonstrates your ability to follow through and pay attention, and reinforces your interest in the position,” Harris says.</p>
<p>RELATED: <a href="http://www.learnvest.com/2013/07/7-ways-to-keep-contacts-in-your-good-graces/" type="external">7 Ways to Keep Contacts in Your Good Graces Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>She suggests emailing everyone who was part of your interview process within one business day. (Gather business cards during the interview so you have their contact information.)&#160;And remember: “It shouldn’t be boiler plate,” Harris stresses. “It should sound like your genuine voice and reflect your personal experience.”</p>
<p>Dana Hagenbuch: “A handwritten card shows you’re a cultural fit for a nonprofit organization.”</p>
<p>Vice president of Commongood Careers, a nonprofit recruiting firm</p>
<p>In the nonprofit sector, thank-you cards are decidedly not on the endangered species list. “Ultimately, it’s more about the content than how it’s delivered, but handwritten notes do require extra effort, which is always valued,” Hagenbuch says.</p>
<p>When you’re applying for any job, it’s key to show not only that your skills are in line with the company’s needs, but also that your personality is a good match. Because nonprofits are often focused on helping others and being team-oriented, a card drives that point home: “It communicates that you care about relationships, about making someone feel their time was valued,” Hagenbuch says.</p>
<p>RELATED: <a href="http://www.learnvest.com/2013/08/5-ways-to-jump-start-your-job-hunt/" type="external">5 Ways to Jump-Start Your Job Hunt Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>As you craft your note, she suggests leading with a line that emphasizes how you enjoyed meeting everyone and learning what the team is all about (“team” is a powerful word in this sector), then delve into what interests you about the organization’s mission and why you want to work for them. (Your card should be about five sentences long—and only one of them should touch on your fit for the role.)</p>
<p>Presumably, your skills and experience should have come out through your interview, résumé and cover letter. “At this point, you don’t need to sell yourself anymore,” Hagenbuch says. “Your intention should be to stay top-of-mind with the hiring manager and leave a great impression.”</p>
<p>She also stresses the importance of writing a separate, personalized note to everyone you met during the interview process—though she says it’s fine to write a card to only the hiring manager and email the others.</p>
<p>Oh, and don’t worry about a card not arriving in time; according to Hagenbuch, it’s very rare that a nonprofit makes a quick hire.</p>
<p>Bonnie Zaben: “Your approach to the thank-you note should reflect the company you interviewed with.”</p>
<p>C.O.O. of AC Lion, a digital media recruiting firm</p>
<p>Although a handwritten card is far from expected in the digital media world, it can give a candidate an edge in certain situations: “Employers want to see that you’re going to be a good fit for the company, so you have to read the person,” Zaben says.</p>
<p>“For example, if you’re writing to someone from an older generation, I would send a card because it’s traditional. On the other hand, if you walk into the manager’s office and there’s not a piece of paper for miles around, you’d better stick to email,” she says.</p>
<p>If you’re going the card route, type out your message before putting it on paper so you can organize your thoughts and run it through the spell check. “Don’t cross words out, and if your handwriting is atrocious, ask someone else to write it for you,” she urges.</p>
<p>RELATED: <a href="http://www.learnvest.com/2012/04/11-things-hiring-managers-wont-tell-you/" type="external">11 Things Hiring Managers Won’t Tell You Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Whichever medium you choose, the meat of the message should be specific to the job, so follow up on something you discussed.</p>
<p>Some ideas: Elaborate on an interesting nugget from the interview (“The story you told me about how you started the company was impressive …”), circle back to a question that you didn’t adequately answer in the moment, or—for emails—include a link or attachment to a relevant project you worked on (“I was thinking about our conversation, and it occurred to me that it might be helpful for you to see how I approached something similar …”).</p>
<p>Again, customization is key: Hiring managers can smell a template a mile away. “I once had a pretty good interview with an applicant, but in her thank-you note, she mentioned the wrong company name,” remembers Zaben. “I laughed and didn’t take it any further.”</p>
<p>Barbara Pachter: “A thank-you note isn’t outmoded, but it may be too late.”</p>
<p>Etiquette expert and author of “ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Essentials-Business-Etiquette-Success/dp/0071811265" type="external">The Essentials of Business Etiquette Opens a New Window.</a>”</p>
<p>Pachter often tells this story: An HR director she knows interviewed four people for a position on a Tuesday. On Wednesday, she received thank-you emails from three of the applicants. On Friday, she made her decision—and didn’t even consider the candidate whom she hadn’t heard from, assuming that she wasn’t motivated enough for the job.</p>
<p>RELATED: <a href="http://www.learnvest.com/2014/03/job-hunt-habits/" type="external">5 No Good, Really Bad Job Hunt Habits Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Then on Monday morning, she received the fourth thank-you note in the mail—one business day too late. “We are an email society, and hiring managers expect a quick response,” Pachter says.</p>
<p>So does that mean we should do away with the handwritten card? Well, not necessarily. “If you’re sure that timing won’t be an issue, then a note will make you stand out,” Pachter says.</p>
<p>Pachter says this is especially true if you’re in a creative field.&#160;For industries like interior design, fashion or graphic design, a card can be a smart branding opportunity. (It’s a reflection of your sense of style, so use a nice pen and elegant stationery.)</p>
<p>And whether you’re writing a card or an email, Pachter suggests sending the note within 24 hours and including a proper salutation. “Address the person using ‘Dear,’ and close with ‘Best regards’ or ‘Sincerely,’” she says.</p>
<p>For industries like interior design, fashion or graphic design, a card can be a smart branding opportunity.</p>
<p>Jessica Miller-Merrell:“In the right setting, a thank-you card can make the right impression.”</p>
<p>HR professional and founder of <a href="http://www.blogging4jobs.com" type="external">Blogging4Jobs.com Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Miller-Merrell agrees that a handwritten note is no longer the norm (she received only about five of them over a two-and-a-half-year period in her last corporate HR role), yet she asserts that in certain circumstances, it can give you a leg up.</p>
<p>“These days, when everything is mass-produced, a one-of-a-kind card gets the hiring manager’s attention,” says Miller-Merrell.</p>
<p>But as we’ve learned, whether or not to send one depends on the field you’re in.</p>
<p>For science-type jobs (engineering, tech), Miller-Merrell says to go for the direct approach: email. “But if you work in a creative industry, it’s important to showcase your unique perception of the world. A card accomplishes that more effectively than email,” says Miller-Merrell.</p>
<p>She says a handwritten card can also tip the scale in your favor if you’re applying for a “warm, fuzzy job,” like teaching. For example, one of her acquaintances who landed a position at a university learned that she nudged out the other top candidate because the hiring manager was touched by her genuine thank-you note. In such a traditional, personal setting, it was a better fit than an email would have been.</p>
<p>RELATED: <a href="http://www.learnvest.com/2013/11/desperately-seeking-a-job-should-you-pull-a-crazy-stunt-to-get-hired/" type="external">Should You Pull a Crazy Stunt to Get Hired? Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>When making the card vs. email judgment call, Miller-Merrell suggests taking into account the lifestyle of your interviewer. “If he or she travels frequently, email may be a safer option,” explains Miller-Merrell. “And if the person has an assistant who opens their mail, a card might not get to them in a timely manner.”</p>
<p>But if you know there’s ample time before the hiring decision will be made, another option is to send both an email and a card.</p>
<p>“This dual-pronged approach has the advantage of keeping you at the top of the hiring manager’s mind,” explains Miller-Merrell. “Write a quick email after the interview, reinforcing your excitement about the position. A couple of days later, send a heartfelt card that gets into more specifics.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.learnvest.com/" type="external">LearnVest's Opens a New Window.</a> mission is to help people feel amazing about their money.</p> | The Handwritten Thank-You Note After an Interview: Necessary or Passé? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/06/06/handwritten-thank-note-after-interview-necessary-or-passe.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
<p />
<p>Anyone paying higher education expenses might want to study his or her tax return. The 1040 and 1040A contain a valuable lesson on how to write off up to $4,000 of college costs without having to itemize.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The tuition-and-fees deduction's immediate attraction is that it doesn't require you to itemize your expenses on Schedule A. It's one of the income adjustments, also commonly called above-the-line deductions, found directly on the first page of tax return <a href="http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/forms/tax-form-1040.aspx?pid=p:foxbz" type="external">Form 1040 Opens a New Window.</a> and <a href="http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/forms/tax-form-1040-a.aspx?pid=p:foxbz" type="external">Form 1040A Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>In addition to counting qualified education expenses paid for academic periods the previous tax year, you also can claim eligible expenses you paid last year to cover school sessions that begin during the first three months of this tax year. For example, if you paid $1,500 last December for course work that begins March 1, that prepayment can count in figuring your current deduction amount.</p>
<p>This tax break can be claimed on 2013 returns, but unless Congress renews it, it's no longer in effect for the 2014 tax year or beyond.</p>
<p>Applies only to specific expenses</p>
<p>The deduction, however, is not without limits.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Note the name. Only payments for tuition and fees count. No room, board or, in most cases, book costs are eligible.</p>
<p>Also, be sure your courses pass Internal Revenue Service inspection. In addition to being college-level, they must be for legitimate educational reasons. Sport, hobby or noncredit courses don't qualify unless the class is required as part of a degree program; for example, an archery class necessary to earn your bachelor's in physical education.</p>
<p>Did you use other tax-advantaged education funds to pay your schooling costs? Those distributions could reduce, or possibly eliminate, this tuition-and-fees tax deduction. If you used money from a state tuition plan, a Coverdell educational savings account or interest on savings bonds you cashed to pay for class, you have to subtract those amounts from your expenses to arrive at the allowable deductible amount.</p>
<p>Some filing-status issues need to be considered. Married couples, for example, must file a joint return to take this deduction.</p>
<p>If you're a college student who is claimed as a dependent on your parents' return, be careful when it comes to this tax break. You can't take the deduction yourself even if you paid your tuition with your own money. In this case, neither you nor your parents get the deduction. And even if your parents don't claim you as a dependent, if they can, that possibility alone means you can't take the tuition-and-fees tax break.</p>
<p>Money limits</p>
<p>Then there are the money limits.</p>
<p>The tuition-and-fees deduction could be as much as $4,000. This amount, however, applies to all qualified expenses paid last year, not paid per student.</p>
<p>So you can't claim the $4,000 spent toward your MBA course work and another $4,000 you paid for your daughter's freshman year at State U. (However, if your course work is employment-related, you might be able to claim it as a miscellaneous expense on Schedule A. Remember, though, you'll have to meet the 2% of adjusted gross income threshold for the schooling costs to be of any itemized tax benefit.)</p>
<p>There also are income limits. Single filers who make less than $65,000 or married joint filers earning less than $130,000 can take the full four-grand deduction. If you make more than those amounts, but less than $80,000 as a single filer or $160,000 when married filing jointly, you can deduct up to $2,000 in tuition and fees.</p>
<p>Earn more than the top limits for your filing status, and you're out of tax deduction luck.</p>
<p>Only one tax break per filer</p>
<p>The IRS also frowns on double dipping in the tax-break pool. You can't claim the tuition-and-fees deduction if you also take the lifetime learning credit or the American opportunity credit for the same student in the same tax year.</p>
<p>In addition, in deciding which tax break to use, make sure you choose the optimal one if you qualify for several education-assistance options. You might be tempted to go for the tuition-and-fees deduction. After all, it's worth $4,000 and relatively easy to claim.</p>
<p>The credit amounts, meanwhile, are less: a maximum of $2,000 for the lifetime learning and $2,500 for the American opportunity credits. Those figures mean the larger tuition-and-fees deduction is the way to go, right?</p>
<p>Not so fast. You're comparing an apple (a tax deduction) to oranges (tax credits).</p>
<p>A tax deduction reduces your taxable income, while a credit reduces your actual tax bill. In almost every instance, a credit is preferable.</p>
<p>For a quick comparison of the educational tax breaks, multiply your deductible schooling costs by your tax rate to see how it matches up with the credits. For example, a $4,000 deduction for a taxpayer in the 25% tax bracket comes to an actual tax break of only $1,000.</p>
<p>So, if you have a choice of how to take your education tax break, run the numbers both ways to make sure you take the one that saves you more.</p>
<p>Additional tax-filing homework</p>
<p>While the tuition-and-fees deduction is available for taxpayers who don't itemize their expenses, there is a bit more paperwork involved in taking this deduction.</p>
<p>If you claim this education expenses deduction, either on Form 1040 or Form 1040A, you must now fill out <a href="http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/forms/tax-form-8917.aspx?pid=p:foxbz" type="external">Form 8917 Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Once you complete Form 8917 and transfer the appropriate amount to your 1040 or 1040A, be sure to send the form along with your final tax return.</p>
<p>In addition to the information found in the Form 8917 instructions (which are part of the downloadable form itself), you can learn more about the tuition-and-fees deduction and other education tax breaks in <a href="http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/forms/irs-publication-970.aspx?pid=p:foxbz" type="external">IRS Publication 970 Opens a New Window.</a>, Tax Benefits for Education.</p>
<p>Copyright 2014, Bankrate Inc.</p> | The IRS Offers Ways to Save on College | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/03/19/irs-offers-ways-to-save-on-college.html | 2016-03-06 | 0 |
<p>DAKAR, Senegal — In the build-up to this past week's mass protests in Burkina Faso that ended Blaise Compaore's 27-year rule, statesmen from French President Francois Hollande to former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan sent him messages with increasing urgency.</p>
<p>The meaning was clear: step aside with reputation intact and a high-profile international job, or risk an undignified exit.</p>
<p>But Compaore stood firm. Even with hundreds of thousands protesting his plan to rejig the constitution to extend his rule, he still hoped to outmaneuver his rivals one more time.</p>
<p>The former soldier had survived many attempts to unseat him since he seized power in a 1987 coup that killed his former brother in arms Thomas Sankara, a leftwing hero.</p>
<p>In doing so, Compaore gradually reinvented himself from a notorious backer of rebel groups and ally of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to a wily, regional peace-broker.</p>
<p>In the end, however, the man popularly known as 'Beautiful Blaise' spectacularly misjudged the people he had ruled with a mixture of democracy and repression for nearly three decades.</p>
<p>"He played for many years and he won. This was one game too many and he lost," Gilles Yabi, an independent West African political analyst, told Reuters. "He miscalculated and didn’t think there would be this level of protest."</p>
<p>Realizing his mistake too late, Compaore withdrew on Thursday his plan to change Burkina Faso's 1991 constitution so he could stand for re-election. But protests intensified and he had no choice but to flee the Kosyam presidential palace and seek haven in neighboring Ivory Coast, governed by his firm ally Alassane Ouattara.</p>
<p>His fall revealed the gulf between those he ruled and Western governments, who saw him as a useful ally against Islamist forces in the turbulent Sahel.</p>
<p>Before the celebratory horns and whistles had died down, the military had stepped in. The army chief of staff announced he had taken control, only to be ousted in his turn by a senior figure in the presidential guard hours later.</p>
<p>Despite condemnation of the military’s intervention from the opposition, the United States and the regional Africa Union bloc, Compaore's fall was still hailed as a warning to several longtime African presidents mulling moves to stay in power.</p>
<p>"If Blaise had been allowed to stay it would have sent a message to the old club of African leaders that they can do whatever they want," said Rinaldo Depagne, head of the West Africa Project for the International Crisis Group (ICG). "Now they see that they have to listen to the streets."&#160;</p>
<p>In Sankara's shadow&#160;</p>
<p>The death of Sankara — whom Compaore had helped to sweep to power in a 1983 leftwing revolution — cast a shadow upon his regime. Compaore went on to win a series of elections, initially unopposed but then against an opposition that cried foul.</p>
<p>Yet Sankara's legacy was not forgotten. Protesters waved his photograph and signs reading "Sankara look at your sons."</p>
<p>The 1998 murder of Norbert Zongo, a journalist who was investigating corruption and the mysterious death of the driver for Compaore's brother Francois, underscored darker methods employed by the state apparatus to maintain authority.</p>
<p>"The country was peaceful but people have never forgotten the bloody episodes," Yabi said.</p>
<p>In her farewell cable to Washington in 2009, outgoing US ambassador Jeanine Jackson described a president taking the country in the right direction through hard work.</p>
<p>Others, who saw the Compaore machine from the inside, remember differently. "He managed things through intimidation, killings and corruption," said one former official.</p>
<p>Compaore sailed to victory in the last presidential election in 2010 with 80 percent. The result masked anger over scant improvement in the lives of Burkina Faso's 17 million people.</p>
<p>Perched on the Sahara's southern rim, Burkina Faso has long been one of the least developed nations on earth. It is a cotton producer and has attracted several foreign gold miners. Aid funds, however, still cover 80 percent of government spending.</p>
<p>In 2011, soldiers mutinied over unpaid housing allowances. Angry students and ordinary people joined them, protesting at rising food prices, police brutality and lack of development.</p>
<p>Compaore survived and swiftly reshuffled his military. But it showed that rivals could capitalize on anger at inequality.</p>
<p>"A once-admired focus on grassroots development has faded, while a well-connected elite has grown prosperous," said Paul Melly, associate fellow of the Africa Program at Chatham House.</p>
<p>While most battled to eke out a living, the wealth on show in the Ouaga 2000 neighborhood — home to sprawling, high-walled villas of Compaore's inner circle — fueled popular anger.</p>
<p>His decision to seek reelection exposed rifts in the regime, prompting defections in the ruling CDP party. Tapping into youth frustration, a rapper and a reggae singer set up Balai Citoyen, a movement at the heart of this past week's protest.</p>
<p>The homes of government figures — including Compaore's hated brother Francois — were looted. Protesters carried off furniture and goods as well as documents on the workings of the regime.</p>
<p>"Dear Blaise"</p>
<p>With few serious challengers during the last decade at home, Compaore thrived in his role as mediator in a turbulent region. In August, US Secretary of State John Kerry praised Compaore's role in advancing "regional peace and security."</p>
<p>It was a remarkable turnaround for a man who spent years as a troublemaker, often as the intermediary for Gaddafi, and supported rebels in the 1990s in Liberia and Sierra Leone's brutal civil wars.</p>
<p>"His government emboldened these groups and their abuses by facilitating arms transfers and in some cases, providing fighters safe haven," said Corinne Dufka, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in West Africa. "He later fashioned himself as a peacemaker, which was rather ironic."</p>
<p>Alongside the public role of supporting US and French counter-terrorism efforts, behind the scenes, senior advisors negotiated the release, often for multi-million dollar ransoms, of numerous Western hostages seized in the region.</p>
<p>His allies sought to warn him about the shifting public mood. In an Oct. 7 letter, addressed "Dear Blaise", France's Hollande appealed to him to take a decision that would make his nation a model of the region. In return, France offered to support Compaore if he wanted a job in international diplomacy.</p>
<p>But, seemingly fearing justice might catch up with him or merely unable to consider a life outside power, he pushed on.</p>
<p>"Blaise made a massive mistake. He lost touch with reality," said ICG's Depagne.</p>
<p>(Additional reporting by Daniel Flynn in Dakar, John Irish in Paris and Joe Bavier in Abidjan; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Stephen Powell)&#160;</p> | 'One game too far': the downfall of Burkina Faso's president | false | https://pri.org/stories/2014-11-02/one-game-too-far-downfall-burkina-fasos-president | 2014-11-02 | 3 |
<p>Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP</p>
<p />
<p>In the days since terror attacks roiled Paris, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who&#160; <a href="http://theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/13998992-123/john-bel-edwards-david-vitter" type="external">has been trailing</a> in the race for governor against his Democratic rival John Bel Edwards, has settled on a new strategy for winning over voters: warning them about&#160;Syrian refugees entering the state.&#160;</p>
<p>After Edwards released an <a href="http://thehayride.com/2015/11/if-the-syrian-migrant-issue-matters-to-louisiana-voters-john-bel-edwards-has-some-problems/" type="external">apparently altered</a> statement on Facebook in the attacks’ aftermath noting he would help “to assist the people coming here and fleeing from religious persecution,”&#160;Vitter’s&#160;campaign pounced. In a robocall over the weekend, Vitter&#160; <a href="http://bobmannblog.com/2015/11/16/vitter-doesnt-want-syrian-refugees-in-louisiana-he-should-talk-to-his-wife/" type="external">warned</a> that President Barack Obama’s “reckless policies” for allowing 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country would turn Louisiana into a “dangerous refugee zone.” (The State Department <a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/11/post_599.html" type="external">confirmed to the Times-Picayune</a> that only 14 Syrian immigrants had settled in Louisiana since January 1.)&#160;</p>
<p>On Monday, as&#160;Gov. Bobby Jindal signed an executive order seeking to block refugees from entering the state,&#160;Vitter&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/17/david-vitter-trailing-in-gubernatorial-race-wants-to-make-it-about-syrian-refugees/" type="external">released an ad</a> claiming that Obama had been “sending refugees to Louisiana” and that Edwards had vowed to work with the president to welcome them. A day later, Vitter <a href="http://theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/14012174-123/david-vitter-files-syrian-refugee" type="external">introduced federal legislation</a> that would halt incoming refugee admissions for at least 300 days while a review of the screening process takes place.&#160;</p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.lagop.com/blog/2015/11/18/missing-unmonitored-syrian-refugee-last-seen-in-baton-rouge" type="external">email sent</a> from the Louisiana Republican Party on Tuesday warned supporters about the possibility of “missing” refugees in the state. &#160;</p>
<p>Just yesterday, David Vitter had to notify the Obama Administration that a Syrian refugee who had been living in Baton Rouge has gone missing. What kind of accountability is that? There is an unmonitored Syrian refugee who is walking around freely, and no one knows where he is.</p>
<p>It turns out that the “missing” refugee in Baton Rouge&#160;hadn’t disappeared at all. A day before the email went out, the New Orleans Advocate <a href="http://theadvocate.com/sports/lsu/14012129-64/catholic-charities-one-syrian-immigrant" type="external">reported</a>&#160;that Catholic Charities, the organization that aids in refugee resettlement, had helped the Syrian man for a few days before he left the state to meet with family&#160;in Washington, DC. Before he left, the man filed relocation paperwork to the federal government.</p>
<p>Vitter’s wife, Wendy Vitter, reportedly <a href="http://www.bestofneworleans.com/blogofneworleans/archives/2015/11/18/vitter-gop-resort-to-hysterical-lies-about-syrian-refugees-in-louisiana" type="external">works as a lawyer</a> for the Archdiocese&#160;of New Orleans, which is affiliated with Catholic Charities. The organization received a flood of phone calls about the supposedly “missing” refugee, <a href="http://theadvocate.com/sports/lsu/14012129-64/catholic-charities-one-syrian-immigrant" type="external">according to the Advocate</a>, and a Jefferson Parish Sheriff warned that <a href="http://www.bestofneworleans.com/blogofneworleans/archives/2015/11/18/vitter-gop-resort-to-hysterical-lies-about-syrian-refugees-in-louisiana" type="external">“somebody’s going to get killed”</a>&#160;as a result of the misinformation, according to the New Orleans alt-weekly The Gambit.</p>
<p>Vitter, whose campaign&#160;has also been mired in reports that he may have <a href="" type="internal">had a love child with a prostitute</a>, will find if his last-ditch effort to lure Louisiana voters is successful when the election takes place on Saturday.&#160;</p>
<p /> | Louisiana Republican Stokes Fears of Syrian Refugees to Boost Struggling Campaign for Governor | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2015/11/david-vitter-syrian-refugees-louisiana-governor/ | 2015-11-19 | 4 |
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Monday evening's drawing of the Illinois Lottery's "Lotto" game were:</p>
<p>11-19-26-28-48-49, Extra Shot: 21</p>
<p>(eleven, nineteen, twenty-six, twenty-eight, forty-eight, forty-nine; Extra Shot: twenty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $4.25 million</p>
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Monday evening's drawing of the Illinois Lottery's "Lotto" game were:</p>
<p>11-19-26-28-48-49, Extra Shot: 21</p>
<p>(eleven, nineteen, twenty-six, twenty-eight, forty-eight, forty-nine; Extra Shot: twenty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $4.25 million</p> | Winning numbers drawn in 'Lotto' game | false | https://apnews.com/amp/6765860125594873bb57ee0f8162a85b | 2018-01-23 | 2 |
<p>Two more members of President Donald Trump's manufacturing advisory council said Tuesday they would resign, while the leader of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. criticized the president for his initial response to the weekend violence in Charlottesville, Va.</p>
<p>Mario Longhi, the former CEO of U.S. Steel, and Scott Paul, the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a nonprofit group formed by manufacturers and the United Steelworkers union, both said they were resigning.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Mr. Paul said he was quitting the council "because it's the right thing for me to do."</p>
<p>U.S. Steel said Mr. Longhi had resigned but refused to comment further.</p>
<p>The men joined other corporate chiefs who have left he council in apparent protest of the president's failure to quickly condemn the white supremacists who engaged in who engaged in violence over the weekend in Charlottesville. On Monday, Mr. Trump denounced the hate groups.</p>
<p>The others CEOs who stepped down were heads of Merck &amp; Co., Intel Corp. and Under Armour Inc. They drew attacks from Mr. Trump, who indicated he had other executives with whom he could fill the slots.</p>
<p>"For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on," Mr. Trump tweeted late Tuesday morning.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Wal-Mart chief Doug McMillon, who is on another White House advisory council, criticized Mr. Trump's for how he responded to last weekend's violence in Charlottesville, but said, "we believe we should stay engaged."</p>
<p>"As we watched the events and the response from President Trump over the weekend," Mr. McMillon wrote in a statement, "we too felt that he missed a critical opportunity to help bring our country together by unequivocally rejecting the appalling actions of white supremacists.</p>
<p>Alex Gorsky, the head of Johnson &amp; Johnson, who also said he would remain on the advisory council, said he respected other chief executives' decisions to leave it, but he decided to remain engaged "not as a way to support any specific political agenda" but to advocate for the company's positions when public policy is discussed.</p>
<p>"Ours is an important voice on healthcare, one that global leaders at every level, in and out of government, need to hear," Mr. Gorsky said in a statement Tuesday. "We must engage if we hope to change the world and those who lead it."</p>
<p>President Donald Trump's response to the weekend violence in Charlottesville, Va., has sparked a new round of soul-searching in U.S. corporate boardrooms over whether they should keep working closely with the White House.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, the number of members who have withdrawn from a White House advisory council grew to five, and executives including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Chief Executive Doug McMillon criticized the president's initial unwillingness to specifically denounce the racist hate groups that rallied in Charlottesville over the weekend.</p>
<p>The fallout is testing already-tense relations between the White House and corporate executives, many of whom face new pressures from employees, consumers and activists to take stands on social and political issues. At times, those issues have put them in direct opposition with a president whose pro-business agenda they are also seeking to shape.</p>
<p>"This is one of the toughest times for the consciences of corporate boards and corporate CEOs," said Davia Temin, head of Temin and Co., a reputation and crisis-management consultancy. Ms. Temin said she expects more leaders to resign their advisory posts.</p>
<p>Privately and publicly, some business leaders have also indicated doubts about how worthwhile their White House access has been, given the mixed progress with Mr. Trump's pro-business agenda. Although the president's meetings with chief executives this spring attracted heavy news coverage, they haven't yielded significant results. Hopes of a corporate tax overhaul or an infrastructure-spending plan being completed soon are fading among executives.</p>
<p>Lawrence Summers, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration and as a top economic adviser in the Obama White House, said in an interview that business leaders serving on Trump advisory councils should pull out.</p>
<p>"I don't think these are forums for either detailed advice or critical advice," he said, adding that he didn't believe corporate leaders serving on such councils received much in return.</p>
<p>Three CEOs of major publicly held U.S. companies sought Ms. Temin's advice this week about whether to take a stance on the Charlottesville violence.</p>
<p>All three are Republicans who voted for Mr. Trump; each told her they would decline a seat on his councils if asked, Ms. Temin said.</p>
<p>Navigating the Trump presidency has been thorny from the start for CEOs. Tesla Inc.'s Elon Musk and Walt Disney Co.'s Robert Iger quit advisory councils to the president over his decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord. Others have had to justify their presence on the councils amid continued pressure from employees and some in the public over their roles.</p>
<p>Chief executives such as J.P. Morgan Chase &amp; Co.'s James Dimon have said they want to help Mr. Trump shape pro-business policy, but have recently voiced frustration over Washington's pace including on broad changes to the tax code.</p>
<p>Merck &amp; Co. Chief Executive Kenneth Frazier was the first executive this week to resign from the White House manufacturing council, followed by the heads of Under Armour Inc., Intel Corp and the Alliance for American Manufacturing.</p>
<p>Late Tuesday, AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka also quit, saying, "I cannot sit on a council for a president that tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism."</p>
<p>On Monday, Mr. Trump singled out white-nationalist groups for criticism for the Charlottesville violence after he initially had declined to do, though on Tuesday afternoon, he again said "both sides" demonstrating in Charlottesville were to blame for the clashes.</p>
<p>White House officials shrugged off the defections, saying Tuesday the councils aren't an active part of day-to-day policy-formulation. "We have an incredible number of CEOs that want to give us their advice and guidance," one White House official said.</p>
<p>Mr. Trump, in a news conference, characterized the CEOs as "not taking their jobs seriously as it pertains to this country." Earlier in the day, he called them "grandstanders" in a Twitter post, and he suggested more leaders were waiting in the wings to join his councils.</p>
<p>Inside boardrooms, leaders are torn between a desire to reduce regulatory burdens and wariness of appearing to support the administration, board members and crisis managers say.</p>
<p>Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. hasn't taken a position on the president or his policies, and the company isn't part of any White House advisory councils.</p>
<p>But last weekend's events "will be fodder for a lot of boardroom discussion" for the insurer, said Dale Jones, a board member and CEO of Diversified Search Inc., an executive recruitment firm. "The conversations will be much broader than Charlottesville."</p>
<p>Northwestern's board members believe less government regulation "is good for policy owners in our industry," said Mr. Jones. "We have to honor the authority of the president while at the same time hold true to our values and respect for dignity of all people."</p>
<p>Yet some business leaders argue that without a seat at the president's table, companies will have no influence on the issues where they lock horns with the White House.</p>
<p>"There are just as many people who would say: Have a seat at the table, try to bring things to him and his cabinet that are of import from a moral point of view." aid an executive at a company whose chief executive is a member of Mr. Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum.</p>
<p>One reason CEOs may be more willing to publicly oppose the president is that his tweet attacks on corporations no longer appear to pack the same punch as they initially did after his election, crisis managers said.</p>
<p>Merck's share price rose nearly 1% Monday after Mr. Trump lashed out at the company's drug prices following Mr. Frazier's decision to withdraw from the White House manufacturing council.</p>
<p>Jonathan Bernstein, president of Bernstein Crisis Management, said he has been advising corporate clients not to participate in any official Trump advisory panel or White House gathering of business leaders. "It's just not worth the risk," he said. "Long before Donald Trump, corporations had plenty of significant ways to achieve what they wanted in Washington."</p>
<p>--Joann S. Lublin, Peter Nicholas, Jennifer Maloney contributed to this article.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 15, 2017 20:27 ET (00:27 GMT)</p> | Wal-Mart CEO Criticizes Trump's Virginia Response | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/15/wal-mart-ceo-criticizes-trumps-virginia-response0.html | 2017-08-15 | 0 |
<p>A couple of months ago I suggested (here) that Jane Addams would be a good choice for the new $10 bill, which will have a woman’s picture on it. This article is about another woman who is also a strong candidate for the proposed new bill to be released in 2020.</p> | Another good candidate for the new $10 bill | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/another-good-candidate-for-the-new-10-bill/ | 3 |
|
<p>There’s trouble in leftist Paradise.</p>
<p>Neighborhoods in Seattle, the leftist haven where socialism reigns <a href="http://crosscut.com/2016/01/the-billionaire-and-the-socialist-seattles-progressive-odd-couple/" type="external">supreme</a>, are hiring <a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/citizen-anti-crime-movement-afoot-in-seattles-neighborhoods/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+seattletimes%2FrgtR+%28The+Seattle+Times%3A+Politics%29" type="external">private security teams</a> to monitor their area because police have been unable to deal with rising crime throughout the city.</p>
<p>In the three neighborhoods of Ballard, Queen Anne, and Magnolia, crime has risen rapidly since 2010. Property crime has mushroomed roughly 30% in Magnolia and about 20% in Ballard and Queen Anne.</p>
<p>As a result, in December the Magnolia neighborhood started <a href="http://www.magnoliapatrol.org/" type="external">its own patrol program;</a>Queen Anne residents will follow suit in February.</p>
<p>Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who <a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/victorious-murray-ready-to-show-lsquogovernment-can-work-againrsquo/" type="external">bragged</a> after his 2013 election that his campaign “was energized by the belief that Seattle can show the nation that government can work once again” protested, “If you were to do a heat map of those neighborhoods where there are intense concerns around crime, and that heat map included where social media about crime was big, you’d see a direct correlation. I realize that in my business, perception is reality, and we’ve got to deal with this.” He said, “We know the city is growing, and we need to increase our police force. But it’s going to have to be over time.”</p>
<p>Murray’s short-term plan <a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-to-open-parking-areas-for-homeless-in-ballard-delridge/" type="external">involves</a> opening two safe-parking sites for people living in vehicles, after some residents complained about crime near their vehicles.</p>
<p>Property crime has mushroomed roughly 30% in Magnolia and about 20% in Ballard and Queen Anne.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that the Seattle police department employed a record 1,289 officers last year, residents are dissatisfied. Brad Renton, president of the <a href="https://whittierheightspatrol.wordpress.com/" type="external">Whittier Heights Patrol Association</a>, said he already has at least 100 subscribers paying $250 annually for his company’s services. The private-security agency Central Protection was hired by the Magnolia neighborhood to work random patrol shifts between four to six days a week.</p>
<p>The security teams cannot carry guns, but they can alert 91 or the police if they notice anything suspicious.</p> | Crime Is So Bad In Leftist Seattle That Some Homeowners Are Doing THIS | true | https://dailywire.com/news/2894/crime-so-bad-leftist-seattle-some-homeowners-are-hank-berrien | 2016-01-26 | 0 |
<p>Published time: 22 Aug, 2017 19:28</p>
<p>Russian Helicopters design and manufacturing holding has produced the very first batch of Mi-28UB combat training helicopters, a new version of the battle-tested Mi-28N “Night Hunter” ground attack helicopter.</p>
<p>The main difference with the Mi-28UB, compared to the basic model of the Mi-28N Night Hunter is a fully-fledged dual control system, which facilitates pilot training. A trainee pilot occupies the command cockpit, while an instructor sits in the front gunner’s cockpit.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/389845-newest-russian-helicopter-ka62/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The new helicopter has also fully retained the combat capabilities of the Mi-28N Night Hunter, which was battle-tested during the ongoing Russian campaign against terrorists in Syria. The Mi-28UB “as well as its predecessor, preserves its maneuvering capability and can carry out combat missions at any time of the day or night,” according to the company, and can support land units alongside with Mi-28N helicopters.</p>
<p>Other enhancements include energy-attenuating seats, which can absorb shock energy during an emergency landing, as well as new avionics and communication systems. The changes have enhanced “the helicopter’s reliability, safety and performance specifications significantly,” the company said in a statement.</p>
<p>The first batch of new helicopters was produced at Rostvertol, a subsidiary of the Russian Helicopters Holding. The machines are undergoing internal user acceptance tests at the company and eight helicopters are expected to be delivered by the end of this year, Russian Helicopters said.</p>
<p>“Production of the first Mi-28UB batch is an extremely important step not only for Rosvertol and Russian Helicopters but also for our colleagues in the Russian Defense Ministry. The delivery of modernized Night Hunters will begin shortly. The Mi-28 has proved its efficiency, and we expect that its combat training version will be of great demand in the army,” Russian Helicopters CEO Andrey Boginsky said.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/360/393837-berkuts-celebrates-25th-anniversary/" type="external">WATCH MORE:&#160;‘Night Hunters’ Mi-28 Flight in 360: Russian aerobatic team performs epic stunts</a></p>
<p>The development of Mi-28UB began in 2010, with a modified serial Mi-28N machine serving as a prototype. The helicopter was designed specifically to meet the needs of the Russian Air Force. Following the successful state tests, the machines have entered production at the Rosvertol plant in Rostov in 2016.</p> | Russia produces first serial Mi-28UB combat training helicopter (PHOTOS) | false | https://newsline.com/russia-produces-first-serial-mi-28ub-combat-training-helicopter-photos/ | 2017-08-22 | 1 |
<p>The average consumer should catch a price break if major health insurers like Anthem and Cigna combine and cut their expenses.</p>
<p>That's the basic theory, at least.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The reality will be much murkier for the more than 50 million people who may be affected if Anthem Inc. succeeds with its bid to buy smaller rival Cigna Corp. or if other major insurers combine as many on Wall Street anticipate.</p>
<p>Customers of companies involved in a multi-billion-dollar combination might see some price changes, fewer plan choices and better technology. This all can depend on the customer's coverage and where he or she lives.</p>
<p>Here are some themes that will emerge if a big deal materializes.</p>
<p>COST OF COVERAGE</p>
<p>Companies often tout the savings they achieve from combining with a rival. Their businesses will blend back-office operations and eliminate overlapping areas of service to cut costs and avoid scrutiny from anti-trust regulators.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>On top of all that, a bigger health insurer might be able to wield more leverage in negotiating lower rates with doctors and hospitals.</p>
<p>Some of these savings may filter down to the consumer, but there's no guarantee.</p>
<p>Insurance is a very market-specific product. That means the cost of care in a market and the health of an insurer's patient population can affect premiums regardless of whether the insurer gets bigger or smaller.</p>
<p>And an insurer won't gain negotiating leverage in a particular market unless it also gets bigger in that market.</p>
<p>"The size of the company nationally ... does not determine the strength of its negotiating position in that area," said Dan Mendelson, CEO of the market research firm Avalere Health.</p>
<p>Competition in a particular market is another key variable. Insurers are more apt to lower prices if they have to keep customers from straying to a rival. They also might use competition among providers to lower rates by pitting one hospital system against another.</p>
<p>The cost of coverage likely won't spike due to a major deal because anti-trust regulators won't let markets become significantly less competitive, Mendelson said.</p>
<p>LESS CHOICE</p>
<p>Customers in some markets may see fewer plan options if big insurers combine. That could be good and bad, depending on the market and product.</p>
<p>Fewer choices could mean less confusion for Medicare Advantage consumers who sometimes have to sort through around 20 different options to find coverage they like.</p>
<p>Medicare Advantage plans are privately run versions of the federally-funded program for people over age 65 and the disabled. These plans can come with different prices and lots of extras to sort through like dental and vision coverage or a gym membership.</p>
<p>Fewer choices also might mean that insurers won't have to fight as hard for business. That could lead problems like lax customer service.</p>
<p>"Wall Street will sort out whether a merger is good for shareholders, the larger question is whether this is good for seniors," said Tricia Neuman, a Medicare expert and senior vice president with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.</p>
<p>BETTER TECHNOLOGY</p>
<p>Anthem CEO Joe Swedish says improved technology will be a potential benefit of a combination with Cigna, and that's a change many consumers might see.</p>
<p>Insurers want to give consumers better information on the cost and quality of the care they buy, based on their coverage. Deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs have been rising for years. That leaves a growing number of consumers with bigger bills to pay before most of their insurance coverage starts, so they need technology that helps them compare prices and shop around.</p>
<p>Insurers also are using data and technology more to monitor patient care and do things like make sure patients stay on their prescriptions or keep up with their immunizations in order to keep costs down.</p>
<p>CHANGE TAKES TIME</p>
<p>Cigna has rejected Anthem's latest offer, and the two sides don't appear close to an agreement. Even if they ironed out a deal later this summer, it would take months to complete. Any acquisition would have to be approved by shareholders and survive regulatory scrutiny, among other steps.</p>
<p>"I doubt any merger would have any impact on 2016 offerings in any product category," said Bob Laszewski, a health care consultant and former insurance industry executive.</p>
<p>Insurers have largely settled on their plans for coverage that starts in January. That means customers may not see changes from a deal filter down to their coverage until 2017 or 2018.</p> | Health insurer combos may yield tech improvements for consumers but no price cut guarantee | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/06/22/health-insurer-combos-may-yield-tech-improvements-for-consumers-but-no-price.html | 2016-03-09 | 0 |
<p>Lagging a few years behind the liberal media, public opinion and common sense, the justice system has come to the conclusion that President Geroge W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program broke the rules.</p>
<p>Lawyers fighting the government on this sometimes have had to overcome extraordinary obstacles. Try proving your client was actually spied on by a secret program. Throw in a government, under both Bush and President Barack Obama, that cries “state secrets!” every time you get close.</p>
<p>It’s thanks only to a few missteps on Uncle Sam’s part that lawyers in this case were able to show heavy breathing on the other end of the line, so to speak. — PZS</p>
<p>New York Times:</p>
<p />
<p>The ruling is the second time a federal judge has declared a program of wiretapping without warrants to be illegal. But a 2006 decision by a Detroit judge, Anna Diggs Taylor, was later reversed on the grounds that the plaintiffs in that case could not prove that they had been wiretapped and so lacked legal standing to sue. Several other lawsuits filed over the program have failed, or been dealt a severe blow, because of similar concerns over standing.</p>
<p>By contrast, the Al Haramain case was closely watched because the government inadvertently disclosed a classified document that made clear that the charity had been subjected to surveillance without warrants.</p>
<p>Although Judge Walker eventually ruled that the plaintiffs could not use that document to prove that they had standing, Mr. Eisenberg and six other lawyers working on the case were able to use public source documents — including a 2007 speech by an F.B.I. official who acknowledged that Al Haramain had been placed under surveillance — to prove the wiretapping.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01nsa.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Judge Rules That Bush's Illegal Wiretap Program Was Just That | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/judge-rules-that-bushs-illegal-wiretap-program-was-just-that/ | 2010-04-01 | 4 |
<p>The dollar hit its highest level of the month after the U.S. Senate passed a budget blueprint, raising hopes for a Republican-led tax overhaul.</p>
<p>The budget was seen as a key hurdle in the process of revamping the tax code. The failure of prior legislative efforts--notably regarding health care--had created doubts about the ability of President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans in Congress to enact his agenda.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Those doubts had contributed to the pressure on the dollar, which in September briefly hit its lowest levels since early 2015. But it jumped after the 51-49 Senate vote, which opened up a process under which the Senate will be able to pass tax legislation without requiring any votes from Democrats.</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal Dollar Index, a measure of the dollar against 16 other currencies, was up 0.4% around midday in Asia, with the biggest gains against a pair of currencies deemed havens: the Japanese yen and Swiss franc. Asian stocks also rose to session highs after the vote.</p>
<p>The gains are "all about the optimism that Trump tax cuts can add growth to the U.S. economy," said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at Australian forex broker AxiTrader.</p>
<p>The dollar had been weak Thursday, with the WSJ index 0.3% lower. That left it down 6.9% for the year 10% since December's postelection top at 10%.</p>
<p>The dollar was hurt by declines in government-debt yields. Some investors sought protection from risk as tensions rose further between Spain and the Catalan independence movement. But yields turned around after the Senate vote, with the 10-year Treasury yield climbing to 2.36% at one point from 2.323% late Thursday in New York.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Some analysts urged caution about Friday's dollar gains.</p>
<p>Peter Chia Siong, a forex strategist at broker UOB Kay Hian in Singapore, said the dollar's near-term direction "hinges not only on the tax reforms" but who Mr. Trump will tap to lead the Federal Reserve for the coming four years.</p>
<p>News reports that he is leaning toward Fed Gov. Jerome Powell weighed on the dollar Thursday as he is considered a dovish candidate. The White House has indicated Mr. Trump will make a decision before leaving for a trip to Asia next month.</p>
<p>"The stronger dollar doesn't sit well with the U.S. administration's goal to encourage exports," said Stephen Innes, head of trading for Asia at Oanda. "They don't want to tip the apple cart against the economy."</p>
<p>Write to Kenan Machado at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>October 20, 2017 00:42 ET (04:42 GMT)</p> | Dollar Gains as Senate Budget Vote Lifts Tax-Cut Hopes | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/20/dollar-gains-as-senate-budget-vote-lifts-tax-cut-hopes.html | 2017-10-20 | 0 |
<p>DETROIT (AP) - Four female photo journalists have filed a pay discrimination lawsuit in federal court against the Detroit Free Press.</p>
<p>Former and current staff members allege in Friday's complaint that the newspaper underpaid them because they're women.</p>
<p>The lawsuit follows a study this year by the newspaper's union analyzing pay data. It shows the median wage for men was higher than for women in almost every job category at the newspaper.</p>
<p>For example, the lawsuit says male photographers make over $4 an hour more than female photographers.</p>
<p>Free Press editor and vice president Peter Bhatia says the lawsuit has no merit and the newspaper has a "long-standing commitment" to supporting equal pay.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for newspaper parent company Gannett, also named in the lawsuit, didn't immediately return a message seeking comment Saturday.</p>
<p>Copyright - 2018 The Washington Times, LLC.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Four women sue Detroit Free Press in pay discrimination lawsuit | true | http://washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/14/4-women-sue-detroit-free-press-in-pay-discriminati/ | 2017-10-14 | 0 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Homs already battered by terrorist suicide bombings and mortar attacks, photographed in 2016</p>
<p>Afraa Dagher <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/moderate-oppositions-terrorists/" type="external">Syria News</a></p>
<p>There, in Geneva, are the talks about the political solution in Syria. &#160;It is the easy talk.&#160; The negotiations should be two sides: &#160; The governmental actor and the opposition actor.&#160; However, the moderate oppositions have many delegations, many podiums, many representatives of many countries, but not to Syria.</p>
<p>There is the Riyadh delegation, Cairo delegation, Istanbul delegation, Moscow delegation – and behind the scene at the prime podium and the most effective delegation, the <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/israel-rushes-rescue-qaeda-terrorists-syria/" type="external">Israeli</a> one.</p>
<p>Who are these people and why are they given podiums to discuss our country?</p>
<p>Stefan de Mistura, the UN envoy supports the wanting of most of those opposition factions for a <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/transitional-government-agenda-behind/" type="external">transitional government</a>, which is also the main goal of Israel.</p>
<p>Saudi, Qatar, Turkey, the US, and Israel have backed these moderate oppositions whose representatives live in Five Star hotels, in luxury – while real Syrians are under the horror of war and under the attack of moderate Wahhabi mercenaries, suicide bombers, <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/syria-cannibal-sakkar-threatens-commit-worse-crimes/" type="external">liver eating cannibals</a>, <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/nato-moderates-massacre-syrian-soldiers-beheaded/" type="external">head choppers</a>, since March 2011 when the west and Gulfie and Levantine underlings launched the fake ‘revolution’ to destroy our country.&#160; All helped by the fake news media.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Photo of recent suicide bomb attack in Homs. <a href="https://twitter.com/SyriaIraqNews/status/835414810250600448" type="external">Photo: Twitter.</a></p>
<p>Now in Geneva there are some of the same terrorists but they arrived after <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/fsa-instructions-grow-lice-hashish/" type="external">shaving their long beards</a> and wearing modern suits to look nicely formed in these so-called opposition delegations.</p>
<p>Morever, Mr. Stefan de Mistura, who never missed any chance to defend the so-called “moderate” terrorists in Syria, supported them so much as <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/syria-de-misturas-wasted-dream-terrorist-run-aleppo/" type="external">to offer to use himself as a human shield</a>, to go with them from Aleppo to any part of Syria, and with their weapons.&#160; The western news reported on this, how loving and caring this old man is for the concern of Syrians, but they left out the part about the weapons.</p>
<p>“If you decide to leave in dignity with your weapons, to Idlib&#160;[which became a state of terrorists by the full will of the west]&#160;or anywhere you wanted to go, I personally am ready, physically, to accompany you. &#160;I can’t guarantee more than my own personality and body.”</p>
<p>They did not report it, either, when he did not go to Aleppo to use himself as human shield when <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/aleppo-terrorists-refuse-leave-hold-civilians-hostage/" type="external">his moderate oppositions friends were murdering any Syrians trying to get on the buses</a> when the government opened humanitarian corridors and gave a long humanitarian pause.</p>
<p>This was al Nusra [Jabhat al Nusra, JaN] he offered to protect, in his fact manner.&#160; But then he finally came and wanted my country to give these terrorists autonomy in Aleppo.&#160; Autonomy of the killers, to kill more.&#160; Autonomy to the “oppositions” who starved and tortured and destroyed.&#160; You can check a video by a real Syria woman, <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/syrian-woman-on-torture-under-nato-rebels/" type="external">Mrs. Hayat, 21 years old</a>, who is not pro and not against the government, just a simple, and not political woman.&#160; She was tortured by the friends of de Mistura, the “rebels.” This woman was pushed to tell her story about daily life and death under the rule of these monsters he wanted autonomy for.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" />All of the world’s media lies against Syria are still not enough! Not enough that most of the terror against Syria is foreign, there are domestic terrorists, too, who sell their country, give poison against their land, Syria.&#160; More deadly insults come from Mr. de Mistura who brought two women whose relatives are involved in terror, as his guests to the Geneva talks, to tell lies as “Syrian witnesses.” &#160;The UN’s website wrote that “He pledged to raise this issue of detainees, abducted and missing people as parts of the ongoing discussions.”</p>
<p>Such a statement sounds like he plans to bring up <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/syrian-woman-amnestys-criminal-propaganda-country/" type="external">the lies of Amnesty</a> about a jail. &#160;All countries have jails for criminals. &#160;But lies about Syria make the world believe jails are for “detainees.” &#160;The UN website didn’t write about the villages in Latakia countryside where men were slaughtered and <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/syria-humanitarian-bastards/" type="external">women and children kidnapped</a> in 2013. &#160;The UN website didn’t write that <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/moment-long-awaited-58-syrian-latakia-countryside-women-children-freed-al-qaeda-captivity/" type="external">58 of them were freed</a> early this month in exchange for imprisoned terrorists. &#160;So, it will be more double standards and hypocrisy against Syria.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the UN security council, the NGOs <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/fake-news-report-criminal-lies-fake-hospital-fake-ngo-syria/" type="external">HRW</a>, and <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/fake-news-report-criminal-lies-fake-hospital-fake-ngo-syria/" type="external">Amnesty</a> are openly defending terrorists in Syria.</p>
<p>Again in Homs, suicide attacks hit.&#160; Six suicide bombers, 6 terrorists targeted two security and military administrative offices.&#160; More than 42 Syrians were martyred and dozens others wounded, many critically.&#160; The destruction of people’s homes, buildings, streets is massive.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Daesh is using fast non-armored suicide bomb vehicles in an attempt to target SAA positions near Palmyra, Southeastern Homs. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=Homs%20suicide%20bomb&amp;src=typd" type="external">(Photo: Twitter)</a> <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/moderate-oppositions-suicide-bombing-homs.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>These are the moderate oppositions — terrorists — supported by the mentality of de Mistura and Amnesty.</p>
<p>If we had captured them before they blew themselves up, slaughtering dozens of Syrians, they should not have been jailed!</p>
<p>Their rotten families have no right to&#160; be honored at the Geneva talks, but this is what the fake, war criminal western media will report.&#160; They will make more <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/oscar-nominations-war-porn-child-new-nominee/" type="external">emotional war pornography</a> against us, using them.</p>
<p>But what about the families of today’s 42 martyrs, de Mistura? &#160;This is the reality of the the many delegations of non-Syrians at Geneva. &#160;Most of these delegations of this conference have backed these moderate oppositions terrorists. We are too used to these attacks during every&#160;peace&#160;conference you hold.</p>
<p>What about the families of all Syrians, since you started your <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/syrians-deserve-hatred-whole-world/" type="external">international plot</a> against my country? What about a generation of orphans?</p>
<p>I would love to be there with Dr. Ja’afari, to ask this of de Mistura, please stop weeping your crocodile tears about Syrians, while all you care about is defending and strengthening the terrorists you have supported.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Head of Military Security branch in Homs,&#160;&#160;Hasan Daaboul, also died with dozens of people, after twin Suicide bomb attack. ( <a href="https://twitter.com/nftvnews/status/835397395022295040" type="external">Photo: Twitter</a>)</p>
<p>One of today’s victims is General Hasan Da’aboul, our countryman. Your mainstream media like BBC Arabic was so happy about his martyrdom, under the pretext that he put many of your moderate terrorists in jail!&#160; This is another clear confession from you:&#160; You cheer the death of defenders of our country.&#160; You call the killers and beheaders “ <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/lexicon/moderate-rebels/" type="external">moderate rebels</a>” but you know that they are well organized gangs funded and armed by you.</p>
<p>Your moderate oppositions also bombed the Ebla processing station, in Homs countryside. It is the commercial gas plant of electricity-generating stations that feed into Syria’s national grid. &#160;Some hospitals are now without fuel for their generators.</p>
<p>Don’t tell me about moderate “oppositions”!&#160; Let Syrians tell you!”</p>
<p>CONTINUE READING AT <a href="http://www.syrianews.cc/moderate-oppositions-terrorists/" type="external">SYRIA NEWS…</a></p>
<p>***</p>
<p>READ MORE NEWS ON SYRIA&#160;AT: <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire Syria&#160;Files</a></p>
<p>SUPPORT 21WIRE –&#160;SUBSCRIBE &amp; BECOME A MEMBER@ <a href="https://21wire.tv/membership/plans/" type="external">21WIRE.TV</a></p> | HOMS: The Global Moral Compass is Spinning Wildly, Terrorists, Rapists and Murderers are “Rebels with a Cause” | true | http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/02/26/homs-the-global-moral-compass-is-spinning-wildly-terrorists-rapists-and-murderers-are-rebels-with-a-cause/ | 2017-02-26 | 4 |
<p>Performer Frenchie Davis sings ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ at the ‘Our Lives, Our History, Our Museum’ celebration. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)</p>
<p>The Center for Black Equity and the National Museum of African-American History and Culture D.C. Host Committee held an LGBTQ celebration of the opening of the museum at the Human Rights Campaign building on Wednesday, Sept. 21. The ‘Our Lives, Our History, Our Museum’ event featured out singer Frenchie Davis.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Center for Black Equity</a> <a href="" type="internal">Frenchie Davis</a> <a href="" type="internal">HRC</a> <a href="" type="internal">Human Rights Campaign</a> <a href="" type="internal">National Museum of African-American History and Culture D.C. Host Committee</a> <a href="" type="internal">Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture</a></p> | PHOTOS: Museum celebration | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2016/09/21/photos-museum-celebration/ | 3 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s new telecommunications minister says Twitter is ready to talk about unblocking access to the microblogging site.</p>
<p>The state-owned IRAN newspaper quoted Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi on Tuesday as saying Twitter has “officially announced readiness to talk with Iran for resolving the problems.”</p>
<p>San Francisco-based Twitter declined to comment.</p>
<p>Iran blocked the site, along with Facebook and YouTube, after mass protests and violence over the 2009 re-election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.</p>
<p>Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, headed by current President Hassan Rouhani, officially is in charge of blocking websites. That council is overseen by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.</p>
<p>Ahmadinejad, Rouhani and Khamenei all have Twitter accounts administered on their behalf. Others in Iran use virtual private networks to subvert the ban.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Report: Iran says Twitter ready to talk on unblocking site | false | https://abqjournal.com/1051535/report-iran-says-twitter-ready-to-talk-on-unblocking-site.html | 2 |
|
<p>MOSCOW — Thirteen members of a nomadic Siberian community have been hospitalized after a heat wave thawed the carcass of an anthrax-infected reindeer and sparked an outbreak of the disease.</p>
<p>Around 1,500 of the animals have died from the highly infectious disease since Sunday, the government of Russia's Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district announced on its website Tuesday.</p>
<p>A state of emergency has been imposed throughout the region in western Siberia due to the incident — the first of its kind since 1941.</p>
<p>The carcass of a reindeer thought to have died from anthrax decades ago thawed and released the bacteria, sending the disease rippling through a population of animals already weakened by unusually high temperatures, according to local officials.</p>
<p>PHOTOS: <a href="" type="internal">Warming Threatens Lifestyle of Russian Herders</a></p>
<p>Temperatures in the Yamal tundra above the Arctic Circle have hit highs of 95 degrees this summer, compared to an average of 77 degrees.</p>
<p>At least 63 members of the Nenet community have been relocated as a result of the outbreak, their tents disinfected and children sent to a boarding school, the government said. The Nenets are traditional deer-herders and their livelihoods are linked to the animals.</p>
<p>A mass vaccination of reindeer is underway in the region, local officials said.</p>
<p>It may be too late for many of the animals because anthrax can kill deer within three days of infecting them, Vladimir Bogdanov, a biology professor with the Russian Academy of Sciences, told the RBC news website.</p>
<p>Yamal authorities stopped vaccinating reindeer 10 years ago because there had been no outbreaks for more than half-a-century — an apparent mistake, Bogdanov added.</p>
<p>Local authorities said they were considering the best way to dispose of dead reindeer. The usual method — burning — has severe risks in the tundra, as much of Siberia is already engulfed in wildfires.</p>
<p>Anthrax has a mortality rate of 25 to 80 percent, depending on a strain.</p>
<p>It was explored as a biological weapon by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, though never used.</p>
<p>Anthrax bacteria can remain dormant in dead bodies for decades, spreading to living organisms when exposed to them.</p> | Heat Wave Sparks Anthrax Outbreak in Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets Area | false | http://nbcnews.com/news/world/heat-wave-sparks-anthrax-outbreak-russia-s-yamalo-nenets-area-n617716 | 2016-07-27 | 3 |
<p>RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Baptists have given more than half a million dollars for relief efforts in Haiti since the Caribbean nation was struck by a devastating earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010.</p>
<p>Those funds will support the completion of several Virginia Baptist projects on the island, including an orphanage and about two dozen houses, Dean Miller, disaster response coordinator for the <a href="http://www.vbmb.org/" type="external">Virginia Baptist Mission Board</a>, told board members at their April meeting.</p>
<p>“Throughout all our work we are hiring local labor and thus providing critically-needed employment for the Haitian people,” Miller said. “Volunteer teams are encouraged to travel to Haiti and work alongside these Haitian workers. This provides incredible opportunities to share with others about our faith in Christ while laboring alongside of them and making a difference in their communities.”</p>
<p />
<p>Already completed is the first of three floors of the orphanage, called Delmas 19 for the suburb east of Port-au-Prince in which it is located. When finished, it will provide accommodations for between 50 and 60 children and space for a school with 150 additional children, said Miller.</p>
<p>He said the facility should be completed in August or September, in time for the children to settle in before the school year begins in October.</p>
<p>Once the main building is complete, work will begin on an adjacent community building, to provide job training and clinics to the neighborhood. Haitian Baptists also will use the building for Bible study.</p>
<p>In March Miller traveled with four other Virginia Baptists to Haiti to review the work and discuss with Haitian Baptists plans for the future.</p>
<p>“An engineer with us on the trip surveyed the work and was glad to see construction was being done at a very competent level,” said Miller. “He believes that the construction is very solid and will provide a safe and secure location for the children.”</p>
<p>Plans call for the orphanage to be financially self-sufficient in three to five years, he said. That will make it the only orphanage in the country not receiving assistance from abroad, he added.</p>
<p>Meanwhile eight houses — each of solid block construction, 16 feet square — have been built and three others are underway. Virginia Baptists hope to provide at least 25 such houses for families still living under tents in refugee camps 15 months after the earthquake, said Miller.</p>
<p>“Our partners in these endeavors — the <a href="http://www.oikoumene.org/gr/member-churches/regions/caribbean/haiti/baptist-convention-of-haiti.html" type="external">Haiti Baptist Convention</a>, the <a href="http://www.bwanet.org/" type="external">Baptist World Alliance</a> and <a href="http://english.baptistasegely.hu/" type="external">Hungarian Baptist Aid</a> — are walking alongside us and together we are making a difference in the lives of Haitians,” he said. “It is so great to share in this ministry with others and work together to change our world for Christ.”</p>
<p>Currently, volunteer teams are focusing exclusively on construction, Miller said. “Children’s ministry teams, medical personnel, church planters and such may be needed later in the year but not at the present time.”</p>
<p>But he added: “The current work is block construction but skilled labor is not required. Anyone willing to work in the heat, carry blocks, clear debris, pour concrete and simply provide ministry to our Haitian brothers and sisters is encouraged to consider volunteering.</p>
<p>Three Virginia Baptists teams have traveled to the island so far and another nine or 10 are expected to go between May and July, said Miller.</p>
<p>Among those is a 10-member Baptist campus ministry team representing eight colleges and universities in Virginia, scheduled to be in Haiti May 19-29.</p>
<p>“After the trip the team members will be sent to churches and campuses to speak,” said Cheri Wise, Baptist campus minister at Longwood University and Hampden-Sydney College, who is coordinating the trip. “The goal is not only to share about the trip but to increase awareness about poverty and how we can all be part of the solution.”</p>
<p>Photographs and additional information about disaster relief ministry in Haiti can be found on the Virginia Baptist Disaster Response’s Facebook page.</p> | Virginia Baptist contributions to Haiti relief top half a million dollars | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/virginiabaptistcontributionstohaitirelieftophalfamilliondollars/ | 3 |
|
<p />
<p>Source: General Electric Company; GE Capital Aviation Services</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Last week, General Electric officially announced to the world that it's no longer too big to fail. Here's what you need to know.The Dirty DetailsOn Friday, General Electric made good on its promise to the U.S. Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, and Securities and Exchange Commission that it would get back to its industrial roots. The company officially filed a regulatory request to no longer be considered a "systemically important financial institution."</p>
<p>In 2013, in the midst of Great Recession finger-pointing, U.S. regulators put into place stricter regulations for big banks had the heft to take markets down with them if they were to collapse. For institution on this list, regulators were given carte blanche to engage in "consolidated supervision," a nightmare in the making for corporate management and shareholders. It included the usual characters: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs , etc.</p>
<p>But it wasn't only banks under the microscope. Mega-corporations with big financial arms also came under scrutiny. The SEC didn't want another Enron to sneak by without scrutiny, so companies like General Electric, American International Group, and Prudential Financialalso got tapped by watchdogs for extra oversight to ensure they kept their finances in order.</p>
<p>This designation was a moment of reckoning for General Electric. In 2012, its "GE Capital" financial arm had a whopping $539 billion in assets and had extended credit to 243,000 commercial customers, 201,000 small businesses, and 57 million consumers. That's a lot to keep track of, and GE recognized that it had moved far away from its core competitive industrial advantage. While increased regulation might make sense for Goldman Sachs, a company that thrives in the financial sector and knows how to deal with regulation, it was too much for General Electric. It had morphed into a financial monster, and GE wanted out.</p>
<p>The PivotIn April 2015, General Electric announced a massive restructuring to create a "simpler, more valuable industrial company." Among the plans it laid out were:</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Source: General Electric Company</p>
<p>GE is well on its way to delivering on all these bullet points. With this latest filing, the corporation is finally saying it's ready to be treated differently by regulators. As GE Capital Chairman and CEO Keith Sherin puts it:</p>
<p>What Now?</p>
<p>General Electric investors should see this latest announcement as good news. The market has smiled upon its stock since the first restructuring announcement -- shares jumped nearly 15% on the initial news and have since headed higher for a total 28% gain. Over that same period, both the Dow Jones Industrial and the S&amp;P 500 have flatlined.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/GE" type="external">GE</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts</a></p>
<p>Running away from regulators isn't always good; Goldman Sachs even went so far as to buy up GE's U.S. deposit business, the final bank on General Electric's books. But for this industrial company, a large financial industry footprint just didn't make sense, and the regulatory push was just what it needed to get back to its roots. Investors will want to keep a close eye on GE as it recenters on its core competitive advantages -- but if its progress to-date is any indication, this stock will continue to deliver solid returns to shareholders for years to come.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/05/general-electric-were-no-longer-too-big-to-fail.aspx" type="external">General Electric: We're No Longer Too Big to Fail</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFJLo/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Justin Loiseau</a> owns shares of General Electric Company and also recently restructured to focus on his comparative advantage, abandoning his quest to bake the perfect pie and making really good chocolate chip cookies, instead. The Motley Fool owns shares of General Electric Company. The Motley Fool recommends Bank of America. 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</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</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</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</a>.</p> | General Electric: We're No Longer Too Big to Fail | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/04/05/general-electric-were-no-longer-too-big-to-fail.html | 2016-04-05 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>University of New Mexico football coach Mike Locksley refrained from the ol’ “correctable mistakes” routine Saturday night, following Texas Tech’s 52-17 victory over the Lobos at University Stadium.</p>
<p>Tech (2-0) blocked two punts and had a 91-yard kickoff return — all leading to touchdowns. The Lobos also had 16 penalties — one shy of the school record — and committed three turnovers.</p>
<p>“I hope they feel sick,” Locksley said after the game, referring to his players. “I hope they’re sick to their stomach. … For the last two weeks, there wasn’t anything that happened on the field that our players hadn’t seen on practice or on tape.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The miscues nullified UNM’s 433-yard offensive effort.</p>
<p>For complete coverage, see Sunday’s Journal or check back on ABQJournal.com.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Tech putting the game away.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Taylor Potts’ 11-yard touchdown pass to Lyle Leong has given the Red Raiders a 45-17 lead with 13:04 left in the game.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>UNM had a prior possession to the Tech red zone stall when cornerback Will Ford intercepted a B.R. Holbrook pass for Ty Kirk at the 3.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Atrocious special teams haunting Lobos.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Punter Ben Skaer had his second punt blocked on the first possession of the second half. A pair of Texas Tech rushers hit the three-man protection wall and Jonathan Brydon broke through. The ball squirted out at the 1.</p>
<p>Tech running back Baron Batch scored on a the next play for a 38-17 lead with 12:25 left in the third quarter.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>No discipline.</p>
<p>The Lobos squandered a red-zone chance after forcing a Tech turnover at the end of the half.</p>
<p>A 15-yard touchdown pass from B.R. Holbrook to tight end Lucas Reed was nullified by a needless pass interference penalty on Chris Hernandez with seven seconds left in the half. Then, offensive guard Mike Cannon drew a dead-ball unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that pushed the ball out of field-goal range at the 45.</p>
<p>Holbrook’s Hail Mary pass to the end zone as the half expired fell incomplete, leaving Tech with a 31-17 lead at the half.</p>
<p>UNM defensive end Johnathan Rainey forced a Taylor Potts fumble, and the Lobos took over at the Tech 31 with 39 seconds left.</p>
<p>Ty Kirk took and end-around run to the 15 to momentarily give UNM momentum.</p>
<p>The Lobos had 276 yards on offense in the first half, but also committed 11 penalties for 105 yards. Texas Tech had 297 first-half yards.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Momentum regained.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>B.R. Holbrook scrambled 11 yards to the Texas Tech but was stripped of the football. Chris Hernandez picked it up and ran it 45 yards for a touchdown to help UNM cut the deficit to 31-17 with 55 seconds left in the half.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Short-lived momentum.</p>
<p>Texas Tech strikes just before the half, a 25-yard Taylor Potts pass to Lyle Leong giving the Red Raiders a 31-10 lead with 1:15 left in the half. Tech drove 76 yards on 11 plays and has 307 yards of offense in the first half.</p>
<p>By the way, our national championship contender Oregon is losing 13-6 at Tennessee in the second quarter.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Reed scores first UNM TD of the season.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>B.R. Holbrook hit tight end Lucas Reed on a 9-yard touchdownd pass with 4:42 left in the first half to help the Lobos cut the deficit to 24-10. UNM went 74 yards in five plays, the big play coming on Holbrook’s 57-yard pass to Ty Kirk.</p>
<p>Holbrook is 15 of 20 passing for 171 yards and a TD. He already has career highs in completions and yards.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Lobos may be one of the better team in the country in red-zone defense.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Texas Tech marched to the UNM 5 but could manage Matt Williams’ 22-yard field goal for a 24-3 lead with 7:05 left in the first half.</p>
<p>The Red Raiders have been inside the Lobo 20 the last two possessions but have come away with only three points.</p>
<p>Oregon was “only” 6 of 8 in the red zone last week.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Stoner to the rescue.</p>
<p>Linebacker Joe Stoner stripped Texas Tech’s Baron Batch at the UNM 1, and Johnathan Rainey recovered to help the Lobos stave off a Red Raiders drive to keep the score at 21-3 with 13:39 left in the first half.</p>
<p>Stoner had an interception for UNM’s only forced turnover last week against Oregon.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Nevermind.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Eric Stephens returned a kickoff 93 yards (actually 95, he was 2 yards deep in the end zone), and Baron Batch scored on a 2-yard run two plays later to give Texas Tech a 21-3 lead with 5:15 left in the first quarter.</p>
<p>The Lobos so far look like a punch-drunk fighter.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Offense!</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>The Lobos get their first points of the season, a 28-yard James Aho field goal with 6:03 left in the first quarter to cut Texas Tech’s lead to 14-3.</p>
<p>UNM marched 53 yards on eight plays, the big play a 37-yard pass from B.R. Holbrook to Ty Kirk on the first play to the Raiders 27.</p>
<p>The Lobos ended their opponents’ 86-point run to start the season.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Am I watching a rerun?</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Texas Tech’s Aaron Crawford single-handedly broke through UNM’s three-player wall of protection and blocked Ben Skaer’s punt, recovering at the Lobo 3-yard line. Eric Stephens scored on a run on the next play (over ailing Lobo linebacker Carmen Messina) to give the Red Raiders a 14-0 lead with 10:49 left in the first quarter.</p>
<p>Sheesh!</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Already resembling Oregon.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Taylor Potts’ 55-yard screen pass to Austin Zouzalik on the fourth play from scrimmage puts Texas Tech ahead 7-0 just 45 seconds into the game. It was a career-long for Zouzalik.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Seventeen minutes to kickoff, and University Stadium has a sprinkling of fans.</p>
<p>The Lobos football team is hoping for a crowd of 25,000 for tonight’s home opener against Texas Tech. The&#160; paid attendance may get there, but the actual attendance may fall short.</p>
<p>UNM’s next two opponents met today in Salt Lake City. UNLV hung with Utah for a quarter, but the Utes pulled away for a 38-10 win. The Rebels, however, are not a horrible football team.</p> | Live at University Stadium | false | https://abqjournal.com/232649/live-at-university-stadium.html | 2 |
|
<p>CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A rare shot of freezing rain and drizzle closed several bridges along the South Carolina coast on Friday.</p>
<p>The glaze of ice ruined commutes on the last business day of the years as commuters have no other nearby options to the high bridges over wide waterways from Charleston to Myrtle Beach.</p>
<p>By midmorning Friday, the sun was out and the bridges thawed. But the cold weather is staying in South Carolina and especially in North Carolina, where the governor signed an order allowing propane and other fuel to be more easily delivered before the most brutal of the cold weather arrives.</p>
<p>The worst traffic problems in South Carolina on Friday were in Georgetown, where ice closed the U.S. Highway 17 bridge over the Waccamaw River — the main route connecting Charleston to Myrtle Beach — for several hours, according to Midway Fire and Rescue.</p>
<p>Wintery weather is unusual along the South Carolina coast, which usually gets snow or ice maybe two or three times a decade. Bridges in Charleston and Myrtle Beach also iced over, causing closures and accidents before things improved.</p>
<p>Now attention turns to more than a week of well-below normal temperatures across the Carolinas. The National Weather Service said it is possible many places in North Carolina will spend two days with temperatures never rising above freezing.</p>
<p>The forecast pushed North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper to sign an executive order to help truck drivers get propane and other heating fuels into the state and delivered to homes and businesses more quickly.</p>
<p>The governor’s order means truckers who are limited to the number of hours they can be in their rigs don’t have to count the time they wait in line to have their tankers filled with propane or heating oil, said John Jessup, executive director of the North Carolina Propane Gas Association.</p>
<p>There is plenty of gas in North Carolina and the cold and dry weather is helping deliveries, Jessup said.</p>
<p>“What really slows us down is ice and snow. When it’s just cold we’re really busy but we can keep up with it,” he said.</p>
<p>Jessup said he knows a dealer who heard from a customer who uses propane for a gas fire place and hadn’t needed a fill-up since 2014 because the past two winters have been mild.</p>
<p>“So all those people are calling,” Jessup said. “That puts more demand on our dealers.”</p>
<p>CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A rare shot of freezing rain and drizzle closed several bridges along the South Carolina coast on Friday.</p>
<p>The glaze of ice ruined commutes on the last business day of the years as commuters have no other nearby options to the high bridges over wide waterways from Charleston to Myrtle Beach.</p>
<p>By midmorning Friday, the sun was out and the bridges thawed. But the cold weather is staying in South Carolina and especially in North Carolina, where the governor signed an order allowing propane and other fuel to be more easily delivered before the most brutal of the cold weather arrives.</p>
<p>The worst traffic problems in South Carolina on Friday were in Georgetown, where ice closed the U.S. Highway 17 bridge over the Waccamaw River — the main route connecting Charleston to Myrtle Beach — for several hours, according to Midway Fire and Rescue.</p>
<p>Wintery weather is unusual along the South Carolina coast, which usually gets snow or ice maybe two or three times a decade. Bridges in Charleston and Myrtle Beach also iced over, causing closures and accidents before things improved.</p>
<p>Now attention turns to more than a week of well-below normal temperatures across the Carolinas. The National Weather Service said it is possible many places in North Carolina will spend two days with temperatures never rising above freezing.</p>
<p>The forecast pushed North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper to sign an executive order to help truck drivers get propane and other heating fuels into the state and delivered to homes and businesses more quickly.</p>
<p>The governor’s order means truckers who are limited to the number of hours they can be in their rigs don’t have to count the time they wait in line to have their tankers filled with propane or heating oil, said John Jessup, executive director of the North Carolina Propane Gas Association.</p>
<p>There is plenty of gas in North Carolina and the cold and dry weather is helping deliveries, Jessup said.</p>
<p>“What really slows us down is ice and snow. When it’s just cold we’re really busy but we can keep up with it,” he said.</p>
<p>Jessup said he knows a dealer who heard from a customer who uses propane for a gas fire place and hadn’t needed a fill-up since 2014 because the past two winters have been mild.</p>
<p>“So all those people are calling,” Jessup said. “That puts more demand on our dealers.”</p> | Rare ice closes S Carolina bridges; now comes the real cold | false | https://apnews.com/a6a65bb155e54f7c9c7d519a63454543 | 2017-12-29 | 2 |
<p>On September 10 1897 a certain George Smith, a London cabbie, had the dubious distinction of being the first person charged with drunk driving.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>The automobile was still in its infancy. But human misconduct was all grown up. And of course cars have continued to get better, fancier, faster and more <a href="" type="internal">stylish</a> ever since.</p>
<p>But guess who's still at the wheel.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">JOIN TheRebel.media</a> for more fearless news and commentary you won't find anywhere else.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.TheRebel.Media/TheMegaphone" type="external">VISIT our NEW group blog The Megaphone!</a>It's your one-stop shop for rebellious commentary from independent and fearless readers and writers.</p>
<p><a href="https://tinyurl.com/CBCExposed" type="external">READ Brian Lilley's book CBC Exposed</a> -- It's been called "the political book of the year."</p> | Today in History: First person charged with drunk driving (1897) | true | http://therebel.media/today_in_history_first_person_charged_with_drunk_driving_1897 | 2015-09-10 | 0 |
<p>Delivered May 12, 2012 at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas:</p>
<p>Your Excellency, Archbishop Joseph Naumann; members of the Board of Trustees; President Minnis and members of the faculty and staff; Benedictine fathers and sisters; parents, grandparents, and family members of the graduates — and especially mothers of the graduates, who celebrate a double-header today; and my fellow-classmates of the Class of 2012 of Benedictine College:</p>
<p>Thank you for inviting me to join you on this great day. Thank you for honoring my work with the gift of a degree. It has been one of the great graces of my professional life to have been given the opportunity to work regularly with young men and women of intelligence, wit, and character — after their parents had done the heavy lifting! So a special word of thanks, today, to the parents of today’s graduates — and the grandparents, and the other family members — who have helped bring you, the Class of 2012, to this pivotal moment in your lives.</p>
<p>Today is, by its nature — and I think at Benedictine College we can still speak of the “nature” of things! — a day of celebration, a day of remembrance, and a day of thanksgiving. Permit me to take a few minutes to suggest that you consider it a day of challenge as well: a challenge that might lead to a certain kind of vocational commitment.</p>
<p>We share, today, a unique and critical moment in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States. At the time of the American Revolution, Catholics accounted for less than one per cent of the population of the thirteen colonies — a tiny population clustered primarily in my native Maryland and a few Pennsylvania counties. Yet within a few decades of the Founding, the great tides of European immigration that began to wash onto the shores of the new nation — those “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” as they are memorialized on the Statue of Liberty — brought millions of Catholics to the New World: at first, Irish and Germans; later, Italians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthenians, and the many others who wove their lives, their traditions, and their aspirations into the rich tapestry of American democracy. Those 19thcentury immigrants felt the sting of anti-Catholic prejudice, even anti-Catholic violence. But notwithstanding that bigotry, Catholics have, I believe, almost always felt at home in these United States.</p>
<p>We have felt at home because we have thrived here; with the exception of immigrant Jews, no religious group has prospered more in America than the Catholic community. Yet Catholic “at-homeness” in the United States has had a deeper philosophical and moral texture. One of the great Catholic students of American democracy, Father John Courtney Murray, described that side of the Catholic experience of America in these terms, in We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition, a book published fifty-two years ago:</p>
<p>“Catholic participation in the American consensus has been full and free, unreserved and unembarrassed, because the contents of this consensus — the ethical and political principles drawn from the tradition of natural law — approve themselves to the Catholic intelligence and conscience. Where this kind of language is talked, the Catholic joins the conversation with complete ease. It is his language. The ideas expressed are native to his universe of discourse. Even the accent, being American, suits his tongue.”</p>
<p>In this second decade of the third millennium, there are many grave questions be debated in America: the question of the legal protection of innocent human life from conception until natural death; the question of long-term strategy and morally worthy tactics in the war against Islamist jihadism; the question of how we attend to the sick and how we manage immigration; the question of fitting public policy ends to fiscal means; the question of building an appropriate regulatory structure around the biotech revolution so that the new genetic knowledge leads to genuine human flourishing rather than to a stunted and manufactured humanity; the question of the health of American civil society and of the American national character; the list goes on and on. The very question of what should be on “the public policy agenda,” and what ought to be left to the private and independent sectors, is being as vigorously contested in our country today as at any time since the Great Depression and the New Deal. Yet amidst all this churning, the gravest question for our public culture is whether what Father Murray called the “American consensus” — that ensemble of “ethical and political principles drawn from the tradition of natural law” — still holds.</p>
<p>There are reasons to be concerned.</p>
<p>In October 2009, the nation’s political newspaper of record, the Washington Post, ran an editorial condemning what it termed the “extremist views” of a candidate for attorney general of Virginia who had suggested that the natural moral law was still a useful guide to public policy. ThePost, determined to nail down the claim that homosexual orientation is the equivalent of race for purposes of U.S. civil rights&#160;law, deplored this as “a retrofit [of] the old language of racism, bias, and intolerance in a new context.” Yet the Post‘s own claim was, to adopt its language, “extremist.” For it suggested that the label “bigot” ought to be applied to notable historical personalities who had appealed to the natural moral law in causes the Post would presumably regard as admirable: figures such as Thomas Jefferson, staking America’s claim to independent nationhood on “self-evident” moral truths derived from “the laws of nature”; or Martin Luther King, Jr., arguing in his Letter from Birmingham Jail that “an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law”; or Pope John Paul II, who, at the United Nations in 1995, suggested that the truths of the natural moral law — “the moral logic which is built into human life,” as he put it — could serve as a universal “grammar” enabling cross-cultural dialogue.</p>
<p>Appeals to the natural moral law we can know by reason underwrote the American civil rights revolution. Appeals to that same natural moral law underwrite the pro-life movement, the successor to the civil rights movement. And appeals to the natural moral law have underwritten U.S. international human rights policy for the past thirty years. Until, that is, December 2009, when the Secretary of State of the United States, in a speech at Georgetown University, emptied the concept of religious freedom of everything save the “freedom to worship” while asserting, in a catalogue of what she claimed were fundamental international human rights, that people “must be free…to love in the way they choose” — which “choice” must, presumably, be protected by international human rights covenants and national and local civil rights laws.</p>
<p>This speech, as things turned out, was one harbinger of an assault on religious freedom that continues to this day — an assault that imagines “religious freedom” to be a kind of “privacy right” to certain leisure-time activities, but nothing more than that. This dramatic misconception of religious freedom was evident in the present administration’s attempt to re-write federal employment law by dissolving the “ministerial exemption” that had long protected the integrity of religious institutions. It was evident in the administration’s refusal to continue funding the U.S. bishops’ efforts to help women who had been victims of sex-trafficking (because the Church refused to provide abortion as part of that work). And it has been most dramatically evident in the January HHS mandate that requires all employers (including religious institutions with moral objections and private-sector employers with religiously-informed moral objections) to facilitate the provision of contraceptives, steriliz ations, and abortifacient drugs like Plan B and Ella to their employees.</p>
<p>All of this suggests that one of the great challenges of your generation, my fellow-members of the Class of 2012 of Benedictine College, will be to rise to the defense of religious freedom in full. And, indeed, what could be a more apt challenge for the graduates of a college named in honor of the saint whose inspired vision and evangelical vigor saved the civilization of the classical world when it was in danger of being lost? What better challenge for the graduates of Benedictine College, named for one of the patrons of Europe, whose life-work saved the West as a civilizational enterprise built from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome?</p>
<p>For the defense of religious freedom in full which you must mount must be both cultural — in the sense of arguments winsomely and persuasively made — and political, in that you must drive the sharp edge of truth into the sometimes hard soil of public policy.</p>
<p>What is this “religious freedom in full” that you must defend and advance?</p>
<p>It surely includes freedom of worship, but it must include more than that; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is content with freedom of worship, so long as the Christian worship in question takes place behind closed doors in the American embassy compound in Riyadh. Religious conviction is community-forming, and communities formed by religious conviction must be free, as communities and not simply as individuals, to make arguments and bring influence to bear in public life. If religiously informed moral argument is banned from the American public square, then the public square has become, not only naked, but undemocratic and intolerant. If, on the other hand, religiously informed moral argument is welcome in public life, then we have the possibility of rebuilding, not a sacred public square (a goal the Catholic Church rejected at the Second Vatican Council), but a civil public square, in which tolerance is rightly understood as differences engaged within a bond of civility formed by a mutual commitment to reason.</p>
<p>It is a matter of both political common sense and democratic etiquette that Catholics in public life should make our arguments in ways that our fellow-citizens, who may not share our theological premises, can engage and understand — which is to say, in our particular case, that Catholics should bring to bear in public life the moral truths we hold through arguments framed by the grammar and vocabulary of the natural moral law. That is what John Paul II did at the United Nations in 1979 and 1995. That is what Benedict XVI did at the U.N. in 2008 and in the German Bundestag in 2011. That is what the bishops of the United States, and lay Catholics in their millions, have done over the past four decades in defense of life. And if there are some who consider such appeals to the natural moral law a form of tarted-up bigotry, well, we shall simply have to inform them, politely but firmly, that they are mistaken, and then demonstrate why.</p>
<p>Religious freedom in full also means that communities of religious conviction and conscience must be free to conduct the works of charity in ways that reflect their conscientious convictions. This is neither the time nor the place to discuss the problems that have been posed by tying so much of Catholic social service work and Catholic health care to government funding — save, perhaps, to note that these problems did not exist before the Supreme Court erected a spurious “right to abortion” as the right-that-trumps-all-other-rights, and before courts and legislatures decided that it was within the state’s competence to redefine marriage and to compel others to accept that redefinition through the use of coercive state power. What can be said in this context, and what must be said, is that the rights of Catholic physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals are not second-class rights that can be trumped by other rights-claims; and any state that fails to acknowledge those rights of conscience has done grave damage to religious freedom rightly understood. The same can and must be said about any state that drives the Catholic Church out of certain forms of social service because the Church refuses to concede that the state has the competence to declare as “marriage” relationships that are manifestly not marriages.</p>
<p>My fellow-graduates, your defense of religious freedom is going to require the skills of reasoning and argument that you acquired here at Benedictine College. It is going to require that some of you accept the risk and challenge of public service in elective office. And it going to require all of you to support those who take, as their vocation, the defense and promotion of religious freedom in full.</p>
<p>This will be the work of a lifetime. But it must begin sooner rather than later, for the threats to religious freedom among us are great, and many of them are deeply embedded in postmodern American culture. This work will not be without cost. Some of you may suffer various forms of martyrdom in taking up this cause: the martyrdom of ridicule, of being labeled “intolerant” and “bigoted”; the martyrdom of career paths blocked and promotions denied because of your adherence to the moral truth of things; the martyrdom of political defeat, or a judicial case well-argued but lost. Fidelity to the truth can have its costs. Yet as Blessed John Paul II taught young people all over the world, those costs are worth paying because the truth sets us free in the deepest sense of human liberation. Thomas More, patron saint of Catholics in public life, was never more a free man than when he bent his neck to the executioner’s axe in free adherence to the truth.</p>
<p>Let us pray that it does not come to that for any of you, or indeed for any of us. But let us also be clear on the stakes for which your generation is playing, which are nothing less than the long-term integrity of American democracy. So: be the culture-forming heirs of St. Benedict that your education here has prepared you to be. Be the champions of religious freedom in full. In doing that, you will give America a new birth of freedom — freedom tethered to truth and ordered to goodness, freedom that sets us free in the noblest sense of human liberation.</p>
<p>Godspeed on your journey.</p>
<p>George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon chair in Catholic Studies.</p> | Defending Religious Freedom in Full: A Generation’s Challenge | false | https://eppc.org/publications/defending-religious-freedom-in-full-a-generations-challenge/ | 1 |
|
<p>Wednesday, May 11, 2016 by <a href="author/tparas" type="external">Tara Paras</a></p>
<p>//www.newstarget.com/2016-05-11-supplements-sold-by-walmart-walgreens-and-other-retailers-dont-match-the-ingredients-on-their-labels.html</p>
<p />
<p>The New York State Attorney General announced&#160;early last year&#160;that testing showed that supplements sold at Walmart, Walgreens, Target and GNC do not actually contain the herbs they claim to contain on their label. Cheap fillers, such as&#160;powdered rice, asparagus, house plants and even some substances that could be fatal to those with allergies, were found to be inside the supplements.</p>
<p>A store brand of ginseng pills at Walgreens, said to enhance “physical endurance and vitality” was only found to contain powdered garlic and rice. On the other hand,&#160; <a href="//walmart.fetch.news/" type="external">Walmart’s&#160;ginkgo biloba</a>, a Chinese plant that enhances memory, contained just radish, houseplants and wheat, even though the product was marketed as wheat and gluten-free.</p>
<p>Big Business just does not care for the public at large, choosing instead&#160;to suck out as much money as they could from unwitting customers. Anyone who has been paying enough attention to alternative news channels would have come across dozens of stories of companies just caring for their one true bottom line&#160;— profit.</p>
<p>When a company like Walmart tries to pay its employees as little as possible and even tries to cheat them of their overtime hours, is it really that surprising&#160;to learn that they cheat their customers as well? Thanks to the seemingly never ending race to maximize profits, companies nowadays are just too keen on increasing their cash flow at the expense of everything else, including ethics.</p>
<p>After the&#160;NY State Attorney General’s issuance of cease-and-desist orders for all four retailers, a spokesperson for GNC promised “appropriate” action, but claims the company still stands behind the quality of its supplements overall.</p>
<p>In essence, what they’re saying is: “We don’t care.”</p>
<p>Leaving everything up&#160;to the&#160; <a href="//www.fda.news/" type="external">FDA</a> is a dangerous idea. As you may or may not be aware of,&#160;the FDA is heavily in cahoots with Big Pharma and <a href="//www.truthwiki.org/monsanto/" type="external">Monsanto</a>&#160;— not really the best choice of associates&#160;when its&#160;goal is supposedly to protect “the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and <a href="//science.naturalnews.com/radiation.html" type="external">products that emit radiation</a>.”</p>
<p>If your health is at stake, remember: The responsibility should rest squarely on your shoulders. Do some research and pick out companies that&#160;use quality herbs and are transparent about their practices. If you’re in need of guidance, visit the&#160; <a href="//labs.naturalnews.com/" type="external">Natural News Food Lab</a>,&#160;and see for yourself what your food and supplements <a href="//www.foodforensics.com/" type="external">are really made of</a>.</p>
<p>Sources used:</p>
<p><a href="//www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/" type="external">FDA.gov</a></p>
<p><a href="//www.naturalnews.com/048514_supplement_scam_big_business_FDA.html" type="external">NaturalNews.com</a></p>
<p><a href="//well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/new-york-attorney-general-targets-supplements-at-major-retailers/?_r=2" type="external">Well.Blogs.NYTimes.com</a></p>
<p><a href="//www.foodforensics.com/" type="external">FoodForensics.com</a></p>
<p><a href="//labs.naturalnews.com" type="external">Labs.NaturalNews.com</a></p>
<p><a href="//science.naturalnews.com/radiation.html" type="external">Science.NaturalNews.com</a></p>
<p>Tagged Under: Tags: <a href="tag/big-pharma-tag" type="external">Big Pharma</a>, <a href="tag/dietary-supplements" type="external">dietary supplements</a>, <a href="tag/fda" type="external">FDA</a>, <a href="tag/gnc" type="external">GNC</a>, <a href="tag/monsanto" type="external">Monsanto</a>, <a href="tag/ny-state" type="external">NY State</a>, <a href="tag/supplements" type="external">supplements</a>, <a href="tag/walgreens" type="external">Walgreens</a>, <a href="tag/walmart" type="external">Walmart</a></p> | Supplements sold by Walmart, Walgreens and other retailers don’t match the ingredients on their labels | true | http://newstarget.com/2016-05-11-supplements-sold-by-walmart-walgreens-and-other-retailers-dont-match-the-ingredients-on-their-labels.html | 0 |
|
<p>In his pre-Super Bowl interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, President Donald Trump didn’t just go off the rails: he hit a bus, ran off the rails, and then proceeded to chase Harrison Ford into a ravine.</p>
<p>Here’s the exchange that matters:</p>
<p>O’REILLY: Putin’s a killer.</p>
<p>TRUMP: We’ve got a lot of killers. Boy, you think our country’s so innocent? You think our country’s so innocent?</p>
<p>O’REILLY: I don’t know of any government leaders that are killers.</p>
<p>TRUMP: Well, take a look at what we’ve done too. We’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’ve been against the war in Iraq from the beginning.</p>
<p>O’REILLY: Mistakes are different than –</p>
<p>TRUMP: A lot of mistakes, okay, but a lot of people were killed. So a lot of killers around, believe me.</p>
<p>This morally benighted garbage led to celebration from Russian-linked Wikileaks:</p>
<p>Then, Vice President Mike Pence went on national television and defended the comments, refusing repeatedly to condemn Trump’s comments, fibbing, “I simply don't accept that there was any moral equivalency in the president's comments.”</p>
<p>Which is both asinine and a lie. Trump plainly equated America with Russia and George W. Bush with Putin.</p>
<p>This is nothing new from Trump, of course. In December 2015, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough pointed out to Trump that Putin “kills journalists that don’t agree with him.” Trump’s reply: “Well, I think our country does plenty of killing too, Joe.” Trump denied later that week that Putin has killed people at all.</p>
<p>Here are a few of Putin’s greatest hits:</p>
<p>Despite the ignorant cynicism from Trump, no American president has a record like that. And Trump’s attempt to equate American leadership with Putin’s thuggish record is beyond the pale. If Barack Obama had done it, the right correctly would have hammered him for the rest of his presidency over it. This is the sort of propaganda for which American enemies pray.</p>
<p>So here’s the question: what does Trump get out of any of this? Why does he so consistently defend Putin more than he would defend anyone else on the planet?</p>
<p>And here’s an even more important question: will mainstream conservatives go silent on Trump no matter what he does? Has the halo effect of victory relieved Trump of any pressure to behave with even the most remote semblance of decency? Will Republicans go along with anything Trump says, lying for him like Pence, because they like his policy preferences?</p>
<p>If so, that says something pretty nasty about Republican so-called leaders, both those who live in fear of a Trump tweet and those who wish to use Trump for their own political ends. Trump’s the president. The president has a duty to his country – and that duty includes not undermining our moral standing in the world by comparing us with one of the world’s leading thugocracies. Alleviating Trump’s responsibility to fulfill that duty because you like his tax policy is both a political and moral sin.</p> | No, Mr. President, We Don't Have 'A Lot Of Killers' Like Russia | true | https://dailywire.com/news/13178/no-mr-president-were-not-russia-ben-shapiro | 2017-02-06 | 0 |
<p>The full globalization of the Chinese economy will not be painless, Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), told CNBC.</p>
<p>China's trade relations, especially with the United States, have been marred by tension. The US has accused China in the past of manipulating its currency to make its exports more attractive. More recently, accusations of cyberspace hacking have further muddied the waters between the world's two largest economies.</p>
<p>(Watch This: <a href="http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?play=1&amp;video=3000156180" type="external">FireEye CEO: Cyberspace Offense Is Winning</a>)</p>
<p>But the WTO Director General said that the new leadership in China seems to be going in the right direction in improving market access to China.</p>
<p>"What I heard the new Chinese leadership saying is that we want to keep China opening its market, we want to keep internationalizing the Chinese economy," Lamy said.</p>
<p>However, he added that this process of opening up will not be without challenges as it will face resistance from domestic players who will not always welcome foreign competition.</p>
<p>(Read More: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100341649" type="external">US-China Relations Will Define Global Politics in 2013: The Economist</a>)</p>
<p>"If you look at the way it has worked for China for the last 10 years, overall it has worked. But that doesn't mean this [opening up] will happen in a painless way, like elsewhere, what is painless is very often inefficient, but what is efficient is sometimes painful," he added.</p>
<p>China has stepped up dialogue with its trade partners with its new President Xi Jinping visiting Russia and then Africa soon after his inauguration in the middle of March.</p>
<p>(Read More: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100585041" type="external">In Moscow, Chinese Leader Warns Against Meddling</a>)</p>
<p>Declining Importance</p>
<p>The WTO countries have been entering into trade negotiations outside the organization's purview since 10 years of trade talks launched in 2001 in Doha failed to resolve a split between the developed and developing worlds.</p>
<p>(Read More: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100375831" type="external">Is WTO About to Abandon Dream of Global Free Trade?</a>)</p>
<p>But Lamy said that trade talks under the WTO had begun again. "Instead of negotiating a big bundle of 20 topics, this is being done slice by slice, bite by bite."</p>
<p>He added that the stumbling block in WTO talks were the differences between the US and China.</p>
<p>"No WTO director general can push the US and China to agree on something if they don't agree and this is what happened," he added.</p>
<p>(Read More: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100575526" type="external">China Must Meet 'High Standards' to Join TPP: US Trade Rep</a>)</p>
<p>The US launched the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP negotiations in 2010 to boost trade relations with the Asia Pacific region. So far 11 countries have joined the free-trade negotiations, however, big economies of China, Japan and India are still to join.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cnbc.com/" type="external" /></p>
<p>More from our partners, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/" type="external">CNBC</a>:</p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100586921" type="external">Boris Johnson: His next big interview</a></p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100586806" type="external">Cyprus relief: Why the rally may be short lived</a></p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100586354" type="external">Russia loses out as Cyprus reaches deal</a></p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100585041" type="external">In Moscow, Chinese leader warns against meddling</a></p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100584249" type="external">Ford apologizes for ads showing women in bondage</a></p> | WTO's Pascal Lamy: Chinese globalization won't be painless | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-03-25/wtos-pascal-lamy-chinese-globalization-wont-be-painless | 2013-03-25 | 3 |
<p><a type="external" href="" /></p>
<p>November 9, 2001</p>
<p><a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=103784" type="external">UN: bombing dam a “disaster” — The Independent (UK)</a> The US bombing of a hydroelectric plant near a dam in southern Afghanistan could lead to a “disaster of tremendous proportions,” warn United Nations officials. Richard Lloyd Parry reports that the UN is concerned that the loss of electricity from the plant will cause civilian suffering. Moreover, UN officials reportedly fear that future damage to the nearby Kajaki Dam — which holds back a 32-mile long reservoir — could result in massive flooding that would damage crops and risk the lives of tens of thousands of people.</p>
<p><a href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2058321" type="external">Not-so-smart cards — Slate</a> Drivers’ licenses are easier to fake than ever before, but Bill Barnes says that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s offer to provide the technology for national “smart” ID cards is no solution. Barnes argues that Ellison’s suggestion “would be grossly expensive to build and maintain” and is not sure to work as promised. “It will take something more than technology to make me feel safe again,” Barnes writes.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.frontsight.com/gun_school_for_pilots_complete.htm" type="external">Arm Our Pilots! — various</a> While one airline considers <a href="http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011108/us/airline_stun_guns_1.html" type="external">giving pilots stun guns</a>, the <a href="http://www.frontsight.com/gun_school_for_pilots_complete.htm" type="external">Front Sight Firearms Training Institute</a> has been ardently campaigning to provide them with the real deal. As early as Sept. 12, the school was offering to “train every commercial pilot in the world free of charge in the defensive use of the handgun.” The Front Sight Web site includes an <a href="http://www.frontsight.com/gun_school_for_pilots_complete.htm#letters" type="external">encouraging form letter</a> for potential travelers to send to airlines: “Arm Pilots or I Will Not Fly.” <a type="external" href="" /></p>
<p>November 8, 2001</p>
<p><a href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2058318" type="external">Are United Nations, European Union becoming obsolete? — Slate</a> “The past two months have been good ones for leaders of large nation-states with relatively significant military capabilities,” writes Anne Applebaum. For the United Nations and the European Union, however, “they’ve been an unmitigated disaster,” she says. In this period of multi-national crises and coalitions, supposedly important multi-lateral organizations have been embarassingly sidelined while the US and its European allies call the real shots, says Applebaum.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/bioterrorism/tryagain.jsp" type="external">Bungling a bioweapons treaty — New Scientist</a> In those carefree days before Sept. 11, the Bush administration <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/bioterrorism/bioterrorism.jsp?id=ns99991076" type="external">vetoed</a> an international protocol aimed at limiting the spread of biological weapons. Now, Washington is submitting an alternative proposal, reports Debora MacKenzie, but they’re not likely to find much favor. “Instead of coming up with new ideas, say experts, the US has simply revived some sections of a protocol that it rejected earlier this year, while ignoring crucial parts that it doesn’t like,” MacKenzie writes. “So despite the recent anthrax attacks on the US, few people expect any progress on enforcing the convention when its members meet in Geneva later this month.” <a type="external" href="" /></p>
<p>November 7, 2001</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/11/07/MN159525.DTL" type="external">Journalists changing face of Afghan village — San Francisco Chronicle</a> Ilana Ozernoy reports that the influx of hundreds of foreign journalists has created an economic boom in the northern Afghan village of Jabal Seraj. Ozernoy says that the “trickle-down economics” of meeting journalists’ demands has transformed the wind-swept village about 50 miles north of Kabul into “a capitalist haven.” The village marketplace, which Ozernoy says once stocked “little more than pistachios and almonds,” is overflowing with rarities such as ketchup, orange Tang and instant oatmeal. Despite the economic benefits, Reuters’ Mike Collett-White reports the journalists <a href="http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011105/lf/attack_afghan_media_dc_1.html" type="external">haven’t been ideal guests</a>. Collett-White says that reporters have been disregarding local Muslim culture, smuggling vodka in water bottles and even paying anti-Taliban soldiers to arrange mock firefights for the cameras.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,2763,589412,00.html" type="external">Musharraf calling for halt to bombing during Ramadan — The Guardian (UK)</a> Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf, whose support for the US military campaign against the Taliban has made him an invaluable ally for Washington, is calling for a halt to the bombing of Afghanistan during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Musharraf, who will meet with government officials in Paris, London and Washington this week, said that any continuation of the bombing during Ramadan “will have definite negative effects around the Islamic world.” Musharrraf will meet with President Bush on Saturday, one day after Ramadan begins.</p>
<p><a href="http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/11/07/national/DRUGS07.htm" type="external">Port security cutting into war on drugs — The Philadelphia Inquirer</a> With 7,000 federal agents reassigned to counterterrorism duty and Coast Guard vessels busy protecting domestic ports, Tim Johnson reports that drug enforcement officials find themselves in a fight for resources. Asa Hutchinson, chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said it is too early to know whether the changes will require significant shifts in the agency’s duties or a reworking of jurisdictional lines. Still, noting that the Coast Guard has reassigned as much as 75 percent of its fleet from the Caribbean to handle port security, Hutchinson says the shifts will have an impact. “I don’t want Miami and the Caribbean to go back to the way it was in the 1980s,” Hutchinson says. <a type="external" href="" /></p>
<p>November 6, 2001</p>
<p><a href="http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=852048" type="external">Bungling homeland defense — The Economist</a> The Bush administration has quickly created the Office of Homeland Security, widened the authority of FBI and police investigations, and heightened security restrictions on many of the nation’s ports and borders. But, The Economist argues, the main target of terrorist activity is still poorly attended: the airlines. Saturday’s <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0111060316nov06.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed" type="external">security breach in Chicago</a>, in which a man nearly boarded a United Airlines flight with seven knives, serves as one alarming example.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-110501bags.story" type="external">Airline security’s 50 year-old baggage — The Los Angeles Times</a> While airplane passengers are subject to intensified scrutiny, checked luggage is still getting a free ride. “Despite ample evidence that airliners are vulnerable to bombings, U.S. officials have made only halting progress in countering the explosives threat,” Ted Rohrlich reports. Suitcase bombs have taken down more than two dozen planes since 1955, but even now “only a small percentage of passenger luggage on domestic flights is screened for explosives,” Rohrlich writes.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0144/ridgeway.php" type="external">White power groups to bin Ladin: You beat us to it — The Village Voice</a> Many US white power organizations have publicly supported the Sept. 11 attacks, James Ridgeway reports, and are chastising movement members online for not being organized or powerful enough to commit the acts themselves. However, experts warn that right-wing extremists are capable of other forms of terrorism, like the recent flurry of anthrax scares aimed at abortion clinics. White-power groups have long held an interest in bioterrorism technology, and have even reportedly made alliances with the Iraqi government and members of Usama bin Ladin’s al-Qaida, Ridgeway says.</p>
<p><a href="http://slate.msn.com//?id=2058125" type="external">Is there a doctor in the White House? — Slate</a> One important voice has been conspicuously absent from the bio-terrorism clamor: the medical establishment. A clear explanation of potential health threats facing America from a “physician in chief” would go a long way to calming American nerves, Emily Yoffe writes, but the Bush Administration seems to be content to let Tom Ridge and Donald Rumsfeld reassure the public.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?ObjectID=D1EC2221-E945-4F46-94AB75BCAE56D0E7&amp;amp;Title=Pentagon%20Delivers%20%27Personal%27%20Warning%20to%20Omar&amp;amp;db=current" type="external">Have you seen this mullah? — Voice of America</a> The Pentagon has upped the PR war in Afghanistan: It’s now dropping leaflets specifically targeting the supreme leader of the Taliban. The leaflets, which contain photographs of Mullah Mohammed Omar and his car’s license plate, as well as the inscription “We are watching,” are intended to intimidate the Taliban, Alex Belida reports. The leaflets come in conjunction with radio announcements urging Afghans to refrain from feeding, assisting or harboring those connected to the Taliban or Usama bin Ladin’s al-Qaida terrorist network. <a type="external" href="" /></p>
<p>November 5, 2001</p>
<p><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000088475nov05.story" type="external">Mystery men in Afghanistan — The Los Angeles Times</a> There has been no scarcity of rumors about US military advisors in northern Afghanistan, but Paul Watson reports that four men seen observing anti-Taliban troops “had the look of the real thing.” Watson says the men, conspicuous because of their light skin, wraparound sunglasses, western sportswear and expensive watches, refused to speak to journalists. An Afghan interpreter claimed the men spoke only Spanish, but Watson says they still refused to answer when asked a question by a Spanish-speaking photographer.</p>
<p><a href="http://web.realcities.com/content/rc/news/attack/miami/1956614127.htm" type="external">No more eyes in Afghanistan — The Miami Herald</a> The departure of Pakistan’s intelligence agents from Afghanistan has hurt the Pentagon’s ability to wage war on the Taliban, say Michael Zielenziger and Juan O. Tamayo. Having cut off his country’s support for the Taliban and pledged to provide intelligence support to the US, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has pulled all of Pakistan’s agents from Afghanistan. Some experts believe that the loss of the Pakistani spies, many of whom maintained close friendships with high-ranking Taliban officials, will weaken the US campaign. But at least one expert, a former director of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, suggests it would be foolish to rely on information coming from sources friendly with the enemy.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4290897,00.html" type="external">Rushdie points finger at “paranoid Islam” — The Guardian (UK)</a> Salman Rushdie, whose book The Satanic Verses earned him the enmity of Muslim fundamentalists, has again taken on the uncomfortable subject of radical Islam. In an opinion column, Rushdie argues that, despite what western leaders have said, the current conflict is very much “about Islam.” But Rushdie says that the version of Islam the Taliban and others are fighting for “stands, in a jumbled, half-examined way, not only for the fear of God – the fear more than the love, one suspects – but also for a cluster of customs, opinions and prejudices.” Those prejudices, Rushdie says, include “a loathing of modern society in general” and the cultural forces associated with it. “This paranoid Islam, which blames outsiders, ‘infidels,’ for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest-growing version of Islam in the world,” Rushdie claims.</p>
<p>Compiled by <a href="" type="internal">MotherJones.com staff.</a></p>
<p /> | Beyond the Blast | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2001/11/beyond-blast-6/ | 2001-11-09 | 4 |
<p />
<p />
<p>It was a foregone conclusion that Secretary of State aspirant Hillary Clinton would sail through her confirmation hearing on Tuesday morning. The <a href="http://www.senate.gov/~foreign/about.html" type="external">Senate Foreign Relations Committee</a> is a club, and whatever their disagreements, it’s members love to see their own rise to the top. (President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden were also Committee members.)</p>
<p>The hearing was a classic game of political softball, in which Clinton’s examiners gushed over her wonderful achievements and wished her well. Many used the occasion to win television time for their own pet projects: Indiana Republican Richard Lugar talked about nonproliferation; Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski urged action on the Law of the Sea Treaty; California Democrat Barbara Boxer discussed women’s rights; and many others—including Massachusetts Democrat, former presidential nominee, and disappointed Secretary of State hopeful John Kerry—brought up the issue of Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Surprisingly, there was almost no mention during the morning’s opening round of questioning about former President Bill Clinton’s <a href="http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=2356&amp;srcid=-2" type="external">Global Initiative</a> and the potential conflicts of interest inherent in his wife’s ascendance to the country’s top foreign policy post; the organization relies, in part, on funding from international donors. Florida Democrat Bill Nelson, among the relative few to even mention the Global Initiative, suggested that rather than complicating Clinton’s nomination, it illustrates her and her husband’s deep engagement in the world. (Yes, but as <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jukRz1P39g94NusdB_OuO7KUJU2AD95MCBCO1" type="external">AP reports today</a>, there is evidence of Senator Clinton intervening at least six times during her years on Capitol Hill on issues directly affecting firms that later donated to her husband’s foundation.)</p>
<p>Equally surprising was the lack of serious questioning on perhaps the greatest foreign policy challenge facing the new administration: Afghanistan. With US troops in Iraq preparing to pull back to their bases by June and depart the country entirely by the middle of next year, the big question now is how many will be dispatched to Afghanistan to battle emboldened Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. For his part, Obama has said relatively little on the subject in recent weeks, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/12/AR2009011203492.html?hpid=topnews" type="external">noting only</a> that things are not going well and that “we’ve got to ramp up our approach.” Thus far, this would seem to involve the deployment of 30,000 more troops, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/12/AR2009011203015.html" type="external">$1.3 billion</a> in additional military infrastructure projects in Afghanistan (bases, barracks, warehouses, training fields, airfields, etc.), and, perhaps, an additional $2.5 billion in supplemental funding to the State Department in support of international development projects. The Washington Post describes the Obama administration’s stance on the latter as “noncommittal.”</p>
<p>Beyond this, the overarching theme of the Obama team’s foreign policy approach is to employ what has come to be called “ <a href="http://www.csis.org/smartpower/" type="external">smart power</a>“—essentially a full-court press using all tools at the government’s disposal: diplomatic, economic, and yes, military. In her opening statement on Tuesday, Clinton <a href="http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/clinton_obama_fopo_will_be_mar.php" type="external">described her commitment</a> to “forward, direct diplomacy in every part of the world,” adding that she believes that “foreign policy must be based on a marriage of principles and pragmatism, not rigid ideology.” She outlined her “pragmatism” vis-à-vis Afghanistan by expressing support for “a comprehensive plan using all elements of national power—diplomacy, development, and defense—to work with those in Afghanistan and Pakistan who want to root out Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other violent extremists who threaten them as well as us in what President-elect Obama has called the central front in the fight against terrorism.”</p>
<p>Clinton’s (and, by extension, Obama’s) enthusiasm for a multi-pronged approach is less a choice than a simple recognition that, given the Taliban’s rapid resurgence, Afghanistan cannot be secured by force of arms. Literally. We simply don’t have the troops. Exhausted by years of combat in Iraq, the bulk of the US military is <a href="/news/feature/2008/09/exit-strategy-weakened-warriors.html" type="external">under extreme stress</a>. The idea of launching into another sustained period of fighting against increasingly smart and well-equipped hit-and-run insurgents is far from appealing. The Army’s new counterinsurgency manual, <a href="http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=8c365b16-d49b-49c0-9ba6-e004462691b2" type="external">written by military prodigy John Nagl</a>, suggests that a successful counterinsurgency requires a military-to-civilian ratio of at least 1-to-50. In Afghanistan, this would require a force of 600,000 troops—an impossibility given the current size and disposition of US forces, not to mention the continued reluctance of NATO partners to commit to large-scale combat deployments. Roughly 31,000 US troops are currently deployed in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>It’s for this reason, perhaps, that the Pentagon has expressed enthusiasm for a strengthened State Department role in the field. According to Tuesday’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/washington/13military.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss" type="external">New York Times</a>, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is even advocating that “more money and personnel be devoted to civilian agencies responsible for diplomacy and economic development.” Have you ever heard of the military suggesting cuts to its own budget?! The move appears to signal a decisive break with the Rumsfeld-era vision of an all-powerful Pentagon. “I believe we should be more willing to break this cycle, and say when armed forces may not always be the best choice to take the lead,” Mullen said. Wow. (It’s worth noting that Mullen will be staying on the for time being and that his boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, will also retain a seat at Obama’s table.)</p>
<p>So, with the emergence of Clinton’s “smart power” approach and the military’s apparent aquiesence to a new way of doing business, what if it’s not enough? What if it doesn’t work?</p>
<p>Clinton’s self-professed pragmatism may place her in the uncomfortable position of compromising on one of her longest and most deeply held passions: the well-being of women and girls around the world. At this morning’s hearing, Senator Feinstein used her question time to push Clinton to be true to her commitments to safeguarding women’s rights. She went so far as to display photographs of Afghan schoolgirls disfigured with battery acid by members of the Taliban. Clinton responded that preventing such attacks is not only an issue of human rights, but of national security. But, as seems increasingly likely, if US involvement in Afghanistan can only be drawn down by cooperating with elements of the Taliban (similar to what happened with Iraq’s Sunni Awakening), Clinton may be forced to do business with some very sketchy characters. Will her pragmatism stretch that far?</p>
<p>At the hearings, Clinton, though paying lip service to pragmatism in general, gave no hints of how far she is willing to apply it in Afghanistan. In fact, she yielded few details about the approach she expects to take—and the senators on the committee did not press her on this front. It’s true that Afghanistan was not intended to be the hearing’s main issue. Soon, though, she and her boss will have to make some hard decisions on the subject. Yet in this first outing in her new role, she provided no clear road map of where they might be heading.</p>
<p>Photo used under a Creative Commons license from <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcn/459273518/" type="external">marcn</a>.</p>
<p /> | At Confirmation Hearing, Hillary Treads Lightly on Afghanistan Question | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/01/confirmation-hearing-hillary-treads-lightly-afghanistan-question/ | 2009-01-13 | 4 |
<p>Romenesko Misc. Hey, journalism school deans: Need a few extra bucks for your department? Have your students write nice things about autos for <a href="http://www.carblog.com/" type="external">carblog.com</a>. (Sample line from the website: "Wow what a treat this car is.") Bob Mahon of the Automotive Brand Network -- the outfit behind carblog.com -- tells j-schools: "We are willing to make a contribution to the department for it's [sic] support, so I would rather not talk to an Internship coordinator at this stage."</p> | J-schools get cash when students write positive car blurbs | false | https://poynter.org/news/j-schools-get-cash-when-students-write-positive-car-blurbs | 2005-01-28 | 2 |
<p>Israeli scientists at Israel Aeorospace Industries ( <a href="http://www.iai.co.il/2013/22031-en/homepage.aspx" type="external">IAI</a>) have come up with an amazingly new schmuck-seeking missile called the Harpy NG,&#160; a new "Roamer" class missile which looks like an unmanned aerial vehicle. Harpy NG is designed to hover in the air and collide with a locked on target. The missile is deemed to be the next generation of what IAI calls its "loitering attack systems", due to its ability to loiter over a target before obliterating it.</p>
<p>This all-weather day/night system can hover 15,000 feet in the air for up to 9 hours with the average speed of 75mph, covering a lot of distance. With increased bandwidth, the missile is able to track and blind enemy radar systems. It can be pre-programmed by the operator, running multiple attack scenarios utilizing the autonomous fire-and-forget method.</p>
<p>This beauty carries 33 lbs of explosives and the total weight reaches 352lbs per missile. This missile is launched from a launcher placed on a truck or a boat, allowing a launch of up to 12 missiles simultaneously.</p>
<p>Boaz Levy, VP of IAI and general manager of the Missile, Systems and Space Group, said: "The new products will be used to strengthen the tactical capabilities of small infantry units and tactical and special operations, with special emphasis on solving operational problems in urban areas."</p>
<p>Israeli brilliance has blessed the world on many occasions despite the challenges of geography, size, and fighting terrorism. None of those challenges have slowed them down, however.</p>
<p>Enemies of Israel, never underestimate Israeli ingenuity. When it comes to excelling and protecting their own, they will always be ahead.</p>
<p>H/T <a href="http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2016/02/17/meet-israels-newest-missile-it-looks-like-a-drone-can-stay-airborne-for-9-hours-and-destroys-targets-at-enormous-distances/" type="external">Jews News</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NicMorgue1/" type="external">Nicole Morgan</a></p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/newsfury/" type="external">Like Us on Facebook</a></p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/americafyea/" type="external">Join Our Facebook Group</a></p>
<p /> | Israel Introduces BADASS New Missile, and their Enemies Are in a PANIC [VID] | true | http://fury.news/2016/06/israel-introduces-badass-new-missile-enemies-panic-vid/ | 2016-06-04 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Beam’s career as a whiskey maker spanned more than a half century at Bardstown, Kentucky-based Heaven Hill, a family owned and operated distilled spirits company and maker of the popular Evan Williams brand. Beam was responsible for distilling and aging Evan Williams — the world’s No. 2-selling bourbon– and other Heaven Hill whiskeys.</p>
<p>“He was a true industry giant long before the current bourbon renaissance,” said Max L. Shapira, president of Heaven Hill Brands. “Without question, he was committed to our industry and possessed a real passion for the craft of distilling.”</p>
<p>Beam’s pedigree as a bourbon maker was impeccable. As a grandnephew of Jim Beam, Parker Beam was born into a family that traces its whiskey-making roots in Kentucky to 1795, when Jacob Beam set up his first still. Park Beam, Parker’s grandfather and namesake, was Jim Beam’s brother.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“If you were a Beam, you sort of were destined to follow in the footsteps of either your father, grandfathers, cousins or uncles,” Parker Beam said in a 2007 interview with The Associated Press.</p>
<p>Another industry patriarch, Bill Samuels Jr., on Monday called his longtime friend “one of the good guys.” For some people, living up to a legendary family name can be a burden, but not so for Parker, Samuels said.</p>
<p>“In his case, he lived up to and exceeded the burden of having the most famous name in bourbon,” said Samuels, who retired after a long career as the top executive at Maker’s Mark.</p>
<p>During his years-long battle with the disorder, Parker Beam raised funds in hopes of helping find a cure.</p>
<p>Parker Beam was among a small fraternity of master distillers who oversaw production at various Kentucky distilleries during bourbon’s revival.</p>
<p>According to a 2014 report by the University of Louisville’s Urban Studies Institute, distilling contributes $3 billion in gross state product to Kentucky’s economy every year, up from $1.8 billion two years ago. Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey exports shot past $1 billion for the first time in 2013, according to the Distilled Spirits Council. By 2015, combined U.S. revenues for bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and rye whiskey rose 7.8 percent to $2.9 billion, while bourbon and Tennessee whiskey exports topped $1 billion for the third straight year, the group said.</p>
<p>Parker Beam began his career at Heaven Hill in 1960 and learned the craft by working alongside his father, Earl. The job of master distiller shifted from father to son in 1975 when Parker Beam assumed the role. He developed the company’s first premium small batch and single barrel bourbons.</p>
<p>That father-son partnership extended into another generation when Parker Beam’s son, Craig, started working at Heaven Hill in the early 1980s. For years, the Beams shared duties as co-master distillers. Parker Beam had the title of master distiller emeritus at Heaven Hill at the time of this death.</p>
<p>“Parker Beam wasn’t just a name on a bottle — he was the living embodiment of the whiskey inside — authentic, classic, well-seasoned and distilled from old-fashioned hard work and gentleman integrity,” said Eric Gregory, president of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association.</p>
<p>Craig Beam had his own humble start. On one summer break from school, he cleaned pigeon droppings in a vacant warehouse purchased by Heaven Hill. He later drove a truck for the distillery and worked in the bottling operation.</p>
<p>“I’ve got a whole lot to live up to with my father and grandfather,” Craig Beam told the AP in 2007. “I’ve got a lot of weight on my shoulders.”</p> | Parker Beam, master distiller of Kentucky bourbon, dies | false | https://abqjournal.com/924078/parker-beam-master-distiller-of-kentucky-bourbon-dies.html | 2017-01-09 | 2 |
<p>FIFA, the world governing body for soccer, has <a href="http://www.fifa.com/about-fifa/news/y=2017/m=1/news=fifa-council-unanimously-decides-on-expansion-of-the-fifa-world-cuptm--2863100.html?intcmp=fifacom_hp_module_news_top" type="external">decided to expand the format of its men's World Cup</a>&#160;from 32 teams to 48. The change will go into effect with the 2026 edition of the tournament.</p>
<p>So get ready for the debate over the pros and cons of this expansion to continue for the next nine&#160;years.</p>
<p>FIFA President Gianni Infantino has said the move is meant to bring the joy of a World Cup to more nations. He explained the change at a press conference in Zurich.</p>
<p>“Sixteen more countries, some of which probably will never have dreamt to participate in a World Cup, will have the chance to participate. And many more will have the chance to dream to participate,” Infantino said.</p>
<p>While the expansion will make it easier to qualify for the premier&#160;men’s soccer tournament, it may also make it harder to win.</p>
<p>The new format calls for the World Cup to move more quickly to a do-or-die knockout stage. That means fewer opportunities for teams to recover from early stumbles, and more opportunities for surprises and Cinderella stories like the ones you see in US college basketball during March Madness.</p>
<p>Certainly, as Infantino suggested, more teams that wouldn’t even be at the tournament under the current format could qualify. And that could mean more excitement for spectators and viewers at home.</p>
<p>But let’s be clear about two big reasons FIFA is choosing to change what is already a very profitable tournament every four years. Money and politics. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/jan/10/world-cup-48-teams-gianni-infantino-fifa-money" type="external">Critics say that’s what this is all about</a>.</p>
<p>First of all, expanding the format means more games per tournament. There were 64 matches at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The 2026 edition will feature 80 soccer games. That means more TV rights to sell, more passionate TV viewers in 16 extra nations, and of course more advertising revenue for FIFA.</p>
<p>Then comes the politics. For years, nations in Asia and Africa have been complaining that they've been discriminated against by a World Cup format that favors Europe and South America, the two historical hotbeds of soccer. And they are right to complain.</p>
<p>Africa, for example, has 54 national soccer teams, but only got five&#160;spots at the last World Cup. Asia has 46 teams and only four&#160;spots. Compare that to Europe with 56 nations and 13 spots, and South America with 10 countries and six&#160;spots. That's not a democratic distribution.</p>
<p>Traditionally, the allocation of spots at the World Cup has been decided&#160;based on performances at past tournaments. The continents whose teams dominated were rewarded with the most qualifying spots.</p>
<p>But that’s not entirely fair either. Asian and African teams have had fewer opportunities to make soccer history than their European and South American counterparts, simply because they’ve been invited to the dance fewer times. Expanding the number of teams helps to address that.</p>
<p>The change may be less significant for North America and the Caribbean, the region that includes the United States. The new system could result in an extra qualifying spot or two. But that may not impact the United States much. The US men’s national soccer team has been a regular at recent World Cups.</p>
<p>But the FIFA expansion could have a very tangible impact on American soccer fans when it goes into effect for the 2026 tournament. The United States is considered a front-runner to host that World Cup, either alone or in collaboration with neighbors Mexico and Canada. If that happens, that will mean more World Cup games being played here on US soil in 2026.</p>
<p>The downside? Any soccer fan hoping to watch all 80 matches in 32 days in 2026 will face a much steeper challenge than at present.</p> | How a bigger FIFA World Cup could lead to March Madness-style drama | false | https://pri.org/stories/2017-01-10/how-bigger-fifa-world-cup-could-lead-march-madness-style-drama | 2017-01-10 | 3 |
<p>On Friday, October 13, some Twitter users went silent to protest the social media platform's decision to silence actor Rose McGowan by suspending her account.</p>
<p>McGowan, in recent days, has been using Twitter to aggressively criticize Harvey Weinstein, his reported years-long behavior towards women, and the men in Hollywood she's certain have known and remained silent about it.</p>
<p>In the video above, What's Trending's Shira Lazar examines the impetus behind the #WomenBoycottTwitter protest and highlights the several different ways celebrities, influencers, and everyday users of Twitter have responded to it.</p> | What's Trending: #WomenBoycottTwitter | false | https://circa.com/story/2017/10/15/nation/whats-trending-womenboycotttwitter | 2017-10-15 | 1 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>MIAMI – Derek Auguste, a former Army sergeant, is used to following instructions. So by the time yoga instructor Molly Birkholm finished her relaxation session, he was at ease.</p>
<p>Auguste was one of 40 or so military veterans and community members practicing yoga and relaxation techniques at Warrior Wednesday, a monthly forum hosted by United Way of Miami-Dade as part of its Mission United veterans support group.</p>
<p>So far, topics have included transitioning back into civilian society and employment. The October session was devoted to mindfulness, a meditative technique that focuses on the present moment, through yoga.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Anything that can help me deal with my anxiety is worth learning how to apply,” Auguste said.</p>
<p>Birkholm, co-founder of Warriors at Ease – a yoga practice intended to help veterans deal with stress, trauma and combat injuries – led the group through a meditation session and Q&amp;A discussion. Civilians and veterans alike found themselves dealing with common issues: busy minds and restless nights.</p>
<p>“The noise in my head just wouldn’t shut up,” said one participant after the session. Heads around the room nodded.</p>
<p>According to Mission United vice chair Tomas Erban, finding mutual ground through shared experiences is the goal. He said he wants the forums to help active-duty members and military veterans re-acclimate to civilian life through interacting with community members.</p>
<p>“I was very impressed with the level of honesty,” Erban said of previous sessions. “It (gives) the veterans a chance to get together and discuss different issues that impact them.”</p>
<p>Auguste, who served in Iraq and Haiti, said the sessions have helped him deal with the sense of isolation he felt after leaving the military.</p>
<p>“I felt alone a lot of the times. I thought I was going through it by myself.”</p>
<p>Now, he says, he has learned there is a community for him.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“The thing that heals all of us is community,” Birkholm said during her yoga session. “This community needs each other. This is yoga as well.”</p>
<p>After the session, Auguste said he felt more rested and less burdened.</p>
<p>Brian Lynch, Mission United’s director and a former major in the U.S. Marine Corps, said he plans on continuing the Warrior Wednesdays each month. The next session will feature Amishi Jha, a University of Miami associate professor of psychology who has done a lot of work with veterans and mindfulness training.</p>
<p>“It’s inspiring and refreshing to see so many people in Miami come around for their veterans,” Lynch said.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Yoga provides veterans with coping techniques | false | https://abqjournal.com/889225/yoga-provides-veterans-with-coping-techniques.html | 2 |
|
<p>The Lord High Almighty Pooh-Bah of threats. The Grand Ayatollah of nuclear menace.</p>
<p>As we all know only too well, the United States and Israel would hate to see Iran possessing nuclear weapons. Being “the only nuclear power in the Middle East” is a great card for Israel to have in its hand. But — in the real, non-propaganda world — is USrael actually fearful of an attack from a nuclear-armed Iran? In case you’ve forgotten …</p>
<p>In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion “Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel.” She “also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.”[1]</p>
<p>2009: “A senior Israeli official in Washington” asserted that “Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation.”[2]</p>
<p>In 2010 the Sunday Times of London (January 10) reported that Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former director-general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, “believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.”</p>
<p>Early last month, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a television audience: “Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability.”[3]</p>
<p>A week later we could read in the New York Times (January 15) that “three leading Israeli security experts — the Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, and a former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz — all recently declared that a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel.”</p>
<p>Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio (January 18), had this exchange:</p>
<p>Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?</p>
<p>Barak: People ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now … in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case.</p>
<p>Lastly, we have the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in a report to Congress: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons. … There are “certain things [the Iranians] have not done” that would be necessary to build a warhead.”[4]</p>
<p>Admissions like the above — and there are others — are never put into headlines by the American mass media; indeed, only very lightly reported at all; and sometimes distorted — On the Public Broadcasting System (PBS News Hour, January 9), the non-commercial network much beloved by American liberals, the Panetta quote above was reported as: “But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that’s what concerns us.” Flagrantly omitted were the preceding words: “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No …”[5]</p>
<p>One of Israel’s leading military historians, Martin van Creveld, was interviewed by Playboy magazine in June 2007:</p>
<p>Playboy: Can the World live with a nuclear Iran?</p>
<p>Van Creveld: The U.S. has lived with a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear China, so why not a nuclear Iran? I’ve researched how the U.S. opposed nuclear proliferation in the past, and each time a country was about to proliferate, the U.S. expressed its opposition in terms of why this other country was very dangerous and didn’t deserve to have nuclear weapons. Americans believe they’re the only people who deserve to have nuclear weapons, because they are good and democratic and they like Mother and apple pie and the flag. But Americans are the only ones who have used them. … We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us. We cannot say so too openly, however, because we have a history of using any threat in order to get weapons … thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the U.S. and Germany.”</p>
<p>And throughout these years, regularly, Israeli and American officials have been assuring us that Iran is World Nuclear Threat Number One, that we can’t relax our guard against them, that there should be no limit to the ultra-tough sanctions we impose upon the Iranian people and their government. Repeated murder and attempted murder of Iranian nuclear scientists, sabotage of Iranian nuclear equipment with computer viruses, the sale of faulty parts and raw materials, unexplained plane crashes, explosions at Iranian facilities … Who can be behind this but USrael? How do we know? It’s called “plain common sense”. Or do you think it was Costa Rica? Or perhaps South Africa? Or maybe Thailand?</p>
<p>Defense Secretary Panetta recently commented on one of the assassinations of an Iranian scientist. He put it succinctly: “That’s not what the United States does.”[6]</p>
<p>Does anyone know Leon Panetta’s email address? I’d like to send him my list of United States assassination plots. More than 50 foreign leaders were targeted over the years, many successfully.[7]</p>
<p>Not long ago, Iraq and Iran were regarded by USrael as the most significant threats to Israeli Middle-East hegemony. Thus was born the myth of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the United States proceeded to turn Iraq into a basket case. That left Iran, and thus was born the myth of the Iranian Nuclear Threat. As it began to sink in that Iran was not really that much of a nuclear threat, or that this “threat” was becoming too difficult to sell to the rest of the world, USrael decided that, at a minimum, it wanted regime change. The next step may be to block Iran’s lifeline — oil sales using the Strait of Hormuz. Ergo, the recent US and EU naval buildup near the Persian Gulf, an act of war trying to goad Iran into firing the first shot. If Iran tries to counter this blockade it could be the signal for another US Basket Case, the fourth in a decade, with the devastated people of Libya and Afghanistan, along with Iraq, currently enjoying America’s unique gift of freedom and democracy.</p>
<p>On January 11, the Washington Post reported: “In addition to influencing Iranian leaders directly, [a US intelligence official] says another option here is that [sanctions] will create hate and discontent at the street level so that the Iranian leaders realize that they need to change their ways.”</p>
<p>How utterly charming, these tactics and goals for the 21st century by the leader of “The Free World”. (Is that expression still used?)</p>
<p>The neo-conservative thinking (and Barack Obama can be regarded as often being a fellow traveler of such) is even more charming than that. Listen to Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at America’s most prominent neo-con think tank, American Enterprise Institute:</p>
<p>The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately.” … And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem.[8]</p>
<p>What are we to make of that and all the other quotations above? I think it gets back to my opening statement: Being “the only nuclear power in the Middle East” is a great card for Israel to have in its hand. Is USrael willing to go to war to hold on to that card?</p>
<p>Notes</p>
<p>[1] Haaretz.com (Israel), October 25, 2007; print edition October 26</p>
<p>[2] Washington Post, March 5, 2009</p>
<p>[3] “Face the Nation”, CBS, January 8, 2012; <a href="http://ufohunterorguk.com/2012/01/12/us-defense-secretary-leon-panetta-admits-iran-not-making-nuclear-weapons/" type="external">see video</a></p>
<p>[4] The Guardian (London), January 31, 2012</p>
<p>[5]&#160; <a href="http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/01/10/pbss-dishonest-iran-edit/" type="external">“PBS’s Dishonest Iran Edit”</a>, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), January 10, 2012</p>
<p>[6] Reuters, January 12, 2012</p>
<p>[7] <a href="http://killinghope.org/bblum6/assass.htm" type="external">http://killinghope.org/bblum6/assass.htm</a></p>
<p>[8] <a href="http://politicalcorrection.org/fpmatters/201112020008" type="external">Video of Pletka making these remarks</a></p> | The Problem With Iran Not Getting a Nuclear Bomb | false | http://foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/02/04/the-problem-with-iran-not-getting-a-nuclear-bomb/ | 2012-02-04 | 1 |
<p>If you thought you had post-election letdown syndrome, with the endless hours of TV punditry and blog pontification that once filled your days and nights suddenly evaporating, imagine what Nate Silver feels like. His labor-intensive web site, <a href="http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/" type="external">fivethirtyeight.com</a>, rocketed to prominence last year as the most reliable and thorough electoral predictor around, but after the election, what does he have to post about? Well, it turns out his geeky brilliance can be used to predict other things as well, including the <a href="http://www.oscar.com/nominees/?pn=nominees" type="external">lame old Oscars</a>, heading to your TV this Sunday. Silver fed the history of Oscar winners into his supercomputer <a href="http://nymag.com/movies/features/54335/" type="external">for New York magazine</a>, and the results included both the obvious and the somewhat surprising. Slumdog Millionaire is given a 99% chance of winning Best Picture, and director Danny Boyle gets an even higher 99.7% chance of winning Best Director, with only Milk and Gus Van Sant having an outside chance at the statues. The late Heath Ledger is an 85% lock on Best Supporting Actor, while Mickey Rourke has a slightly less assured 71% chance at Best Actor (compared to Sean Penn’s 19%). Kate Winslet gets a 67.6% shot at Best Actress although Meryl Streep is her only competition at 32.4%, but it’s the Best Supporting Actress category that has a surprise: Benjamin Button‘s Taraji P. Henson has a 51% chance, followed by Penelope Cruz at 24.6%, an inversion of the apparent conventional wisdom. The magic computer’s reasoning was that Henson is the only actress in the category whose film is also a Best Picture nominee, which turns out to be a major correlative factor. So, if you want to win the $10 at your Oscar party, you might want to consider Silver’s analysis, as well as my own motto when it comes to picking winners: “The Oscars: It’s Not About Good Movies!”</p> | 538’s Nate Silver Predicts the Oscars | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/02/538s-nate-silver-predicts-oscars/ | 2009-02-16 | 4 |
<p>The cartoonists&#160;killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack on Wednesday&#160;were&#160;well known across France, cultural mainstays whose work&#160;many French grew up with and followed over decades.</p>
<p>Jean Cabut, who went by the&#160;pen name "Cabu,"&#160;was the lead cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo. He was 75.&#160;</p>
<p>French publisher Arash Derambarsh knew him&#160;well. He was just 5 when he saw Cabu for the first time,&#160;on a hit TV show for children. He later met Cabu as an adult&#160;and confessed that he was a fan.</p>
<p>Derambarsh even went on to publish some of Cabu's work.&#160;“I never imagined that I would one day work with him,”&#160;Derambarsh&#160;says.</p>
<p>He also recalls that the cartoonist was extremely shy.&#160;“I never see a person that was so shy in my life," Derambarsh says. "All the time, he would talk with his pen."</p>
<p>"He's the most gentle soul, he had great humor," says Agnes Poirier, the UK editor for French news magazine Marianne. She points out that while cartoonists like Cabu wrote for Charlie Hebdo, they were also much more broadly known.</p>
<p>"They were also on radio and they were also on television, and so, you know, they don't just belong to one publication, they're just part of the French culture," she says. "They have shaped the humor of generations of French people."</p>
<p>Also lost was another friend of Derambarsh's —&#160;47-year-old Stéphane Charbonnier, or "Charb,"&#160;the weekly magazine's&#160;editor-in-chief. He&#160;was&#160;also was a frequent contributor of cartoons at the newspaper, and he was no stranger to death threats.</p>
<p>Derambash says&#160;he talked to Charb a lot about terrorism, but the editor was&#160;determined not to give in to the threats. “He said to me, 'We have to make caricature, because this is the last thing that democracy has to give: expression,”&#160;Derambarsh remembers.</p>
<p>When Derambarsh last spoke with Charb, about a month ago, he told the editor of Charlie Hebdo to be careful.&#160;He says Charb replied with this: “Oh you know, nobody wants to kill caricaturists like us.”&#160;</p> | 'Oh, you know, nobody wants to kill caricaturists like us' | false | https://pri.org/stories/2015-01-07/oh-you-know-nobody-wants-kill-caricaturists-us | 2015-01-07 | 3 |
<p>Sean Hannity, whose fanatical support for Donald Trump has crescendoed to rather unseemly proportions, reached a new apogee on Friday:</p>
<p>In 10 yrs <a href="https://twitter.com/wikileaks" type="external">@wikileaks</a> has gotten nothing wrong &amp; no one's been killed bc of the info released. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/freejulianassange?src=hash" type="external">#freejulianassange</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/freeinternet?src=hash" type="external">#freeinternet</a> for all.</p>
<p>Hannity’s support of Julian Assange, who is closely aligned with Russia and Vladimir Putin, and Assange’s Wikileaks, drew condemnation from many on the political right, as well as others, especially since in the past Hannity had condemned Assange’s work.</p>
<p>Hi <a href="https://twitter.com/seanhannity" type="external">@seanhannity</a> <a href="https://t.co/7UmtzJ3hUG" type="external">https://t.co/7UmtzJ3hUG</a></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/seanhannity" type="external">@seanhannity</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/wikileaks" type="external">@wikileaks</a> Didn't you used to be against Wikileaks?</p>
<p>Remember that time you attacked Assange for "waging war on the U.S." and "putting American lives at risk?" I do. <a href="https://t.co/MhqhATzZoB" type="external">https://t.co/MhqhATzZoB</a></p>
<p>You were outraged at Wikileaks as traitors but now that Trump is schlonging you, you love them. Pathetic idiot. <a href="https://t.co/h9M8TW1rw9" type="external">https://t.co/h9M8TW1rw9</a></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/seanhannity" type="external">@seanhannity</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/wikileaks" type="external">@wikileaks</a> Did you forget about this? <a href="https://t.co/P5qj9ftPsz" type="external">https://t.co/P5qj9ftPsz</a></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/seanhannity" type="external">@seanhannity</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/wikileaks" type="external">@wikileaks</a> Tell that to the LGBT people it outed in Saudi Arabia. Wikileaks deals in STOLEN information on private citizens.</p>
<p>Indiscriminate Wikileaks revelations brought Kenya to the brink of civil war and 1,300 people died, Sean. <a href="https://t.co/7QTIowZ1vK" type="external">https://t.co/7QTIowZ1vK</a> <a href="https://t.co/ZDly9pOk62" type="external">https://t.co/ZDly9pOk62</a></p>
<p>This is emphatically WRONG. 1,300 people died in Kenya alone b/c of Wikileaks. <a href="https://t.co/7QTIowZ1vK" type="external">https://t.co/7QTIowZ1vK</a> <a href="https://t.co/ZDly9pOk62" type="external">https://t.co/ZDly9pOk62</a></p>
<p>Sean breaks out the kneepads for a Kremlin useful idiot: <a href="https://t.co/CZsZI3Ibbo" type="external">https://t.co/CZsZI3Ibbo</a></p>
<p>So, let's have a gander at *your* emails <a href="https://twitter.com/seanhannity" type="external">@seanhannity</a>. Is it fair that you aren't hacked because you back the Russian dictator's candidate?</p>
<p>You have no idea what the cost of life of his propagandizing might be and you're legitimately the shittiest American alive. <a href="https://t.co/zgvk7eerKf" type="external">https://t.co/zgvk7eerKf</a></p>
<p>How do you know, Shinebox? <a href="https://t.co/6sieq6nNAJ" type="external">https://t.co/6sieq6nNAJ</a></p>
<p>How long until Hannity claims the primetime slot on Russia Today? <a href="https://t.co/O41hvJT2lw" type="external">https://t.co/O41hvJT2lw</a></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/seanhannity" type="external">@seanhannity</a> So, you're okay that <a href="https://twitter.com/wikileaks" type="external">@wikileaks</a> publishes material that the US Gov't considers harmful to national security? Fuck you, traitor.</p>
<p>You’ve burned every shred of your dignity and principle at the alter of partisanship you hack. <a href="https://t.co/OnYR0qcwiU" type="external">https://t.co/OnYR0qcwiU</a></p>
<p>And now it's complete. Supporting people who hate this country. There's no coming back for Hannity. <a href="https://t.co/9p9nt2Sqkl" type="external">https://t.co/9p9nt2Sqkl</a></p>
<p>Every conservative should disavow this man. This is just beyond foolish. <a href="https://t.co/uEaNy5cPTl" type="external">https://t.co/uEaNy5cPTl</a></p>
<p>And finally:</p>
<p>This will change when they decide to start dumping on Republicans. <a href="https://t.co/64wwq8RNru" type="external">https://t.co/64wwq8RNru</a></p>
<p>H/T <a href="http://twitchy.com/sd-3133/2016/10/21/nail-meet-coffin-sean-hannity-prostrates-himself-at-altar-of-assange-wikileaks/" type="external">Twitchy</a></p> | Hannity Reverses Himself From 2010, Genuflects To Wikileaks | true | https://dailywire.com/news/10162/hannity-reverses-himself-2010-genuflects-wikileaks-hank-berrien | 2016-10-22 | 0 |
<p>Some 13 US Army soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas have been arrested in a prostitution sting, officials said. They range in rank from private to major.</p>
<p>The personnel, who were all active duty, agreed to sex before they were detained. In total, 20 people were arrested in the sting, which went on for a number of weeks, KWTX <a href="http://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Twenty-snared-in-local-prostitution-sting-442803963.html" type="external">reports</a>.</p>
<p>The police sting used websites known for prostitution to place ads soliciting sex. In less than 20 minutes, the first contact was made, Sheriff Eddy Lange said, according to the&#160; <a href="http://kdhnews.com/news/crime/sheriff-of-arrested-in-prostitution-sting-are-soldiers/article_97af3d52-92b2-11e7-9a05-6b47870dd846.html" type="external">Killeen Daily Herald</a>. The suspects agreed to pay for sex acts largely through a series of text messages.</p>
<p>The agreed prices ranged from $60 to $200, depending on the sexual act and timeframe the suspects were looking for. A number of women responded to the ads, but none actually showed up, police <a href="http://kdhnews.com/news/crime/sheriff-of-arrested-in-prostitution-sting-are-soldiers/article_97af3d52-92b2-11e7-9a05-6b47870dd846.html" type="external">said</a>.</p>
<p>All of the men arrested face solicitation of prostitution charges, which are misdemeanors with punishment ranging from a fine to jail time. Two of the men arrested face felony charges.</p>
<p>One asked for sex with a person under 18 years of age, while another requested a “two-fer,” which TJ Cruz of the Bell County Sheriff’s Office explained means sex with both a minor and an older woman. It wasn’t revealed whether these two men were soldiers.</p>
<p>Cruz also said one man who came to the hotel left both his wife and mother waiting in the car.</p>
<p>An undercover female officer posed as a prostitute and met the suspects at various hotels in Salado and Killeen. They were then arrested.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/175516-us-troops-rape-italy/" type="external" /></p>
<p>“The purpose of the operation is to crack down on sex trafficking and to identify and arrest individuals seeking sexual acts in exchange for an agreed-upon fee in Bell County,” Cruz said.</p>
<p>“Our goal is to focus our efforts on sex buyers who are seeking to take advantage of sex trafficking victims. We are putting these predators on notice that our Bell County community will not tolerate their behavior.”</p>
<p>“Allegations such as these are taken seriously as they run counter to Army values,” said Fort Hood public affairs officer Tom Rheinlander. “As always, we are supportive of local authorities and will cooperate fully. Fort Hood will refrain from commenting further given that this is an ongoing investigation.”</p>
<p>All soldiers have been released on bail. According to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, pandering and prostitution carries a maximum punishment of dishonorable discharge, <a href="https://www.stripes.com/news/more-than-a-dozen-fort-hood-soldiers-arrested-in-texas-prostitution-sting-1.486516#.WbKTWsiGOUl" type="external">Stars and Stripes reports</a>. &#160;</p>
<p>“We’re putting predators on notice,” Lange said. “We’ll be doing this on a regular basis. We want this area to be known as ‘too hot’.”</p>
<p>Located halfway between Austin and Waco, Fort Hood is the largest military base in the world by area, with more than 215,000 acres (87,000&#160;hectares) and over 45,000 military personnel.</p> | 13 Fort Hood soldiers arrested in prostitution sting | false | https://newsline.com/13-fort-hood-soldiers-arrested-in-prostitution-sting/ | 2017-09-09 | 1 |
<p>The bitcoin price rose on Thursday after Chinese digital-currency exchange BTCC said it would temporarily halt withdrawals while it upgrades its anti-money laundering systems, becoming the third major exchange to do so. Last week, OKCoin and Huobi, which, along with BTCC, comprise China's "big three" bitcoin exchanges, made similar announcements, saying the necessary upgrades should take a month, if not less. One bitcoin cost $1,019 in recent trade, according to Coin Market Cap. In the past, the bitcoin price has fallen following reports of Chinese regulators stepping up pressure on the exchanges. Instead, the price reaction on Thursday suggests that investors are less worried about interference from Chinese authorities, who have sought to tighten oversight over the country's exchanges in recent months. "The market is kind of number," said Chris Burniske, blockchain analyst and products lead at ARK Invest. "It's priced in this information and it's not concerned." Earlier in the week, a former governor of the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, said on local television that bitcoin will continue to exist in China.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Bitcoin Price Rises As Third Chinese Exchange Halts Withdrawals | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/02/16/bitcoin-price-rises-as-third-chinese-exchange-halts-withdrawals.html | 2017-02-16 | 0 |
<p>Becca Schaefer (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)</p>
<p>Next weekend will be huge for the GenOUT Chorus as the local LGBT teen chorale, which operates under the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington umbrella, will have its first full-length concert on Saturday, Feb. 11.</p>
<p>“Youth Invasion” will be held at 8 p.m. (one performance only) at the Atlas Performing Arts Center (1333 H St., N.E.) in a program featuring songs such as “I Was Here,” “Beautiful City,” “Be Like the Bird” and “Over the Rainbow.” Tickets are $20-35. Full details at <a href="http://gmcw.org" type="external">gmcw.org</a>.</p>
<p>GenOUT, formed in 2015, is the region’s first choir for LGBT youth and allies and is open to singers age 13-18. Paul Heins directs.</p>
<p>Becca Schaefer, a 16-year-old Arlington, Va., resident, learned about the chorus at a Leading With Pride conference she attended hoping to find more opportunities for her school’s GSA (Gender Sexuality Alliance), an LGBT-affirming club of which she’s co-president. She sings alto in the 15-member choir and will be performing Paramore’s “The Only Exception” as a solo with her ukulele in next weekend’s concert.</p>
<p>“A lot of times, it can feel like it’s you against the world,” Schaefer says. “Like no one’s ever felt the way you do. But when we all get together and get to talk, you can actually see that you’re not the only LGBT kid out there. GenOUT has been a really good space for me where I can talk about my experiences and attractions without feeling judged by the outside world.”</p>
<p>Schaefer lives with her parents in Arlington and enjoys music and her favorite shows like “Star Trek Voyager” and “Scrubs” in her free time.</p>
<p>How long have you been out and who was the hardest person to tell?</p>
<p>I’ve been out for about three years and I have been very lucky to come from a really supportive family, so I wasn’t too nervous telling anyone. Of course there’s always that anxiety before you tell somebody you love, but I’ve never been faced with anything but a continuation of that love.</p>
<p>Who’s your LGBT hero?</p>
<p>Definitely Alan Turing. As someone who is in the community and also a scientist, he’s my idol.</p>
<p>What’s Washington’s best nightspot, past or present?&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;The Potomac River, right next to the Key Bridge. That view of the water and all of the lights of the city is unbeatable.</p>
<p>Describe your dream wedding.</p>
<p>Somewhere up in the mountains, with plenty of forest around, surrounded by the people I love.</p>
<p>What non-LGBT issue are you most passionate about?</p>
<p>Women’s rights. I firmly believe that Planned Parenthood should be protected, and that a woman should have the right to choose what happens to her future. I once stood in front of a sign with gory images that pro-life protesters were holding in front of my school for an hour until they finally left.</p>
<p>What historical outcome would you change?</p>
<p>Oh boy. How about the election and subsequent presidency of our current president? That’s definitely a historic moment I wish I didn’t have to live through.</p>
<p>What’s been the most memorable pop culture moment of your lifetime?</p>
<p>Probably the launch of “Orange Is The New Black”! It’s a cast like no other I’d ever seen and the writing is phenomenal.</p>
<p>On what do you insist?</p>
<p>The person I’m talking to needs to be open minded enough to see another point of view and to not shut down a different opinion because it differs from theirs. And pineapple can never touch my pizza. Don’t even try.</p>
<p>What was your last Facebook post or Tweet?</p>
<p>I have neither of those things, but my most recent tumblr post says, “I just ate four macadamia nut cookies and I regret nothing.”</p>
<p>If your life were a book, what would the title be?</p>
<p>“A Little Bit Too Peppy,” which was what a girl used to describe me when asked why she didn’t want to hang out with me.</p>
<p>If science discovered a way to change sexual orientation, what would you do?</p>
<p>I’d urge people to understand that they should love themselves for who they are and to not try so hard to fit into what society’s idea of a “normal” person is.</p>
<p>What do you believe in beyond the physical world?&#160;</p>
<p>I don’t really believe in much beyond the physical world, but Magic 8-balls are pretty freaky. Something’s gotta be going on there.</p>
<p>What’s your advice for LGBT movement leaders?</p>
<p>Keep fighting the good fight! If you ever think it’s hopeless, just think of the millions of people who will rally behind you to ensure that our community is treated equally.</p>
<p>What would you walk across hot coals for?</p>
<p>I’d do it for all of the homeless LGBT youth. So many kids are just kicked onto the street by their parents when they find out their kid is LGBT.</p>
<p>What LGBT stereotype annoys you most?</p>
<p>The idea that bisexual people are just faking it for attention. Not just from straight people, but even in the community! How ridiculous to see somebody struggle through the same thing you do/did and still choose to exclude them.</p>
<p>What’s your favorite LGBT movie?</p>
<p>I can’t say I’ve watched many LGBT movies, but I really like the show “Grace and Frankie.”</p>
<p>What’s the most overrated social custom?</p>
<p>Not being allowed to double text. I have a lot to say and I cannot be confined to one text!</p>
<p>What trophy or prize do you most covet?</p>
<p>Last year I placed in a very selective science fair for high school students in Virginia. I worked really, really hard to get there and I’m pretty proud of myself!</p>
<p>What do you wish you’d known at 18?</p>
<p>Well I’m not 18 yet, but in 10 years I’m sure I’ll tell myself that I should try to stress a little less, because all of my life is not decided by which classes I take or which college I get into. I’m still trying to chill out.</p>
<p>Why Washington?</p>
<p>There are so many opportunities here! Where else could I be a part of a youth LGBT chorus like GenOUT?</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Arlington</a> <a href="" type="internal">Atlas Performing Arts Center</a> <a href="" type="internal">Becca Schaefer</a> <a href="" type="internal">Gay Men's Chorus of Washington</a> <a href="" type="internal">Gender Sexuality Alliance</a> <a href="" type="internal">GenOUT</a> <a href="" type="internal">GSA</a> <a href="" type="internal">Leading with Pride</a> <a href="" type="internal">lgbt youth</a> <a href="" type="internal">Paul Heins</a> <a href="" type="internal">Virginia</a></p> | QUEERY: Becca Schaefer | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2017/02/01/queery-becca-schaefer/ | 3 |
|
<p>Lubbock County judge Tom Head received brief national attention for remarks he made <a href="" type="internal">in August</a> when he claimed President Barack Obama will incite civil war if he is reelected to a second term. Democrats in West Texas have insisted that Judge Head step down from the bench, but they also see an opportunity to boost their momentum and support for the upcoming election.</p>
<p>The Republican judge is also chairman of the Committee on Emergency Planning for the county and has proposed <a href="http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/08/22/texas-judge-preparing-for-civil-war-if-obama-re-elected/" type="external">tax hikes</a> to “beef up” resources for the local sheriff’s department and the district attorney’s office. This will help ensure Lubbock County will have a well trained militia when Obama surrenders the sovereignty of the country to the United Nations, which will lead to an uprising and the US will plunge into civil war.</p>
<p>If it sounds like nonsense, that’s because it is. There is no evidence to back up such a sensationalized claim and this type of divisive rhetoric has become a problem in the realm of public discourse. It doesn’t move the debate forward on what policies are best for the US and who the best leaders are to implement these policies. It is a distraction that Democrats welcome.</p>
<p>Judge Head is an elected official in Lubbock County. Judges from local positions to county seats to the high courts are elected in the state of Texas, which is the subject of constant debate in the state. The majority of voters in the county have not and, most likely, will not insist that Tom Head step down from his positions of influence. Yet, some leaders within the Democratic minority are <a href="http://lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2012-09-16/democrats-see-boost-lubbock-judges-civil-war-remark#.UFfkRhgWXeb" type="external">energized</a>.</p>
<p>Kenny Ketner, chairman of the Lubbock County Democratic Party, said:</p>
<p>“Obviously it was embarrassing, but his comments have certainly helped our party because we have moderate Republicans scratching their heads wondering how people like Tom Head get elected.”</p>
<p>Democrats are confident that the political landscape will change in their favor, but it will be some time before such a partisan shift occurs in West Texas. However, local Democrats are already seeing a shift. It is not just because of moderate Republicans that are dissatisfied with the more radical voices in their party. There is also a growing population of Hispanic voters, and this segment of the voting age population tends to vote for Democratic candidates.</p>
<p>Tom Head insisted that his words were taken out of context and that he was speaking of the worst case scenario as a hypothetical only. If this is indeed the case, it is still highly inappropriate and unreasonable for a county judge, or anyone regardless of position or title, to make such radical comments about the President of the United States without sufficient evidence to back up such assertions.</p>
<p>While state and local democratic parties will look to capitalize on Judge Head’s comments, it won’t likely affect statewide races. The majority of voters in West Texas are still likely to support Tom Head before they support a Democratic candidate. Still, the remarks have no doubt altered the perception of some voters.</p> | Judge’s ‘Civil War’ Comment Energizes Texas Democrats | false | https://ivn.us/2012/09/18/texas-democrats-optimistic-after-judges-anti-obama-remarks/ | 2012-09-18 | 2 |
<p>Seventy years ago this week General Franco launched his attack on the Spanish Republic, backed by Hitler, Mussolini and, tacitly, by the US and other Western powers. Across the next days and weeks we will be publishing articles on this pivotal struggle. We launched the July 18 anniversary with a overview by Vicente Navarro of the enduring significance of the Fascist onslaught and the malign tenacity of Franco’s admirers to this day in burying his crimes while seeking to renew his objectives. Here now is British Member of Parliament GEORGE GALLOWAY on one Englishman who gave his life for the Republic. We thank London-based CounterPuncher Omar Waraich for his initiative in helping set up this series.&#160; AC / JSC.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>No men ever entered earth more honorably than those who died in Spain</p>
<p>— Ernest Hemingway, 1939</p>
<p>But for a bullet in the brain on the Ebro, Rupert John Cornford might have loomed as large as George Orwell in the British left-wing lexicon. Orwell would probably have informed on him to his bosses in British Intelligence. For Cornford was a Communist. Not just a Communist, but a potential leading figure of the party, then rising towards the zenith of its power as the potential nemesis of Fascism, as well as a war poet as brilliant as he is now obscure. Not bad for a man who was killed doing his internationalist duty on his 21st birthday.</p>
<p>John Cornford was the grandson of Charles Darwin, son of the Victorian poet Frances Cornford, and part of the golden generation of the British left who went to fight fascism in Spain. That their memory has been sullied by Orwell’s slanders, unfortunately reinforced by Ken Loach’s film Land and Freedom, and now lies largely forgotten on the Iberian peninsula by the progressives of the 21st century is the main reason why I am working on an historical novel, Heart of the heartless World at the centre of which is the tall handsome figure of John Cornford.</p>
<p>Recruited, as one of the brightest and the best, at Cambridge University by the same party talent spotters who sent his classmates Philby, Burgess and MacLean underground in the service of the USSR. Cornford was just too good to be used as a mere mole. Athletic, an orator, an organizer, poet and propagandist, the best student of his generation, a heart-throb to boot —&#160;Cornford was a socialist-realist poster-boy.</p>
<p>Yet he was sacrificed for the cause on the scorched earth of the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigade, in which the C.P was the driving force and which wrote the most glorious page in the history of the British left — a left which thanks to Orwell and the passage of time has either forgotten, never known or now misunderstands its importance.</p>
<p>The International Brigade was the working class (and their other class allies) answer to the policy of non-intervention by the British and French governments towards the bestial murder of the Spanish Republic by the Fascist hordes of Franco and his friends Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The British Section, organized as the Saklatvala Batallion,&#160;sent 2100 to fight in Spain. Five hundred of them came back in boxes, hundreds more of them on crutches and stretchers. The war effort was supported by a huge movement throughout the British left and the trades unions. Aid to Spain was a rallying cry which resounded throughout the world. Some of the greatest writers, journalists and photographers — Ernest Hemingway, Claud Cockburn, Robert Capa, Laurie Lee and Orwell himself — amplified the cry through newspapers pamphlets Left Book Club tomes, newsreels, and at huge public meetings throughout the country.</p>
<p>Most of the martyrs — and the vast majority of the heroes — were coal miners, carpenters and boiler-makers, shop stewards and industrial militants. But others were brilliant academics like the mathematician David Haden-Guest, or writers like Ralph Fox and Christopher Caudwell. One of these was John Cornford. Some of his poetry reflected the socialist realism style of the times and has little potential popularity today (though, who knows, it may yet come back into fashion). His writings from the front line however match the very best of Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves or Siegfried Sassoon. And his piece de resistance Heart of the Heartless World, written to his great love Margot Heinemann (who became a great Communist luminary herself writing such agitational work as Wages Front and the Case for Coal — she worked closely throughout her life with the National Union of Mineworkers — and who eventually married J.D. Bernal the crystallographer, the only scientist to win both the Nobel prize and the Stalin prize for science) was both his last and greatest work.</p>
<p>Too late for Cornford, the mobilization of the flower of the movement to Spain, where many were cut down, was discontinued. Harry Pollitt the party’s legendary general secretary observing, brutally perhaps but rationally, that the Communists had plenty of Welsh miners but not as many great intellectuals.</p>
<p>Until now the knowledge of the meteor that was John Cornford has been buried under the sands of time and prejudice. He flared briefly but brilliantly and burnt out in the flash of a Fascist musket in a now largely forgotten battle. It is a duty, for me, to see his name and those of his comrades are&#160;inscribed in a properly glorious firmament of the British section of the greatest internationalist movement of its, or any, time.</p>
<p>GEORGE GALLOWAY is a Member of the British Parliament, representing the&#160; <a href="http://www.respectcoalition.org/" type="external">Respect</a> coalition .&#160; &#160;He is the author of,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">&#160; Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington</a> (New Press),&#160; <a href="" type="internal">&#160;I’m Not the Only One</a> (Penguin UK),&#160; and the upcoming&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Fidel Castro Handbook</a>(MQ Publications). <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">&#160;[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | John Cornford and the Fight for the Spanish Republic | true | https://counterpunch.org/2006/07/21/john-cornford-and-the-fight-for-the-spanish-republic/ | 2006-07-21 | 4 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>THE GAME AFTER game, season after season woes of the Lobos defense reminds me of the movie “The Last Picture Show”. In that 1971 classic the local football team in a small Texas town has just lost 121-14 and the townsfolk are burning with frustration. Some townspeople just shake their heads and say nothing when they meet the players on the street. But others ask them, “Why can’t you guys tackle?” I think the state of New Mexico is asking that same question of the Lobos: “Why can’t you guys tackle?”</p>
<p>– Will</p>
<p>WELL SPORTS FANS the old cliche that Offense puts people in the bleachers and Defense wins games is so true. However, it might seem like Lobo Football has the cliche that yes Offense does indeed put people in the bleachers but Defense keeps more people out of the bleachers. I still believe in this team and this coaching staff, especially after the three years of disaster prior to the Davie Era which has been oh so difficult to recover from. However excuses are not accepted and serious defensive work must be accomplished immediately. Bounce back time over the next few weeks and go Lobos beat the Aggies.</p>
<p>– Claudie, Rio Rancho</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Sports Speak Up! | false | https://abqjournal.com/458515/sports-speak-up-246.html | 2 |
|
<p>HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — Authorities are investigating the death of an 18-year-old Penn State student who last week jumped from a rooftop, a suicide the young man's father blames on fraternity hazing practices his son was asked to inflict on fellow students.</p>
<p>Marquise Braham, a freshman from Rosedale, N.Y., who attended Penn State's Altoona campus, leaped to his death last Friday from a hotel in Uniondale, N.Y.</p>
<p>His father Rich Braham, managing editor at ABC News, said he believes his son was driven to take his own life by the hazing he had participated in earlier this year as a member of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity.</p>
<p>The fraternity has been suspended, pending an investigation, according to a campus spokeswoman.</p>
<p>Marquise had texted a friend about his concerns, sought counseling from a priest and confided in an aunt in the days before his suicide, his father said Thursday.</p>
<p>"He could not haze the other students. He expressed in text messages how uncomfortable he was doing that. He didn't think he could do that," Braham said. "He was a nice kid, a kind person."</p>
<p>Photos found on his phone included one taken earlier this month of a blindfolded pledge with a real-looking pistol held to his head, Braham said.</p>
<p>His son's text messages described a choice offered to pledges to take cocaine or have a sex toy inserted into their lower body, he said.</p>
<p>Another practice, according to his son, was making pledges drink alcohol until they vomited, then do so again, he said.</p>
<p>His son, during his own pledging last fall, was ordered to don a ski mask and steal a bag of chips from a store, he said.</p>
<p>Michael Carey, executive vice president of the Indianapolis-based Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity, said the national organization has launched an investigation.</p>
<p>Nassau County police detectives are investigating the student's death, while police in Logan Township, Pa., the site of the off-campus frat house, said they are investigating the hazing activities.</p>
<p>Logan Township Chief of Police Ron Heller said the fraternity has not cooperated with the investigation and has invoked its right to legal counsel.</p> | Father Blames Son’s Suicide on Frat Hazing at Penn State | false | http://nbcnews.com/news/us-news/father-blames-sons-suicide-frat-hazing-penn-state-n58181 | 2014-03-20 | 3 |
<p>DETROIT (AP) _ These Michigan lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>Classic Lotto 47</p>
<p>10-17-30-38-40-41</p>
<p>(ten, seventeen, thirty, thirty-eight, forty, forty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $1.05 million</p>
<p>Poker Lotto</p>
<p>AH-QS-8D-4H-5H</p>
<p>(AH, QS, 8D, 4H, 5H)</p>
<p>Midday Daily 3</p>
<p>3-1-9</p>
<p>(three, one, nine)</p>
<p>Midday Daily 4</p>
<p>3-7-2-8</p>
<p>(three, seven, two, eight)</p>
<p>Daily 3</p>
<p>0-9-7</p>
<p>(zero, nine, seven)</p>
<p>Daily 4</p>
<p>2-2-0-5</p>
<p>(two, two, zero, five)</p>
<p>Fantasy 5</p>
<p>03-07-12-23-36</p>
<p>(three, seven, twelve, twenty-three, thirty-six)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $105,000</p>
<p>Keno</p>
<p>03-04-06-16-25-26-30-38-40-44-48-49-51-55-56-57-60-62-64-66-67-75</p>
<p>(three, four, six, sixteen, twenty-five, twenty-six, thirty, thirty-eight, forty, forty-four, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty-one, fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, sixty, sixty-two, sixty-four, sixty-six, sixty-seven, seventy-five)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $76 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>05-09-11-33-64, Powerball: 21, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(five, nine, eleven, thirty-three, sixty-four; Powerball: twenty-one; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $92 million</p>
<p>DETROIT (AP) _ These Michigan lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>Classic Lotto 47</p>
<p>10-17-30-38-40-41</p>
<p>(ten, seventeen, thirty, thirty-eight, forty, forty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $1.05 million</p>
<p>Poker Lotto</p>
<p>AH-QS-8D-4H-5H</p>
<p>(AH, QS, 8D, 4H, 5H)</p>
<p>Midday Daily 3</p>
<p>3-1-9</p>
<p>(three, one, nine)</p>
<p>Midday Daily 4</p>
<p>3-7-2-8</p>
<p>(three, seven, two, eight)</p>
<p>Daily 3</p>
<p>0-9-7</p>
<p>(zero, nine, seven)</p>
<p>Daily 4</p>
<p>2-2-0-5</p>
<p>(two, two, zero, five)</p>
<p>Fantasy 5</p>
<p>03-07-12-23-36</p>
<p>(three, seven, twelve, twenty-three, thirty-six)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $105,000</p>
<p>Keno</p>
<p>03-04-06-16-25-26-30-38-40-44-48-49-51-55-56-57-60-62-64-66-67-75</p>
<p>(three, four, six, sixteen, twenty-five, twenty-six, thirty, thirty-eight, forty, forty-four, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty-one, fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, sixty, sixty-two, sixty-four, sixty-six, sixty-seven, seventy-five)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $76 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>05-09-11-33-64, Powerball: 21, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(five, nine, eleven, thirty-three, sixty-four; Powerball: twenty-one; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $92 million</p> | MI Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/b6e64bee62664b5dafd7243c51d13e19 | 2018-01-25 | 2 |
<p />
<p>Image source: The Motley Fool</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Everyone knows who Warren Buffett is, but Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B), the company that he transformed from a failing textile manufacturer into one of the largest conglomerates in the world, is not well-known by many people. With that in mind, here are 10 things about Berkshire Hathaway that even current shareholders might not be aware of.</p>
<p>1. Berkshire Hathaway is the sixth-largest company in the world, in terms of market capitalization. As of this writing, it is slightly smaller than Facebook and just a bit larger than ExxonMobil.</p>
<p>2. The company's original form is much different than the Berkshire Hathaway of today. In fact, Berkshire's history can be traced back to a textile manufacturing company established in 1839 as the Valley Falls Company, which merged with the Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company in 1929.</p>
<p>3. In 1964, Warren Buffett verbally agreed to sell back his shares of Berkshire Hathaway (which he didn't yet control) to the management team at the time for $11.50 per share. Fortunately for Buffett, Berkshire's management lowered their offer slightly to $11.38 per share and Buffett decided not to sell. In fact, the lowered offer infuriated him so much that he decided to buy enough additional stock to take control of the company and fire the people running it. Today, each of those shares is worth approximately $218,000.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>4. Berkshire Hathaway was initially a textile company, even after Buffett took control. He didn't expand into the insurance industry for a few years, ultimately acquiring National Indemnity Company in 1967. However, Berkshire's textile operations remained active until 1985.</p>
<p>5. Surprisingly, Buffett has said that purchasing Berkshire Hathaway was his biggest investment mistake of all time, as he bought a failing textile business simply to spite the company's management. He claims that if he had simply bought insurance businesses directly, he would have made another $200 billion over the following 45 years.</p>
<p>6. Although Berkshire Hathaway isn't a widely known brand name, many of its subsidiaries are household names. Just to name a few, these include GEICO, Duracell, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, Helzberg Diamonds, Oriental Trading Company, The Pampered Chef, and Clayton Homes.</p>
<p>7. Berkshire Hathaway is famous for its stock portfolio of about 45 different companies, but the majority of the portfolio's value is in the stocks of just five companies --Wells Fargo, Kraft Heinz, Coca-Cola, IBM, and American Express.</p>
<p>8. Berkshire Hathaway has about $72 billion in cash on its balance sheet. Even accounting for the $20 billion cash cushion Warren Buffett likes to have at all times, this means that Berkshire could buy PayPal, General Motors, Caterpillar, MetLife, or salesforce.com in cash.</p>
<p>9. Berkshire openly publishes its <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/17/how-warren-buffett-chooses-what-to-buy-and-what-yo.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">acquisition criteria Opens a New Window.</a> and is always looking to grow. To be considered, businesses need to have at least $75 million in pre-tax earnings, a demonstrated consistent earnings power and good returns on equity, a management team in place, and an offering price.</p>
<p>10. Warren Buffett has given away more than one-fourth of his Berkshire shares to charity, and he continues to give away 4% of his remaining holdings every year. In fact, as part of the Giving Pledge that he and Bill Gates started, Buffett is giving away 99% of his wealth to charity, with all of his Berkshire stake to be distributed for current charitable needs within 10 years of his estate's settlement.</p>
<p>Berkshire Hathaway is a truly great company and, as you can see, an extremely interesting one. A cornerstone of my own stock portfolio, Berkshire Hathaway is a <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/19/how-risky-is-berkshire-hathaway-inc.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">diversified investment portfolio Opens a New Window.</a> run by the best in the business, all in one stock.</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=2759&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/KWMatt82/info.aspx" type="external">Matthew Frankel Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of American Express, Berkshire Hathaway (B shares), Caterpillar, General Motors, and PayPal Holdings. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Berkshire Hathaway (B shares), Facebook, PayPal Holdings, and Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool owns shares of ExxonMobil and has the following options: short October 2016 $50 calls on Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool recommends American Express, Coca-Cola, General Motors, and Salesforce.com. 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> | 10 Fascinating Things You Probably Didn't Know About Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/10/01/10-fascinating-things-probably-didnt-know-about-warren-buffett-berkshire.html | 2016-10-01 | 0 |
<p>AMERICAblog: I reported the other day that your cell phone records are on sale online for anyone to buy, without your permission. Well, this morning AMERICAblog bought former presidential candidate, and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO (SACEUR), General Wesley Clark's cell phone records for one hundred calls made over three days in November 2005, no questions asked. (Clark's cell phone provider is Omnipoint Communications, which seems to be related to T-Mobile.) | <a href="http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/01/americablog-just-bought-general-wesley.html" type="external">entry</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/12/eveningnews/main1206518.shtml" type="external">CBS</a> and <a href="http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=d17b156d-a5ed-4cfa-acfc-23b89f5962c3&amp;f=copy" type="external">NBC</a> both chime in with reports on the issue.</p> | Blogger Obtains Gen. Wesley Clark's Phone Records For $89.95 | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/blogger-obtains-gen-wesley-clarks-phone-records-for-89-95/ | 2006-01-13 | 4 |
<p>On Wednesday, <a href="http://joshmandel.com/" type="external">Republican Josh Mandel</a>, who’s hoping to defeat Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) this November, took the stage alongside Mitt Romney in the tiny village of Beallsville in the eastern Ohio coal belt. In a brief speech, Mandel <a href="http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120814/NEWS0106/308150011/Romney-takes-battle-Ohio-s-coal-belt" type="external">blasted</a> President Obama for having “waged war on coal” and for buddying up with “people in California and New York City who think coal is a four-letter word, who never stepped foot in Appalachia Ohio and don’t understand coal.”</p>
<p>Mandel’s talking points weren’t new. His delivery, however, certainly was. Backed by a phalanx of coal miners, Mandel soaked his speech with a distinct southern accent, a drawl never before heard from the candidate. Mandel, a former US Marine and now Ohio’s state treasurer, is no southerner. He <a href="http://www.lakegop.com/our-elected-officials/josh-mandel-for-state-treasurer" type="external">hails</a> from the Cleveland area, in northern Ohio, where he still lives with his wife. He attended college at Ohio State University in Columbus and law school at Case Western in Cleveland. Neither qualify as southern cities—not even close.</p>
<p>As this video from the Ohio Democratic Party shows, Mandel has delivered almost identical remarks elsewhere on the campaign trail—with no trace of a southern accent:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Strange, right? Just to be sure, we dug up three more interviews with Mandel. Spoiler alert: No drawl.</p>
<p>June 2012 Interview with OhioCapitalBlog</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>March 2012 Interview with Toledo’s WTVG</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>January 2012 Interview on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>As <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2012/07/campaign_attacks_give_mandel_p.html" type="external">PolitiFact Ohio’s reigning “Pants on Fire” champion</a>, having spouted more false statements than any other major Ohio pol, Mandel’s campaign has faced plenty of criticism about running fast and loose with the facts. His newfound southern accent could be another headache for Mandel.</p> | VIDEO: Ohio GOP Senate Hopeful Josh Mandel Fakes a Southern Accent | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/08/josh-mandel-ohio-senate-southern-accent/ | 2012-08-16 | 4 |
<p>SEATTLE — The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is weighing the appeal concerning President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration, is the federal appeals court conservatives have long ridiculed as the “nutty 9th” or the “9th Circus.”</p>
<p>Covering a huge swath of territory — nine western states plus Guam — the San Francisco-based court handles far more cases than any other federal appeals court, including some rulings that have invoked furor from conservatives over the years. Among them: finding that the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional, that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military was problematic long before President Barack Obama’s administration ended it, and that states can force pharmacies to dispense emergency contraceptives.</p>
<p>But some legal scholars say the 9th Circuit’s liberal reputation is overblown and that the court has moved to the middle as some of President Jimmy Carter’s appointees — who were considered extremely liberal — have taken semi-retired “senior” status or passed away. A Democratic Congress nearly doubled the number of judges on the court during Carter’s tenure, and his appointees faced easy confirmation in the Senate.</p>
<p>President George W. Bush appointed six of the court’s 25 active judges, but 18 have been appointed by Democrats, though the seven appointed by President Barack Obama are generally considered moderate, said University of Richmond Law School Professor Carl Tobias.</p>
<p>Tobias called the notion that the 9th Circuit is liberal “dated.” Arthur Hellman, a federal courts scholar at University of Pittsburgh Law School, said the picture of where the court stands in relation to other circuits has become muddier.</p>
<p />
<p>“The reputation is certainly deserved based on the history of the last 40 years or so,” Hellman said Monday. “It’s been more liberal, by which we mean more sympathetic to habeas petitioners, civil rights plaintiffs, anti-trust cases, immigration cases. But it’s less of an outlier now than it was.”</p>
<p>That history has prompted repeated, unsuccessful efforts to split the 9th Circuit — most recently in proposals filed this year by Arizona’s congressional delegation. A bill introduced last week by Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake would put Arizona in a new 12th Circuit with Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Washington while leaving California, Hawaii and Oregon plus Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in the 9th Circuit.</p>
<p>A House version previously introduced by Reps. Andy Biggs and four other Arizona Republican representatives would leave Washington in the 9th Circuit.</p>
<p>In a news release, Biggs said his aim was “to free Arizona from the burdensome and undue influence of the 9th Circuit Court.”</p>
<p>“As a promise to my constituents last year, I introduced this bill to protect Arizona from a federal circuit court that does not reflect the values nor laws of our state,” he said. “The Ninth Circuit cannot handle the number of states currently entrapped within its jurisdiction, causing access to justice to be delayed.”</p>
<p>Tobias said that while the 9th Circuit could use more judges, it makes little sense to split the circuit. California generates so many cases that the 9th is always going to have a heavy workload — it handled 11,888 of the 56,244 cases handled by all federal appeals courts in the 12 months ending last June. And Tobias said he doesn’t consider the sort of judicial gerrymandering Biggs seeks as a valid reason to split the court.</p>
<p>Judge Alex Kozinski, the circuit’s former chief judge, once joked in a New York Times interview that far from splitting the 9th, he was hoping to acquire more territory. He had his sights on Utah, for the good skiing, he said.</p>
<p>The three judges weighing Trump’s travel ban are on the case by virtue of having been randomly assigned to the circuit’s motions panel for this month. Senior Circuit Judge William C. Canby Jr. was appointed by Carter in 1980; Senior Circuit Judge Richard R. Clifton was appointed by Bush in 2002; and Circuit Judge Michelle T. Friedland was appointed by Obama in 2014.</p>
<p>Canby, who is based in Phoenix, was a first lieutenant in the Air Force in the 1950s before becoming a Peace Corps administrator in Ethiopia and Uganda in the 1960s. Clifton, who keeps his chambers in Honolulu, came to the bench from private practice, as did Friedland, who is based in San Francisco.</p>
<p>They were scheduled to hear arguments by phone Tuesday on whether to maintain a temporary restraining order issued by Seattle U.S. District Judge James L. Robart that blocked enforcement of the travel ban concerning seven majority-Muslim nations.</p> | ‘Nutty 9th’ Circuit Court of Appeals to hear challenge to Trump’s ban Tuesday | false | https://reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nutty-9th-circuit-court-of-appeals-to-hear-challenge-to-trumps-ban-tuesday/ | 2017-02-07 | 1 |
<p>Surveillance footage shows Dylann Roof entering the Emanuel AME Church on June 17, 2015.Charleston Police Dept/ZUMA</p>
<p />
<p>The US law enforcement community regards homegrown violent extremists, not radicalized Islamists, as the most severe threat from political violence in the country, according to <a href="http://sites.duke.edu/tcths/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Kurzman_Schanzer_Law_Enforcement_Assessment_of_the_Violent_Extremist_Threat_final.pdf" type="external">a new study</a> from the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. Released late last week, the report comes amid renewed focus on the problem ever since a 21-year-old avowed white supremacist carried out a mass shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. There is a <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/violence-caused-by-far-right-extremists-has-surpassed-that-caused-by-domestic-jihadists-study-says" type="external">growing body of research</a> highlighting the threat from right-wing extremists, but who or what exactly does that term encompass, and how big really is the problem? Mother Jones examined various reports and contacted experts to find out more.</p>
<p>What are “far-right” or “right-wing” extremists? While there is no uniform definition, these terms <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/the-terrorist-threat-confronting-the-united-states" type="external">loosely encompass</a> individuals or groups associated with white supremacist, anti-government, sovereign citizen, patriot, militia, or other ideologies that target specific religious, ethnic, or other minority groups. (Meanwhile, how to determine which violent attacks constitute an act of terrorism has been a subject of <a href="" type="internal">renewed debate</a>.)</p>
<p>The available data on violent attacks perpetrated by right-wing extremists ranges widely, explains Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now a national security expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. Researchers at the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/politics/terror-threat-homeland-security/" type="external">US Department of Homeland Security</a>, the <a href="http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.html" type="external">New America Foundation</a>, <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2014/spring/The-Year-in-Hate-and-Extremism" type="external">the Southern Poverty Law Center</a>, <a href="http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/" type="external">the University of Maryland</a>, and the <a href="https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/challengers-from-the-sidelines-understanding-americas-violent-far-right" type="external">Combating Terrorism Center at West Point</a> have all compiled data on right-wing extremist violence using <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-us-challenges-perceptions-of-top-terror-threat.html" type="external">varying criteria</a> over different periods of time, most of them going back to the mid 1990s,&#160;when the Oklahoma City bombing riveted attention on the problem. (The exception is the University of Maryland’s data, which <a href="http://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_IUSSD_GTDTerroristAttacksinUS_ResearchHighlight_Jan2014.pdf" type="external">dates to 1970</a>, during a surge in violent far-left extremism.)</p>
<p>The various studies have all led to the same general conclusion: The threat from homegrown right-wing extremists <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/opinion/the-other-terror-threat.html?_r=0" type="external">has grown in recent years</a>. “Since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating in the far-right of American politics,” Arie Perliger, the director of terrorism studies at the Combating Terrorism Center, wrote in <a href="https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/challengers-from-the-sidelines-understanding-americas-violent-far-right" type="external">a 2012 report</a>.</p>
<p>How often do right-wing violent extremists attack? The University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/opinion/the-other-terror-threat.html?_r=0" type="external">registered</a> 65 attacks on American soil associated with right-wing ideologies since 9/11, versus 24 attacks by jihadist extremists. The New America Foundation, meanwhile, <a href="http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.html" type="external">tallied</a> 48 deaths from attacks by non-jihadist extremists over the same time period—including the Charleston shooting—compared with 26 deaths from attacks by jihadist extremists, including the one at Fort Hood in 2009, in which 13 people were killed.</p>
<p />
<p>The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which compiles data on “all violent attacks that were perpetrated by groups or individuals affiliated with far-right associations,” counted an average of 337 annual attacks by right-wing extremists in the decade after 9/11, including a total of <a href="https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/challengers-from-the-sidelines-understanding-americas-violent-far-right" type="external">254 fatalities</a>, or an annual average of about 18 deaths.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Daryl Johnson</a>, a former domestic terrorism intelligence analyst at the Department of Homeland Security who now heads the consulting firm DT Analytics, says attacks from far-right extremists “increased dramatically” after 2008. Johnson, who <a href="http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/9-19-12JohnsonTestimony.pdf" type="external">began tracking</a> domestic terrorism while at DHS, estimates there is currently an average of one plot or attack every 40 to 45 days. “We are in a heightened period right now,” he says.</p>
<p>Johnson’s view is supported by <a href="https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/challengers-from-the-sidelines-understanding-americas-violent-far-right" type="external">a 2012 report</a> from Perliger at the Combating Terrorism Center: “Since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating in the far-right of American politics,” it notes.</p>
<p>How organized are these extremists? As former Mother Jones staffer Adam Serwer <a href="" type="internal">reported</a> in August 2012 when a neo-Nazi <a href="" type="internal">carried out</a> a massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the number of American extremist groups has also risen overall in recent years:</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>How is law enforcement responding? About three quarters of the 382 state and local law enforcement agencies surveyed by the Triangle Center listed anti-government extremism as a top threat in their jurisdiction, compared with 39 percent that listed violence connected with Al Qaeda or related groups.</p>
<p>In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League <a href="http://blog.adl.org/extremism/officers-down-right-wing-extremists-attacking-police-at-growing-rate" type="external">documented</a> an upswing in far-right attacks against law enforcement:</p>
<p />
<p>But those numbers should be put into perspective, the report’s authors Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/opinion/the-other-terror-threat.html?_r=0" type="external">note</a>, since terrorism of all kinds represents a small fraction of total violent crime in the United States. The <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/1tabledatadecoverviewpdf/table_1_crime_in_the_united_states_by_volume_and_rate_per_100000_inhabitants_1994-2013.xls" type="external">number of homicides</a> in the United States since 9/11 totaled more than 215,000.</p>
<p>And because the data on right-wing violence varies so much, “it’s hard to get a true understanding of the threat,” German says, adding that the FBI—whose <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/elpaso/about-us/what-we-investigate/priorities" type="external">No. 1 priority</a> is to protect the United States from a terrorist attack—does not publish data on domestic terrorism. “Instead, we rely on these private groups that are doing a public service by compiling and publishing information,” he says. The FBI does collect and publish <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/hate_crimes" type="external">limited data</a> on hate crimes, which it defines as criminal offenses “against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” But German as well as researchers at the <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2014/spring/FBI-Reports-Major-Fall-in-Hate-Crimes-But" type="external">Southern Poverty Law Center</a> point out that data relies on voluntary reporting and thus undercounts those numbers.</p>
<p>So what is the government doing about it? The federal and local governments ramped up efforts to combat domestic terrorism of all kinds in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. A few months following the 9/11 attacks, FBI official Dale Watson <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/the-terrorist-threat-confronting-the-united-states" type="external">testified</a> before the Senate Intelligence Committee that “right-wing groups continue to represent a serious terrorist threat.” But Johnson, German, and others assert that federal counterterrorism programs since 9/11 have focused overwhelmingly on the perceived threat from Islamic extremism. That includes the Obama administration’s “countering violent extremism” strategy, which “revolves around impeding the radicalization of violent jihadists,” <a href="https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R42553.pdf" type="external">according to</a> a 2014 Congressional Research Service report.</p>
<p>The attack in Charleston underscored “the failure of the federal government to keep closer tabs” on right-wing extremists, argues Gerald Horne, a historian and civil rights activist at the University of Houston.</p>
<p>But the focus may soon increase. In February, CNN <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/politics/terror-threat-homeland-security/" type="external">reported</a> that DHS circulated an intelligence assessment that focused on the domestic terror threat posed by right-wing extremists. Kurzman and Schanzer also point to a handout from a training program sponsored by the Department of Justice, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/opinion/the-other-terror-threat.html?_r=0" type="external">cautioning</a> that the threat from antigovernment extremism “is real.”</p>
<p>Who and where are the perpetrators of far-right extremist attacks? According to Perliger’s research at West Point, 54 percent of such attacks since 1990 in which the perpetrators were caught or identified were carried out by a single individual. About 75 percent of all perpetrators identified were 29 years old or younger.</p>
<p>Perliger also notes that attacks have moved beyond states in the South—the birthplace of groups such as the KKK and the site of major attacks during the 1960s—to places including California, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. “The existence of significant minority groups in the different states appears linked with the level of far-right violence they experience,” Perliger says. In a recent editorial, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Morris Dees and J. Richard Cohen <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/opinion/white-supremacists-without-borders.html" type="external">argued</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/opinion/white-supremacists-without-borders.html" type="external">that</a> far-right extremism is gaining ground beyond state boundaries: “Unlike those of the civil rights era, whose main goal was to maintain Jim Crow in the American South, today’s white supremacists don’t see borders; they see a white tribe under attack by people of color across the globe.…The days of thinking of domestic terrorism as the work of a few Klansmen or belligerent skinheads are over.”</p>
<p>What factors might explain the latest rise in this kind of extremism? Experts suggest several factors may have played into it. Researchers commonly attribute the spike in right-wing attacks, around 2008, to the election of an African American president. Around the time of Obama’s election, Johnson notes how the white supremacist web forum Stormfront had less than 100,000 registered users. “Today, it is over 300,000,” he says. Scholars have also debated the role the <a href="http://fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf" type="external">2008 financial crisis</a>, a <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/08/19/immigration_sparks_domestic_terrorism_threat/" type="external">heightening debate</a> over <a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/guest-the-troubling-rise-of-the-anti-immigrant-far-right-in-europe/" type="external">immigration</a>, and <a href="http://www.start.umd.edu/publication/profiles-individual-radicalization-united-states-preliminary-findings" type="external">other</a> <a href="http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/48/3/339.short" type="external">socioeconomic changes</a> may have had. The Combating Terrorism Center’s Perliger points out that past spikes in far-right attacks also corresponded with the passing of landmark legislation such as the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and firearm restrictions during the 1990s.</p>
<p>Was the Charleston shooting a hate crime or an act of terrorism? It had the marks of both, according to Horne, German, and others. FBI Director James Comey <a href="" type="internal">came under fire</a> for saying the Charleston shooting did not appear to be an act of terrorism based on the available evidence. German adds that Roof’s racist comments about black people, his photos with flags invoking racist ideologies, and the fact that he killed a state senator, make clear that his attack on the church was both targeted and political.</p>
<p>Could the Charleston shooting have been prevented? Violent attacks by extremists are difficult to predict, but both the government and researchers could be doing a better job of working to understand them, German says. “You have to understand both how the movement works and what parts are dangerous and what parts aren’t, as well as understanding how the particular terrorist activity starts,” he explains, adding that most research on terrorist attacks has fixated on their ideological roots, rather than their methodologies. “That’s where you’ll see terrorism studies completely lacking, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been thrown into terrorism research. They’re not studying the right things.”</p>
<p /> | The Rise of Violent Right-Wing Extremism, Explained | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/right-wing-extremism-explainer-charleston-mass-shooting-terrorism/ | 2015-06-30 | 4 |
<p>By Tom Miles</p>
<p>GENEVA (Reuters) – Syrians in the besieged enclave of Eastern Ghouta are so short of food that they are eating trash, fainting from hunger and forcing their children to eat on alternate days, the U.N. World Food Programme said in a report on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Since September, approximately 174,500 people in the town of Douma in the besieged zone have been forced to adopt emergency “coping strategies”, the WFP report said.</p>
<p>“This includes consuming expired food, animal fodder and refuse, spending days without eating, begging and engaging in high risk activities to get food. Moreover, many hunger-induced fainting episodes have been reported among school children and teachers.”</p>
<p>At least four people have died from hunger, including a child in Douma who took his own life due to hunger, said the report, which was based on a mobile phone survey and information from contacts on the ground.</p>
<p>Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have besieged rebel-held Eastern Ghouta since 2012 and Douma has not had a food aid convoy since receiving wheat flour rations in August.</p>
<p>Although the area is traditionally agricultural, arable land on the outskirts of Eastern Ghouta is either on the frontline of the conflict or targeted by snipers, the report said.</p>
<p>Last week fighting destroyed recently distributed rations in a storehouse, exacerbating shortages. Although Damascus is only 15 km (10 miles) away, 700-grams (25 ounces) of bread is 85 times more expensive in Eastern Ghouta, the report said.</p>
<p>“The situation is anticipated to deteriorate further in the coming weeks when food stock is expected to be totally depleted and household coping strategies will be highly eroded as a result.”</p>
<p>Government restrictions meant WFP could only provide a fraction of the food needed. Family food baskets were being shared among six families and were reportedly the only source of food for many female-headed and destitute households, it said.</p>
<p>“Some households are even resorting to rotation strategies whereby the children who ate yesterday would not eat today and vice-versa.”</p>
<p>The report quoted a female head of household in Douma as saying she was forced to rotate rations between her 13-year-old daughter and her two- and three-year-old orphaned grandchildren.</p>
<p>“My daughter cries every time I lock her door cause she knows today is not her turn and will sleep with an empty stomach,” she said.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | Besieged Syrians eating trash, fainting from hunger: U.N. survey | false | https://newsline.com/besieged-syrians-eating-trash-fainting-from-hunger-u-n-survey/ | 2017-11-22 | 1 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Now some speech scientists are developing customized voices to reflect the broader diversity of the people who use them. To do it, they are tapping into a vast network of volunteers who are donating their voices to share with people who cannot speak.</p>
<p>The effort to build an international “Human Voicebank” has attracted more than 17,000 volunteers from 110 countries, including Priyanka Pandya, a 16-year old from Columbia, Md., who plans to spend her winter vacation recording a string of sentences into her laptop.</p>
<p>“To be able to give somebody the gift of voice,” said the junior at Glenelg Country School. “I think that’s really, really powerful,” she said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Her voice could be used to help one of more than 2 million Americans who have severe speech disorders and need help to communicate, a dilemma captured in the acclaimed new television series “Speechless,” whose main character, a teenager with cerebral palsy, relies on technology and a personal aide to act as his “voice” at school.</p>
<p>“Everyone has a voice,” said Rupal Patel, founder of VocaliD, the Belmont-Mass.-based start-up that launched the voice bank. “Even people who are speechless have sounds that are unique to them.”</p>
<p>Her company designs personalized synthetic voices by recording the unique, if limited, sounds of the user, and then blending them with a larger sample – usually six to ten hours of recordings – from a voice donor, matched by age, gender and region.</p>
<p>The company is developing voices now for its first 100 customers. But researchers have been honing the technology for many years.</p>
<p>Tim Bunnell, head of the Speech Research Laboratory at the Alfred I. DuPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware, has engineered voices for more than 1,000 people with degenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Those people were usually able to record their own voices before they lost the ability to talk. He said it’s much more challenging to extrapolate what a voice should sound like for someone who can only make a few vowel sounds.</p>
<p>The scientists in Bunnell’s lab take the sounds and analyze them for vocal qualities, such as pitch and timbre, and record them as a batch of numbers. Then they map out the recordings from a voice donor. They merge the voices by modifying the donor voice to reflect the qualities of the user’s voice.</p>
<p>Bunnell said, in particular, they work to match the “vowel quality” because the “color” of someone’s voice is primarily conveyed through the vowels. It’s a process of tweaking the numbers and trial and error.</p>
<p>Patel, who is also a speech technology professor on leave from Northeastern University, worked with Bunnell as a researcher. When she decided to bring the technology out of the lab, she developed her own method for blending voices and turned to crowdsourcing to gain access to enough voices to reflect the diversity of potential customers, which could include a middle-aged man from Alabama or a little girl from Ireland.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Since she announced the voicebank two years ago, the response has been overwhelming, she said, with donors ages 6 to 91 logging on from all over the world. People donate for many reasons: Some are practicing English or working toward community service requirements. Some have throat cancer or degenerative diseases such as ALS and could eventually become voice recipients.</p>
<p>Some donors said they are undergoing gender transition and want to preserve their voice before it changes. Many are simply interested in a new way to volunteer.</p>
<p>Priyanka Pandya has gone on mission trips to South America, and she started a service organization at her school. But the aspiring biomedical engineer said she was inspired to help someone speak and also fascinated by the technology and the ability to “intertwine two voices.”</p>
<p>She began recording her voice last summer – using a pair of headphones and speaking into her MacBook Air as she read the prompts on her computer screen. Then she recruited family friends and members of her Girl Scout troop to do the same.</p>
<p>The emerging technology has challenges. Patel said she is continuing to streamline the process to build voices cost-effectively and efficiently. The $1,249 price tag puts it out of reach for many people. And for donors, the process is lengthy; It can take six to 10 hours to record the 3,500 phrases required to complete a voice sample. Only about 10 percent of the donors have made it all the way through.</p>
<p>Also: People’s voices change. The company is looking for donors who are willing to record their voices, and then record them again a few years later, as they get older. But some of the first customers say they are happy with the results.</p>
<p>John A. Gregoire, of Windham, Maine, was one of the first to receive a customized voice last December from VocalID, then in a pilot phase. The voice came eight years after his diagnosis of ALS, and more than six years since his voice had become unintelligible to everyone except his wife and youngest son.</p>
<p>Since then, his wife, Linda, said she got used to hearing him speak with “Ryan,” the American-sounding male voice programmed into his iPad. When they heard his customized voice, they “reacted simultaneously,” Linda said. “It was him.”</p>
<p>The couple is raising money now to build a sound studio to encourage people in their community to make high-quality recordings of their voices to donate to others.</p>
<p>“Having a distinctive voice is like getting something back that was stolen,” John said.</p>
<p>voicebank-1stld-writethru</p> | Volunteers create a ‘human voicebank’ to share their voices with the speech-impaired | false | https://abqjournal.com/902486/volunteers-create-a-human-voicebank-to-share-their-voices-with-the-speech-impaired.html | 2016-12-05 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Sen. Tom Udall</p>
<p>Udall, D-N.M., teamed with Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., on a bill that would direct the U.S. Small Business Administration to work with microlenders, traditional lenders and regulators to ensure that artists and entrepreneurs have access to microloans.</p>
<p>The bill would also establish a law allowing artists to claim tax deductions for charitable contributions based on the sale value of a piece of artwork, rather than the value of the materials used to create the artwork. It would also direct the Corporation for National and Community Service to assist artists with grant writing, marketing and financial planning, among other initiatives.</p>
<p>“With more artists per capita than any other state, New Mexico is home to one of the most vibrant artistic communities in the nation, and our artists play a vital role in shaping our culture, attracting tourists and creating jobs,” Udall said in announcing his bill at an event on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Udall is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over arts funding.</p>
<p>A 2014 report by the University of New Mexico’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research found that the arts and cultural industries in the state were a primary source of employment for 43,031 New Mexicans – roughly equal to the state’s construction industry and 50 percent larger than the manufacturing industry.</p>
<p>The White House last week proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts budget, which totaled $148 million in fiscal 2016. But the ultimate decision about funding rests with Congress. The NEA helps finance nearly 200 arts projects around New Mexico, according to New Mexico Arts.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We are disappointed because we see our funding actively making a difference with individuals of all ages in thousands of communities, large, small, urban and rural, and in every congressional district in the nation,” National Endowment for the Arts Chairwoman Jane Chu said of the White House proposal.</p>
<p>Although public funding for arts and humanities sometimes comes under fire from conservatives, Udall said he remains confident that despite Trump’s budget proposal, money for the arts will remain in the federal budget.</p>
<p>“I really believe there is a vast well of support out there for the arts,” Udall told the Journal on Tuesday. “I’ve been through this before and … there is such a wide network of support that people just come back like gangbusters. Generally, Republicans have been very supportive of the arts.”</p>
<p />
<p /> | Udall bill aims to help professional artists | false | https://abqjournal.com/973742/udall-bill-aims-to-help-professional-artists.html | 2017-03-21 | 2 |
<p>ANALYSIS/OPINION:</p>
<p>It’s the height of hypocrisy.</p>
<p>Seriously, it could not be any more hypocritical, or it would just sound made up.</p>
<p>Former President <a href="/topics/barack-obama/" type="external">Barack Obama</a> is hauling in millions from Wall Street banks — the very institutions he harangued throughout both of his presidential campaigns.</p>
<p>Throughout their political careers, both Hillary Clinton and <a href="/topics/barack-obama/" type="external">Mr. Obama</a> berated banks and the “fat cats” who run them as heartless corporations (while filling their own pockets with their cash). Mrs. Clinton made millions giving speeches to the huge financial institutions, swatting away charges of hypocrisy. This apparently didn’t really sell with Mr. and Mrs. America, who didn’t elect her president.</p>
<p>Now it’s <a href="/topics/barack-obama/" type="external">Mr. Obama</a>’s turn to make bank.</p>
<p>Last month he spoke to clients of Northern Trust Corp. for about $400,000, a person familiar with his appearance told Bloomberg News.</p>
<p>But that’s not a one-off. “Last week, he reminisced about the <a href="/topics/white-house/" type="external">White House</a> for Carlyle Group LP, one of the world’s biggest private equity firms, according to two people who were there,” Bloomberg wrote.</p>
<p>Bloomberg went on to note that he would “give a keynote speech at investment bank <a href="/topics/cantor-fitzgerald-lp/" type="external">Cantor Fitzgerald LP</a>’s health-care conference,” which happened Monday.</p>
<p>You can bet they brought a hefty chunk of change: The <a href="/topics/cantor-fitzgerald-lp/" type="external">Cantor Fitzgerald</a> speech was worth about $400,000, according to Agence France-Presse, citing “a person briefed on <a href="/topics/barack-obama/" type="external">Obama</a>’s planned appearance.”</p>
<p>And not every paid appearance by <a href="/topics/barack-obama/" type="external">Mr. Obama</a> is even known.</p>
<p>“ <a href="/topics/barack-obama/" type="external">Obama</a>’s appearance at the Carlyle conference in Washington was previously unreported. The private equity giant has enjoyed some of the best political connections in the world, with executives and advisers who have included former presidents, prime ministers and cabinet secretaries. <a href="/topics/barack-obama/" type="external">Obama</a> discussed his life and the decisions he made in the <a href="/topics/white-house/" type="external">White House</a>, the people who heard him said,” according to last week’s Bloomberg report.</p>
<p>At his apparent going rate, just those three speaking engagements we know about brought <a href="/topics/barack-obama/" type="external">Mr. Obama</a> a $1.2 million haul. He hasn’t even been out of office a year, and the very places he bashed while in office are paying him big bucks to swing by and speak.</p>
<p>So of course the media has been all over the story, exposing the raw hypocrisy, right? Wrong. Totally wrong. No one’s said hardly a word, barely a peep.</p>
<p>Mrs. Clinton made 92 total paid speeches between 2013 and 2015, just after leaving her job as secretary of state, and charged anywhere from $250,000 to $300,000, according to reports. Using the low end of that scale, she pulled down $23 million — much of it from places like Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street financial institutions.</p>
<p>If <a href="/topics/barack-obama/" type="external">Mr. Obama</a> follows that path, he’ll haul in nearly $37 million before the 2018 midterm elections.</p>
<p>And he doesn’t even need the money. He and wife Michelle reportedly will be paid $60 million for their memoirs. The couple owns three or four houses (who can keep track), in Hawaii, Palm Springs, Chicago and beyond.</p>
<p>So why do it? Why risk the horrible media reports that could come in the face of such craven hypocrisy?</p>
<p>Because he can. And he knows no one will say boo. He’s right, too.</p>
<p>Remember: If you point out the former president’s hypocrisy, you’re a racist.</p>
<p>• Joseph Curl has covered politics for 25 years, including 12 years as <a href="/topics/white-house/" type="external">White House</a> correspondent at The Washington Times. He can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @josephcurl.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. <a href="http://license.icopyright.net/3.7280?icx_id=/news/2017/sep/26/obama-hauls-in-millions-from-wall-street-media-don/" type="external">Click here for reprint permission</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Obama hauls in millions from Wall Street, media don’t say a word | true | http://washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/26/obama-hauls-in-millions-from-wall-street-media-don/ | 2017-09-26 | 0 |
<p><a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gop-candidates-are-doing-better-than-trump-and-may-still-lose/" type="external">According</a> to expert statistician Nate Silver, Democrats are favored to win back the Senate, but not by that much. Silver estimates the Democrats have a roughly 67% chance of retaking the Senate.</p>
<p>The good news for the GOP is that GOP Senate candidates are running ahead of Donald Trump more than they did when Mitt Romney ran in 2012, so there is a split in the ticket as to how people are voting.</p>
<p>Silver writes:</p>
<p>In the 29 states with a Senate race (and at least one poll),1 Clinton leads by about 2 percentage points in the <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/?ex_cid=2016-senate-forecast" type="external">FiveThirtyEight polls-only</a> adjusted polling average. In <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/senate/?ex_cid=2016-forecast#polls" type="external">those same states</a>, the Republican Senate candidate is leading the Democratic candidate by about 3 points, on average. Here are the stats:</p>
<p>REPUBLICAN AVERAGE POLLING MARGIN</p>
<p>STATE</p>
<p>SENATE RACE</p>
<p>PRESIDENTIAL RACE</p>
<p>DIFFERENCE</p>
<p>Alaska</p>
<p>+38.2</p>
<p>+7.5</p>
<p>+30.7</p>
<p>Utah</p>
<p>+31.1</p>
<p>+5.7</p>
<p>+25.5</p>
<p>South Carolina</p>
<p>+26.9</p>
<p>+7.1</p>
<p>+19.8</p>
<p>Kansas</p>
<p>+25.6</p>
<p>+8.3</p>
<p>+17.3</p>
<p>Ohio</p>
<p>+13.7</p>
<p>-0.4</p>
<p>+14.1</p>
<p>Iowa</p>
<p>+13.6</p>
<p>+0.7</p>
<p>+12.9</p>
<p>Idaho</p>
<p>+31.9</p>
<p>+20.9</p>
<p>+11.0</p>
<p>Georgia</p>
<p>+13.7</p>
<p>+3.0</p>
<p>+10.7</p>
<p>Arizona</p>
<p>+10.1</p>
<p>-0.2</p>
<p>+10.3</p>
<p>Florida</p>
<p>+5.9</p>
<p>-3.4</p>
<p>+9.3</p>
<p>Louisiana</p>
<p>+24.6</p>
<p>+15.6</p>
<p>+9.1</p>
<p>Illinois</p>
<p>-8.9</p>
<p>-17.6</p>
<p>+8.7</p>
<p>New Hampshire</p>
<p>+0.1</p>
<p>-8.5</p>
<p>+8.6</p>
<p>South Dakota</p>
<p>+20.3</p>
<p>+12.0</p>
<p>+8.3</p>
<p>Pennsylvania</p>
<p>-0.7</p>
<p>-6.4</p>
<p>+5.8</p>
<p>North Carolina</p>
<p>+1.5</p>
<p>-2.6</p>
<p>+4.1</p>
<p>Nevada</p>
<p>+0.0</p>
<p>-2.8</p>
<p>+2.9</p>
<p>Maryland</p>
<p>-29.7</p>
<p>-30.1</p>
<p>+0.4</p>
<p>Wisconsin</p>
<p>-6.9</p>
<p>-7.1</p>
<p>+0.2</p>
<p>Arkansas</p>
<p>+17.4</p>
<p>+20.4</p>
<p>-3.0</p>
<p>Washington</p>
<p>-18.9</p>
<p>-14.1</p>
<p>-4.8</p>
<p>Colorado</p>
<p>-12.2</p>
<p>-6.5</p>
<p>-5.7</p>
<p>Vermont</p>
<p>-35.0</p>
<p>-28.7</p>
<p>-6.3</p>
<p>Missouri</p>
<p>-0.9</p>
<p>+6.0</p>
<p>-6.8</p>
<p>Oregon</p>
<p>-19.5</p>
<p>-12.1</p>
<p>-7.4</p>
<p>Kentucky</p>
<p>+6.7</p>
<p>+14.5</p>
<p>-7.7</p>
<p>Connecticut</p>
<p>-22.5</p>
<p>-14.2</p>
<p>-8.3</p>
<p>Indiana</p>
<p>-4.6</p>
<p>+7.4</p>
<p>-12.0</p>
<p>New York</p>
<p>-40.3</p>
<p>-22.2</p>
<p>-18.1</p>
<p>Average</p>
<p>+2.8</p>
<p>-1.7</p>
<p>+4.5</p>
<p>The only states where Trump is repeatedly running ahead of the GOP senatorial candidates are Connecticut, New York, and Oregon. The opposite is true in Arizona, Idaho, South Carolina and Utah. In the key states of Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, the senatorial candidates are running ahead of Trump. In Indiana and Missouri Trump is doing better than the candidates for the Senate.</p>
<p>Silver continues:</p>
<p>In 2012, in contrast, Mitt Romney did considerably better than Republican Senate candidates … Romney did better than Republican candidates in 21 of the 32 races. Trump is doing between 4 and 5 percentage points worse than down-ballot Republicans, on average. Romney did 5 points better … In all three groups (races with incumbent Democrats, incumbent Republicans and open seats), Romney did better than Trump is doing — relative to GOP Senate candidates. In fact, Romney did at least 2 percentage points better than Trump is doing in all three groups. That could be the difference between Democratic and Republican control of the Senate.</p>
<p>Silver concludes:</p>
<p>What has to sting Republican strategists most is that they have the opposite problem in 2016 that they had in 2012 … That year, there was talk that down-ballot Republicans were hurting Romney. GOP Senate candidates haven’t had those kinds of issues this year. Instead, their presidential candidate — and his own controversial remarks about women — is the one dragging down their chances.</p>
<p>Given Trump and the <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-2014-senate-elections-were-the-most-nationalized-in-decades/" type="external">rise in straight-ticket voting</a>, it’s actually pretty amazing Republicans are keeping the fight for Senate control competitive.</p> | Nate Silver: Dems Favored To Retake Senate, But It's Not A Sure Thing | true | https://dailywire.com/news/10242/nate-silver-dems-favored-retake-senate-its-not-ben-shapiro | 2016-10-26 | 0 |
<p>President Obama spent much of his first term fending off criticism that he hadn’t done enough for the black community, and that he wasn’t paying enough attention to Africa, where his father was born and where expectations soared after his election. In his second term, he’s making up for lost time. Earlier this year, he launched his “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative aimed at boosting opportunities for boys and young men of color, and this week, he hosted 50 heads of state from Africa for a first ever U.S-Africa Summit aimed at building stronger ties with a continent where six of the 10 fastest growing economies are located.</p>
<p>Three of the four former living presidents were in Washington to participate in various summit events, demonstrating, amazingly enough, that Obama may have to elbow his way into the Africa Club. Jimmy Carter has worked tirelessly to eradicate guinea worm disease; George W. Bush instituted the wildly popular PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief); and Bill Clinton is often in Africa, promoting a range of projects from HIV prevention to reforestation through his global initiative.</p>
<p>“What Obama is doing fits under the headline, ‘Despite the commitment of previous presidents, lots of work remains to be done to create a healthier economic relationship’,” says William Galston of the Brookings Institution. He notes that unlike the initiatives of his predecessors, which are largely humanitarian, Obama is carving out a niche for himself as “the proponent for and advocate for a new kind of economic relationship in the developing world.”</p>
<p>And like “My Brother’s Keeper,” Africa is a long-range project that offers a window into the kinds of issues that speak to Obama personally and will shape his post-presidency.</p>
<p>“My Brother’s Keeper” is modeled after First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, which treats obesity among children as a serious health challenge. Key to the success of ensuring that such programs endure beyond Obama’s presidency is involving corporate America in public-private partnerships. With two years to go in Obama’s term, there is some unease over his prematurely easing into his post-presidency. “It doesn’t mean he intends to do nothing,” says Galston, “but it’s pretty well known he’s about given up on Congress.”</p>
<p>Obama has begun talking almost wistfully about the longer term, and hoping his influence, his vision, will germinate the seeds for his successors to cultivate with a stronger hand and/or a kinder, gentler Congress. “Everything he does now is geared to this idea that whatever initiatives he puts in place are going to come to greater fruition after he leaves office, and he will be remembered as the one who put them in motion,” says historian Robert Dallek.</p>
<p>Should Hillary Clinton become the next president, it’s quite logical that she or any Democrat for that matter would carry forward much of Obama’s unfinished agenda. A GOP that lost three in a row might be chastened enough to cooperate, at least sometimes. Then again, if a Republican wins the presidency in ’16, Obama will take the heat for the loss.</p>
<p>Obama has long argued that Republican obstructionism is to blame for the current paralysis in government. Congress’ performance, leaving town for five weeks without providing funds or policy guidance to deal with the immigration crisis at the border, serves to vindicate Obama’s view. “All he gets from Congress is negativism and carping,” says Dallek. “I think in a sense this deadlock in Congress gives him a greater sense of independence, of freedom to try to take initiatives that will have some progressive, instructive impact.”</p>
<p>Dallek is among a small group of historians invited to the White House on an occasional basis to meet with Obama. He recalls at one point talking to Obama about the Tea Party and its anti-government rhetoric: “I called it the politics of resentment, and he said, ‘Bob, I think you’re right, there’s something subterranean about the way these people process things’.”</p>
<p>“We didn’t talk about race,” Dallek told the Daily Beast, “but I took it as an expression of feeling on his part that race is part of the resentment, resentment of the fact that they feel they’re being elbowed aside, not just by blacks, but by Hispanics, and Asians too.” Asians voted for Obama in a higher percentage even than Hispanics, Dallek notes, adding, “Race is never very far from the American experience.”</p>
<p>Sensitive to the underlying dynamics of his election, Obama steered clear in his first term of anything overt that might stir those subterranean emotions. But now time is winding down, and he appears more willing to take risks. This could manifest itself in the executive action he has promised at summer’s end to clarify the immigration status of tens of thousands and perhaps millions of immigrants, or in the tax issues that allow American corporations to shift their address overseas and stick taxpayers with the lost revenue.</p>
<p>Immigration reform activists would like to see Obama as the Great Emancipator of the 21st century, following in Lincoln’s footsteps. “He has to observe reasonably clear constitutional boundaries and statutory authority, and not hand a sword to his adversaries,” cautions Galston. Whatever action Obama takes, he will get pushback from Republicans. As a constitutional lawyer, he must think he is on solid ground and has no choice but to act on his own or let the rest of his presidency fritter away.</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>Obama’s legacy as the nation’s first elected black president is ensured, and he has now put programs in place to carry that identity forward. But in the two years he has remaining, and with his leadership and effectiveness under assault, time is getting short to build the legacy he wants.</p> | Outlining His Post-Presidency | true | https://thedailybeast.com/outlining-his-post-presidency | 2018-10-04 | 4 |
<p>&lt;img class=" size-large wp-image-1244 aligncenter" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/FullHouse-Link-1024x535.png" alt="FullHouse Link" width="620" height="324" srcset="https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/FullHouse-Link-1024x535.png 1024w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/FullHouse-Link-300x157.png 300w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/FullHouse-Link.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /&gt;</p>
<p>by <a href="http://www.twitter.com/thefriddle" type="external">Krystal Heath</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Steven Crowder</a></p>
<p>It’s not Leave it to Beaver. &#160;It’s not even the Andy Griffith Show. &#160;It’s didn’t portray the typical American family. &#160;But Full House is one of the most popular family-centered sitcoms in history.</p>
<p>This week, we learned that Netflix is officially creating a&#160;follow-up to the show, <a href="http://tvline.com/2015/04/02/full-house-reunion-show-fuller-house-netflix-revival/" type="external">“Fuller House.”</a> &#160;Social media has exploded with excitement over this news, which led us to ask, what made – what continues to make – Full House so popular?</p>
<p>Could it be the show’s many traditional, conservative values? &#160;Yes, we’re serious. &#160;Watch some reruns and be amazed… this show is chock-full of America at its finest. &#160;So here’s our top 5 conservative moments from Full House – and here’s to more in Fuller House!</p>
<p>1. &#160;Family first – it’s what Full House is all about. &#160;Family. &#160;When Danny’s wife is killed by a drunk driver, his brother in law Jesse and best friend Joey move in to help raise his young daughters. &#160;Soon after, Jesse marries Becky who becomes a mother figure in the home. &#160;The entire series is about family. &#160;And family is the bedrock of America.</p>
<p>&lt;img class=" aligncenter" src="https://media.giphy.com/media/HjPbLbmep2aJO/giphy.gif" alt="" /&gt;</p>
<p>2. &#160;Parental involvement – the dudes that date the daughters, they know who’s the man of the house. &#160;And they respect him. &#160;And, if they don’t… well, the three amigos may show up at that drive-in movie. &#160;But it’s not just relationships. &#160;Tanners, adults and kids alike, communicate and participate in each other’s lives.</p>
<p>&lt;img class=" aligncenter" src="http://cdn2.hellogiggles.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/10/aladdin.gif" alt="" width="433" height="371" /&gt;</p>
<p>3. &#160;Prayer –&#160;though not included in every episode, we are given glimpses of the Tanner family’s faith. &#160;From the traditional prayer at their Thanksgiving meal, to Stephanie plea for help finding Mr. Bear, the presence of a Supreme Being is clearly acknowledged by the Tanner Family.</p>
<p>&lt;img class=" aligncenter" src="https://40.media.tumblr.com/d88109b1072948575591e7205672fd0e/tumblr_inline_nlmygxQWQG1sij0ih_500.png" alt="" width="463" height="347" /&gt;</p>
<p>4. &#160;Lessons and morals – every show. &#160;Each show presents a problem and a solution (and the government doesn’t solve the problems!). &#160;Someone in the family is always learning something. &#160;It’s not all fun and games – sometimes life is downright painful. &#160;Full House reminded us of that. &#160;And other times… you just need to pour pancake batter down the other guy’s shirt. &#160;Because fun is an integral part of life, too.</p>
<p>&lt;img class=" aligncenter" src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7fpbynf2i1ro8ysbo1_500.gif" alt="" /&gt;</p>
<p>5. &#160;They’re&#160;Entrepreneurs – if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. &#160;From exterminator, to band leader, to night club owner, to radio dj, to Ranger Joe… these guys are always building something, always creating something. &#160;They’re not about hand-outs. &#160;They’re about contributing to society.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p /> | Top 5 Conservative Moments of Full House | true | http://louderwithcrowder.com/conservative-values-full-house/ | 2015-04-21 | 0 |
<p>JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa summoned the United States’ senior diplomat in Pretoria on Monday over President Donald Trump’s recent disparaging comments about African nations and Haiti.</p>
<p>Trump has been accused of describing African nations as “shithole countries” during a meeting with U.S. senators last week. He has denied making the statements, as well as the ensuing accusations that he is racist.</p>
<p>South African foreign ministry officials met the U.S. chargé d’affaires and other U.S. Embassy officials in the capital to express South African concerns about Trump’s reported comments, the ministry said in a statement.</p>
<p>“It was noted that Africa and the African diaspora has contributed significantly to the United States and to its development into the country that it is today, and that the African and international reaction to the alleged statements clearly serve as a united affirmation of the dignity of the people of Africa and the African diaspora,” the ministry said.</p>
<p>The meeting provided an opportunity for the U.S. Embassy to reiterate its “commitment to working with South Africa to achieve shared goals and strengthen our bilateral ties,” embassy spokeswoman Cindy Harvey said in a statement. “We remain committed to working together to realize the promise of a more peaceful, more productive, more prosperous South Africa.”</p>
<p>Trump’s comments were met with widespread consternation in Africa, with an African Union spokeswoman saying the union was “frankly alarmed.”</p>
<p>“Given the historical reality of how many Africans arrived in the United States as slaves, this statement flies in the face of all accepted behavior and practice,” AU spokeswoman Ebba Kalondo said. The governments of Namibia and Botswana have also condemned the comments.</p>
<p>JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa summoned the United States’ senior diplomat in Pretoria on Monday over President Donald Trump’s recent disparaging comments about African nations and Haiti.</p>
<p>Trump has been accused of describing African nations as “shithole countries” during a meeting with U.S. senators last week. He has denied making the statements, as well as the ensuing accusations that he is racist.</p>
<p>South African foreign ministry officials met the U.S. chargé d’affaires and other U.S. Embassy officials in the capital to express South African concerns about Trump’s reported comments, the ministry said in a statement.</p>
<p>“It was noted that Africa and the African diaspora has contributed significantly to the United States and to its development into the country that it is today, and that the African and international reaction to the alleged statements clearly serve as a united affirmation of the dignity of the people of Africa and the African diaspora,” the ministry said.</p>
<p>The meeting provided an opportunity for the U.S. Embassy to reiterate its “commitment to working with South Africa to achieve shared goals and strengthen our bilateral ties,” embassy spokeswoman Cindy Harvey said in a statement. “We remain committed to working together to realize the promise of a more peaceful, more productive, more prosperous South Africa.”</p>
<p>Trump’s comments were met with widespread consternation in Africa, with an African Union spokeswoman saying the union was “frankly alarmed.”</p>
<p>“Given the historical reality of how many Africans arrived in the United States as slaves, this statement flies in the face of all accepted behavior and practice,” AU spokeswoman Ebba Kalondo said. The governments of Namibia and Botswana have also condemned the comments.</p> | South Africa summons US diplomat to explain Trump comment | false | https://apnews.com/76a8c2aed00d48cf9b5c94e01449c20a | 2018-01-15 | 2 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Pravda</p>
<p>by John Stanton</p>
<p>Americans live in the infinite now. They are happy not to be burdened with the knowledge of their past or the long-term future. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, says that Americans are totally ignorant of the world around them. America’s leaders are not much better. He is right. The United States of America’s priorities are distorted. “We the People” seems now an oddball concept. It’s the threat era: China, Cyber, Climate, Terror, Drugs, Sequester, Avian Flu, Shooters and Insecurity</p>
<p>The Globalized world is a creation of the USA that began in earnest immediately following WWII. Is this a monster that has turned on the American people? Where did “We” go wrong? Why do Americans let it grind them up? What happened to critical thinking?</p>
<p>So now it’s 2013 and Americans are insecure and malleable. Better keep busy, don’t think about it. Employers know it is a buyer’s market. Now more than ever, better keep in line. This leads to societal selfishness. “Each according to his/her ability, each according to his/her needs,” said Marx. A Communism of despair and reality avoidance is in the air.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;In this environment single issues explode, the difficult interconnected matters are avoided. “Let’s let the next generation handle that.” Gun ownership is more important than eliminating child poverty. Cutting taxes and letting cities like Detroit decay takes precedence over keeping people employed and out of the Hell of financial squalor, homelessness and suicidal thinking. “Protect the critical infrastructure!” say American leaders. Yet, Education and Human Security are absent from the list of America’s critical infrastructure systems like the Defense Industrial Base or Electrical Grid.&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;So we see that the Donkey and Elephant have finally mated and live in the same house. They have proclaimed this time the Dawn of the Age of Austerity for America. To make it all feel better, one percent of Donkey’s and Elephants are forsaking a year’s salary. Wow! A fine example of sacrifice for the rest of the ragged population. Uncle Sam’s America is being cut to pieces.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="/r2/?url=http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/08-05-2013/124518-america_uncle_sam-0/" type="external">Read More Here</a></p>
<p><a href="/" type="external">We encourage you to Share our Reports, Analyses, Breaking News and Videos. Simply Click your Favorite Social Media Button and Share.</a></p> | America’s Uncle Sam: Death By A Thousand Cuts | true | http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/05/americas-uncle-sam-death-by-a-thousand-cuts-2641154.html | 2013-05-08 | 0 |
<p>California needs to find ways to improve its <a href="http://www.sco.ca.gov/upd.HTML" type="external">lost-and-found</a>&#160;program.</p>
<p>That’s the conclusion of a <a href="http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/Unclaimed-Property/unclaimed-property-021015.aspx" type="external">new report</a> by Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor. He&#160;reviewed the state program for returning <a href="http://www.calnewsroom.com/tag/unclaimed-property/" type="external">unclaimed property</a> to its rightful owners. At the end of 2014, the state held more than 28.4 million unclaimed properties worth an estimated $7.2 billion.&#160;Ninety-five percent of unclaimed property held by the state is cash assets.</p>
<p>Taylor&#160;said&#160;the state could do a better job of finding owners, instead&#160;of passively waiting for the cash to be claimed. His report&#160;also raised the question of whether the state has a conflict of interest in managing the program.</p>
<p>“In particular, because property not reunited with owners becomes state General Fund revenue, the unclaimed property law creates an incentive for the state to reunite less property with owners,” according to the report. “Now generating over $400 million in annual revenue, unclaimed property is the state General Fund’s fifth-largest revenue source. This has created tension between two opposing program identities — unclaimed property as a consumer protection program and as a source of General Fund revenue.”</p>
<p>Under state law, when there’s been no activity on an account for three years, financial institutions are obliged to report this unclaimed property to the California&#160;Controller’s Office. In turn, the controller holds the funds, commonly money from a forgotten bank account or insurance settlement, until it is claimed by the owner.</p>
<p>Controller Betty Yee has a <a href="http://sco.ca.gov/upd.html" type="external">special web page</a> to help find lost property. It urges, “You may be one of millions of Californians owed money by the State!” The search engine is <a href="https://ucpi.sco.ca.gov/ucp/" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p>Among the biggest problems facing the state’s unclaimed property program is a lack of public awareness about where people can find their old property.</p>
<p>“To begin with, the name itself — unclaimed property — is not very user-friendly,” the <a href="http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/Unclaimed-Property/unclaimed-property-021015.aspx" type="external">report</a> said.&#160;“It likely prevents potential claimants from quickly understanding the program. The poor branding is likely made worse by limited state efforts to increase public awareness of the program.”</p>
<p>Even state leaders&#160;aware of the program’s existence,&#160;such as former controller candidate and <a href="http://www.calnewsroom.com/2014/10/17/controller-candidate-has-unclaimed-property-at-state-controllers-office/" type="external">Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin</a>, don’t bother to routinely check and then collect small sums held by the state.</p>
<p>A search by CalWatchdog.com of the unclaimed property database showed prominent state political leaders with unclaimed property.</p>
<p>Gov.&#160;Jerry Brown has $61.26 in cash from the sale of shares formerly held by US Bancorp. The address for Brown in the database matches an Oakland address for his “ <a href="http://www.wtp.org/" type="external">We The People</a>” organization.</p>
<p>There are also <a href="https://ucpi.sco.ca.gov/ucp/PropertyDetails.aspx?propertyRecID=13183576" type="external">unclaimed cashier’s checks for&#160;“Kamala Harris</a>” and “ <a href="https://ucpi.sco.ca.gov/ucp/PropertyDetails.aspx?propertyRecID=23772953" type="external">Gavin Newsom</a>.” But, without any addresses listed, it’s unclear whether the $200 and $40, respectively, are owed to the attorney general and&#160;lieutenant&#160;governor by the same names.</p>
<p />
<p>Missing addresses are only the beginning of the&#160;problems with the state’s unclaimed property database. Inaccurate information, such as misspelled city names, can prevent owners from finding their properties in the database. For example, the city of&#160;“San Bernardino” has at least 18 different spelling variations.</p>
<p>In addition to allowing the controller’s office the authority to clean the database, the Legislative Analyst’s office recommends the Legislature approve an upgrade to enhance search capabilities. Other states’ databases, such as Virginia’s unclaimed property database, include an address suggestion feature.</p>
<p>“Virginia’s database seems more effective than California’s, particularly for users living in large cities, who have common names, or who have lived at many addresses,” the report noted.</p>
<p>Other website&#160;upgrades&#160;could include an automated email, similar to a Google Alert, to notify&#160;Californians when new property is reported to the state.</p>
<p>Other recommendations for improving the program include:</p>
<p>Although the report dished out&#160;plenty of criticism, it&#160;also praised the controller’s office for its new eClaim feature. The new streamlined process for accounts valued at less than $500 was the product of John Chiang when he was controller from 2007 to 2015. He now is the state treasurer.</p>
<p>Roughly 90 percent of the 28.4 million&#160;properties held by the state are valued at&#160;less than $500.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://citizensjournal.us/california-unclaimed-property-report/" type="external">statement</a>, Chiang welcomed the report’s recommendations:</p>
<p>“The LAO has detailed many of the innovations and reforms which fueled an 8-year revival that wrestled away from past lawmakers a program that was hijacked to pay for their own spending priorities and, importantly, restored its original purpose of reuniting property with their rightful owners,” Chiang said. “I strongly support the LAO’s overarching message urging lawmakers to fight the instinct to oppose changes and investments which benefit consumers, even if those changes reduce money from California’s 5th largest revenue source.”</p>
<p>Yee, who has only been on the job a few weeks, hasn’t neglected the unclaimed property program. Earlier this month, she <a href="http://sco.ca.gov/eo_pressrel_16043.html" type="external">announced a new agreement</a> with&#160;Charles Schwab &amp; Company Inc. to return accounts to Californians via the unclaimed property program.</p> | Leg Analyst: Fix CA lost-and-found program | false | https://calwatchdog.com/2015/02/24/leg-analyst-fix-ca-lost-and-found-program/ | 2018-02-20 | 3 |
<p>By Terry Maples</p>
<p>Recently I read an article by a newly retired Baptist minister who recounted experiences while searching for a new church home. He sadly reported members in most churches where he visited ignored him. Hospitality was lacking. Members were so busy enjoying each other they were unaware or inattentive to guests.</p>
<p>He filled out a guest card at each church, but most never followed up after his visit. Just one church he visited was prepared for and welcomed guests. No surprise, but he said that church will likely become his new spiritual home.</p>
<p>I have had similar experiences when visiting churches. While on a mini-sabbatical a few years ago I attended different churches four Sundays in a row. The only people who spoke were staff ministers who knew me.</p>
<p>Would you agree a hospitality gap exists in most churches? If so, how can we address the problem?</p>
<p>For most people attending our congregations, church is primarily about “community” and being with friends. That is an incredibly important part of gathering with brothers and sisters in Christ. Certainly, congregations must create an environment in which genuine community can be developed and nurtured.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there is a down side to this drive to be with friends (those we know who are like us). It’s easy to overlook new folks. I’m sure, most of the time, there is nothing intentional about ignoring strangers, but far too often I’ve witnessed scenarios like these:</p>
<p>— Members pass by guests who are sitting alone at Wednesday night dinner in order to sit with their friends at “their” table.</p>
<p>— Guests enter a Sunday school class for the first time and are essentially ignored (not spoken to, not properly welcomed, not introduced, not engaged in conversation and not invited to lunch).</p>
<p>— Guests come to worship for the first time and are not acknowledged by church members before they leave, or, the worst-case scenario, they are told: “Could you please move? You are sitting in my seat!”</p>
<p>The hospitality gap requires constant attention. Where do we start? Are there things we can do to awaken church members to the power of welcoming strangers in our midst? What will sensitize us to the vital importance of opening ourselves to give and receive Christian hospitality? Here are some ideas and observations to help jump-start the conversation:</p>
<p>— Congregants need a theological foundation for understanding authentic hospitality. It begins with understanding hospitality is a gift from God to be received. God welcomes us. As we reflect God’s heart and character, we naturally embody that gift and create an inclusive, welcoming community so others may also experience the joy of being in Christian community. Because God welcomes all, we must welcome all guests as we would welcome Christ!</p>
<p>— It’s time to challenge assumptions about the private nature of faith. As long as we send the message church is about private beliefs and the assembly of like-minded folks, it will be incredibly difficult for people in the church to practice God’s intended hospitality to strangers. The Bible contains many illustrations about the radical nature of hospitality God expects. Have we allowed “fear of stranger” so prevalent in our culture to rationalize away God’s expectations of us?</p>
<p>— Genuine hospitality is much more than being polite or nice. What folks are looking for is something real and authentic. Hospitality flows from sincere caring, compassion and love (which always requires action). Effective discipleship that transforms heart and mind is essential to the formation of genuine hospitality.</p>
<p>A friend of mine enjoys saying, “You are what you do!” I don’t know any churches that advertise on their sign: “The folks who gather in this place are content with the relationships they have. Don’t bother coming!” No, signs convey that members want you to come and experience the warmth and welcoming spirit of the congregation. People pick up pretty quickly if what we say is incongruent with what we practice.</p>
<p>I’m aware how difficult shifting the practices of a faith community can be. Patterns get ingrained. Without awareness and attention, we continue doing what we’ve always done, unaware of the gap. More importantly, we are not conscious of the damage being done to the kingdom of God, congregations and strangers searching for a vibrant spiritual experience.</p>
<p>Creating new and healthier patterns is difficult, but any effort we’re willing to invest pleases God and fulfills Christian duty. Isn’t it time to acknowledge the hospitality gap? Isn’t it time for honest reflection and conversation about bridging the hospitality gap in the congregation you serve or attend? Isn’t it time to engage in practices that turn strangers into friends and enemies into neighbors?</p> | Bridging the hospitality gap | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/bridging-the-hospitality-gap/ | 3 |
|
<p>Reality-based reporting is making a comeback on the matter of Banco Delta Asia — fgthe little Macau bank with the frozen North Korean accounts that has held up execution of the Six Party Agreement for almost two months.</p>
<p>McClatchy’s Kevin Hall is one of the few journalists who has followed this issue closely and critically. He recently posted two important articles on BDA.</p>
<p>As a result, a clearer picture is emerging of a concerted U.S. effort to exceed the scope and intent of U.N. sanctions by exploiting the domestic exigencies of the Patriot Act Section 311 anti-money laundering powers as a pretext for pursuing a worldwide economic blockade against North Korea.</p>
<p>Now the imperatives of the Patriot Act have collided with the demands of U.S. diplomacy over the issue of Banco Delta Asia. Diplomacy dictates that the BDA decision be overruled, but elements within the Bush administration are unwilling to surrender or curtail the investigatory and sanctioning power they enjoy under the Patriot Act for the sake of the Six Party Agreement.</p>
<p>The Bush administration’s head might understand the superiority of the State Department’s diplomatic approach to the North Korean (and Iranian) problems, but its heart is with the coercive anti-diplomacy of a faction within the Treasury Department.</p>
<p>Apparently unwilling to choose between one or another, the Bush administration has awkwardly attempted to split the difference and as a result its diplomacy in North Asia is thrown into confusion.</p>
<p>Now an unwelcome light is being cast both upon the use of Patriot Act Section 311 as a policy — as opposed to a national security-tool, and on the role of the Treasury Department in exploiting, misrepresenting, and, quite possibly abusing the Act in turf struggles with realists in the State Department.</p>
<p>At the heart of the BDA matter is the Bush administration’s fundamental conundrum in Asia-whether it should confront or conciliate China.</p>
<p>Hall’s first article, Money laundering allegations by U.S. false, report says describes the (relatively) clean bill of health Ernst &amp; Young gave to BDA in its audit, characterizing it as a legitimate bank doing legal business, albeit with weak internal controls, and debunks the counterfeit supernote moneylaundering canard.</p>
<p>The second article, Gold sales may have spurred Macau bank’s blacklisting, posits that the real motive for the crackdown on BDA was to cut off North Korea’s (legitimate) gold bullion sales, noting that BDA purchased and resold about $110 million of North Korean gold.</p>
<p>The significance of McClatchy’s reporting is that it further undercuts the U.S. assertion that the BDA sanctions executed under Section 311 of the Patriot Act were independent Treasury efforts to protect U.S. currency from compromise by counterfeit currency and prevent terrorists from exploiting the world financial system–and should not, indeed can not, be subordinated to the exigencies of U.S. diplomacy.</p>
<p>However, cutting off bullion sales by the North Korean government was not part of the U.N.-approved international sanctions regime against Pyongyang’s WMD industries; and it could not be construed as a legitimate pretext for sanctioning BDA under the Patriot Act.</p>
<p>Cutting off North Korean government sales of bullion looks like part of a campaign of economic blockade and financial warfare that goes beyond the targeted sanctions regime endorsed by the United Nations.</p>
<p>And using Patriot Act Section 311 as the means to shut down BDA’s bullion purchases from North Korea looks less like a legitimate use of the Act to protect U.S. national security and more like an element in a campaign of coercion on behalf of a unilateral United States foreign policy-a secret policy that had regime change at its heart.</p>
<p>As to the question of how important BDA was to North Korea’s gold bullion sales, I will admit to being an agnostic.</p>
<p>Gold is as good as…gold. People like it, especially when desperate sellers provide a discount, as North Korea probably does.</p>
<p>North Korean gold is probably not that hard to sell, even in the context of North Korea’s rumored production of six tons per annum and in the face of a U.S. campaign to cut North Korea off from the world financial community.</p>
<p>What the United States has probably accomplished is simply to make it very difficult for North Korea to trade gold on the established international markets, and force it to dispose of the gold at a less desirable price.</p>
<p>As the Christian Science Monitor reported in January:</p>
<p>One indication of North Korea’s need to sell gold was its decision to provide information needed by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) to list the North’s central bank as a “good deliverer” of gold and silver. Listing with the LBMA is essential for refiners who want to sell their products in London. The bank’s listing was suspended 2-1/2 years ago when it failed to respond to LBMA requests for “proactive monitoring.”</p>
<p>The LBMA said it does not “take into account any political criteria,” and will keep the bank on its rolls for another three years without monitoring.</p>
<p>Despite the listing, market experts say the big banks that are major buyers of gold ­ and form the LBMA’s core membership ­ are not likely to flout the spirit of the US Treasury order against Banco Delta Asia, through which North Korea exported gold prior to the ban.</p>
<p>“The fact that they’re on the list does not mean they can deliver to the London market,” says Stewart Murray, the LBMA’s chief executive. “When we have sanctions, none of the facilities will accept delivery from a company or a country that is subject to these sanctions.”</p>
<p>Of course, North Korean gold exports haven’t been officially banned, so Murray’s statement that, despite being listed as a “good deliverer”, North Korea was not allowed to sell gold on the London market makes little sense except in the context of a U.S. campaign to discourage trade in North Korean gold on the London exchange, using either diplomatic pressure or the threat of some Treasury enforcement action.</p>
<p>Colin McAskill — who purchased Daedong Credit Bank, the bank which has $6 million in funds tied up in BDA — has been campaigning to make it possible for North Korean gold bullion and other metals to be sold freely on the international market, thereby making foreign investment in North Korea’s gold and other metals and raw materials industries more feasible and attractive.</p>
<p>I wonder if McAskill’s enthusiasm for bringing North Korea in from the cold on gold sales is a reason why the obviously legitimate and private character of his bank’s account at BDA has been ignored by the champions of the free market and capitalism at the Treasury Department and, instead of being repatriated separately, his monies will disappear into Kim Jung Il’s suitcase as part of the funds “resolution”.</p>
<p>As befits its anonymous, fungible character, North Korean gold has found its way into the world market through other channels.</p>
<p>An interesting article by Bertil Lintner in Asia Times describes the growth of North Korean gold and silver sales to Thailand. Precious metal exports from North Korea to Thailand grew from virtually zero to $40 million in 2006.</p>
<p>Along the way, Lintner also documents the financial harassment of North Korea in Europe:</p>
<p>The action against Banco Delta Asia, a privately owned bank that the Macau government later had to prop up to prevent it from collapsing, was the second move against North Korea’s assets abroad. In a much less publicized action, North Korea’s only bank located in a foreign country – the Golden Star Bank in Vienna – was forced to suspend its operations in June 2004.</p>
<p>The Golden Star was 100% owned by the Korea Daesong Bank, a state enterprise headquartered in Pyongyang, and was allowed to set up a branch in the Austrian capital in 1982. For more than two decades, Austrian police kept a close eye on the bank, but there was no law that forbade the North Koreans from operating a bank in the country.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Austria’s police intelligence department stated in a 1997 report: “This bank [Golden Star] has been mentioned repeatedly in connection with everything from money-laundering and distribution of fake currency notes to involvement in the illegal trade in radioactive material.”</p>
<p>Eventually the international pressure to close the bank became too strong. Sources in Vienna believe the US played an important behind-the-scenes role in finally shuttering Golden Star’s modest office on 12 Kaiserstrasse in the Austrian capital. Until then, Vienna had been North Korea’s center for financial transactions in Europe and the Middle East. Visitors to North Korea have noted that euro coins in circulation in the country – the US dollar is not welcome in Pyongyang – invariably came from Austria. (Euro notes are the same in all European Union countries, but coins designate individual member countries.)</p>
<p>Here’s another data point, courtesy of Daily NK:</p>
<p>Singaporean newspaper “Singapore Lianhe Zaobao” reported, “Though the recent BDA issue ended in shambles, Macao and BDA did face some trials” and “With the U.S. able to strangle any county with international financial sanctions, the BDA issue rang alarm bells for illegal acts occurring throughout the world.”</p>
<p>The Zaobao’s online site reported on the 24th, “7~8 small scale family run banks in Macau banks are faced with the threat of closing down as BDA concluded that these banks were acting as North Korea’s ‘laundering black money.’</p>
<p>Macau has been caught in this political issue after being targeted as a place dealing North Korea’s money laundering.” The newspaper also analyzed that the international community had questioned China’s morals [emphasis added].</p>
<p>China’s morals are probably not the issue here.</p>
<p>China’s insistence on following the letter of the UN sanctions and not the broad interpretation favored by the United States is probably at the nub of it all.</p>
<p>China is North Korea’s largest trading partner. It can purchase exportable North Korean outputs for its own use or even repackage and re-export them.</p>
<p>It can pay for North Korean exports using foreign exchange, let North Korea hold the funds in a Chinese bank, and permit North Korean companies to use those funds to open letters of credits for imports.</p>
<p>Its jewelry industry can easily absorb North Korea’s bullion-or, if desirable, resmelt it into clean, pretty bars-without reference to any de facto sanctions by the London exchange.</p>
<p>Therefore, China is the weak link in any U.S.-led financial blockade of China.</p>
<p>And we all know, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.</p>
<p>Which means that an effective financial blockade of North Korea had to include an effective China component-something which is apparently lacking.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, diplomacy was apparently not part of the Bush administration skill set, and the big stick was trundled out to threaten China with dire consequences if it didn’t participate in the unilateral U.S. sanctions regime.</p>
<p>As David Asher-the State Department’s previous pointman for the North Korean effort at State — acknowledged in a recent interview, the ultimate target of Treasury’s investigations in Macau was China.</p>
<p>In comparison with Banco Delta Asia, the information that had been collected on evidence of money laundering by the Macao branch of the Bank of China was “voluminous,” Asher said.</p>
<p>Asher insists that the move against Banco Delta Asia was the direct consequence of law enforcement efforts and was not designed as political leverage in talks that were taking place simultaneously with North Korea on nuclear disarmament.</p>
<p>He advocates that efforts to curtail North Korea’s links to criminal activity, and to ensure that China joins the enforcement effort, should not be suspended for the sake of expediency in the disarmament talks in Beijing.</p>
<p>“Banco Delta may be a sacrificial lamb in some people’s minds, but it is not about Banco Delta,” he said. “It’s about Macao, Macao’s government, China, the Chinese government and their complicity and their accommodative behavior toward North Korea’s illegal activities, proliferation activities and leadership financial activities.” (Donald Greenlees and David Lague, How a U.S. inquiry held up the N. Korea peace talks, International Heritage Tribune, April 11, 2007)</p>
<p>It looks like Treasury took the provocative step of threatening Bank of China with a money laundering tag in a failed attempt to get Macau and its patron Beijing to fall into line on America’s unilateral sanctions initiative against North Korea.</p>
<p>The threats apparently persisted even after the so-called March 14 resolution of the BDA funds-the Treasury Department’s scorched-earth final decision denouncing BDA. After the decision was announced, Daniel Glaser went to Macau and presented the results of the Treasury investigation to the Macau authorities in an effort to persuade them not to release some of the BDA funds.</p>
<p>Reading between the lines, Glaser probably declared that Treasury’s campaign against purported laundering of North Korean funds by Macau banks would not be suspended unless Macau obeyed Treasury’s diktat concerning the BDA funds.</p>
<p>My hypothesis is when Macau didn’t respond with appropriate enthusiasm, Glaser injudiciously escalated the confrontation by promising further investigation of mom-and-pop banks in Macau, possibly an indictment of BDA’s directors for being knowing conspirators (something that was bruited about in the Macau press) and, most unwisely, threatened to make it known that Treasury considered Bank of China Macau to be implicated in the North Korean money laundering web.</p>
<p>This kind of threat against the reputation and viability of Bank of China Macau is the best explanation I can come up with for China’s remarkably harsh and pointed subsequent summons to Treasury.</p>
<p>On March 21, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated:</p>
<p>In an effort to safeguard the financial stability in the Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR), China yesterday demanded the US consult and negotiate with the MSAR government to address the latter’s concerns over the issue of Banco Delta Asia (BDA), a Macao-based bank.</p>
<p>Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao made the remarks at a regular press conference commenting on the frozen capital of North Korea at BDA. … He urged the US to negotiate with the MSAR government on the issue to maintain Macao’s financial and social stability.</p>
<p>Nothing here about greasing the wheels for the Six Party Agreement. Or doing the right thing by a little bank that got caught in the middle of superpower diplomacy.</p>
<p>China’s talking about the “financial and social stability” of Macau.</p>
<p>That probably means Bank of China Macau.</p>
<p>So Daniel Glaser was called back for what appears to have been ten days of stonewalling during which he refused to lift the threats against Bank of China Macau and other banks handling North Korean money or gold.</p>
<p>His line of defense — in his discussions with perhaps his most determined opponent, the State Department — probably hinged on the fact that Patriot Act 311 enforcement had been sold as an independent U.S. enforcement initiative unrelated to whatever U.N. sanction or Six Party diplomatic process involving North Korea.</p>
<p>If the sanctions against BDA were removed explicitly to facilitate the Six Party Agreement, then the legitimacy of Patriot Act Section 311 investigations-and their intimidating aura of implacable, inexorable malice — would be lost.</p>
<p>And Daniel Glaser and his boss, Stuart Levey, would look like jerks who had been using the pretext of supposed U.S. law enforcement obligations to promote a secret, unilateral, destabilizing North Korea policy under false pretenses.</p>
<p>Which, in my opinion, is exactly what they did.</p>
<p>And now I think the world-and Beijing–knows it.</p>
<p>Which means the credibility of Patriot Act Section 311 investigations is shot. European banks (and governments) leery of the U.S. approach on North Korea and Iran will find it easier to opt out of an explicitly politicized Section 311 investigation and sanctions regime.</p>
<p>And obtaining explicit waiver from Section 311 investigations will emerge as a central theme in trade negotiations between China and the United States (whose team will be led by Levey and Glaser’s boss, Treasury Secretary Paulson).</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Levey and Glaser probably insisted to President Bush that the club of Section 311, exploiting the central position of the United States in the world financial system and shielded from international and U.S. law under the national security aegis, was too powerful a weapon to repudiate for the sake of the Six Party Agreement (indeed, this is an assertion that Glaser and Asher and their advocates have been making with suspicious frequency in public fora).</p>
<p>And perhaps President Bush, himself a big fan of coercive middle-finger unilateralism, backed them, in effect splitting the baby, letting State pursue engagement and Treasury continue with confrontation.</p>
<p>Maybe it was the Chinese and the State Department who blinked, in effect throwing up their hands, ginning up a workaround, proceeding with the Six Party Agreement, and leaving the question of what to do about Patriot Act initiatives against Chinese banks-and the issue of the Treasury Department’s refractory attitude–for Secretary Paulson’s upcoming China trade talks.</p>
<p>Given the general contempt for North Korea and the credulity and sloppiness of most Western reporting on this subject, the only reason that we know or care that the Treasury Department is out to screw the North Koreans no matter what is the embarrassment and chaos its intransigence has brought to American diplomacy.</p>
<p>But now, thanks to the saga of the $25 million that somehow could not make it out of Macau, the narrative emerging from the BDA mess is not of the threat from North Korean supernotes, contraband, or WMDs.</p>
<p>It’s a picture of a U.S. campaign of economic warfare against North Korea, a campaign which may have registered successes in cutting off access U.S. financial institutions, intimidating European banks, ostracizing North Korea from the London gold exchange, and twisting the arm of the Macau monetary authority to stop BDA and possibly other Macau banks from selling Kim Jung Il’s gold.</p>
<p>And it’s the disturbing picture of a campaign that went too far, stalled and become meaningless except as an unnecessary irritant to China, a crucial world power, because the United States lacked the political will and international support to initiate a high-stakes confrontation with North Korea’s powerful protector over a little country with a little bomb.</p>
<p>Even more disturbing, it’s a picture of a campaign that has been so extensive, so prolonged, so demanding of our allies, so insistent and coercive upon international financial institutions, and so central to American prestige and credibility that we are unable to abandon it and move beyond a campaign of harassment against a tiny bank in Macau-and provocation directed against a country that is central to the United States’ economic and fiscal well-being.</p>
<p>But the true story is not one of confusion, contradiction, and mixed messages in U.S. policy.</p>
<p>The story is one of American shortsightedness.</p>
<p>If North Korea wants to be insulated from the international financial community, all it needs to do is hide behind China’s coattails.</p>
<p>But that’s not what it wants.</p>
<p>North Korea wants to achieve international legitimacy and access to world financial markets. It wants to export directly, attract foreign investment, raise capital on the international financial markets, and sell its gold on the world exchanges.</p>
<p>North Korea doesn’t want to grovel to the Chinese and sell energy, resources, and gold to Beijing at below-market prices.</p>
<p>Quite the opposite.</p>
<p>Returning from North Korea, Bill Richardson noted:</p>
<p>Interestingly, North Korea sees themselves eventually as an ally of the United States; in other words, as an ally against China. They see themselves as playing a strategic role as a buffer between the United States and China.</p>
<p>Every American comes back from North Korea with the same message.</p>
<p>North Korea wants to break free of Chinese domination and align itself with the United States.</p>
<p>And what do we do?</p>
<p>Every time the North Korean dog sticks its head out of its Chinese kennel, we beat it on the snout with a stick-and force it back to the heel of its Chinese master.</p>
<p>And we persist with the policy even when it runs counter to our current diplomatic efforts and security strategy for the region.</p>
<p>It’s a policy that’s blind, self-defeating, and futile.</p>
<p>And now that the U.S. has abandoned a policy of confrontation with North Korea, it’s also become ridiculous.</p>
<p>CHINA HAND edits the very interesting website <a href="http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/" type="external">China Matters</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | The U.S. Treasury Department’s Economic Campaign Against North Korea | true | https://counterpunch.org/2007/04/18/the-u-s-treasury-department-s-economic-campaign-against-north-korea/ | 2007-04-18 | 4 |
<p />
<p><a href="http://redstatements.co/michigan-teachers-sink-to-new-low/" type="external">Recently, I wrote a story about a young man who was abused by his teacher.&#160;</a> To make matters worse, 6 present teachers, 2 former teachers, and a sitting member of the Board of Education, all wrote letters asking for leniency.&#160; And believe it or not, his bail was paid for by a church right down the road from the Janczewskis. &#160;The story continues and it’s not a pretty one.</p>
<p>The first thing you need to know about this family, is all the bad luck they have suffered.&#160; The&#160;Janczewski family has had enough trial and tribulation to last a lifetime.&#160; The mother has cancer, the father has multiple sclerosis, and the son was sexually abused.&#160; After the teacher, who is such a lowlife, his name will not appear here, was sentenced to 15 years to 30 years in prison, they went after the six current teachers and the board member (who is married to one of the teachers) in order to get them fired.</p>
<p />
<p>Then one night, an explosion went off outside and Mr Janczewski went&#160;to the window, only to see his garage on fire.&#160; His camper and the side of his house were also damaged.&#160; The liberals have their gay marriage now and have their sights set on pedophilia now.</p>
<p>Glenn Beck interviewed him on his show today and offered help from his charity, Mercury One, that he said could at least rebuild the garage.&#160; &#160; Janczewski found two sets of letter painted on the side of his house.&#160; They were “YWP” and “ITY”.&#160; Janczewski thinks they stand for, “You will pay” and “I told you”.&#160; Despite what some people in town are doing and saying, Janczewski says the majority of the community has been very supportive.</p>
<p>The school is caught between a rock and a hard place.&#160; Parents say if the teachers aren’t fired, they will pull their kids out of the school and if they do fire them, they will undoubtedly sue.&#160; The cash strapped school will be financially strapped no matter what they do.&#160; Since that is true, then they should do the right thing and fire the six teachers and recall the school board member.</p> | Michigan Town Needs to Purge Liberals | true | http://conservativefiringline.com/michigan-town-needs-to-purge-liberals/ | 2013-08-19 | 0 |
<p>In a move that will nearly double its broadcast portfolio, USA Today owner Gannett (NYSE:GCI) inked a $1.5 billion transaction on Thursday to acquire TV company Belo (NYSE:BLC).</p>
<p>The buyout of Dallas-based Belo will push Gannett even further away from the newspaper industry it is most closely associated with in favor of the more lucrative TV business.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The deal will make TV and newspaper company Gannett the fourth-largest owner of major network affiliates in the U.S., with 21 stations in top 25 markets.</p>
<p>“We have been successfully transforming Gannett into a diversified multi-media company with broadcast, digital and publishing components across high-growth markets nationwide, and this is another important step in the process,” Gannett CEO Gracia Martore said in a statement. “It will significantly improve our cash flow and financial strength, enabling us to quickly pay down debt while remaining committed to disciplined capital allocation.”</p>
<p>Gannett offered to pay $13.75 a share for Dallas-based Belo, representing a 28.1% premium to the company’s closing price of $10.73 on Wednesday.</p>
<p>When the assumption of about $715 million in existing Belo debt is included, the value of the acquisition rises to about $2.2 billion.</p>
<p>By getting its hands on Belo, Gannett will increase its number of stations to 43 from 23 and allow the company to reach almost one-third of U.S. households.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>“This is an outstanding and financially compelling transaction for our shareholders.&#160; It is also a testament to the tremendous value our employees have created over Belo's long history and to the strength of our brand in the media industry,” Belo CEO Dunia Shive said.</p>
<p>The companies see the transaction closing by the end of the year, subject to approval from two-thirds of the voting power of Belo shares and a green light from antitrust regulators as well as the Federal Communications Commission.</p>
<p>Gannett said Belo’s directors and executive officers, who collectively own about 42% of the voting power of the company’s outstanding stock, have agreed to vote their shares in favor of the deal.</p>
<p>Wall Street applauded the move by Gannett, bidding the McLean, Va.-based company’s shares 25.94% higher to $25.00 in premarket trading. Belo soared 27.87% to $13.72.</p>
<p>The buyout is expected to be financed with cash on Gannett’s balance sheet and by tapping capital markets and bank financing.</p>
<p>Despite the deal, Gannett said it has replaced its existing share buyback program with a new one valued at $300 million that expires in two years. The company said it will maintain its existing dividend plan.</p>
<p>J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) served as financial advisors to Gannett, while Belo was advised by Royal Bank of Canada’s (NYSE:RY) RBC Capital Markets.</p> | Accelerating its Diversification Plan, Gannett Grabs Belo in $1.5B Deal | true | http://foxbusiness.com/news/2013/06/13/gannett-to-buy-belo-for-15-billion-cash-to-assume-debt-also.html | 2016-01-25 | 0 |
<p>Image via “Smith Q&amp;A” Facebook page. Design by jack laxson.</p>
<p>Last summer, Calliope Wong, then a high school senior, began an <a href="http://calliowong.tumblr.com/post/45074030481/thank-you" type="external">open-letter campaign</a> regarding the admissions policies of Smith College. Calliope had hoped to apply for admission to their undergraduate program. But as a trans woman, Calliope encountered an admissions policy at Smith with such prohibitively high demands and so many inconsistencies that her application was ultimately denied consideration, even after following instructions given to her through repeated, direct communication with members of the Smith College administration in which they encouraged her to apply. ( <a href="http://media.tumblr.com/c8d519c96d55a55738d0214702fa8f8f/tumblr_inline_mjh26orrVA1qz4rgp.jpg" type="external">Here’s</a> a photo of the rejection letter she received, courtesy <a href="http://calliowong.tumblr.com/" type="external">Transwomen@Smith Tumblr</a>)</p>
<p>The actions of the Smith College administration constitute a discriminatory bar against trans women. But after reaching out to over eight women’s colleges nationwide, it’s clear that such policies are not the exception but the rule.</p>
<p>Calliope’s case</p>
<p>There are several aspects of Calliope’s experience that are particularly alarming and contribute to idea that the Smith College admissions policy constitutes discrimination against trans women.</p>
<p />
<p>First, the administration’s requirements were prohibitively demanding. According to her account, Calliope was told that all school records submitted as part of her application must indicate her gender as female. “I understand why women’s colleges would want paper verification of a trans woman applicant’s gender identity,” Calliope told me. “However, it doesn’t make sense to me for institutions to demand that all forms and federal forms confirm the individual’s gender. For many trans applicants, getting the necessary paperwork in order isn’t simply an inconvenience; it’s practically a prezygotic barrier, a bar against even attempting to apply to women’s colleges in the first place. Though the individual student may have every intention to apply, he, she, or ze may not have the resources or support (parental, administrative at school) to make the appropriate changes.”</p>
<p>Second, the requirements for trans women seeking admission to Smith were created on an ad hoc basis, leaving lots of room for interpretation on the part of the administration and little for consistency in how they were applied. Calliope claims she was told by administration officials that as long as school records indicated her gender as female, she could apply as any other Smith assigned-at-birth female applicant. Yet even after discussing her specific case with Smith administration and changing all school documentation to female as suggested by the Dean of Admission, she had her application sent back to her twice without processing due to a discrepancy in her FAFSA (a federal financial aid form). Calliope sees this as a particularly problematic aspect of the process. “Women’s colleges typically do not have clear, well-defined policies for trans woman-application,” Calliope told me. “Colleges may simply make up policy as the student progresses along. This seems to be the case with Smith College, as the nebulous (lack of official) policy suggested I was simply jumping through hoops made up as I went along. It is impossible to adhere to protocol and regulations during application, when the school itself is improvising with policy.”</p>
<p>Third, such off-the-book, ad hoc policies give schools the leeway they need to shift the blame and accountability for their discrimination over to someone else. In Calliope’s case, Smith was able to throw out her application without reading it on the grounds that the “sex” category on her FAFSA form read “male.” (There is no ambiguity in the rejection letter she received: “Your FAFSA indicates your gender as male. Therefore, Smith cannot process your application.”) However, Calliope has <a href="http://calliowong.tumblr.com/post/45877663408/not-done-yet" type="external">published</a> an email exchange on her Tumblr with Jon O’Bergh, Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of the US Department of Education, which appears to challenge the &#160;logic of this decision, stating that “The FAFSA sex reported is only used for Selective Service purposes. Neither FAFSA nor the Department of Education cross-checks sex information with Social Security,” and causes Calliope to conclude that “Smith College could choose to accept me or at least process my application, if the administrators wanted to. Smith is not bound by any kind of federal mandate…Thus, Smith College’s decision not to process my application based on my FAFSA sex marker is at Smith’s sole discretion. Their hand was not forced; they chose this. Smith College is fully capable of reviewing my application and making an admissions decision for me based on my credentials. Just—it’s so simple, really. This is obvious discrimination on Smith’s part.”</p>
<p>Smith College, for their part, declined to comment on the particular case of Calliope Wong, or on the issues it raises relating to the difficulties transgender individuals might face in applying to the College. They also declined to comment when asked whether their administration is considering updating its policy to reflect greater consideration for trans women applicants in the future. A spokesperson did point me to <a href="http://www.smith.edu/diversity/gender.php" type="external">this Diversity and Gender page</a> on the College’s website, which states that “Smith College has a diverse and dynamic student body that includes individuals who identify as transgendered” [sic]. The page also boasts a bizarre and frankly outdated foray into some of the reasons said individuals might choose to do so (“for intellectual or political reasons, in order to challenge prevailing gender norms in our society”) and the policy goes on to emphasize that Smith is “absolutely” still a women’s college and, as such, “only considers female applicants for undergraduate admission.”</p>
<p>A systemic issue</p>
<p>The case of Callope Wong is emblematic of a wider problem of cissexism and transmisogyny across the board at women’s colleges across the country.</p>
<p>A number of schools declined to comment for this article, including Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Chatham, Simmons, and Barnard.</p>
<p>Spelman College, to its credit, had a spokesperson let me know that the College addresses admission for transgender and genderqueer students on an ad hoc basis, but emphasized that they admit&#160;“qualified female candidates without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, marital or veteran status, or any other legally protected status.” They also sent me <a href="http://www.thegavoice.com/index.php/news/atlanta-news-menu/2508-spelman-college-offers-summit-focused-on-lgbt-issues-at-historically-black-colleges" type="external">a</a> <a href="http://www.archives.soulforce.org/2008/10/16/southern-voice-soulforce-spelman-work-to-increase-gay-visibility/" type="external">few</a> <a href="http://www.archives.soulforce.org/2008/10/16/southern-voice-soulforce-spelman-work-to-increase-gay-visibility/" type="external">links</a> to some of their notable work around LGBTQ rights.</p>
<p>Wellesley wrote to let me know that they are “deeply committed to being a women’s college” and as such, they “admit women exclusively.” They also said that “once a woman has been admitted as a Wellesley student, we support all her choices and we celebrate her progress toward self-discovery.” This second part makes sense — if someone wants to transition while at a women’s college for example, they shouldn’t face getting kicked out of their school. But when pressed further to clarify if a trans woman would be considered for admission under this policy, they declined to comment.</p>
<p>I find all of these responses sub-par and problematic. While I respect Spelman for being the only school I contracted willing to state for the record a policy of considering trans women applicants, it is not enough. Trans women should not have to guess and hope their way into fair consideration from women’s colleges as a matter of policy.</p>
<p>Historic sites of activism</p>
<p>Hillary Rodham giving the commencement speech at Wellesley College, 1969. “Every protest, every dissent…is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age,” she said.</p>
<p>It’s easy to forget that just 40 years ago, men’s only colleges were not just acceptable but the norm. Many colleges, including Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown, systematically and unapologetically excluded women throughout&#160;and sometimes beyond the 1960’s. Co-ed commencement&#160;exercises didn’t take place at Harvard until 1970, for example. These discriminatory policies didn’t just go away — they were pushed out by the advent of feminist activists demanding their right to quality education along the same lines as their male counterparts.</p>
<p>It was in this context that many women’s colleges were founded, as alternatives to these men’s only spaces. Women’s colleges offered women access to the higher education they were being denied elsewhere. They also played a large social and cultural role, coming of age in a time when feminist activism was rampant in America. Hillary Clinton has famously extolled the virtues of her Wellesley experience. Gloria Steinem is a graduate of Smith.</p>
<p>Even today, women’s colleges have maintained a reputation as having politically active students, progressive policies and an inclusive atmosphere. Women’s colleges are frequently considered a safe space for people to get to know their genders and explore how they identify. I spoke to <a href="http://about.me/drkellywise" type="external">Kelly Wise, Ph.D</a>, a sex therapist in private practice who attended Smith College School for Social Work for graduate school, who expressed disappointment with the College’s admissions policy despite having had a positive experience at Smith himself. “[Attending] Smith helped me figure out many different aspects of who I am, including gender,” he said. “I wish they would come up with a policy that’s more inclusive, because the learning environment at Smith has great potential to be a safe haven for trans* individuals in a lot of ways.”</p>
<p>Yet this “safe haven” aspect seems to be restricted to those who are assigned female at birth or become female-identified early in life. It’s ironic, then, that women’s colleges, having long played a pioneering role in feminist history, now find themselves on the other side of such feminist advocacy efforts.</p>
<p>Demanding change</p>
<p>If anything is clear from Calliope’s case, it’s that these schools don’t need an explicit policy of exclusion towards trans women to achieve the same result. De facto transmisogyny is still misogyny.</p>
<p>Women’s colleges should not be in the business of policing people’s bodies or identities, or deciding what kinds of people get to qualify as “women”. Many women’s colleges are already sites of inclusion for some trans and gender non-conforming folks, but this behavior should not be limited to certain kinds of trans* people. It’s both arbitrary and discriminatory to label a space as “for women” and then deny access for many women just because they were not assigned female at birth. Stating this, and demanding that women’s colleges include trans women in the group “women,” is not akin to calling for the end of women’s colleges by any means. Rather, it is calling for a policy change that will strengthen and bolster the mission of women’s colleges and bring them back in line with the feminist activism of today.</p>
<p>A Feministing Editor will be speaking on a range of topics, including this one, at Smith on April 6. Details are forthcoming. In the meantime, please feel free to direct letters&#160;[[email protected]] or phone calls [413-585-2500] concerning this policy to Dean Shaver at Smith College Admissions.</p>
<p>UPDATE: <a href="http://calliowong.tumblr.com/post/45942592041/simmons-primacy" type="external">A trans woman has been accepted to the Simmons class of 2017</a>. I applaud this move by Simmons. We need to keep up the pressure on Smith and other women’s colleges to not only follow suit in considering some trans women for acceptance, but developing a clear and consistent policy of inclusion towards such individuals.</p>
<p>CORRECTION: This post originally&#160;included Stanford University in a list of schools that remained closed to women until the 1960s. The school has been open to women since it was established in 1891, however, it limited enrollment of women to a specified ratio.</p> | Prominent women’s colleges unwilling to open doors to trans women | true | http://feministing.com/2013/03/21/obvious-discrimination-prominent-womens-colleges-unwilling-to-open-doors-to-trans-students/ | 4 |
|
<p><a href="" type="internal" />It’s a different dustbowl, but this time the media is telling everyone how great it all is.</p>
<p>Obama is downsizing America in every way imaginable. Downsizing the motor of the world (while incurring incalculable debt coupled with socialized medicine, Obamacare).</p>
<p>Last week&#160; <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/obama_has_dismantled_america.html" type="external">I discussed Obama’s dismantling American hegemony on the world stage.</a>&#160;Now more bad news on the home front.</p>
<p>I regularly receive letters like the one I was cc’ed on below to Senator Ted Cruz.</p>
<p>Dear Senator Cruz,</p>
<p>I am a new Obama Peasant (one suffering under the weight of government’s deleterious economic/liberty crushing policies). Your efforts to Preserve Our Liberty are intellectually and emotionally uplifting because of the possibilities they reveal. I want to Thank You.</p>
<p>For background, I’m a 50 year old man who -up until 2010- never knew poverty, hunger, fear of the future. I have owned my homes since I was 21. I lost my two full time jobs in May-2009 and since then, I have been pulverized by the weak/sick economy. If I can’t short-sell, I will be losing my home of 26.11 years . I can’t fix my 1987 Ford Escort wagon; I am riding a bike….Unbelievable. I cannot take care of my 74 year old Mother with early Alzhiemers. I have officially been in Poverty-to-Extreme Poverty since 2011.</p>
<p>I have 2 part-time jobs that don’t add up to a fraction of one of my previous jobs. I am trying to build a micro-business but it is difficult. I am pushing forward but I am at my weakest point in Life.</p>
<p>I have lost hope of being able to help save our country from the pernicious effects of the the Mystical Statist Wizards on the Potomac. They’ve been sinisterly successful in their duplicitous plot to wear people down to dependency on Them.</p>
<p>I wish I could go to Washington or join a group but I am to focused on basic survival. The only thing I have to offer to the winning the DEBATE for getting America on track toward its founding goals is an edited (toned) part of an old 1985 college economics paper for Professor Jay Forrester-M.I.T. that described a hypothetical future America that had reached the economic/financial/social/political limits of decades of expansion and debt financing.</p>
<p>Respectfully,</p>
<p>XXXXXX</p>
<p><a href="http://news.investors.com/politics-obamacare/092513-669013-obamacare-employer-mandate-a-list-of-cuts-to-work-hours-jobs.htm?fromcampaign=1" type="external">Here’s a list&#160;</a>of over 300 employers who have allegedly cut their employees’ hours because of Obamacare. (thanks to Suzanne)</p>
<p>These 300 employers&#160; have allegedly cut their employees’ hours to avoid a tax associated with President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law was published this week by a prominent investors website.</p>
<p>Pamela Geller is the Editor of <a href="http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/09/downsizing-america-a-letter-from-an-obama-peasant-and-a-list-of-over-300-employers-who-have-cut-thei.html" type="external">Atlas Shrugs</a>.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Downsizing America: A Letter From an “Obama Peasant” and a List of Over 300 Employers Who Have Cut Their Employees’ Hours Because of Obamacare (Geller, Atlas Shrugs) | true | http://dcclothesline.com/2013/09/29/downsizing-america-a-letter-from-an-obama-peasant-and-a-list-of-over-300-employers-who-have-cut-their-employees-hours-because-of-obamacare-geller-atlas-shrugs/?fb_source%3Dpubv1 | 2013-09-29 | 0 |
<p>(Greg Rikaart. Photo by Greg Hernandez via Wikimedia Commons.)</p>
<p>“Young and the Restless” star Greg Rikaart will be exiting the show after a 14-year run.</p>
<p>Rikaart, 40, announced the news in an Instagram post that he and his character&#160;Kevin Fisher would be leaving the show.</p>
<p>“Fourteen years ago, I booked a two-week long gig on The Young and the Restless. In my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined what it would turn into: a career-defining experience that has brought me so much happiness and fulfillment,” the out actor writes.</p>
<p>Kevin was introduced to the show in 2003 as&#160;an internet predator. The role was meant to be short-lived, but Kevin stayed in the fictional Genoa City. Rikaart’s portrayal of Kevin earned him a Daytime Emmy win and four nominations.</p>
<p>“Playing Kevin and watching him evolve over the years has mirrored my real life in so many ways. We both found love, both became dads and we both have more gray hair now than we did in 2003,” Rikaart, who has one child with his husband Robert Sudduth, writes.</p>
<p>Rikaart will film his last episode in June with his final episode airing in August.</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Greg Rikaart</a> <a href="" type="internal">Young and the Restless</a></p> | ‘Young and the Restless’ star Greg Rikaart leaving after 14 years | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2017/05/05/young-restless-star-greg-rikaart-leaving-14-years/ | 3 |
|
<p>The United States can’t handle the truth.</p>
<p>At least according to the Russian response to a State Department top-10 list that compiled President Vladimir Putin’s “false truths” on Ukraine.</p>
<p>After Putin’s press conference about Ukraine on Wednesday, the US State Department released a top-10 list of his "false truths" that many considered tongue-in-cheek.</p>
<p>Russia was not amused.</p>
<p>Foreign Ministry representative Aleksandr Lukashevich issued a haughty retort, accusing the United States of “low-grade propaganda” and an arrogant inability to accept it has no “monopoly on the truth.”</p>
<p>“The State Department is trying to play on a shamelessly one-sided interpretation of the events,” he said on Thursday, according to <a href="http://rt.com/news/state-department-putin-list-234/" type="external">Russia Today</a>.</p>
<p>Lukashevich also provided a history lesson, citing American interventions in foreign conflicts as proof of American hypocrisy.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/russia/140306/the-state-department-channeled-its-inner-letterman-top-10" type="external">State Department channels its inner Letterman with top 10 Putin ‘False Truths’</a></p>
<p>“What about the bombing of former Yugoslavia or the invasion of Iraq over a fabricated cause? The Vietnam War claimed the lives of two million civilians, not to mention totally destroyed the country and polluted the environment,” Lukashevich said.</p>
<p>He also mentioned Lebanon (1958), the Dominican Republic (1965), “tiny” Grenada (1983), Libya (1986) and Panama (1989) as evidence.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/world/europe/jarred-by-us-top-ten-lies-list-moscow-fires-back.html?_r=0" type="external">The New York Times noted</a>, "Detailed and grisly descriptions of the United States’ past interventions, nearly every one deeply unpopular with Soviet and Russian people, have become a dominant theme in Russian reporting on Ukraine and its Russian-populated Crimean Peninsula."</p>
<p>A former Russian diplomat and Putin ally went a step further during an interview with the <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2b508fa8-a558-11e3-8070-00144feab7de.html#axzz2vIUTUykG" type="external">Financial Times</a>, saying the United States was trying to destroy Russia.</p>
<p>Vladimir Yakunin, now president of Russian Railways, claimed the United States always wanted to drive a wedge between Kyiv and Moscow.</p>
<p>He accused the West of bringing former Warsaw Pact nations into NATO or the European Union to dismantle Russia.</p>
<p>“We are witnessing a huge geopolitical game in which the aim is the destruction of Russia as a geopolitical opponent of the US or of this global financial oligarchy,” Yakunin told the FT.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/140304/2014-nobel-peace-prize-nominees-malala-pope-francis-putin" type="external">2014 Nobel Peace Prize nominees include Snowden, Malala, Pope Francis … and Putin?</a>&#160;</p> | Russian officials lash out at US after State Department publishes list of Putin lies | false | https://pri.org/stories/2014-03-07/russian-officials-lash-out-us-after-state-department-publishes-list-putin-lies | 2014-03-07 | 3 |
<p>Oil prices weakened on Tuesday for a fifth day running as Greece's post-election uncertainty added to signs of economic slowdown on both sides of the Atlantic and fanned concerns about weakening demand for petroleum as supply increases.</p>
<p>But crude futures, the euro and U.S. stocks all pared losses after initially dropping sharply on news that Left Coalition leader Alexis Tsipras will not cooperate with Greece's two main parties unless they renege on pledges made to abide by a bailout deal made with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"Failure to take out Monday's lows caused the shorts that had piled in the market to turn," said Gene McGillian, analyst, Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut.</p>
<p>Tuesday's pared losses still left Brent down 5.79 percent over five sessions, with U.S. crude off 8.62 percent, the biggest five-day percentage losses since October.</p>
<p>Oil prices also felt pressure early after Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said the kingdom's output was around 10 million barrels per day (bpd) and that the world's top exporter was storing 80 million barrels in case of any disruption in supplies.</p>
<p>Brent June crude eased 43 cents to settle at $112.73 a barrel, having fallen to $110.53, finding support above Monday's $110.34 intraday low.</p>
<p>U.S. June crude fell 93 cents to settle at $97.01. It slumped as low as $95.52, also finding support above Monday's 2012 low at $95.34.</p>
<p>The Brent/U.S. crude spread widened, also in choppy trading, with Brent's premium to its U.S. counterpart ending at $15.72 a barrel based on settlements, but only after swinging from $14.78 to $15.87 intraday.</p>
<p>Total crude trading volume surpassed 600,000 lots and topped 30-day averages by 10 percent for both Brent and U.S. crude.</p>
<p>U.S. gasoline and heating oil futures rallied to post higher settlements, despite continuing signs of weak consumer demand.</p>
<p>U.S. gasoline demand fell 0.7 percent in the week to May 4 versus the previous week and was down 5.8 percent from the year-ago period, MasterCard said in a report.</p>
<p>Europe's elections last weekend prompted a sharp sell-off early on Monday as France's choice of a new leader and Greece's inability to form a new government shook an already fragile outlook for the debt-laden region.</p>
<p>"As Europe's political, financial and social cohesion crumbles, it will have the attendant effect on demand," said Michael Fitzpatrick, editor of industry newsletter Energy Overview in New York.</p>
<p>Friday's disappointing U.S. jobs data had already stoked concerns about growth in the world's largest economy.</p>
<p>EUROPE TURMOIL HITS ACROSS MARKETS</p>
<p>The political uncertainty in Greece sent the euro lower against the dollar for a seventh straight session, making oil costlier for European buyers. On Wall Street, all three major U.S. stock indexes fell more than 1 percent.</p>
<p>Copper fell to a two-week low as Greece's travails drew attention to the possible threat to demand outlooks for industrial materials, beyond oil.</p>
<p>U.S. Treasury debt prices rose, pushing benchmark yields to three-month lows, as Greece's post-election uncertainty stoked safe-haven buying of U.S. government debt.</p>
<p>U.S. OIL INVENTORIES</p>
<p>Crude oil stocks in the United States, already at their highest since 1990, are expected to have risen a seventh straight week, as supply in Cushing, Oklahoma, builds ahead of a reversal of a key pipeline connecting the Midwest and the refinery-rich Gulf Coast, a Reuters poll showed.</p>
<p>Inventory data from the American Petroleum Institute (API) is due on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT), followed by the U.S. Energy Information's (EIA) weekly report on Wednesday.</p>
<p>The EIA raised slightly its 2012 world demand growth forecast by 70,000 bpd, in a monthly report on Tuesday, but cut its 2013 estimate by 140,000 bpd.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Oil Slips as Europe, Greece Fan Demand Worries | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/05/08/oil-prices-slide-for-fifth-straight-session.html | 2016-01-26 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>But lame-duck President Barack Obama and soon-to-be former Secretary of State John Kerry have done their best to change that in the waning days of Obama’s eight years as president, siding with the terrorist group Hamas and others dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state and its people.</p>
<p>The stunning events of the past week have ignited a dangerous game that is further unsettling a turmoil-roiled Middle East that is in tatters in large part by this administration’s disastrous foreign policy. As if the killing or displacement of millions of Syrians, including the fall of Aleppo and the leadership void that elevated Russia and Iran into positions of Mideast power, weren’t enough. Or the administration’s role in the destabilization of Libya and Egypt. Or Obama’s wrongful assessment of Islamic State as a “JV” threat that contributed to its dramatic rise, especially in Iraq and its expansive terror attacks on the West.</p>
<p>Now the administration has trained its failed foreign policy eye onto another target – blaming Israel for the breakdown of peace negotiations and attacking its settlement process.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Somehow forgotten are a nearly achieved two-state agreement forged in 2000 during the Clinton administration and a similar one offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. Both were rejected, the first by late PLO leader Yasser Arafat and the second by current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. And it should be remembered that Israel’s return of the Gaza Strip to the PLO in 1994 has only resulted in its being used as a staging area for terrorist and rocket attacks on Israel and its people.</p>
<p>Last week, Obama allowed a U.N. Security Council resolution to go forward – the Israelis say the U.S. engineered the deal – condemning Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem as illegal and in violation of international law. This was the first time the U.S. failed to veto such a move. The resolution lays open the possibility of reducing Israel’s negotiating hand with the Palestinians – land could no longer be traded for peace – and leaves Israelis open to prosecution in international tribunals.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, Kerry defended the U.S. abstention and launched into a tirade against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom President Obama has had a strained relationship during his administration and whom Obama’s operatives tried to oust in Israeli elections. Kerry also laid out an outline for a possible peace solution he will not be able to oversee and warned that the favored two-state solution was in jeopardy.</p>
<p>Some Israelis also have concerns about whether a two-state solution remains feasible. But what is incontrovertible is that as a result of the Nazi Holocaust, in 1948 Jews were granted the right to create a safe state in lands their religious ancestors, like the Arabs’ ancestors, had occupied for millenniums.</p>
<p>It is deplorable that the Palestinian leaders’ long-stated goal is eliminating Israel as a state and driving all Jews out of the land.</p>
<p>In 1970, The Washington Post quoted Arafat as saying, “We shall never stop until we can go back home and Israel is destroyed. … There can be no compromises. … We don’t want peace, we want victory. Peace for us means Israel’s destruction and nothing else.”</p>
<p>Nothing has changed – with the possible exception of the view held by our commander in chief.</p>
<p>While drawing predictable praise from France and Germany, the administration’s inaction on the U.N. resolution sparked some rare foreign policy criticism from our nation’s closest ally.</p>
<p>British Prime Minister Theresa May said in a statement Thursday, “We do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically elected government of an ally. … We are also clear that the settlements are far from the only problem. … In particular, the people of Israel deserve to live free from the threat of terrorism, with which they have had to cope for too long.”</p>
<p>Even key members of Obama’s own party are expressing dissatisfaction with the change. “While he may not have intended it, I fear Secretary Kerry, in his speech and action at the [United Nations], has emboldened extremists on both sides,” incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer,” D-N.Y., said last week.</p>
<p>It is reasonable to question Obama’s and Kerry’s motives for the decision to throw a last-second wrench into U.S. foreign policy. But it is unfortunate that the incoming president, like him or not, will have to deal with this.</p>
<p>This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.</p>
<p /> | Editorial: Policy shift against Israel was a JV move by Obama | false | https://abqjournal.com/918585/policy-shift-against-israel-was-a-jv-move-by-obama.html | 2 |
|
<p>When Donald Trump spoke at the rally in Pennsylvania for some GOP candidate whose name he barely mentioned, Trump naturally launched into a medley of his campaign’s greatest hits. One of those most clamored for by his audience of fanatics was that old familiar refrain “Build the Wall.” And Trump didn’t disappoint his fans as he once again promised that the wall would be built “100 percent.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NewsCorpse/posts/2071203169561134" type="external" /></p>
<p>The following day Fox News jumped on this critical breaking story with a report on Fox and Friends First. Host Heather Childers interviewed the Trump sycophant head of the so-called National Border Patrol Council, Brandon Judd. In Childers introduction of Judd she summarized what would be the theme of the whole segment:</p>
<p>“A brand new report says the wall could pay for itself by eliminating the need for welfare and other taxpayer funded benefits given to illegal immigrants.”</p>
<p>Wow, really? Actually, no. The report cited by Childers was published by the ultra-conservative assembly of xenophobes known as the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). It concluded that undocumented immigrants in the United States were consuming sixty-four billion dollars in federal benefits from welfare, public education and refundable tax credits. Outside of education, Childers and CIS were simply making most of that up. The immigrants in question are not eligible for welfare of any type, including ObamaCare. And how can they receive refundable tax credits if they aren’t filing tax returns? The truth is that <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-01/study-undocumented-immigrants-pay-billions-in-taxes" type="external">immigrants provide far more financial benefits</a> to the the country than anything they consume.</p>
<p>Through a flurry of leading questions, Judd repeated the findings from the same CIS study. And he went on to say that the wall “will cut down on what the taxpayer burden will be, which will then go straight into funding the wall.” That’s an impressively delusional statement. Let’s try to follow his logic. What Judd is saying that taxpayers would be relieved from having to pay welfare benefits for illegal immigrants (we’ll set aside for the moment that there are no such benefits). But that tax revenues would instead be shifted to paying for Trump’s wall. So contrary to Judd’s comment, there is no reduction in the burden of the taxpayers at all.</p>
<p>Furthermore, Judd is conceding that it’s the taxpayers who are paying for the wall. So the lede in this story where Childers claimed that the wall would pay for itself was a lie. It would be paid for by the aforementioned taxpayers. And in that case, it would not be paid for by Mexico, as promised by the President. Judd called this “a brilliant way to go about it. And that’s the business strategy that President Trump brings to the American people.”</p>
<p>It’s rather ludicrous to characterize this idiocy as “brilliant.” But it’s pretty accurate to say that it’s characteristic of Trump’s business strategy. As a failed businessman who has declared bankruptcy at least six times, Trump can hardly qualify as a business expert. He is a practitioner if <a href="http://amzn.to/2FCsVDM" type="external">“Disaster Capitalism”</a> (hat tip: Naomi Klein), who exploits his failures for his own gain at the expense of everyone he does business with. And as president, that means the American people are the chumps in his greedy game. And Fox News is his PR division that airs garbage like this interview in order to help Trump fleece the nation.</p>
<p>How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QSSMOES/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00QSSMOES&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=newscorpsecom-20&amp;linkId=TLI6JC2OYE22MUTS" type="external">Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.</a> Available now at Amazon.</p>
<p>Watch the latest video at &lt;a href="//video.foxnews.com"&gt;video.foxnews.com&lt;/a&gt;</p> | Fox News Lies: Trump’s Border Wall Can Be Paid for By Cutting Welfare – Still Not By Mexico | true | http://newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p%3D28987 | 4 |
|
<p>U.S. PUTS MORE VENEZUELAN OFFICIALS UNDER SANCTIONS</p>
<p>The U.S. government leveled sanctions at 13 high-ranking Venezuelan officials days before a scheduled vote for a constitutional assembly that many believe would deal a death blow to Venezuela's democracy.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>EU CAUTIONS U.S. ON RUSSIA SANCTIONS BILL</p>
<p>The European Union stands ready to act "within days" if its concerns about the U.S. bill to impose new sanctions on Russia aren't addressed, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said.</p>
<p>AFGHAN MILITARY BASE HIT BY TALIBAN ATTACK</p>
<p>The Taliban attacked an Afghan army base in southern Kandahar province overnight and killed at least 26 soldiers, as the insurgent group increases pressure on government forces.</p>
<p>NEW CHALLENGE TO U.S. POWER: CHINESE EXCEPTIONALISM</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>China's once-reticent citizens see their country as economically, diplomatically and politically ascendant-and the U.S. in decline. The phenomenon bolsters President Xi's signature slogan exhorting the "China Dream."</p>
<p>EU THREATENS POLAND WITH SANCTIONS OVER COURT OVERHAUL</p>
<p>The European Union warned it could still pursue unprecedented sanctions against Poland, trying to pressure the government as both sides weigh their next moves after the president vetoed legislation to replace the entire Supreme Court.</p>
<p>U.K. ECONOMY POSTS LACKLUSTER GROWTH</p>
<p>U.K. economic growth remained subdued in the second quarter, as a modest revival in consumer spending offset shrinking industrial production, a sign that a hoped-for shift toward export-led growth remains elusive.</p>
<p>VATICAN FINANCE CHIEF WILL PLEAD NOT GUILTY TO SEX-ABUSE CHARGES</p>
<p>Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis' finance chief, will plead not guilty to multiple charges of sexual abuse leveled against him in Australia.</p>
<p>SPANISH PRIME MINISTER DENIES KNOWLEDGE OF ALLEGED ILLEGAL FINANCING</p>
<p>Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy testified in court on Wednesday as a witness in a graft trial and said he had no knowledge of the alleged illegal financing scheme that helped fund his Popular Party.</p>
<p>(For continuously updated news from the Wall Street Journal, see WSJ.com at http://wsj.com.)</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>July 26, 2017 17:36 ET (21:36 GMT)</p> | WSJ.com What's News - Worldwide News Briefs for Jul 26 | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/07/26/wsj-com-whats-news-worldwide-news-briefs-for-jul-26.html | 2017-07-26 | 0 |
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006073132X/ref=ase_wwweppcorg-20/104-6284162-7691931?s=books&amp;v=glance&amp;n=283155&amp;tagActionCode=wwweppcorg-20" type="external">Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything</a>, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. HarperCollins, 256 pages, $25.95</p>
<p>According to Freakonomics, co-authored by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and freelance journalist Stephen Dubner, “economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers but a serious shortage of interesting questions.” This book, and its authors, have become well-known for asking all kinds of interesting questions. Do real estate agents act in their clients’ best interests? Why do so many drug dealers live with their mothers? Does campaign money determine election results?</p>
<p>Levitt and Dubner’s publisher proposed the book (and since then, a magazine column, blog, audio book, T-shirts, etc.) to capitalize upon a 2003 New York Times Magazine article Dubner had written about Levitt. Back then, Dubner quoted Levitt as saying, “I just don’t know very much about the field of economics. I’m not good at math, I don’t know a lot of econometrics, and I also don’t know how to do theory.” But once a media maelstrom erupted over the book’s assertion that legalized abortion has led to a reduction in crime, Levitt was forced to buttress the argument with his authority, telling the New York Times, for example, “As an economist, I am better than the typical person at figuring out whether abortion reduces crime….” Meanwhile, the book ignored the fatal weakness in his earlier research.</p>
<p>That original paper, co-authored with John J. Donohue, had many flaws, as economists have pointed out ever since Levitt posted it on the Internet in 1999. The paper argued that after abortion was legalized by several states starting in the late 1960s and nationwide by Roe v. Wade(1973), millions of fetuses were killed who, when old enough, would have been disproportionately likely to commit crimes. Abortion’s culling of them should therefore have lowered crime rates. To prove this, Levitt and Donohue looked at crime rates 15-18 years after Roe and found the drop they had predicted. But did abortion cause it? Many economists doubt it, pointing out, for example, that teenage crime soared in the late 1980s and early 1990s, just when the abortions’ effect should have manifested itself. But the paper examined only aggregate crime rates, not crime rates by age group.</p>
<p>Tellingly, Levitt and Donohue found their results indistinguishable whether they used 1970s or 1990s abortion rates to try to explain overall ’90s crime rates. But when both were included the models went statistically haywire (“standard errors explode due to multicollinearity”). This alarm goes off when research is “misspecified,” typically by omitting necessary variables. Failing to uncover any valid evidence for either a 20-year lag or for no lag, the two replaced the missing facts with an arbitrary assumption: “Consequently, it must be recognized that our interpretation of the results relies on the assumption that there will be a fifteen-to-twenty year lag before abortion materially affects crime.”</p>
<p>They justified their assumption by quipping that “infants commit little crime.” But nearly all violent crime is committed by men (women are equal only in nonviolent crime) precisely the ages of the fathers of aborted children. In short, the missing variable is “economic fatherhood.” (“Economic” fatherhood is defined not by residency with but by provision for one’s children.) Including this variable not only invalidates Levitt’s claim but reverses it. One can see this in a comparison of homicide rates and economic fatherhood, the latter defined by the Total Fertility Rate for the same demographic mix as prisoners (though measured for women, it’s almost exactly the same for men) minus men in prison (who cannot provide for children) and children on welfare (who aren’t supported by fathers). Though strong for all categories of crime, the trade-off with economic fatherhood strengthens with the crime’s violence, and is strongest for the most violent of all, homicide.</p>
<p>(Click to enlarge.)</p>
<p>As far back as data exist, rates of economic fatherhood and homicide have been strongly, inversely “cointegrated” — a stringent statistical test characterizing inherently related events, like the number of cars entering and leaving the Lincoln Tunnel. Legalizing abortion didn’t lower homicide rates 15-20 years later by eliminating infants who might, if they survived, have become murderers: it raised the homicide rate almost at once by turning their fathers back into men without dependent children — a small but steady share of whom do murder. The homicide rate rose sharply in the 1960s and ’70s when expanding welfare and legal abortion sharply reduced economic fatherhood, and it dropped sharply in the ’90s partly due to a recovering birth rate, but mostly because welfare reform and incarceration raised the share of men outside prison who were supporting children.</p>
<p>This scenario didn’t occur to Levitt not because of a lack of ingenuity or data but because of the inherent weakness of the theory he was trying to apply, which Nobel Prize-winning economists George J. Stigler and Gary S. Becker, Levitt’s mentor, called the “economic approach to human behavior.” Levitt was unable to see the true correlation between abortion and crime because he was among the first victims of an epic change in the teaching of economics orchestrated by Stigler, with Becker’s support.</p>
<p>Freakonomics relies heavily upon the theory of “information asymmetry,” which explains for example why a new car’s value drops sharply the moment it is driven off the lot (people assume that if anyone wants to resell a new car, it must be a lemon). Levitt and Dubner warn, “Experts — from criminologists to real-estate agents — use their information to serve their own agenda.” They don’t mention that Stigler and Becker viewed the teaching of economics exactly the same way. Stigler’s 1983 Nobel address advised his peers to consider themselves so many used-theory salesmen, whose livelihood was mortally threatened by students’ knowledge that newer (or older) theories are superior:</p>
<p>Gary Becker has suggested that…the established scholar possesses a valuable capital asset in his command over a particular body of knowledge. That capital would be reduced if his knowledge were made obsolete by the general acceptance of a new theory. Hence, established scholars should, in their own self-interest, attack new theories, possibly even more than they do in the absence of joint action.</p>
<p>For Stigler, this was not hypothetical. Until the mid-1950s, he had built his reputation as an expert in the history of economics on the strength of an excellent dissertation published in 1941, which covered 19th-century theory and had proceeded on the general assumption that economics began with Adam Smith. But Joseph Schumpeter’s History of Economic Analysis, published posthumously in 1954, demonstrated that all modern theory could be traced to the Scholastics who sifted and synthesized Biblical and Greco-Roman thought in light of Arabic and Jewish commentaries, and that “the Wealth of Nations does not contain a single analytic idea, principle, or method that was entirely new in 1776.” This fact revolutionized the field, but slashed Stigler’s relative expertise. He quickly switched from the history of economics to its modern sociology and urged others to do likewise. In a famous 1969 article he posed the question, “Does Economics Have a Useful Past?” and answered in the negative, explicitly opposing Schumpeter. In 1972, the University of Chicago’s economics department approved Stigler’s motion to abolish the requirement that students master its history before receiving a degree, and departments at all major universities quickly followed suit.</p>
<p>But Stigler was wrong in claiming “all that is useful and valid in earlier work is present — in purer and more elegant form — in the modern theory.” Economics has been taught at the highest university level since about 1250, when Thomas Aquinas integrated four theories from Aristotle and Augustine into a coherent whole: production; utility, which explains consumption; exchange; and final distribution, which explains personal gifts and crimes (as well as distributive justice in the family and government). All major economic thinkers taught the scholastic outline until Adam Smith.</p>
<p>Smith rejected the theories of utility and final distribution in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (substituting his famous “invisible hand”) and started classical economics with the outline chopped from four elements to two, production and exchange. The current neoclassical period began in 1870 when three economists dissatisfied with Smith’s revision (W.S. Jevons, Carl Menger, and Leon Walras) independently rediscovered the theory of utility. Since later neoclassical economists never reinvented final distribution, today’s theory contains no more than three elements — consumption, production, and exchange — and tries to explain final distribution with these three. This is why Levitt couldn’t reach a statistically valid conclusion about abortion and crime: he was trying to explain four things with only three explanatory equations.</p>
<p>Becker earned his 1992 Nobel Prize for building on Theodore Schultz’s rediscovery of Aristotle’s theory of the household production of so-called “human capital.” But on Stigler’s advice, Becker combined it with Jeremy Bentham’s incompatible notion that utility is a thing, a quantum of physiological pleasure that Bentham supposed is the ultimate good we all wish to consume. In Benthamite theory, all of us are selfish, sociopathic utility maximizers — freaks, as it were.</p>
<p>As Augustine explained 14 centuries before Bentham, utility is not a thing, but a relation: our order of preference (first, second, third, etc.) for the goods we want to distribute among the persons (including ourselves) who are the “end” or purpose of our actions. Our fundamental preference (also first, second, third, etc.) is for these persons, and we distribute our goods proportionally to our love for others relative to ourselves. This theory explains the near-perfect trade-off between homicide and economic fatherhood. Since parents spend so much time serving their children, they have less for themselves. A small but roughly constant fraction of all adult time spent on oneself is spent harming others. Hence for a few men, the choice is literally between giving life and taking it.</p>
<p>Historian Henry William Spiegel remarked of the “marginal revolution,” which ended classical economics and began the current neoclassical phase: “Outsiders ranked prominently among the pioneers of marginal analysis because its discovery required a perspective that the experts did not necessarily possess.” This will be true in coming decades as economists who understand the “human approach to economic behavior” of Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas find full employment rewriting neoclassical theories of the Bentham-Becker variety.</p>
<p>—John D. Mueller is author of Redeeming Economics: Free Markets and the Human Person (ISI Books), director of the Economics and Ethics program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and president of LBMC LLC, a financial-market forecasting firm.</p> | Dismal Science | false | https://eppc.org/publications/dismal-science/ | 1 |
|
<p>DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa state lawmaker was arrested early Friday on suspicion of drunken driving and possessing a firearm while under the influence, following a report his vehicle was weaving between lanes in the early morning hours.</p>
<p>Rep. Chip Baltimore, a Republican from Boone whose legal first name is Francis, was driving in Ames near Interstate 35 when he was stopped shortly after 3:30 a.m., according to Ames Police Sgt. Mike Arkovich.</p>
<p>Arkovich said a police radio received a report around the time of a car driving “recklessly” in the area. An officer then spotted the vehicle, driven by Baltimore, and initiated a traffic stop.</p>
<p>Baltimore, 51, recorded a blood alcohol level of 0.147 percent. The blood alcohol limit for drivers in Iowa is 0.08 percent.</p>
<p>Arkovich said a pistol was also found under the driver’s seat. He said Baltimore has a permit to carry, but it became void because of his high blood alcohol level.</p>
<p>Baltimore was cited for a failure to maintain lanes, according to Arkovich, and booked into the Story County Jail. The lawmaker faces charges of first offense operating while intoxicated and possession or carrying a firearm while under the influence. He was released from jail Friday afternoon.</p>
<p>A phone number listed to Baltimore’s home is not accepting messages. He did not immediately return an email left Friday.</p>
<p>House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, the top Republican in the House, said in a statement: “Drunk driving is unacceptable behavior for anyone, let alone a state legislator. We will work through this issue and take appropriate action quickly. We will also work with Rep. Baltimore to get him the help and support that he needs at this time.”</p>
<p>Baltimore, an attorney, is serving his fourth term as a state representative. He is chairman of the House judiciary committee, a legislative body that has advanced legislation in recent years to add more penalties for individuals arrested for drunken driving.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>This version corrects spelling of Baltimore’s first name to Francis from Frances.</p>
<p>DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa state lawmaker was arrested early Friday on suspicion of drunken driving and possessing a firearm while under the influence, following a report his vehicle was weaving between lanes in the early morning hours.</p>
<p>Rep. Chip Baltimore, a Republican from Boone whose legal first name is Francis, was driving in Ames near Interstate 35 when he was stopped shortly after 3:30 a.m., according to Ames Police Sgt. Mike Arkovich.</p>
<p>Arkovich said a police radio received a report around the time of a car driving “recklessly” in the area. An officer then spotted the vehicle, driven by Baltimore, and initiated a traffic stop.</p>
<p>Baltimore, 51, recorded a blood alcohol level of 0.147 percent. The blood alcohol limit for drivers in Iowa is 0.08 percent.</p>
<p>Arkovich said a pistol was also found under the driver’s seat. He said Baltimore has a permit to carry, but it became void because of his high blood alcohol level.</p>
<p>Baltimore was cited for a failure to maintain lanes, according to Arkovich, and booked into the Story County Jail. The lawmaker faces charges of first offense operating while intoxicated and possession or carrying a firearm while under the influence. He was released from jail Friday afternoon.</p>
<p>A phone number listed to Baltimore’s home is not accepting messages. He did not immediately return an email left Friday.</p>
<p>House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, the top Republican in the House, said in a statement: “Drunk driving is unacceptable behavior for anyone, let alone a state legislator. We will work through this issue and take appropriate action quickly. We will also work with Rep. Baltimore to get him the help and support that he needs at this time.”</p>
<p>Baltimore, an attorney, is serving his fourth term as a state representative. He is chairman of the House judiciary committee, a legislative body that has advanced legislation in recent years to add more penalties for individuals arrested for drunken driving.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>This version corrects spelling of Baltimore’s first name to Francis from Frances.</p> | Iowa state lawmaker arrested on suspicion of drunken driving | false | https://apnews.com/22cbbdd52c004d3ab74af3e3bf3d0a10 | 2018-01-19 | 2 |
<p>A food safety manager at Kauffman and Arrowhead stadiums in Kansas City says he was fired after complaining about dirty conditions.</p>
<p>Jon Costa shared with ESPN's "Outside the Lines" a letter that he said came from his former employer, Aramark. The March 17 letter said Costa was being fired "for cause" for several reasons, including that he violated the company's media policy by taking his concerns public.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>ESPN says Costa's complaints prompted a Nov. 3 inspection that found violations at 20 out of 26 food stands. The stadiums later passed a follow-up inspection.</p>
<p>Aramark said in a written statement that it considers personnel matters confidential. It added that food safety is "a top priority." Costa's attorney, Ryan McClelland, didn't immediately return phone or email messages from The Associated Press.</p> | Arrowhead, Kauffman stadiums' food service fires manager who complained about dirty conditions | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/03/27/arrowhead-kauffman-stadiums-food-service-fires-manager-who-complained-about.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Colorado’s use of Rio Grande water is depriving the river of spring flows needed to keep the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow alive, an environmental group charged in a legal notice filed this week.</p>
<p>The notice by the Santa Fe-based group WildEarth Guardians opens a new legal front in the struggle over environmental flows in the Rio Grande, a struggle that until now had focused on tradeoffs among water interests within New Mexico.</p>
<p>The filing, a formal notice of intent to sue the Colorado Department of Natural Resources over its water management on the Rio Grande, charges that irrigation in the San Luis Valley, north of the New Mexico-Colorado border, is significantly reducing the spring runoff peak, which the minnow depends on for spawning.</p>
<p>Colorado Department of Natural Resources spokesman Todd Hartman Wednesday declined comment.</p>
<p>Here’s the full notice, and I’ve highlighted what I think are the key passages (click on the “notes” tab). I’ll have more in tomorrow’s newspaper. (udpate: UNM law professor Reed Benson has written <a href="http://westernriverlaw.com/2014/01/23/is-colorado-violating-the-endangered-species-act/" type="external">a nice analysis of the issues</a>)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&lt;a href="http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1008387/1-21-14-final-noi-colorado-and-exhibit.pdf"&gt;1 21 14 Final NOI Colorado and Exhibit (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br /&gt; &lt;a href="http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1008387/1-21-14-final-noi-colorado-and-exhibit.txt"&gt;1 21 14 Final NOI Colorado and Exhibit (Text)&lt;/a&gt;</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Environmental group files notice against Colorado over silvery minnow water | false | https://abqjournal.com/341086/environmental-group-files-notice-against-colorado-over-silvery-minnow-water.html | 2 |
|
<p>A few days ago, the West’s favorite Pakistani journalist, Ahmed Rashid, wrote a ‘guest column’ on the BBC website in which he suggested that the Afghan governance model be transferred to Pakistan:</p>
<p>“Pakistan’s Reconstruction Trust Fund could be run by a board that included the World Bank, other international lending agencies and independent and prominent Pakistani economists and social welfare figures with no ties to the government.</p>
<p>“Pakistanis would still take all the major decisions, but those who did so would not be the cronies of the president, the PM or the opposition leaders.Pakistan’s finance bureaucracy and army would have seats at the table, but certainly no veto powers over how the money is spent.</p>
<p>“Their job would be impartial implementation of recovery overseen by the Trust Fund. Such a fund would not just monitor the cash, but help the government put together a non-political, neutral reconstruction effort. It would also help plan long-term economic reforms….”</p>
<p>The notion that that the World Bank, IMF and friends are ‘non-political’ and ‘neutral’ is risible and not worth wasting time on, especially given that their supervision of Afghanistan’s largest bank (largely owned and controlled by the Karzai family and just as corrupt as Zardari and his cronies) doesn’t seem to have been all that effective since it collapsed just as the BBC website published the path-breaking text.</p>
<p>Of course it is undeniable that the inner decay and disintegration of Pakistan, about which I have been writing for so many years, proceeds apace. A profound disillusionment accompanied by nihilism had already set in some decades ago, when, in one of his poems, Faiz Ahmed Faiz referred to the fatherland as ‘a forest of dead leaves’, ‘a congregation of pain.’ It’s got worse since then.</p>
<p>As if the Af-Pak war (supported by Rashid and company) isn’t bad enough. The backlash it has created in the shape of armed religious extremists bombing targets in every major Pakistani city is out of control. Or to put it another way, if the Pakistani state with its half-a-million strong army, its countless networks of military and police intelligence operatives embedded in every corner and institution of the country, is incapable of penetrating and isolating the groups carrying out the bombings then the end is truly nigh.</p>
<p>Or could it be that the intelligence services that have been infiltrated from within and without. Otherwise how to explain the timing of some of the attacks targeting internal enemies or foreign intelligence agents and soldiers would be a total mystery. Take this from a few years ago: US and NATO intelligence guys and gals decided to meet for an informal lunch at a fancy Islamabad restaurant. The location and guest list is secret, known only to themselves and their trusted security guys within Pakistani intelligence. A well-placed bomb disrupts the lunch leaving bodies in its wake.&#160; And this definitely wasn’t Wikileaks.</p>
<p>Political corruption has wrecked the country on other levels with widespread anger against the politicians and despair at the inability of anyone to do anything. The alienation from politics runs deep and the average citizen regards politicians in power as a filthy business and tries to retreat into private life. The active citizen, for the moment at least, is a disappearing breed, despite the courage of a tiny minority of activists and journalists who refuse to give up.</p>
<p>The country stumbles from one disaster to another and with the gulf between the super-rich whose wedding feasts are flown in from Dubai and who have built schools, universities and hospitals for themselves and ordinary middle-class families who cannot afford or access these facilities looking desperately for ways to migrate elsewhere, no longer easy because of the heightened security since 9/11. And this is only 20 percent of the population.</p>
<p>The talk-show presenters who speak of a cleansing revolution can never make one and those below, whose sufferings become visible only when disaster strikes, are so demoralized and fearful and concentrating on feeding their children and themselves that meaningful political action is far removed from their thoughts at the moment. &#160;The religious extremists, mercifully, remain unpopular. Their development model is hardly a secret in the region.</p>
<p>Ahmed Rashid wants to hand the country over to the United States and institutions under its control. Surely this is a bit mean spirited to the other world powers. Given the dodgy state of the US economy he would be better advised to expand the list. Perhaps four global multinationals (based in the United States, Germany, China and Russia) could set up a consortium (AFPAKCO) and start bidding for failing states, starting with Pakistan.</p>
<p>What Blackwater, its subsidiaries and rivals are doing for the US and British armies, could be replicated in civil society by big banks, oil giants and the nuclear industry. They could take over and run a few countries and if they messed up the World Bank and IMF could bail them out. &#160;The elites, many of their number already on the payroll, would happily sell out completely. And if the consortium were broad-based enough then the Pakistan Army would willingly police the new structure in return for a larger monthly check than it receives currently from CENTCOM.</p>
<p>Where once the East India Company took over an entire subcontinent, all that is needed now is for the AFPAKCO consortium to buy a Northern sliver. This time economic self-interest might dictate educating the population, making sure the work force was reasonably fed (genetically modified foods would come in handy on this front) and kept relatively healthy.</p>
<p>Of course the media, so wild these days and out of control, would have to be restrained and tuned to the needs of AFPAKCO. Here the BBC, CNN and Fox could just take-over and Rashid would be a good person to appoint as the first Director-General of the consolidated PTV.&#160; Whether a few porn channels should be allowed for recreational purposes is a tactical question, though on this front many of the politicians currently wasting their time could provide useful advice and service.</p>
<p>In 25 years time, let us be pessimistic, a huge anti-AFPAKCO uprising might erupt and bring about real change and independence on a very different basis and under a new leadership untainted by blood ties, corruption or collaboration. Now that would be a new start.</p>
<p>TARIQ ALI’s latest book “ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1844674495/counterpunchmaga" type="external">The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad</a>’ is published by Verso this month</p> | Selling Off Af-Pak | true | https://counterpunch.org/2010/09/10/selling-off-af-pak/ | 2010-09-10 | 4 |
<p />
<p>Ask foreign correspondents in Iraq about Steven Vincent, and what you’ll hear in their voices is respect tinged with fear. A New York art critic turned war reporter, Vincent was one of the few Western journalists to venture far from the safety of Baghdad’s tightly guarded hotels. He set up camp in Basra—the city most often held up as the Iraq war’s success story—and covered the place as if he were on the general-assignment beat in New York or Cleveland: hitting the pavement, listening to people, exposing graft, corruption, and duplicity. An unreconstructed idealist who believed that the war should bring democracy to Iraqis, he grew increasingly disappointed with what he saw as “fascist” tendencies in the country’s nascent institutions; he wrote about the growing repression of women and the role of religious fundamentalists in the police force. This past July, he filed a story for this magazine on how political assassins have established a reign of terror in Basra; with the piece came an email noting that he’d been told a story like this could get a reporter “disappeared.”</p>
<p>Two weeks later, on August 3, Vincent and his translator were kidnapped by men who, witnesses say, wore police uniforms and drove an unmarked police car. They were taken to a warehouse, interrogated for five hours, then—their hands still bound—told to run. As they fled, they were shot multiple times. The translator survived, but Vincent was killed. This is the story he wrote for Mother Jones. —The Editors</p>
<p>Tears flowed freely at the funeral last May of a man murdered in the streets of Basra by unknown assailants. “He was a good man,” said the victim’s nephew, an Associated Press stringer named Abdul. True, he was a member of the hated Baath Party, but he had “clean hands,” Abdul added, and never participated in any crimes. “But the killers who walk Basra’s streets today don’t make such distinctions. They take revenge on anyone they wish. To these people, life is cheap.”</p>
<p>“These people” are widely believed to be members of militant Shia organizations, who have targeted for liquidation ex-Baathists as well as many Sunni leaders. These well-armed groups carry out some killings themselves and rely for others on sympathetic members of Basra’s police department. But many say the execution orders come from outside. “Certain foreign intelligence services draw up lists of people they wish to eliminate for purposes of revenge or simply to destabilize Basra,” says one Sunni sheikh. “The trigger fingers may be Iraqi, but the brains behind the murders are foreign.”</p>
<p>Others see an even larger conspiracy. “Our sectarian problems are new,” says Khalid Ubaid, the head imam of the Usama bin Zaid Mosque in Zubair, southwest of Basra. “Throughout history, Sunnis and Shia have joined together to fight imperialism. This conflict has only come about because the U.S. and Britain—together with its Iranian and Israeli allies—want to divide and conquer Iraq.”</p>
<p>Whoever is behind the killings, they are busy. In a single week last May, for example, assassins murdered more than 100 ex-Baathists and other Sunni Muslims (most, but not all, Baathi are Sunnis). On June 9, terrorists kidnapped a Sunni sheikh named Abdul Salaam Alwan; nine days later, his bullet-ridden body was found beside his car. (The vehicle was untouched, a signal from the killers that the murder was politically motivated, rather than a criminal hijacking.) Two other Sunni clerics have also been slain this June—again by unknown assassins. In other cases, Shia militias have forced Sunnis from their jobs.</p>
<p>The result is terror among Basra’s Sunni minority. “Wherever we go now, people accuse us of being Wahhabi, of belonging to Al Qaeda, or supporting Zarqawi,” says Najat, a young Sunni woman who works for a Western aid organization. “We hear what’s going on in the street, we see the killings, and we are afraid for our lives.”</p>
<p>Things have gotten worse since the January 30 elections, when Shiite religious parties seized control of Basra’s government. Of the 41 members of Basra Province’s Governing Council, for example, 35 have connections to Shiite groups, and an official at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense claims that at least 50 percent of the council has ties to Iran. Perhaps even worse, Basra’s police force is heavily compromised by sectarian loyalties. Last May, the city’s police chief admitted to a Western reporter that 50 percent of his force is “affiliated” with Islamic groups. Another cop recently boasted to this reporter that 75 percent of his comrades were followers of populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. “After the elections, we expected security problems and political oppression,” says Jamal Khaza’al, director of the Basra branch of the Islamic Religious Party. “But in many ways the situation is worse than we feared.”</p>
<p>One professional woman, who along with her physician husband had joined the Baath Party in order to further her career, told me that her family welcomed the overthrow of Saddam, but lived in fear of the de-Baathifi-cation committees—made up in large part of armed Shia vigilantes who seek to purge Iraqi society of members of the hated regime through pressure, intimidation, and murder. One night, armed men kidnapped the doctor as he left the hospital. Another gang broke into her house, firing pistols into the walls and ceilings, terrifying her children. “They returned my husband unharmed a few days later, but threatened to kill him if he returned to the hos- pital. But we can do nothing now,” she said. “We are helpless.”</p>
<p>Not every Sunni feels the long shadow of Shia vengeance; many Sunnis in Basra live in peaceful accord, and intermarriage between the two sects remains common. According to Thawra Youssif Yaa’koub, a Sunni professor of drama at Basra University, “Mainstream Shia parties are not steeped in blood. I may not agree with them, but they are not threatening my life.”</p>
<p>It’s in the more radical religious parties that the thirst for retribution is strongest. One especially feared group is called “Vengeance of God.” Another is called As-shahouda, a reference to Muslim prayer. Despite the party’s reputation, General Secretary Sayyid Darghar denies its members resort to violence. “We firmly believe in de-Baathification,” he says. “It is not necessary to kill those people, however, just to exclude them from power.”</p>
<p>Despite such denials, the sectarian terror continues in Basra, targeting even Sunnis with no connection to the Baath Party. One Sunni sheikh who lives in the city’s old quarter says he recently received a letter from a Shia group “threatening me with harm if I did not stop talking about how Iraq is one nation, not a country divided by religion.” To Najat, the young woman working for the Western aid group, the situation has come down to a simple feeling shared by many of her fellow Basrawis: “To be a Sunni in Basra today is a crime.”</p>
<p /> | Assassins | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2005/11/assassins/ | 2005-11-01 | 4 |
<p>Jay Mallin/Zumapress.com</p>
<p><a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iovOpPgjdLpwyZ9zC_NmSIOlp53A?docId=CNG.d1ed550b2fc462fc20edac5d256b5591.591" type="external">“Foreclosuregate,”</a> as <a href="" type="internal">the latest horrible housing mess</a> to befall the US is now being called, is yet another aftershock from the <a href="" type="internal">financial earthquakes of 2008 and 2009.</a> But despite <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Too-Big-Fail-Washington-System/dp/0670021253" type="external">dozens</a> of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393072231" type="external">books</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/All-Devils-Are-Here-Financial/dp/1591843634" type="external">chronicling</a> Wall Street’s collapse, few authors have charted the breathless rise and spectacular fall of the subprime mortgage industry behind the catastrophe.</p>
<p>Investigative journalist Michael W. Hudson’s new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Predatory-Lenders-Bankers-America/dp/0805090460" type="external">The Monster: How A Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Lenders Fleeced America—And Spawned A Global Crisis</a>, does just that. A <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/blog/entry/2507/" type="external">staff writer</a> at the Center for Public Integrity, Hudson gives subprime the full treatment it deserves, tracing the industry from its birth—in the ashes of the <a href="" type="internal">savings and loan crisis</a>—to its implosion, decades later.</p>
<p>Recently, Mother Jones spoke with the former Wall Street Journal reporter (and <a href="" type="internal">MoJo contributor</a>) about the drug-addled, often seamy world of subprime, “the leading edge of a financial hurricane,” as one financial guru called it,&#160;a place where fraud was seemingly tucked into every nook and cranny of the system.&#160;</p>
<p>Mother Jones: You can fill bookshelves with stories of the Wall Street meltdown, the bailout, and the high drama in the boardroom. But when I finished your book, I thought, “This is the only real investigation of the subprime mortgage industry from start to finish.” Why do you think that is?</p>
<p>Mike Hudson: It’s a bit of a mystery to me, too, why there hasn’t been more shoe-leather reporting on what was happening on the ground level. You think about it: People were lied to about the kind of loans they were getting; they were run through bait and switches; they were taken advantage of and in many cases defrauded. The whole system was contaminated by fraud.</p>
<p>MJ: In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Predatory-Lenders-Bankers-America/dp/0805090460" type="external">The Monster</a>, you write about the “overheated world of subprime, where money, liquor, and cocaine flowed freely, [and] down-and-dirty sexuality often came with the territory. According to dozens of industry insiders, the trading of sexual favors became commonplace in the mortgage business.” Or as one rep for mortgage company New Century put it, “I didn’t want to be a mortgage slut.” How did you get inside this world?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Predatory-Lenders-Bankers-America/dp/0805090460" type="external" /></p>
<p>MH: I talked to as many people as I could. I talked to everyone from secretaries to loan officers to branch managers to vice presidents. I probably talked to more than 200 people.</p>
<p>And there were very few people who refused to talk with me. It seemed most people wanted to talk; many people wanted to get things off their chest, wanted to unburden themselves, to set things right. There were a lot of people who felt abused themselves because they went to work for a company that they thought was a legitimate place, and they immediately found themselves pushed and prodded to do things that wore on their conscience. At a lot of these places, you checked your ethics at the door when you came to work each day.</p>
<p>Also, I read lots of lawsuits, lots of court records. I read a huge volume of articles in the trade press. It’s not that this kind of stuff wasn’t ever reported, but it was reported in small ways, in bits and pieces, in obscure currents of the media. So part of my reporting was just piecing all that together.</p>
<p>MJ: There’s this conception out there that the subprime mortgage industry came to life in the late ’90s, or even the early 2000s. When and where do you mark the birth of subprime?</p>
<p>MH: The “where” was Orange County, California, and the “when” was the late 1980s. The modern subprime mortgage industry really got its start during that time. Amid the savings and loan debacle, there were a couple small S&amp;Ls that were able to skirt some of the failures and problems of the industry by doing these kinds of loans. Long Beach Savings and Loan and Guardian Savings and Loan really pioneered the subprime market in that era.</p>
<p>Eventually, one of those S&amp;Ls, Long Beach, left everyone else behind and became really the one main trailblazer for subprime loans. It later morphed into Ameriquest Mortgage, which was part of the biggest subprime mortgage empire out there by the time of the 21st-century mortgage bubble.</p>
<p>MJ: We’ve heard a lot about one godfather-like figure in subprime, and that’s Angelo Mozilo, the overly tanned former chief at Countrywide Financial. But in your book, Roland Arnall, who started Long Beach S&amp;L and later Ameriquest, is really the central figure.</p>
<p>MH: If you had to pick one figure that did more than anyone else to grow the subprime market, and grow it into the monster that it became, it would be Roland Arnall. Now, Countrywide and Angelo Mozilo played a big role, but they were very late to the game. Mozilo, especially in the ’90s, was nervous about subprime, and worried about getting into it. It wasn’t until Ameriquest and a few other Orange County-based subprime outfits really showed that you could make lots and lots of money, and really started threatening Countrywide’s market share, that Countrywide got into it.</p>
<p>MJ: Another big connection you make is the link between Wall Street and Orange County, the epicenter for these subprime outfits. You really zero in on Lehman Brothers to show this link. Why Lehman?</p>
<p>MH: Like Roland Arnall in the subprime mortgage space, Lehman Brothers was among the biggest Wall Street firms that bankrolled subprime. I think Lehman was first or second in packaging mortgage-backed securities for 10 or 11 years. For much of the time they were the fourth-largest [investment house] on Wall Street and were much smaller than Goldman Sachs, which was the largest. Lehman became very aggressive about diversifying the kinds of business lines it was in, and in the mid ’90s, as the subprime business was starting and gaining traction, Lehman Brothers decided to really jump into the business.</p>
<p>MJ: If you fast forward to 2006, 2007, especially 2008, when Lehman crumbled, the sheer amount of subprime loans that it had in its system as subprime tanked had to play a huge role in why the firm failed.</p>
<p>MH: Real estate in general was definitely Lehman Brothers’ downfall. Residential mortgage loans and commercial real estate investments. Lehman was making risky bets throughout the real estate space, and it came back to haunt the company and eventually led to its demise.</p>
<p>MJ: Are there parallels in the story you tell in The Monster and in the rapidly unfolding foreclosure mess we’re seeing right now, with fraudulent paperwork, foreclosure mills, “robo signers,” and so on?</p>
<p>MH: The current foreclosure scandal—with the evidence of backdated documents and false affidavits and these “rocket dockets” that are pushing families into the street—is amazingly similar to what we saw back in the heyday of subprime, when you had falsified documents, mortgage professionals forging people’s signatures on key disclosures, and a rush for speed to push families into subprime loans as quickly as possible, regardless of the consequences.</p>
<p>MJ: What do you think the legacy of the subprime industry will be?</p>
<p>MH: I think the legacy is yet to be written. There have been some efforts at reforming the system and correcting the problems that helped lead us into the crisis, correcting the problems that left American consumers vulnerable to the subprime machine. But there is still a lot of work to do. You can pass all the financial reform laws you want, but they have to be implemented in the real world. And that hasn’t happened yet.</p> | Sex, Drugs, and the Subprime Meltdown | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/michael-w-hudson-monster-foreclosures/ | 2010-10-26 | 4 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Three lawsuits filed against OptumHealth Inc. this year accuse the company of malfeasance stemming from its state contract to oversee Medicaid payments to mental health providers between July 2009 and December 2013, The New Mexican reported. OptumHealth spokeswoman Lauren Mihajlov says the company rejects the allegations in all three lawsuits and "will defend ourselves vigorously."</p>
<p>OptumHealth's efforts led Gov. Susana Martinez's administration in June 2013 to suspend payments to 15 providers treating low-income patients for mental illness or addiction.</p>
<p>Three years later, 13 of the 15 providers have been exonerated of criminal wrongdoing by the state Attorney General's Office.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In the latest lawsuit, a former OptumHealth investigator says she was fired for reporting concerns about possible Medicaid fraud on the company's part to the Attorney General's Office. Valerie Tafoya says OptumHealth had told her to keep quiet after discovering $4 million in potential Medicaid billing errors.</p>
<p>Tafoya first sued the company in May 2012, but the case was under a court-ordered seal for more than three years at the request of the Attorney General's Office. On March 18, Tafoya filed an amended suit against OptumHealth under the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act.</p>
<p>Her complaint names OptumHealth, former Chief Executive Officer Michael Evans and former Chief Operating Officer Marilyn Van Horn as defendants. She says the company's higher-ups told her not to investigate certain improper billing practices and that her boss, Van Horn, did not want to ruffle feathers with certain providers who were politically connected.</p>
<p>Neither Evans nor Van Horn could be reached for comment.</p>
<p>The New Mexico Fraud Against Taxpayers Act allows whistle-blowers who expose money fraudulently obtained from the state to recover up to 25 percent of the money returned to the state.</p>
<p>"With regards to the Tafoya complaint, we investigated as soon as we learned of allegations of employee misconduct, took prompt action based on our findings as to her employment and disclosed the results of our investigation and actions to the New Mexico Attorney General's Office and the New Mexico Behavioral Health Collaborative," Mihajlov said.</p>
<p>Former OptumHealth employee Karen Clark is also suing the company on allegations similar to Tafoya's. Attorneys for Minnesota-based insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, OptumHealth's parent company, have filed a motion to dismiss Clark's suit. They say she cannot produce evidence of false claims.</p>
<p>The third suit was filed by an Arizona company recruited to provide some New Mexico patients with mental health treatment after Martinez's administration cut off provider payments. La Frontera Center Inc. argues that OptumHealth and other UnitedHealth Group subsidiaries accused providers of fraud to cover up their own inability to pay Medicaid claims to those providers.</p>
<p>The companies have asked to halt the lawsuit and instead go to arbitration.</p>
<p />
<p /> | OptumHealth accused of Medicaid fraud in 3 lawsuits | false | https://abqjournal.com/748089/optumhealth-accused-of-medicaid-fraud-in-3-lawsuits.html | 2016-03-29 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Cleaning the garage and doing a few loads of laundry only keep you occupied for so long. Last week I discussed those athletes preparing for their last big “A” races of the season. There are a great number of you beginning to shut it down for a few weeks before heading into that long winter “base-phase.” This all sounds good, but can you walk away from those huge volume days your body has become accustomed to?</p>
<p>There are a few ways to add that volume and make your family happy, if they still want to spend time with you. Bringing flowers home from your last race of the season is a good way to re-introduce yourself to your spouse or significant other. Then, after a nice romantic dinner, where you actually do the dishes, instead of running to your computer to download the most recent data from your Garmin. Then, go for a walk. The greatest way to add a little extra volume to your day is to take your kids, wife and or dog and just go for a walk.</p>
<p>That same walk or easy run has become the saving grace in my household. Most of my runs at this time of the year are in the easier zones of 2-3. This makes it easy to include your partner in the training. Either start the run or finish the run with them. It sounds simple and it is. Start the day with that special person in your life. Maybe plot out a 35minute run with them and then add that little extra volume that you grave at the end. By the time he or she has showered, you are back at the house, ready to participate in the household activities.</p>
<p>The longer cycling volumes have also created a little stress in my household. I once suggested a tandem bicycle, but my wife did not want to be that close behind me early in the morning. So, we approach the winter rides the same way we dealt with the runs. I head out for the first few hours by myself, when the weather is a little colder, then return home to pickup my wife for the final hour or two.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>These little winter training methods seem so basic and simple, but they go a long way. When spring arrives and the longer harder efforts with your teammates are on the schedule you might get a little leeway.</p>
<p>The problem I am having is that my body and family are ready for me to be in the “base-phase,” but I am trying to hold onto the season for just one more event on December 1st. To accommodate, I am trying to get all the tempo and race pace efforts in during the weekend the longer slower workouts on the weekend. It is a balancing act that we all have dealt with at one time or another whether its your training or work schedule.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Jaime Dispenza has been a triathlete for 15 years and is a USA Triathlon and USA Cycling certified coach. Contact him at <a href="" type="external">[email protected]</a></p> | Moving into Winter Training | false | https://abqjournal.com/510003/moving-into-winter-training.html | 2 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>“With these seven games added, every regular season game home or away will be shown on a regional or national sports network,”&#160; UNM athletic director Paul Krebs said Tuesday in a statement released by the school.</p>
<p>Coverage begins on Wednesday, Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. with the Lobos, last season’s MW regular season and tournament champions, hosting Jamestown in an exhibition game. The regular season commences on the network on Saturday, Nov. 9 at 8 p.m., when the Lobos host Alabama A&amp;M live from The Pit.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The complete ROOT SPORTS 2013-14 Lobo men’s basketball telecast schedule is below. Please check with your cable or satellite provider regarding ROOT SPORTS channel information in your area.</p>
<p>2013-14 ROOT SPORTS Lobo Basketball Telecast Schedule</p>
<p>All times listed are MT. Territorial restrictions may apply. Schedule subject to change.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Date&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Game&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Time</p>
<p>Wednesday, Nov. 6&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Jamestown at New Mexico&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 7 p.m.</p>
<p>Saturday, Nov. 9&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Alabama A&amp;M at New Mexico&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 8 p.m.</p>
<p>Sunday, Nov. 17&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Charleston Southern at New Mexico&#160; 4 p.m.</p>
<p>Saturday, Nov. 30&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; San Diego at New Mexico&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 1 p.m.</p>
<p>Monday, Dec. 23&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Grand Canyon at New Mexico&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 7 p.m.</p>
<p>Saturday, Jan. 11&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; New Mexico at San Jose State&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 8 p.m.</p>
<p>Saturday, Feb. 1&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; San Jose State at New Mexico&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 6 p.m.</p> | TV picks up seven more Lobo men’s hoops games | false | https://abqjournal.com/268485/tv-picks-up-seven-more-lobo-mens-hoops-games.html | 2013-09-24 | 2 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Merck led a rebound in the health care sector Tuesday after reporting surprisingly strong results.</p>
<p>Twitter plunged 18 percent after its revenue came in lower than analysts' forecasts. Trading in the stock was temporarily halted because the results were released before the closing bell, earlier than investors were expecting.</p>
<p>The Container Store dropped 15 percent after releasing earnings that were far below estimates.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 72 points, or 0.4 percent, to 18,110.</p>
<p>The Standard &amp; Poor's 500 index rose five points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,114. The Nasdaq composite fell four points, or 0.1 percent, to 5,055.</p>
<p>Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.99 percent.</p> | Stocks end mostly higher; Health care rebounds, led by Merck | false | https://abqjournal.com/576144/stocks-open-mostly-higher-health-care-rebounds.html | 2015-04-28 | 2 |
<p>BRUSSELS, Belgium — Armed robbers have pulled off a spectacular heist at Brussels airport, stealing millions of dollars worth of uncut diamonds from a plane.</p>
<p>The gang of eight hit a Brinks security truck as its contents were being loaded onto a Swiss aircraft bound for Zurich, Belgian public television reported Tuesday.</p>
<p>The Flemish radio station VRT initially reported the haul as being worth 350 million euros ($465 million), but later revised the figure to 50 million euros ($67 million), <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jf4pM8Xb_VKp53YjbyOFDhOBLwew?docId=CNG.7997a88383498968a1a51023b6c5cefb.61" type="external">according to Agence France-Presse</a>.</p>
<p>"What we are talking about is obviously a gigantic sum," Caroline De Wolf of the Antwerp World Diamond Center told VRT.</p>
<p>AFP cited a spokeswoman at the same Antwerp center calling the robbery "one of the biggest" ever. She said the diamonds were "rough stones" being transported from Antwerp to Zurich.</p>
<p>A GlobalPost series: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/benelux/111004/blood-diamonds-belgium-antwerp-global-trade-kimberley-process" type="external">Blood diamonds are forever</a></p>
<p>"The men were armed and masked," a spokeswoman for the Brussels prosecutor told <a href="http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/19/17013510-armed-robbers-in-467-million-diamond-heist-at-brussels-airport?lite" type="external">Reuters.</a>"There were no shots fired and nobody was injured."</p>
<p>GlobalPost's senior correspondent in Brussels, Paul Ames, says the holdup is the latest in a series over the past 20 years at Brussels International Airport.</p>
<p>It raises serious questions about security at what is a major transit point for gems passing through the world's leading diamond trading center in the nearby city of Antwerp.</p>
<p>"The level of security is sub-standard," a senior police officer told the Belgian news agency Belga on Tuesday. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he complained of problems created by the fact that responsibility for security is shared between two police units and a private security company.</p>
<p>The robbers reportedly broke through a fence Monday evening and escaped back through the same hole, with the operation taking just minutes.</p>
<p>Aviation chat rooms have been abuzz with conversation about how vulnerable the airport's perimeter is as well as the apparently slow response of security forces which gave the robbers time to load the gems into their vehicles and escape.</p>
<p><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323495104578313523821463276.html?mod=googlenews_wsj" type="external">AP cited</a> the spokeswoman for the Brussels prosecutor as saying that the robbers used two vehicles.&#160;</p>
<p>Police later found a burned-out vehicle close to the airport, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21504112" type="external">the BBC reported</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>"The police have been complaining for years about a lack of staff and resources," said opposition lawmaker Ben Weyts.</p>
<p>"The Federal Police and especially specialized operational units like the airport police have not been getting the attention they deserve."</p>
<p>There have been several raids on high-value targets at the Brussels airport in recent years often involving vehicles breaking through the perimeter fence, Ames reports from the Belgian capital.</p>
<p>Paul Ames contributed to this report from Brussels.</p> | 8 armed robbers steal millions in uncut diamonds from plane at Brussels airport | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-02-19/8-armed-robbers-steal-millions-uncut-diamonds-plane-brussels-airport | 2013-02-19 | 3 |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.